Sushi Math

Brother-Bug's all time favorite restaurant is SushiLand - one of those sushi places where we sit next to a conveyor belt and sushi rolls past us in limitless quantities. He tries it all, enjoying some things that I just can't stomach. At our last trip to the sushi restaurant, I realized we had an excellent math game right in front of us.

There are so many possibilities. The plates are 1.00, 1.50, 2.00, and 3.00 each. You pick your plates and the waiter adds up your total at the end of your gorging. On this trip, we kept it simple, just playing with some of the many numbers we encountered.

What to eat next? Tuna? Salmon? Octopus?

I kept my plates in one pile, he kept his in another pile. We estimated who was eating the most by looking at the two piles. At first we tried to keep track of how many of each plate, making hash-marks on our paper...but we got to excited about eating sushi to keep up with that.

It was just too good to track while we were eating...

At the end of our feast, we counted up. How many of each plate? How can we figure out the cost of that stack? Who ate the most? (He did - he out ate me by one plate.) About how much money did we spend? Which plate - 1.00, 2.00 - did we eat most of? Least?

Brother-Bug starts counting. I ate 9 plates. He ate 10. 

It was an awesome math game.

There are so many places it could expand as well. Multiplication, division, quantity of individual rolls...  Mental math as we add up the total... I could give him $15 and he could figure out some budgeting... And going the other way, we kept Sister-Bug involved by having her do some basic counting practice - how many rolls are on this plate? Everyone was really happy, full of sushi, and enjoying finding a new math game out in the world.

Bonus! Sister-Bug works on her fine-motor skills with her chopsticks....

What other things could we do with Sushi Math? I guess we will have to go back...

Recipe: Simplest Strawberry Pie

I promised some strawberry recipes - results of our wonderful strawberry picking expedition at Riverbend Farm. Their u-pick strawberries are done, but I've heard tell of all kinds of other berries coming ripe. This pie would work with any kind of berry, as long as you get a good corresponding jam.

Really, this is so easy it shouldn't count as a recipe. But here you go anyway.

One baked pie shell - I wrote out my thoughts on pie crust here, or you can check out this tasty almond (and therefor gluten free, paleo-friendly) crust here.



Approximately 4-6 cups of washed and cut strawberries.
1 cup strawberry jam (fresh made? use up last years?)
Zest and juice of one lemon

8 oz. whipping cream or 4 oz. whipping cream & 4 oz. marscapone cheese
Pinch of sugar (optional)
1 tsp. vanilla

Put the jam, lemon juice, and zest in a small sauce pan. Heat to thin the jam and mingle the flavors. Mix with the strawberries. Taste - add sugar or honey if you feel it needs it. I never think it does.

Fill the crust with the berries. Whip the cream till it forms soft peaks. Use 4 oz. if you are adding the marscapone, 8 if not. I add vanilla to whipped cream, but not sugar. Do what moves you. To make the topping truly decadent, use 4 oz. whipping cream, once it is whipped add in 4 oz. marscpone and whip again to combine. Spread on the top of the pie. Decorate with a few extra strawberries if you wish.

That's so easy. And tasty, as you will note by the lack of pictures.

Recipe: Lamb & Cabbage with Fennel

Thus far, Summer is a tease. We will have a day - maybe two! - of warmth and sun, only to be plunged back into dreary, muggy, rainy days. I'm craving the flavors of summer - corn, tomatoes, cherries - but the weather calls for different foods. Grrrrr.

The following recipe is a result of wanting a rich and warm dinner, but also lighter summer fare. The results were very pleasant and just fit the bill. The fennel is flavorful and summery, but the warm lamb and cabbage helped combat the cold and dreary day.

When I posted about Lamb Burgers, I mentioned what a difference there is between pastured lamb and cheap lamb. Don't compromise on this. Like most of the meat we eat, our lamb is raised on organic pastures at Deck Family Farm.

This was a slow cooker meal, but with a little time to simmer it would also work well on the stove.

Lamb & Cabbage with Fennel

1 lb Lamb stew chunks
1 tbl. oil or lard
3-4 cups chopped green cabbage
1 fennel bulb
6-8 new potatoes
2-3 cups water
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tbl dried oregano
Salt and pepper

Heat a frying pan and warm the oil. Brown the lamb chunks.

While they are browning, cube the potatoes, and coarsely chop the fennel and cabbage. Layer potatoes, greens, and browned lamb in the slow cooker. Sprinkle the caraway and oregano over the top. Add the water - less for a thicker stew broth, more for a thinner soup broth.

Cover and cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours. Stir once or twice in the last hour or two. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with crusty bread and a salad.

The Day Lillies Are Blooming!

Summer is here, with Strawberries to eat and the bank of Day Lillies blooming out front. Last summer I was delighted to find out that

Day Lillies are edible!

They are so tasty added to salads.

Doesn't Sister-Bug look so...One...in that post? She's grown so much in a year!

Find some Day Lillies. Eat them. Enjoy.

What is your favorite edible flower?

Strawberries to Start the Summer

Yesterday we loaded kids, carseats, snacks, and buckets into a friend's minivan - 2 moms and our 4 kids - and went questing after the fierce, but not particualrly elusive, Strawberry.

We were successful. We went picking at a friend's farm where the berries were thick and sweet.

Brother-Bug hard at work and snack.

There was great excitement from all the kids, and enough space in the open fields for them to run and scream and "help" pick berries for pies and jams and frozen treats.

I love getting kids out of the house and out of the constraints if the city. I always notice how much happier they seem, how less drastic their meltdowns become. I especially love when we can connect the experiences of outside and away to the food that we eat. It seems so empowering and health-building, not to mention FUN!

What all kids really need - space to run and play without restraint.

The strawberries taste the best when they are fresh in the field, all the better for being just a little dusty. When we bring the berries home and wash them, they still taste better than purchased berries because our work is a part of them, and our memories of toddlers free-ranging through rows of bright berries lingers around each bite.

Oh Yum!!

Berry picking should be a mandatory activity, and not only for children. Take a morning, or the whole day. Play hooky and flee to the berry patch. In most areas strawberries absurd just starting. Soon you can find blueberries or blackberries. The summer is full of sweetness.

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We went picking at Riverbend Farm, near Pleasant Hill. I love this farm and buy all my canning fruits from them. If you aren't in our area, try a Google search for u-pick berries. Find your own favorite local farms to support.

Keep your eye out for a post about all the many things I will do with these berries!

I guess my work is cut out for me...

Recipe: Carrot-Mushroom Lasagna

Brother-Bug has long had a strong distaste for cooked carrots in almost all incarnations. However, last week I made a soup with grated carrots as a base and he was enchanted. He decided he wanted a lasagna with grated carrot as a main ingredient. I had to think about it for a while, but eventually I came up with this recipe. It's not at all a traditional Italian lasagna, but it's really tasty.

I used whole wheat lasagna noodles, but my preference here would have been to use fresh sheets of pasta. Sadly I was out of sheets, and didn't get to our favorite local pasta shop to grab some.

Carrot-Mushroom Lasagna

 1 pound lasagna noodles or fresh pasta sheets, cooked

2 cups milk
2 bay leaves
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 sweet onion, chopped
4 cups button mushrooms, chopped
3 cups grated carrot
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried parsley (you can use fresh instead...I didn't have any fresh)
3 tbl. flour
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
Salt & Pepper to taste

3 cups grated mozzerella
15 oz. ricotta

Filling:
Heat the milk with the bay leaves until it simmers. Do not boil. Simmer for 2-3 minutes.

Melt half the butter in a large frying pan. Add the garlic, onion, and dried herbs and saute for 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and carrots and cover. Cook on medium heat until the mushrooms have cooked down, releasing their juices. Add the rest of the butter and sprinkle the flour over the mushrooms. Stir the flour in till smooth, coating the mushrooms and carrots. Remove the bay leaves from the milk. Pour the milk over the mushrooms, stirring throughly till smooth. Stir in 3/4 cup parmesan cheese. Add salt & pepper - because there is no salt added to the noodles or ricotta, you might want to over salt the filling a little bit.

Assembly:
Preheat the oven to 350.

Grease a baking pan. Stack a layer of noodles, 1/3 of the carrot-mushroom filling, and a sprinkle of mozzarella. Spread another layer of noodles and spread the ricotta over. Pour the next 1/3 of the carrot-mushroom filling over the ricotta. One more layer of noodles, the remaining carrot-mushroom mixture, and the rest of the mozzarella and paremesan. Bake in the oven for 45-60 minutes, or till the cheese is golden. Allow to cool for 10-20 minutes before serving.

We served this with a spinach salad. As I was making it, I was unsure. Carrot lasagna? Really? But it turned out really good. Everyone enjoyed it and cleaned their plates.

Hot Breakfast Cereal Options

We eat a lot of oatmeal around here - partially because we have ample Steel Cut Oats from our Lonesome Whistle CSA and partially because we just like oatmeal. If there is one grain you should eat, it's oatmeal.

Oatmeal is good for your nervous system, supporting, healing, and strengthening the mylin sheath that protects your nerves. (This link will take you to excellent information on the whole plant.) When I hear someone say their "nerves just feel frayed", I tell them to eat oatmeal. Of course it won't work for some folks who need to avoid grains of all sorts, but the rest of us can really benefit from a good bowl of oatmeal (or an oatmeal cookie!).

We like to bulk up our oatmeal - a lot. We add all kinds of nuts and dried fruits. The dried fruits mean we can add less (or no) sweetener later. I almost always add flax seeds for a little extra nutrition. Along the same lines, I often add a handful of coconut. The result is a bowl of goodness that sets us up for a busy day. Some of our favorite combinations (in addition to the flax and coconut);

*Dried blueberries, cashews, & pumpkin seeds.
*Raisins, dried cherries, almonds, & pecans.
*Dates, sunflower seeds, & any tree nut.
*Dried cranberries, crystalized ginger, & pecans.
*Sliced fresh apple, raisins, pecans or almonds, & pumpkin seeds.

I know I have barely begun to tap the myriad possiblities, but those are some of the best. Add a drizzle of honey, a little butter if you like, and a splash of milk.

So that's good, but sometimes we have grains leftover from our previous dinner and I want to use them. Cooked rice or barley are the most usual suspects here, though wheat, kamut, or spelt could work as well.

Make a breakfast pudding!

I recently did this with a blend of brown rice and the purple barley from Lonesome Whistle. There's not really a recipe... but here's the general concept.

Combine the leftover cooked grain in a pan with enough milk (cow, coconut, or almond milk are my favorites) to just cover. Add raisins, almonds, flax seeds, coconut (or any other combination...as above). On medium heat bring to a simmer, reduce heat and cook on low, stirring frequently until thickened. If the puddin is too thin you can pull some liquid and temper an egg or two into your pudding (which adds some extra protien - always good!), add the egg back in and allow to thicken. If eggs aren't your thing, stir in a couple tablespoons of almond meal. Add honey to taste, a dash of vanilla, and a pinch of salt. The resulting pudding is rich and flavorful.

Combining this, lots of different fruit and nut combinations, oatmeal, and plenty of extra nutritional add-ins...and suddenly those hot breakfast cereals offer a lot of diverse options for a most basic breakfast.

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And if you like coconut milk, did you know it's easy to make your own? I've been using these instuructions with a fair amout of success. The resulting milk is thinner than what I use for cooking usually, but really tasty. The kids drink it up so fast there usually isn't much left for cooking anyway. 

Recipe: Lamb Burger with Apple and Gruyere

For Mother's Day, Papa-Bug & Brother-Bug made me these lovely lamb burgers. Simple and very tasty. It's the honey-dijon sauce that really puts them over the top. We ate them outside after a day of wonderful sunshine and yard work, with oven-baked french fries. Simple, yet gourmet and deeply satisfying.

No pictures, because we ate them up too fast!

A couple of tips.
Get good buns - if you're going all the way with a fine cheese and good meat, don't scrimp on the buns. Go to a bakery and see what they have that's real. Your standard wonderbun just won't cut it here.

Get pastured lamb. Seriously. I could (and eventually will) go on and on about the flavor differences in pastured versus feed-lot raised meat. But the place that I notice the biggest difference is in lamb. Good lamb, from animals who have been with their herd in lush fields, is amazing. It doesn't get much better. Cheap lamb tastes...cheap. And it's cruel. But if you are making hard decisions with your food dollars - and with the need for organics for many people combined with rising food costs, who isn't? - choose to get the pastured and worth-every-penny lamb.

Lamb Burgers with Apple and Gruyere

1+ pounds pastured ground Lamb (1 pound will make 4 quarter-pound burgers...do your math and figure out what you need.
2-3 tart apples - Papa-Bug used Granny Smith
Wodge of Gruyere (enough to have slices for the number of burgers you are making, but can you get too much?)
Good buns - as mentioned above
Romaine hearts
Salt, pepper & onion powder to mix into the meat
Olive oil
Creamy Honey-Dijon Sauce
1-2 tablespoons honey (gently warmed till melty)
1-2 tablespoons dijon mustard
2-4 tablespoons whole yogurt
Mix throughly, tasting and adjusting honey and mustard till you're satisfied.

Mix the meat with the salt, pepper and onion powder to taste and form into patties. Peel and slice the apples into cross-wise rings, taking the core out of each ring. Toss the apple rings with olive oil. When the grill is ready (I assume you know what you are doing here. There are lots of website dedicated to the hows of grilling if you need help...), put the apples on, grilling them till they are warm through. Add the burgers and grill as you would any burger. Add the cheese near the end of the burger's second side, and the apple on top. When the burgers are satisfactory, remove and quickly toast the buns over the grill. Spread each bun generously with the Honey-Dijon Sauce, apply burger, and romaine. Enjoy.

Bonus!

Easy Oven Fries

Preheat the oven to 425F.

For a family of 4 cut 3 average sized potatoes into your favorite fry shape - long and skinny, short and fat, wedges, whatever. Toss with salt, pepper & olive oil (or a combination of melted butter and coconut oil). Spread the fries on cookie sheet in a single layer. Pop those fries into the oven for about 15-20 minutes, turning half way though. The time they need to bake will depend on how thick or thin you cut them. Poke them with a fork to see if they are done.

These are so easy that I wonder at buying frozen fries (even though I do so at times...).

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If you are in the Willamette Valley, Oregon and need some pastured Lamb...because you read my recipe and now you are craving...the Deck Family Farm sells such an item from the farm, which you can visit or at 7 different Saturday Farmers' Markets! One in Eugene and 6 in Portland. Contact them for more details.

A Collection of Soup

Over at TidyMom they are collecting soup recipes. I think this is brilliant, because I love soup. There is a give away also, but my motivation is mostly my love of soup. I looked back over my posts and here are all the soup recipes I have posted about. All tried and true favorites - which one will you try?

Almost-Instant French Onion Soup - this relies on the magic of a slow cooker. It's not instant in that you have to start it the night before. It is instant in that your total cooking time is 20 minutes with a food processor. And you end up with extra caramelized onions, which is always good.

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Dinosaur Bean Soup - a creation I made when working with some heirloom beans from a local farmer. The first part of the post is about the bean and grain CSA that I belong to (and love). The soup recipe is near the end.

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Sunshine Soup and Ham & Barley Winter Stew - two recipes in one post! The sunshine soup is a bright soup with all red, yellow, and orange ingredients that we made for Winter Solstice. The Ham & Barley Stew is just what is says it is. Both these recipes feature more heirloom beans and grains from my CSA. The flavors of these ingredients is amazing and worth tracking down if you have time and resources.

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Summer Cucumber Soup - yesterday it was warm here, and sunny! We worked outside for a while, transplanting raspberry canes, and I got to thinking about all the tasty summer foods in the nearing future. This recipe is not appropriate now...but will be in just a few months. And SOOOO refreshing on a summer day!

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Sweet Potato & Beef Stew - using that earlier technique of slow-cooker caramelized onions, I made this amazing stew a couple weeks ago. There is no picture because we ate it to fast. There were no left overs.

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So those are the soup recipes I've posted here. I hope you try them out, enjoy them, and let me know. And really - give-away or no give-away, there are some amazing recipes in the Soupapalooza post I linked to in the beginning. This is the official line: "Come join SoupaPalooza at TidyMom and Dine and Dish sponsored by KitchenAid, Red Star Yeast and Le Creuset!" The give-away ends today, but that is no reason to ignore the cache of amazing recipes. Check them out.

Pie Crust Tricks

It's time.

Pie Time!!

I love, love, love to make pie, especially the crusts. And, all humility aside, my pie crusts rock. They are buttery, flakey, and oh-so-tasty. They stand up to freezing for later use and they don't get gooey when uneaten pie (or quiche) sits in the fridge.

I have assembled a couple of tricks that make pie crust a breeze in our house, and for a Thanksgiving present, I thought I would share them with you.

Trick One: Put the butter in the freezer while you get ready. This drops the tempeture of the butter so your crust will get less sticky and maintain a better butter/flour crumb.

Trick One-A: I have a food processer, but before I got it I always froze the butter, and then grated it with a cheese grater. (You might have to put it back in the freezer briefly to get it to re-solidify.) Then it is relatively easy to combine it with the flour to get the right consistency. No hacking large hunks of butter down to the right consistency.

Trick Two: Use half water and half vodka to moisten the flour. Add ice cubes to drop the tempeture some more. I don't remember where we learned this, but my husband started this years ago and we've never looked back. The vodka moistens and binds the flour, but doesn't develop the gluten and evaporates away when baked. This is a secret of the super flakey.

Trick Three: Leave enough time to refrigerate twice! Once your dough is mixed, break it into individual crust amounts, wrap in plastic, and put it in the fridge for about 30 mintues to allow the butter to re-solidify. After you roll it out and it's in your pie dish, pop it back into the fridge for at least another 20 minutes before it hits the oven.

Trick Four: ALWAYS par-bake, even if the recipe doesn't call for it! This allows the bottom crust to get a little crispy so it soaks up less pie juice. 5-10 minutes in a 400-degree oven will do it.

Trick Five: This is my favorite. While we are on the subject of par-baking, ditch your pie weights or beans or rice. Poke holes in the crust with a fork to release excess air, then line your pie crust with parchement paper and use pennies as weights! I have a bottle of pennies on my baking shelf that are specifically for pies. Why? The metal heats up in the oven, causing the crust to get crisped bottom and top. Pennies work better than mixed change.

The last thing I have to say about pie crusts...

People think they are tricky. And it's true that they can be. A good crust must be mixed exactly enough and not too much. But I've heard a lot of worry about mixing and pie crust and tricks of the trade. I believe that it is just as easy to over-think a pie crust as it is to over-mix it. Relax. Enjoy. It's magical alchemy and it won't work if you worry about it too much. Just let it flow.

Simple Saturday: Independent Snacking

One of the things that can drive me crazy is how the Little Bugs always seem to get hungry the minute I have gotten my hands deep in a project, sat down to nurse, or just opened my book. I know I shouldn't get peeved - they are growing and they get hungry and that's okay.

But really? I just started writing this! Two minutes ago I was in the kitchen, digging through the fridge, and you couldn't want a snack then?

In answer to this, I decided to simplify and empower. To do this I got a smaller selection of snacks, focusing on nutritional and flavor balance as well as things I was okay with both kids eating whenever. Then I got three plastic containers with lids that Brother-Bug can easily open.

I keep these bins in a low cupboards, and/or on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Brother-Bug can help himself anytime he is hungry - and he usually takes on sharing with his sister as well.

I keep refreshing the snacks as they need it, and I usually put two different things in each bin. One might have fruit leather and nuts, one crackers and nori, and one carrot and green bean pieces. I try to stick to our concept of The Three Gs as my guidelines. If there is something sweet like fruit leather, they have to eat everything in the bin, not just the sweetie) before that bin is replenished.

Some things I have packed in these bins: cheese and meat bites, seaweed, assorted nuts, chips, crackers, freeze dried fruits and veggies, cooked chickpeas, fresh carrots, peas, celery, or green beans, tofu dip, yogurt, dried fruit, carrot & beet chips, trail mix...

I'm having fun finding fun snacks to diversify their bins, and also finding a special surprise snack occasionally. I think they are both learning about meeting their own needs, saving the sweets so they last (delayed gratification), and a little nutrition. When I do go to get a more prepared snack, I find that I am more inspired to make it fun a different because it's something I do once a day instead of three or four times a day.

And when someone comes in the middle of my writing time, I can easily remind them that the snacks ate within their reach.

Preserve Us

Everything is ripe all at once. Peaches on Sunday, now tomatoes, Chantrelles, and applesauce in the next week. If I miss some of my regular posts it's because of a canning onslaught taking over my kitchen.




Keep your eye of the Canning Count in the sidebar there if you want to know what I'm up to...

Recipe: Not-Ceviche Shrimp and Pasta

Some of my better recipes come from having one dinner plan, but failing to fully read the recipe or buy all the ingredients... and then having to completely alter my plan with what I have, usually at the last minute. That's where I got the Orange-Miso Salmon recipe.

And what happened on Saturday as well. I had been planning on making Ceviche, but at actual preparation time I realized that I...well...hadn't started it early enough. Whoops. So with shrimp, some anaheim chilies, and other stuff on hand, I whipped up this very tasty

Not-Ceviche Shrimp Pasta.



1 pound cooked shrimp (I like to use the already peeled dudes, because it is easier to serve to kids).
1/2 cup lime juice
6 tbl. butter

2-5 cloves of garlic
2 (or more) anaheim chili peppers
6 large tomatoes
2 handfuls of fresh basil
Salt & pepper to taste

1 pound rotelle or similar pasta

Cook the pasta.

Heat a large frying pan on medium heat and melt the butter. Add the shrimp and lime juice, turn to low and simmer until the dudes are cooked through - nicely pink. Remove from the heat.

Mince up the garlic and chilies and coarsely chop the tomatoes and basil (this is so easy if you have a food processor). Mix throughly and add to the shrimp/butter/lime mixture. Add the pasta and let stand for 20 or so minutes to let the flavors mix.

You can leave it to flavor up and serve as a cold pasta dish if you want. It was really good the next day, after it had set over night.

That is all. With the food processor it is a very simple and satisfying dish, especially with a nice salad on the side, or some fruit. If I was making this for my spice-loving brother, I would have passed minced jalapenos or another hot chili to sprinkle on at the table.

August Kindergarten Review: Food

In lieu of formal curriculum, each month we choose a subject (or I choose a subject) and make that the focus of our learning projects for the month. Brother-Bug is kindergarten-aged (more or less), so our topics are broad and simple. I try to keep them easy to work into our day and fun to play around with.




For the month of August we learned about Food. This was a particularly easy one for a family deeply immersed in whole food eating, local food, canning, and who all love cooking. As the month progressed it was fun to see Brother-Bug take on more and more of the food challenges, and his awareness of what I was serving him at meals (and why) deepened as well.

We started off with a Preschool Lesson Bin from our local library all about food - a collection of a CD, some puppets, a DVD, and about 10 books all centered around Food. It was a good start.

We read some great books and did some excellent projects.

Muzzy kicked us off with her great Ice Cream Project! Brother-Bug said this was his favorite because he got to eat ice cream at the end.

Brother-Bug samples the produce

We also enjoyed blueberry picking at Adkins Farm, and the resulting work making jam, freezing berries, drying more berries, and making pie. Mmmm...pie....

We made our own mozzarella one day, using Ricki Carroll's book and instructions. It's fun and easy to make, and very satisfactory. Brother-Bug said he really liked the kneading and pulling necessary to make mozzarella. And when we hung the whey up to make ricotta (which didn't really turn out) he liked how the dripping was "cheese pee".

With the leftover whey, we made bread! We measured, mixed, kneaded, let sit, punched, and waited, and finally baked. It was perfect with honey. We talked about how the yeasts work (they make the bread fluffy by eating sugar and then 'farting'...lots of giggles there!), how to be safe with the oven, and other general learning tasks presented themselves - measuring math and so on.


So far, all these projects are just things that happened in the course of our days. Part of our rhytem of August. The cheese was made because we had extra milk. The bread was made because we had the whey from the cheese.

Kneading, kneading, kneading...

We talked about the 3 Gs - something I have written about on this blog. We cut out food pictures from magazines and made a 3 Gs collage. Along with the collage we discussed healthy eating choices, the importance of balancing healthy food with treat food, eating a rainbow of colors...and had fun with scissors and glue!

We had a field trip to a local fresh pasta maker - Pasta Plus - and learned about how food is produced in a factory. Brother-Bug got to cut his own sheets of pasta which we later had for dinner. Super tasty.

In our library bin there was a Sesame Street DVD about funny food songs, which was a favorite. Brother-Bug got to write a first 'Media Report' about it - dictating to me while I asked him questions. It was a real challenge for him to put his thoughts together about the movie, and I was thrilled that he was very excited about that particular challenge. When we thought back about the month's activities, he specifically mentioned enjoying the challenge of the report.

Our major math activity was making a Bar Graph of likes, dislikes, and favorites. Brother-Bug worked with his friend T, asking people in their world yes/no questions and filling in the graph I made with stickers. After the information gathering was done, we looked closely at the graph, asking several questions - is there anything that everyone likes, but is not anyone's favorite? How many people like ice cream and how many like celery? Which has the most likes? And so on.

Our graph - green indicates 'like', yellow indicates 'dislike', and red indicates 'favorite'.

To finish up the month we read Everybody Cooks Rice and located the countries represented on our globe with post-its. We also read The Life of Rice, about how rice is grown in Thailand and the culture that surrounds that staple crop.

To augment, I found some websites with food-related games for when he really wanted to play computer games. There was no game or site that stood out as excellent, so I'm not going to bother sharing them here. I threw them in mostly to keep consistent with our Food theme. 

We had a great time with all of this, and since we are only in kindergarten, I don't worry too much about retention and the ability to regurgitate information. It's enough for me that we are learning and doing and enjoying - forging pathways of life long learning and experiencing all that we can. That's what it is all about for me.

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Nest month we leap into maps and how they work - playing with geography! I can't wait to see where the month's adventures lead us!

12 Reasons to Frequent Your Local Farmers Market

Eugene, Oregon and the surrounding Willamette Valley is full of amazing farms that grow hugely diverse crops. We boast an amazing Farmers Market. What does your Local Market have?

Pink oyster mushrooms. We will be tasting these tonight...

Assorted fresh breads... not pictured are the amazing pastries these folks make.

Onions and tomatoes...

I never can decide what kind of berries I want to buy when they are all ripe at once...

Picked early this morning....

Just get near the basil and breathe deep...

These pepper plants have me eyeballing good sun spots for next year's garden...

Roasted hazlenuts... use in chocolate confections, pesto, or anywhere else.

It's all so bountiful - as through a huge cornucopia spilled out, covering these two blocks.

Melons are finally ripe and so sweet.

Fresh, raw honey...and the beeswax that comes with it.

And flowers. I love seeing people walking around market with an armful of flowers.

There was extra milk in my fridge, a whole gallon. Luckily the time was right, the weather was good, and the basil and tomatoes... well, you saw the pictures. With half an hour in the kitchen to make some mozzarella, as well as a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar...

Fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and we are ready for dinner.

...we enjoyed a perfect Caprese Salad for dinner.

Do you shop at your Farmers Market? What is your favorite thing to get there?

In the Pantry

These are some of my jars.

I love to can. There's an art to it, a rythem, and when I stack shelves of broth and jams I feel good. I know what is in those jars, I usually know who grew it.

I like knowing that the food I feed my family is made by me. I like knowing that we have food stored away. I like the alchemy of jellies and pickles, and the way jars of tomatoes and pears look on the shelf. I love the taste of home canned peaches.

Today I organized my shelves of canned goods - jams on one shelf, pickles on another, broths on another. Empty jars kept together, organized more or less by size and neck width.

I discovered that we are set for pickles, probably for several years. We need peaches, possibly some apple sauce, certainly more apple and grape juice. We are completely out of beef broth and fish broth, fine for chicken, and have lots of veggie broth.

So now we can strike into canning season, with its sticky jam pots, jewel colored jars, rich smells, and long days of hard work. Maybe some cherry jam and cherry pie filling this weekend. We will have to see. Maybe some strawberry jam. And I noticed I have only one jar of blueberry jam left...

Recipe: Caeser Pasta Salad

Finally we had a weekend where we could eat outside - light summer-ish foods that create a deep satisfaction in the soul.

I wanted to try a different kind of pasta salad so I went looking on line. I found this Caesar Pasta Salad over on Epicurious and made a few adjustments.

*I added an extra clove of garlic.
*I substituted a couple of handfuls of chopped up snow peas for some of the lettuce.
* I added extra Parmesan.

It was excellent with one of the incomparable Smoked Bratwursts from Deck Family Farm. A little sauerkraut (someday I want to learn to make sauerkraut), some mustard...

It was also good the next day as leftovers, with some smoked salmon crumbled on top. The note there is that the croutons had become soggy. If there is enough to be leftovers, serve it without the croutons mixed in and pass them at the table. 

Both kids loved the salad. They ate it right up with no fussing at all!

Then we went out for a banana split. How lovely.

The New Nutrition Symbol

It's a plate! NPR reported that the out-dated and unwieldy pyramid is out and the plate is in.

To my eyes, this makes a lot of sense. After all, we usually see our food on a plate and so this makes it easy to see if anything is missing. I also really like the broad categories. It's going to be hard to lobby any specifics into this baby. Meat lobby? You've got a whole protein category right there, Ditto to you, soy lobby. Lots of fruits and veggies, and a reduction of grains. Also good. The proportions are good too - more veggies and grains than proteins and fruits, and just a cup of dairy to the side. It doesn't have to be milk - it could be a cup of cheese to sprinkle on everything.

In fact, this plate is very similar to my concept of The Three G's.  I hope this makes meeting nutritional requirements easier on parents. I personally think it makes it more like an art project when serving up - arranging plates to cover all your bases could be fun. Actually, it is fun! I do it with my Gs all the time. Making attractive, colorful, diverse meals is an artistic delight. Which makes cooking less of a chore and more of a game.

I like games.

 

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I just learned about Reverse Graffiti. This is brilliant. I am totally thrilled. Actually revolutionary, in my opinion.

A Sip of Gold

Last fall, in the excitement of high canning season I tried making some Pear Liqueur. I had grabbed Classic Liqueurs from our local home brew shop and finally had a chance to try it. I made the Golden Pear Liqueur (page 39). With one thing and another, it took me forever to get around to the final step - just straining it a couple of times. I did it, FINALLY, the other day. It took five minutes.

Immediately I was shocked that I had waited SO long to strain this amazing and delectable goodness. I could have been sipping this for the last 5 months! It's sweet. It's syrupy (maybe too syrupy...I need to experiment a little more). It tastes of sun-warmed Bartlet Pears. It's amazing.

I'm going to need to make some more liqueurs. Strawberry? My own amaretto? Milk liqueur? Who knows? It's going to be yet another food making adventure in our home.

No Liver N' Onions For Me...

I really don't like liver. In fact, I refuse to eat it. There is something in the texture and flavor that I can't force myself through. Foods like that make me crazy, because I have very few foods I just don't like. Most things I can eat and even enjoy.

But liver is good for me - I know that as a nursing mom my body needs the iron and vitamin D in liver. Add to that the fact that I buy our meat in sides, split with friends, so I get half a cow liver once a year. That's a lot of liver. And so I have to eat liver. Somehow.

Wonder of wonders! This year I have figured it out. On recommendation of my midwife I have been grinding my liver, a quarter-pound at a time, into our ground beef. It takes a few minutes. You can't taste the liver, can't even tell that it is there. If anything, the beef is even tastier for the deeper flavor the liver imparts. And it bulks up a pound of ground nicely, just making those burgers a little bigger.

Maybe someday I will learn to love liver for its own sake, but for now I am just glad I found a way to get it in our diet.