Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan was next on our list, and it is such an amazing country!  It was the first Muslim-majority, democratic, secular country in the world.  Its capital Baku is the lowest lying country capital in the world at 28 meters below sea level, and it has the greatest concentration of mud volcanoes in the world.  So many cool things about this country!

Video List

• Geography Now! Azerbaijan
• Geography More! Azerbaijan - this section ends at 6:05
• A Super Quick History of Azerbaijan - a little hard for younger kids to follow, but informative and quick
• Azerbaijan. Cities, Sights, and People - a long video (a little over 40 minutes), but my kids enjoyed the entire thing.  The narrator covers cities all over Azerbaijan.
• Huge Mud Volcano Eruption - my kids were fascinated with mud volcanoes, so we tried to find some videos about them.  This is the best one we could find, but it is still rather slow

For the food, I checked out this list of popular dishes in Azerbaijan.  We had already tried gata for our Armenia studies and the others looked a little more involved, so I went with plov, mentioned elsewhere as Azerbaijan's national dish.  There are lots of different regional variations, and the recipe I chose is called Parcha-Dosheme Plov (layered rice pilaf with dried fruits and chestnuts).  I couldn't get chestnuts at our local grocery store, so I ordered them on Amazon.  I was able to get everything else locally (substituting regular prunes for the dried sour plums), even Afghan saffron!

First step is to sauté the dried fruit in butter - smells so yummy!

Setting the dried fruit aside, the chicken is layered on the bottom of a pan, covered with sliced onions, and then come the partially cooked basmati rice, the dried fruit, and a final layer of rice.  This all gets steamed together for an hour.

The final result was delicious!  If I made the recipe again, I would use a smaller but deeper pot, as the wide pan I used meant the chicken in the middle got overcooked before the meat on the edges was properly done.  I would probably also use more chicken and add more water to the saffron so that it could give all of the rice that beautiful color.  But overall, it is a dish we really enjoyed!

Austria

 Next in our alphabetical journey through the world was Austria.  In the center of Europe, it was also the epicenter of World War I and the seat of the Austrian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Video List

• Geography Now Austria
• Geography More! Austria - the Austrian section of this video ends at 3:16
• Top 10 Places to Visit in Austria
• 10 Best Places to Visit in Austria - a little slower and more polished than the previous video, but we actually liked the earlier video a bit better because of its faster pace
• Visit Austria: What You Should Know Before You Visit Austria - nice overview of some cultural differences between the US and Austria, as well as practical info
• 7 Tourist Mistakes (Visiting Vienna) - a little slow but helps you feel like you are getting to know the city of Vienna

For the food, I checked out this blog post on the 20 best Austrian dishes.  We felt like we got a little bit of a taste of some of the dishes like schnitzel and knodel when we had our Czechia meal, so I decided to go for #1 and #3 on the list: Viennese Apfelstrudel and Vienna Sausage. 

I had had Vienna Sausages as a child and knew I liked them, but this was a totally new experience for my kids.  The texture threw them off, and none of them were a big fan of them, but I didn't mind finishing off the extras.

 I found a recipe I liked for the apfelstrudel and thought I would give it a try.  In the interest of time, I took their suggestion and used a premade puff pastry.

I tried rolling the pastry instead of folding and sealing as they recommended, so it came uncurled a bit when baking.  But the final results was still quite delicious!