How to Have an International Date Night

TTT International Date Night
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Jenn: hi everyone and welcome back to travel tip tuesday with the travel mug podcast This is Jenn and I am joined by my partner in crime, I mean, podcasting, Meggan.

Meggan: we going to change the topic of our podcast

Jenn: No, this is now a true crime podcast.

Meggan: I hope not. Gosh, I hope we're never the stars of that. Well, it's good to see you, Jenn. Good to see you.

Jenn: As I've mentioned a few times on this podcast, we are not traveling this winter, which is very sad and I hate it. But, in order to do something fun, we have brought back what my husband and I call International date night. So we started this when we lived in our very first small, small apartment together and we didn't have much money to travel.

So What is international date night? You're probably wondering out there. So it's a night where we cook food from Uh, a different country other than Canada. So, what we did when we first, put this together and what we did this time was we wrote down a bunch of different countries that we were interested in trying their cuisine.

We put them, all these little slips of paper, in a, in a container, and then when the, the time comes, we randomly draw one out. And then, we do another random draw for who cooks the appetizer. Or side dish and who cooks the main course so The rule is that we can't make something that's already In our like regular rotation of meals.

So like italy, you can't make spaghetti or like alfredo so and We recently we've done our first Country since we kind of rebrought this back and it was thailand and it was like, okay Well, we can't make pad thai because we like already make pad thai So that is our rule. We like to keep the dish a secret until the day of or until we're really starting to cook it.

And I'd say like part of the fun is the planning and the shopping. Although I will say, when we first did this, we lived in Halifax, and now we live in Liverpool, and uh, we don't have as many options

Meggan: No?

Jenn: for shopping at now. So yeah, it was a lot easier when we actually had access to like, an Asian or Indian food market, and like, the larger grocery stores just carry larger - or like a larger selection of items. So it is a little bit more challenging to find ingredients in our town of 2, 500 people. But that's, we're figuring it out.

Meggan: I like that.

Jenn: Now, if you don't like to cook, maybe you can still adapt this. In many different ways. You could choose a country and like, watch a documentary about it, or if you live somewhere where you have access to a lot of different restaurants, you could find a restaurant that's serving the cuisine, or you could even like, plan a mock trip to a country to use later. It's just another way that we found to kind of incorporate Travel into our everyday lives plus we get to eat delicious food. Not that they have all been amazing because there have been Several flops over the years that we have done

Meggan: But you're trying man.

Jenn: But we are trying yeah, I can't remember exactly what it was, but there was some like cilantro Chicken dish that was really quite bad.

And, uh, which, and like, I'm a person who likes cilantro, like, I'm not one of those people who is,

who

Meggan: tastes like soap.

Jenn: Yeah, no, I like cilantro, and it was still like, ooh, I don't think we finished that one. Yeah. Uh, so, Meggan, what do you think of this? Is this something, like, uh, would you consider adopting, like, a practice like this to kind of bring travel into your everyday lives?

Meggan: I saw this on your Instagram, you must have done it just as we were leaving or while we were away or something.

I'm like, that is so adorable. So cute. I definitely would like Peter can't cook his way out of a paper bag. So that part would be tough, but I think I would like to try incorporating it somehow, whether we get like takeout, And like you said, watch a documentary about somewhere.

I'd like to, I'd like to try that. I'm going to definitely, I can't imagine what he's going to say. Um, but I definitely would like to like, try to introduce it. See, I think like you and Ryan are probably a little bit more like foodies than like, I would be a foodie, like I could join you.

Um, and not that Peter doesn't like food, but it's not really like,

Jenn: Yeah.

Meggan: His jam as much, but I'm going to, I'm going to give something to go here. I love this idea. I think

Jenn: Yeah. It's

Meggan: great idea.

Jenn: just think it's like really fun and something to kind of like break up the monotony of, you know, especially I think that all, all of us get in a food rut and you cook the same like 10 meals over and over and over and having staples are great things. Yeah. But it's fun to like experiment and especially if you have access to, um, different grocery stores where you can find a variety of ingredients.

It's also, I mean, my husband has food allergies and so sometimes it is a challenge, but it's a fun challenge to find the right recipe.

Meggan: I think you're going to inspire some people with this one. I love this idea.

Jenn: I'm so glad. Yeah, I think, uh, let me, let us know on Instagram or Facebook, you know, if there are other little creative ways to incorporate travel into your everyday lives. We're on Facebook and Instagram at TravelMugPodcast and our website TravelMugPodcast. com. You can always send us an email there.

Um, we're. What is our email address? TravelMugPodcast at gmail. com.

Meggan: It is. It is.

Jenn: That's us. So yeah, if you're interested, maybe I can start sharing our international date night recipes with you. I can post that on our Instagram stories too. All right. That is it for this week's travel tip Tuesday and until next time. Bye.