The lovely Lino from San Marino sent a "holding postcard" while his letter is making its way over. Bearing in mind how long we looked for a contact in San Marino, we can't quite believe it, but it's here, we promise, stamps and all! When we sent him an email to let him know, he had more news for us:
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I wanted to share with you another exciting happening. Last Wednesday I was received by Giuseppe Morganti the Hon. Secretary of State for Culture and Public Instruction of the Republic of San Marino.
I shared with him Toby's project. He was very interested in hearing Toby's project, acknowledged it was a very nice and stimulating venture, and asked me to congratulate Toby and thank him for including San Marino in his project. I asked permission to take a picture of me and him, right after I read to him Toby's letter. Here is the picture: I'm the one standing on the right.
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What an honour!!! Thank you so much, Lino!! This brings the list of "missing countries" down to 40, with four of them arriving in the last two weeks!

Not since the "Blueberry grunt" has a recipe's *name* been this much fun. I think we dragged out making this dish, simply because we enjoyed talking about it. "Are we making Shakshuka this week-end?" "Hopefully, what do we need for Shakshuka?" "The Shakshuka recipe says..." - you get the picture. When we told Rotem of our love for the word, she laughed and told us another Israeli word - "Sababa", which means "cool", "everything's great", etc. We can see that one becoming a family favourite, too :)

We have to admit that this recipe is cheating a little, because it didn't come from a penpal, a friend shared it with us! Still, after last week's nests, this looked such fun, we just had to try it! The recipe can be found here, if you'd like a go: ​http://www.homecookingadventure.com/recipes/estonian-kringle-cinnamon-braid-bread

Okay. These are not really called "Any-Time-Of-Year Nests". The recipe we have (from the early 1970s) calls them Easter nests. But we love them so much, we have been known to bake them in November. So...who are we to restrict  a nice recipe to one particular time of year? We hope you enjoy making these - Toby has enjoyed plaiting, rolling and shaping them since he was two years old!

Marko and Alex sent us a yummy recipe from Serbia - it took us a couple of weeks to get round to making it, but when we did, Toby has lots of fun chopping leeks and grating carrots - and he really enjoyed the idea that there was a "surprise" inside the pepper, too. We'll definitely be making this one again!

On the 16th March, something amazing happened: Toby's story got picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald, and subsequently spent the week bouncing around "down under", hitting the New Zealand Herald on Friday 18th March. Lots of lovely people got in touch to help Toby find the "missing countries", and even more volunteered their addresses from Australia and New Zealand. Both are countries Toby would love to visit one day, so he was very keen to try and write to as many people as possible. He therefore declared Sunday, 20th March 2016 to be the:

Over the course of the day, a total of 23 letters got written - the most letters Toby has ever written in one day!

10 letters got written to New Zealand, to:
Lianne (Tauranga), Beryl (Manurewa), Savannah (Hamilton), Mr Quate's class at Tamatea Intermediate School (Napier), Jessica (Wellington), Jasmine (North Canterbury), Matthew (Auckland), Toby (Auckland), Di (Auckland) and Karen (New Plymouth).

​Over the course of the day, we read about the WOMAD Festival, we found out how Mauao / Mount Manganui got its name, found out about countless museums and beautiful landscapes, and Toby asked about school, toys and recipes.

13 letters got written to Australia, to:
Gisele (Ashfield), Emily (Fairy Meadow), Kirsty (Hobart), Nina (Victoria), Lily (Lilydale), Mrs Salter and Kingergarten Green (Summer Hill), Ariana (Sydney), Alex (Derby), Logan and Emerald (Cessnock), Laura (Lithgow), Angel (Morgan), Bigyan (Wollongong), Anita (Buderim).

​In Australia, Toby loved finding out more about the Puffing Billy Railway, fell in love with the Jenolan Caves, and tried to work out how he could get to Sculpture at Scenic World. 

​Since it's impossible to write 23 letters without breaks, we asked on Toby's Facebook Page to find authentic recipes to sustain us. We made a pavlova and Anzac biscuits (but we did eat some healthy food, too).

Thank you so much to everybody who helped us have such a fantastic day - we would love to do the same with different countries in the future!!

So...we made these two days in a row. Both times, we tried to leave some for Daddy. It never happened, so we have bought more apples to try again. I think it's safe to say that these are delicious!

Vera and Aleksej shared a recipe for a Slovenian sweet bread called potica - it is yeast based, so the time the dough took to rise was perfect for writing some letters!

This is Laura's Mum's family recipe for banana cake - it is super-yummy...we never managed to let the cake cool down before eating it!

Thank you to Laura from Brazil for sharing this cheese bread recipe! It was our first attempt of cooking with tapioca flour. Having the bread in little muffin tins worked really well!