Cooking an authentic Canadian Meal

We are wrapping up our Studies on Canada and we have learn a lot.  We finished up our lesson by cooking a Canadian meal.  I contacted a few friends and they gave us a few suggestions for our meal, since I couldn't at the time find my world's country cookbook (it has since been found).

Our meal consisted of Poutine, Tourtiere and Maple syrup cookies. I have to say we were all a bit skeptical of the main dishes, but they were in fact quite yummy!  If I am ever in Canada (and I will be one day) and I see these on the menu I will definitely be ordering it:)

The kids helped with the making of this meal and every one was most excited to try the maple syrup cookies, which were delicious!  You can find the directions here .  If you participate in a cookie exchange at Christmas time, I suggest you give these a try:)  They will become your families favorite.

Tourtiere is a meat pie from French Canada.   I was a little apprehensive about the spices in this meat pie but it really works, and everyone thought it was good.  We used this recipe but have since been given some family recipes from a friend of my husband and will be trying their version very soon as it is slightly different.

The final result of the meat pie called Tourtiere (don't make fun of my pie crust--I am not known for my pretty pies;)

Poutine was the side dish which is a specialty dish found in French Canada.   I found the recipe here   I did modify this recipe slightly using mozzarella pearls as I couldn't find Cheese curds in our grocery store.  I also used oven baked fries instead of frying fresh fries to save a little on fat content.  We were told that in Canada the brown gravy is so thick you can literally stand up a spoon in it.  My gravy wasn't that thick but it worked and gave us the overall idea. 

We topped of our Canadian meal with Maple Syrup cookies.    

This menu I am sure is not for the calorie conscience but for a one night meal it was fun to not worry about the calories and just enjoy the savory flavors.

We rotate on a monthly schedule learning about Artists (we learned about Frida in August) , geography Canada in Sept) and next month, Oct. we will be studying our next Character trait just as soon as I organize the lesson plans in the next week:)