A multilingual recipe book

In May 2009, 28 primary school pupils and 3 of their teachers from the International School of Manosque will take off for a four-day hands-on learning experience at Meolans-Revel (Alpes de Haute Provence). There will be nature trails, treasure hunts, orienteering activities, bread baking and a guided tour in the Mercantour National Park.

So what does this have to do with a recipe book? Well, French teacher Karine Meger came up with the idea of her 8, 9 and 10 year old pupils producing a multilingual recipe book to help finance the trip. "I asked each child to write a recipe from their country of origin and to provide a picture/photo of the dish," she says. "Not only did they enthusiastically live up to the task, some brought in the real thing for us to try." Piyush from India for example brought in mint sauce and Alu Wada small savoury cakes (a typical Indian dish); Lysiane got straight down to preparing roses des sables, and Julien made a delicious blanquette de veau.

Printing and putting the finishing touches to the book required a lot of work in a short space of time. It arrived from the printers just three days before the Christmas holidays were to begin. "With the children's help, we sold 80 copies in three days but before that we had just one hour to bind each book with raffia. Twelve of the children helped to do this in record time. The joint effort was enormous."

If anyone is interested in a copy of the children's book, please contact @email.