Belarus Unit Study

I have to admit I don’t know much about Eastern Europe. Apparently not many other people do either because my search to learn more about Belarus didn’t yield much but they have the world’s largest dump truck. It was truly disappointing, so I emailed my friend Natalie to find out more, and she gave me some great suggestions to make this Belarus Unit study better as an addition to our geography lessons.

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Belarus Booklist

• Bison– I learned bison are a favorite in Belarus, so we picked up a book about them
• How Mama Brought the Spring– this was my favorite book, it’s a variation on a traditional tale, and is such a great story
• In the Picture– this was the one book I could find about Chagall at our library, and it’s only a single picture of his as it’s a find the hidden items book for several artists
• The happy man and his dump truck– sooo….. Belarus holds the record for the largest dump truck, so I added this book in, it pretty much has nothing to do with Belarus, aside from that dump truck connection, and my kids gave me an endless hard time as I read this preschool book to them…
• My bison– another nonfiction book, I liked this one a bit more

 

Belarus Resources

10 Weird Facts About Belarus

50 Interesting Facts About Belarus

Belarus Key Facts

 

 

 

 

 

 

Belarus recipe: Belarusian Machanka with Yeast Crepes

This is what I found for Belarus:

Draniki– potato pancakes, the national dish

Kletski (apple dumpling version)- On 10 Belarus recipes, they said it was a meat dumpling, but I couldn’t find a recipe for that

So, I emailed Natalie whining about how I could find nothing, and out of all the recipes, I basically found potato cakes, which we’d made before for Luxembourg, and waaaaaaahhhhhhh!

She came back with some great suggestions and said if I was feeling more adventurous to try borscht, which I wasn’t that adventurous, and this other recipe that I thought, “Everyone won’t hate this one.”

 

Yield: food for 6

Belarusian Machanka with Yeast Crepes

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savory crepes with a cream sauce as part of cooking around the world, it makes a worthy addition

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 45 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons yeast
• 3 1/3 cups warm milk
• 4 eggs
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups flour
• 10 pork sausages
• 1 can beer
• 2-3 cups of chicken broth (enough to cover the sausages)
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 onion diced
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 8 tablespoons sour cream
• oil

Instructions

1. In a large bowl combine the warm milk and yeast. Whisk in the eggs, sugar, and salt. Slowly add the flour and whisk until smooth. Then set aside for 15-20 minutes.
2. While that is going on, put the sausages in a pot and cover with the beer and broth. Cover cook for 30 minutes.
3. As you wait for the crepes to be ready to cook, dice the onions and start them cooking in the butter.
4. Now start making the crepes. I found it worked best to make them on a griddle because I couldn’t easily flip them in my pan, and to wait for the pan to heat. Cook for about a minute on each side.
5. After 30 minutes take a break from cooking crepes to mince the sausage into smaller pieces.
6. Whisk the 4 tablespoons flour into the butter/onion mix and slowly add in the beer/broth mixture the sausages were cooked in. Slowly stir that until smooth. Then add the sausage back in and let that mixture cook together.
7. While that is simmering together continue working on cooking crepes.
8. When you are almost done cooking crepes add the sour cream to the sausage/sauce mixture, stirring it into a nice mix. If wanted you can add dill or parsley to the mix.
9. Serve with the crepes, either like a breakfast burrito or dipping the crepe in the sauce.

My additional comments on our Belarus recipe

I forgot to buy a second package of sausages, so I did not have 10 sausages, which meant the sauce to sausage ratio was quite high.

I could not figure out how to flip the crepes in our normal fry pan, so I highly recommend using an electric skillet. I’m not sure if that’s a great plan, but it worked mostly better for us. I would really like to increase my crepe skills for sure.

The original recipe said to use plain water, but I like the extra flavor the homemade broth made.

Our Belarus notebooking pages

The notebooking pages for Belarus are in my subscriber page, and the Europe notebooking pages are in my store.

• Largest Dump Truck- like I said we read the book, but we also watched the video up above just to see this monstrosity in action
• Bison- we only read the book, but I’ve included in my Belarus videos, another one on the bison

• Spring- since my favorite book was all about Spring, I had to include a minibook for that, I really hope you can find a copy of this book
• Marc Chagall– Click on over and check out the Chagall art history lesson to see how we put together that book

More Country Studies

• Andorra Unit Study
• Green Tea Cookie recipe
• Create the perfect Country
• Cookbooks for Cooking Around the World 
• Europe Notebooking pages