By now it must be obvious to you, dear readers, that I'm enjoying this challenge because I'm learning and improving my cooking techniques. But something I haven't mentioned that I'm also enjoying is learning about the countries I'm cooking from.

There is culture, history, and geography behind every dish, and it's cool to discover those things, as well as write the extremely short country introduction that opens each post. For example, I discovered that the country I'm cooking from this week is actually an island country! Let's get started with: Bahrain!

Eleven countries down, all starting with the letter A. Thankfully the alphabet has many more letters, and the world is even bigger! This week I'm starting countries with the letter B — and it's a longer list than A, with 17!

For this first country on the B-list, I go back to America to cook something from a country made up of islands: the Bahamas!