Sprout Schoolhouse: China, Made in Virginia

"Chinese Food? Chinese Food? YOU want to talk to ME about Chinese Food?"
- Carol Seaver, Growing Pains

Dessert: Homemade fortune cookies, ice cream cups (like at our favorite local Chinese buffet), orange slices and pocky sticks.

Today's theme was China. The menu for dinner was Chicken-On-A-Stick that turned into just regular chicken when all my bamboo skewers torched and disintegrated on the grill, sesame-ginger-clementine-veggie stir-fry, shrimp egg rolls with duck sauce for dipping, homemade fortune cookies and vanilla ice cream cups for dessert. We may never go out for Chinese again.
I had extra egg roll filling left over, so I ate it for lunch. Then I had to have another bowl. I will be tooting around the house for the rest of the week, if you get my drift.
Miriam thought the filling was pretty great too. (Charlie decided to wait for dinner. Well, what he actually said was, "That is food for Chinese people and I am not a Chinese person." He didn't eat a thing at dinner, just licked his chicken a couple of times and called it a day.)

Here's a list of a few things we did today to, as my children put it, "celebrate China."
....googled "Baby Panda" and oooh-ed and aaaahhh-ed at the adorable little beasts
....read a story book about a Chinese girl who lost her hen- "Daisy Comes Home" by Jan Brett
....tuned into Pandora for some traditional Chinese music...watched Kung Fu Panda in the afternoon
...watched one episode of "Wild China" on Netflix after dinner. They were mesmerized by the scenery and cool animals as well as thrilled to stay up until 9:30.
...kids took their butterfly nets and stripped the plastic, showing the bamboo so it would be more "Chinese"
....hung paper lanterns on the light above the dining room table
....found China on the globe
....talked about what kind of animals people eat in China and pretended to catch fish with our nets
...made homemade eggs rolls and fortune cookies and laughed about what fortunes we would like to receive in our cookies
....shared our meal with friends...if you would like to eat with us on a "country theme night" sometime, just say the word. Next up is Greece.