Introducing Ancient Greece with Loukoumades

There is not enough that can be said about how awesome  you make history when you bring it back to being about the basics.  Especially, if they're yummy basics.

I wish I could claim I  scoured the web for this recipe, but actually, it came up rather quickly in my search, and just happened to kick it out of the ballpark.  Loukoumades, an impeccable Greek dessert that made all of us is our house say, "Let's make these again, and regularly!"

Here is the Recipe by Greek Gourmand, Sam Sotiropoulos.  We pretty much followed his recipe to the T, and it turned out fabulous.

My son got to help with some of this recipe, because he recently has been taking a cooking class and is now very interested with what's going on in the kitchen.

This was really a pretty easy recipe to do, but it is not a quick one, because the dough is supposed to rise for awhile.

And I wouldn't recommend letting your kids handle the part involved with hot oil, but maybe that's just me.  

Now, if you're wondering why the pictures above show round little balls and mine up above are rather flat, almost like a puffy little pancake...it's because the I fried ours in a pan rather than dropping them into a little pot of hot oil.  But they still tasted the same:  fabulous.

Our friend Sam, who wrote the recipe, says these delicious little (almost dough-nuts) were made all the way back during the Olympic Games.  How cool is that!

Whatever the case, if you're looking for something else to do in Story of the World, Chapter Nineteen, this was a fun introduction!  :) 

More Paper People

We've been busy over here, and I am honestly proud of the results.  In our Homeschool curriculum (story of the world), study of the ancients in the Americas are still several chapters away.  But I have been wanting to get prepared for when it comes.  Here's our latest offering.

I like my ancient Mayans.  Turns out that the Mayans utilized facial tattoos quite commonly.  Another thing they did was to insert implants into their teeth!  Apparently, archaeologists have unearthed quite a few Mayan skulls where the teeth were ornamented with gems.  (I didn't attempt to pull that off in my paper people, but if I thought I could do it well and get away with it, I would have!) You can see images online of these skulls, and as bizarre as it sounds, I think it might have looked rather nice in person.  Especially when the individual smiled.

I also created a packet of paper dolls, or "Paper People" as I prefer to call them, for Ancient Greece.  Both of these packets include the images of the people themselves, several outfits for male and female, and then a coloring page for the budding artists out there who would like to color their own outfits.

These are going to be great products for your study of the clothing of the era, or even introducing to younger ages.  My son played with Ancient Egypt Paper People for several weeks, and I loved hearing him create stories with them.

Each of these historical packets is available in our store and I will soon be making a combined bundle of the three!  Follow me here or at my TpT store to keep up on all the latest!