Armchair Traveler..Well, Sometimes

At my job, we participated in a "Discovering Your Strengths" workshop from Gallup.  I wasn't surprised to find that my top five were intellection, strategic, empathy, input, and connectedness.  They all feel very accurate to me, but the two that jump out the most are empathy and intellection.  I spent over 15 years in the profession of counseling, a field where empathy is essential. What I did find interesting was intellection.  A collector of ideas.  A collector period.  That is very much a part of who I am, and it is who I have been my whole life.  I've saved boxes of ideas for all kinds of things, but some of my worst obsessions revolve around recipes, travel ideas, and books.  No surprise about the books either, considering that I am currently working as a school librarian.  But you should see the piles of recipes, recipe books, and travel books I've collected.  I've never really understood it until now...and I guess now it makes sense.

I recently purchased three home courses from "Great Courses" and they were "The Old Testament" , "The New Testament", and a wine course.  Along those same lines, I purchased a book about understanding wine and wine pairings.  And to even further the obsession, enrolled in something I find thrilling, which is called "Try the World".  The name grabbed my attention and I had to explore it.  If you haven't heard of it, but you love new experiences, travel, bringing the food and experiences home, and food well..this is for you.  I read about it on the internet, and decided to try it. 

Try the World is a company that provides a box from a particular region or country every other month.  Inside of the beautiful box you find local foods and information about that country, and links to music as well.  This month my box arrived and it was inspired by Morocco. In my box are things like Argan oil, couscous, a couscous sauce that has onions and raisins in it, a traditional Moroccan spice, kefka, and some moroccan cookies.  What fun! What excitement!  

My friend and I decided to start a weekly wine tasting using the course I purchased.  And we decided to cook together.  Now we are also going to cook foods that are from the regions in our "Try the World" box.  We are so excited to start our cultural adventure.  More information will be forthcoming as the weeks progress.  

My goal now is to share our recipes and wine tasting experiences with you.  I am so excited.  I have never traveled to any location where I didn't buy a local cookbook, and now I get to expand even more.  I have cookbooks from England, South Africa, Hawaii, Seattle, Boston, The Czech Republic, Italy, Germany...well you get the idea.  My hope now is to travel to some of these places that we are enjoying through cooking...I wonder when I will get to Morocco?  :-)  

Stay tuned.....