I’ve been thinking a lot on this and was wondering if any of you happen to use cooking as a learning tool/ a way to explore the culture of languages you are learning? Does it prove to be useful? What are some of your favorite things to cook?
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Hi @Natashia ,
In the past I used recipes in almost all of my languages for cooking. I love the Mediateranian cuisine and am a vegetarian. Nowaday I cook “freestyle”, which has the advantage that i can buy all the ingrediants in ONE supermarket. I LOVE all kinds of vegetables and like to combine them with noodles or rice or create a soup, adding potatoes. What’s your opinion about vegetarian food?
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Yes, yes, yes!! I love doing this because it has a physical reference and experience to your learning, a direct relationship. I can talk to myself about what I am doing, and then express my thoughts about what I liked or could improve etc.
I’m a big “foodie”, so it is near impossible for me to choose a favourite.
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I recently found a wonderful recipe for pâine. It was on a Romanian cooking channel and was very easy to make. I would love to do more food exploration.
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I often enjoy it! I’m an avid meat eater, but could stand to dial it back! I enjoy finding vegetarian recipes from other places! I often feel bored by American vegetarian optio, but perhaps I haven’t found the right thing!
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When I think back to some of the first books I acquired in a language when learning, cookbooks often came before novels. Now, thanks to the internet it’s even easier to find recipes or videos in one’s chosen language/culture. My German never got terribly high, certainly not past A1 level ages ago, but German or Austrian cookbooks or recipes were my favorite, especially as I had friends from Tirol who stayed with me (also years ago) and actually taught me a few of their favorites like kaaspatzen (think spatzle, sauteed in butter and backed in a cast iron pan with loads of cheese and caraway seeds). And I learned pierogi and pirohi with a fellow Russian student years ago in her Ukranian family kitchen.
Nowadays I’m working on Irish, and have not found a cookbook yet, but did find a show or two that touches on food and cooking on tg4.ie (the Irish language tv station). And I translated a part Mexican/Scottish candy I make into Irish for an Immersion weekend I attended at the beginning of the year.
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One of my projects was to record and analyze various procedural texts in Balinese - including recipes! Unfortunately, there were a lot of cultural assumptions, like knowing how to dispatch a live pig using only a sharp knife! (Which my parents could have done - but not city-raised little old me…!)
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I am from South Tyyrol which is in Italy and I love Kaasspatzlen, too. 
Claudia
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Hi @Natashia,
I have got delicious vegetarian recipes in Spanish, Italian and French as well as lots in German - all Mediterranian cuisine - it’s all written on paper, so I could not send them by mail. That’s a pity…
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