Good Morning!

Today starts our Halloween week! It will be a fun week of Boooo!

We will have regular classes with an emphasis on making neat stuff. Ghost stories a la Miss Judy and the history of Halloween! All in good fun and all to make children well rounded and knowledgeable.

Friday is our dress up day. We will wear costumes to school and then board the bus to visit with some elderly people in nursing homes.

On Friday at 3:00 p.m. is our Halloween party. It begins at 3:00 and ends at 4:00. Please plan to bring a Halloween treat to share – a plate of cookies or cupcakes or a salty treat. Parents are welcome to wear a costume. Every child needs an adult, so please plan to have someone there for your child. Children who are left stranded cry all afternoon, and this is truly a children’s holiday, so make it sweet.

That’s all folks! I think.

Vegetables – the inscrutable little thing mostly forgotten and thought of as a duty. Me too, Iguana!

Like many of us, I was not reared on vegetables. I was reared on a myriad of fruit that mostly grew in my back yard or just down the street. I ate it all with delight. Vegetables were another story. The vegetable I probably ate more often than any were hot pickled peppers because they were always on the vegetable tray that came with the olives and man, was I hungry.

We had frozen mixed vegetables, canned peas, corn, and lettuce. I ate artichokes, but it was a solo in my house. Not tomatoes? My father knew they were poisonous. That was about it at home. At Thanksgiving we had sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. We had those hideous French fries occasionally, and roast potatoes that were so thick with time in the oven, they were impossible to eat. I did eat Chinese vegetables a lot and loved whatever was in the mix. There were times when a shish kabob had mushrooms, green pepper and tomatoes. I was not a picky eater, I was a deprived eater.

So introducing my own family to vegetables was not an easy gig. I had never eaten broccoli, cauliflower, most lettuces, squash, leeks, turnips, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, etc. But I learned.

And that’s the attitude other people of deprived backgrounds should take when re-discovering the vegetable market. Especially in a store like Schnucks that looks like an outdoor market. It’s a great way to re-up your acquaintance with vegetables. Don’t be afraid they will taste bad.

Vegetables are still relatively cheap, and can be the center of your meal if you play them up. It’s just a matter of trying to mix and match.

Let’s start with a salad. My husband once told me that my salads were as dull as the plate. I was horrified, but he was right. I had never really eaten a salad that did not consist of lettuce. So the effort began with adding one thing at a time to the family dinner salad until I finally had to lessen the amount of lettuce. Nearly anything goes into a salad, I discovered: raw onions, raw broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, tomatoes, cucumber, peanuts, celery, carrots, raisins, nuts, cheese, berries and the list can go on forever. Salad dressings do not have to be those egregious bottled yucks. They can be made easily and made to go with the salad at hand. Mayo, lemon juice and Parmesan cheese make a great salad dressing. It’s a matter of trying and doing. Takes five minutes. Cost: about $1.00.

Let’s talk about the hateful canned vegetable. Let’s ask the Judy question: Why? Why would anyone buy an overcooked, water- soaked, nutrition free slop – ever? The only thing you can do with canned vegetables that’s even remotely palatable is leave them on the front porch for the possums. They have taste buds that correspond to canned vegetables. Frozen are OK in a pinch, but they still taste remarkably like freezer paper.

Let’s now talk about fresh vegetables: They are cheap, they are good, they are nutritious. They should add, grace, and enhance everything you serve. Let’s start with the hamburger. Instead of serving those potato paste sticks that drip unconscionable amounts of questionable added heart attack fat, let’s look at the little red potato. @ $2.99 for five pounds, you can’t go wrong. You wash, slice into wedges and bake for 25 minutes – about the same as frozen French fries. Yum. To the hamburger and potato wedges, we can add sauteed onions and mushrooms ( in olive oil) for the adults, and carrot sticks for the children. Dinner served. Cost of vegetables: about $1.00.

When steaming broccoli, cauliflower or brussels sprouts, don’t over kill. These vegetables take about four minutes in the average micro and about that long on the stove. If you buy a steamer basket, it helps keep the vegetables from turning troll green.

But what about the other vegetables you see and never buy: turnips, leeks, funny looking squash, odd mushrooms, Asian vegetables, rutabaga, kale, and all the things you would have to ask the green grocer about before buying. Try one thing at a time.

I like turnips raw with dip. Three turnip chips on a plate is plenty. You can also julienne them. They are stunningly cheap. Leeks are funny little onion looking things, but they really taste more like an artichoke. One leek makes a ton of boats into which we can put meat, rice, bread stuffing, and some rice like noodles – and they are invitingly cute!.

Kale makes a great leaf to stuff much like a grape leaf. Beet leaves are good in salads, cooked, and shredded and added to rice and noodles. Beets are delicious and turn everything red. They aren’t like those nasty canned enemies, they are sweet, and vaguely crunchy.

My favorite these days are odd squash. Cut in half, baked and filled with rice and a little meat and then topped with cheese sauce is a very filling dinner.

Vegetables are delicious rubbed with salad dressing mixes, seasoned with a favorite spice and baked. Cube them and mash them and serve like applesauce. They are great baked into a “critter” and topped with crumb crust. Lots of bland vegetables make great fruit buddies. It’s just a matter of taking the time – about 20 minutes – and reinventing the wheel.

Summer squash like zucchini and yellow crook neck make lively little dishes sliced, and alternated with sliced tomatoes with a cheese topping. Dipped in pancake batter, these three make wonderful fritters. All squash make great dumplings, breads, cupcakes and cookies.

One of my favorite dishes is sliced cucumbers, onions and green peppers in an oil and vinegar brew. It only gets better with age.

None of these things take much time. A whole squash can be zapped in the microwave in a matter of ten minutes. Don’t forget to pierce like a potato. Don’t over cook anything.

The whole gig with vegetables is that you buy probably less than a pound of anything and then divide and use a little at a time. Fruits and vegetables should cost less than $25.00. You don’t have to buy every veggie every shopping trip. For a family of four, you need about half a pound of broccoli, some potatoes, a bag of carrots, an artichoke, lettuce, mushrooms and onions and a squash. Next time try six more.

Here is the Garden School recipe for cheese sauce:

1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup flour
3 cups milk
1 tablespoon chicken bouillon

Bring mix to steaming, add 8 slices American Cheese – don’t use cheddar – it will taste like soap.
1/2 cup sour cream once to take it from the heat.

Salad dressing:

Real mayo, and then anything you can think of.

Make it fun and add one new veggie every week. You’ll be glad you did, and well prepared vegetables will really cut down on your meat budget.

From Kids Lunch Box Cards

Comment: Here’s an article on Applesauce that’s well worth reading.

Applesauce

Honestly, when I started this taste test I thought “How different could applesauce really taste?” Well, very different! Some are tart, some bland… chunky or smooth. I have new respect for choosing applesauce- even for cooking and baking. Though we tested many brands, I am sure you will come across many more- the ingredient list for the applesauce you plan to buy is: APPLES. Many brands we tested just had this one ingredient- some also had fruit juice concentrate, water and ascorbic acid (vitamin C). NOTHING ELSE. Our winners are: Trader Joe’s single serving Organic Apple Sauce (kid friendly taste), Solana Gold Organic Apple Sauce (their ingredient is apples only- wow!), Trader Joe’s Applesauce Crushers (whipped taste, kid-friendly FUN packaging) and Trader Joe’s Big&Chunky Applesauce.

I prefer dolling out from the large jars into lunchboxes because I know I can recycle them. I rarely use the single serve, but if I do, I have the kids leave it in their lunchbox so I can make sure it goes into recycling.

Because there are so many varieties, this taste-test is for basic applesauce- no flavors or spices. Later in the year we will be testing spiced and fruit flavor apple sauces!

Tastefully sponsored by:
Lassen’s Health Foods
Trader Joe’s Market

It was a beautiful day yesterday – a real ball game of weather. As I approached school at 5:45, I wondered if the mist on my car would stop the field trip. I pulled into the parking lot and fed the cats, and then started making lunch. I thought that it looked less threatening as the dawn approached. The sky was wild with activity, but as a more or less daring person, I bet on the sunshine. As the hours ticked away and the apricot bars finished baking and the Pizzel was packed for a trial run as bread for the peanut butter and jelly, I hesitated to pack drinks till the trip was a go.

About 8:45, I called our bus driver Sandy and the farm. The farm had planned on our cancellation. I told them we didn’t want to cancel, but they said they didn’t have anyone scheduled to do the field trip. Nice, I thought. But they gave us the green light for about fifteen minutes, and then called to say it was raining out there and the mud and the… every excuse in the book.

We ended up doing a regular Friday, but it was fun. We ate our picnic outside, and the children literally ate every single thing we had. That’s a real reminder that the combination outside and lunch is a great big green light.

It was Elayna’s birthday so there was very nice treat for snack. All in all, a very nice day.

One of the things that children have to do when they first come to school is to learn to communicate beyond that special language they have had with their parents at home. The intrinsic knowledge that exists between mother and child, and sometimes father and child stays at home when a child enters school. Nobody can do that like the parent.

Being able to communicate well is the highest level of being human. It is what we do that other creatures can’t. We speak, we ask questions, we reply. Animals can growl and hiss and spit and bite and kick and get their point across, but humans can organize their thoughts and speak about what is important to them. I have yet to listen to a cat reflect on anything.

So teaching a child to act on being fully human is important. The first step is listening. You can’t listen if you are speaking. So, getting children to be quiet in a group is a big challenge. “It is time for you to listen, and we listen with our ears not our mouths. So we need to stop talking and listen.” Many children have a great difficult with this. The question is why.

Listening to someone else means that “I” have to take a step back and lose being the center of attention. I am no longer the focus when “I” listen. The selfish child thinks, “I may lose myself if I listen to another person, and that would not be a good thing. So, I will never listen, and while they are talking, I will make as much noise as I can, simply because I want to be the center of all things.”

This is typical of three year old behavior. The child has not let go of the image of self as a small god, and a god who needs to be reckoned with. In a normal child, this dissipates by age four.

By age four, children have mostly learned that we share air space, and sometimes the child gets to talk and sometimes the adult gets to talk. So no longer fearing that he will lose himself, the child begins to listen, and he discovers that he likes what he hears. He’s learning because he has learned to listen. He is growing up.

The next step to solid communication is learning to ask questions. This happens in late four and at five. It is utterly amazing to me how hard learning to ask a question is. It is a task few people ever acquire. Many people grow old without ever inquiring out loud to another person about the things they see, hear or experience around them. They will tell, tell, tell, but they will never ask. It is no wonder so many relationships fade, die or crash because the inability to ask someone – even someone who is close to us- a genuine and concerned question is so difficult, so Herculean, that actual asking must be tantamount to death.

“I saw a wonderful movie last night.”
“I saw one about…” and the communication is grabbed like a football and the play is lost because the initiator is left in the dust while the ball carrier runs away.

Better:
“I saw a wonderful movie last night.”
“Oh, what did you see?”
“I saw High Noon.”
“What was it about?”
“It was about…”
“I like that kind of movie. I happened to see a movie last night as well.
“Oh, what was it?”
“I saw…”

This is called conversational exchange. It is begun by one person and through the curious question, an exchange is made. In the first dialogue, it is not conversation at all. It is “show and tell.”

“I made talapia for the first time last night.”
“I made gumbo. It was really good. I used…”

Better:
“I made talapia for the first time last night.”
“How did it turn out?”
“It was really good. I was surprised by…”
“I know what you mean. Whenever I make something new, like….”

One conversation is communication and the other is a launching pad into ignorance because nobody learns. One person initiates a conversation, and the other reports his own story. That kind of “palaver” is learned in childhood, and it’s taught by parents who never ask a question. There is a not so rare social ill that says: “I don’t have to ask questions because questions make me look foolish.” So the child who models his behavior after the not so rare social ill poops in his pants because he might look foolish asking where the bathroom is.

Asking a question never makes a child or an adult look foolish. Not asking questions makes the child look like a three year old and the adult look like an idiot. Asking questions is the second step in basic communication skills. Learning to ask a simple question allows a child to enter into a social order that will serve him all his life. He doesn’t have to wander all over the high school aimlessly because he can ask someone, “Hey, where’s the coach’s office?”

One of the problems with children who are reluctant to learn to ask questions is that they are always in the dark. “I didn’t know” becomes the standard excuse. “I didn’t think you wanted me to” or “I didn’t know what you wanted me to do” are also phrases of excuse that somehow allow the unspoken question to be validated. The proper response from the loving adult is, “If you don’t ask, you won’t know. Next time ask.”

Perhaps the problem is a deeper one. Caring about one another should produce a steady stream of questions. It’s only natural to want to know about someone you care about. Imagine going to a doctor who tells you that your child will need surgery and you never ask “what or why?”

The further up the social ladder one travels, the more elaborate the questions become: “Say, I heard that you are traveling to ——-. I’ve never been there, but I’d sure like to go. Can you tell me…” Or, “I’ve been reading such and such a book, and I’m interested in ________. I understand that you know _______.”

There are certain given questions a child will learn when he is learning to write essays that will allow him to converse with adults. The questions are about who, what, when, where and why. By learning to ask questions that cover who, what, when, where, and why, a child will begin to grasp real knowledge and climb the social ladder. But it doesn’t begin on it’s own, and it can only be half taught in school. The home is the place where children either learn to communicate, or they don’t.

Talk to your child and ask him questions – not why until after he is six. But ask him questions and then listen to his response. Help the youngest child respond. Shaking heads and saying, “yeah” will not count. The response to any question should be a full sentence. And don’t, whatever you do, walk out half way through his response. People who cut off other people, interrupt, finish other people’s sentences, change the subject, or point to extraneous objects mid remark are not only rude, they are ignorant. What we are saying when we do this is, “You’re not important enough to listen to, so I’m not.” Communication is the high point of life. So let’s begin to work on that with our children. Stop, look and listen. It’s always a good idea, and then ask, who, what, when, where and why.

A little warmer week this week! Good morning!

This is farm week. We will look at farms and farming and even do a little of our own. Growing things is a human condition. Growing things teaches children all kinds of virtues like patience, and gentleness, and observing. We will talk about the plants at school and how we take care of them, what they need to grow, and what they offer us as owners.

We will continue to work on our vocabulary. Please check the word wall at the front of the school and help re-teach and remind your child about the words he hears daily at school. Vocabulary is a thing that sets a child free of the constraints of non-communication. Communication is a lacking thing these days, and without the word power to get the point across, the child is hobbled by silence.

This week we will talk about Johnny Appleseed. He was a real character who lived in the East as a farmer – an apple farmer or nurseryman. He traveled much of his life sewing apple seeds, making friends and taming wild animals. He never wore shoes and wore a pan on his head. Many of his apple trees are still around and that was two hundred years plus ago!

On Friday we will be going to the farm at Mayse Farm. We will learn about growing corn and about growing broccoli, and other things on the farm. We will take a hay ride and do some maze running.

Then it’s a picnic at the park.

Have a great week!

This week’s Sunday Plate is about meat. Meat is a very controversial topic. Some people denounce meat as the first and last contribution to the decline of Western Civilization. On the other side of the ticket, there are those who regard meat as a constitutional right.

Let’s put meat in the middle where it, and most things, belong.

Buying meat for a big family is a really tough project because meat is very expensive and then shrinks when you cook it. I remember making a lot of things that looked wildly big and having them all but disappear in the pan, pot, and especially the crock pot. The object is to buy enough but not too much. Meat is the one item on the table people will want to eat too much of – especially if it is cooked properly and tastes like it smells.

Let’s look at what we are buying to understand meat. Meat is the center of most meals. It’s what we base the rest of the menu on. So meat must be the first priority in constructing a week’s menus. Meat is set up at the butchers by kind – beef, pork, chicken, and fish and shellfish, and if you add eggs, and cheese and beans, you have eight totally different meal bases for the a week. meat contains the essential amino acids we need in order to live. Meat is brain food for children and contains the fat that their hungry brains thrive on. But too much meat, or the wrong kind of meat will damage health. So arranging the diet and menu plan to be healthy means a little thought and a little domestic engineering.

We can start with Monday. If Monday is the beef day, you browse the butcher’s for the best deal. There are so many kinds of beef dishes, it will be hard to run out of fun things to do on Mondays. If you buy a roast, it will be more expensive than if you buy ground meat, but with a roast, you will probably have a little left over for soup on Saturday. Sometimes there are sales on steaks, but rarely are there leftovers. Cubed meat make great fondue dishes, great stews, meat pies and stir fry. Ground meat can be the basis for a hundred different foods, and if you make meatballs, you can use them in as many ways as the cubed meat. Buying no more than 4-5 ounces per person is not only wise, it’s a healthy way to buy beef. Buy the leanest ground meat possible because the fat just goes down the drain.

On Tuesday, you might choose pork. Chops, ground, sausage, hot dogs, ham, ham steaks, pork roasts, and pork steaks for piggie pie. Pork is bought the same way beef is bought – about 4-5 ounces per person, and it doesn’t have to be served as a huge hunk of meat. You can use ground sausage, which is cheap, and it can be used in place of hamburger. It is great in chili and spaghetti sauce.

Let’s take a breather from meat on Wednesday and use eggs and cheese. Eggs and cheese make great breakfast-for-dinner meals as well as quiches, Welsh Rarebits or open face cheese sandwiches. When you add pancakes or waffles to the show, everyone seems to enjoy this. Cheese also makes a great pizza night.

Thursday makes a great chicken night. The cheapest and easiest chicken meal is a whole baked chicken. You pop it into the oven at 350 degrees when the kids get home from school, and it’s ready in 1.5 hours and best if cooked for 3 hours. Chicken pieces are easy to bake and if you crank up the stove to 400 degrees, it’s done in 45 minutes. Legs, thighs, wings, all make great dishes. Chicken also makes a great last minute stew. You saute chicken pieces quickly and then add bouillon, wine, a tablespoon of ketchup and 30 minutes later thicken with a rue of cornstarch and water. Chicken is one of the most versitile meats there is.

Friday makes an excellent fish day. Fish is not hard to cook if you remember to thaw it out or buy it fresh on Friday. Fish cooks fast, so don’t leave it, and don’t cook it on high. Salmon makes a wonderful dinner and can be baked. Trout is a bit of a challenge, but talapia, sole, and cod can easily be baked, breaded and broiled. There are as many fishes in the sea as you could count, and shopping for fish should not be hard. Shell fish is just as easy to cook. Make sure you add your shrimp at the very very last minute or it will shrink up to nothing and taste like an eraser. When buying fish, buy 6 ounces per person. Tuna and canned clams make great patties and soups, and the cost is really quite doable. When making tuna patties use a lot of Parmesan cheese and make a cheese sauce to dip.

Saturday makes a great soup and bean day. By using all your leftovers, and adding a can of beans, you can make a great swamp soup that in a busy schedule will not hinder. Swamp soup is probably the best nutrition of the whole week. Everything goes into the pot – except tuna.

Sunday is a great catch up day. Whatever you didn’t eat the week before is served on Sunday.

One thing to remember is that meat does not have to be served in a whopping big chunk. By using smaller pieces, and distributing it among vegetables, noodles, rice and eggs, you are making your meal a lot healthier. This weekend I stuffed acorn and butternut squash with brown rice and a pound of bacon. The bacon cost me $2.79. I fed six adults with a meat base of $2.79 and everyone thought it was wonderful. Meat does not have to be expensive.

For the frugal buyer a typical week’s menu might be:

Spaghetti with ground beef cost of meat $4.00
Cubed ham steak in brown rice and cheese sauce cost of meat $4.00
Breakfast for dinner with bacon and eggs cost of meat $3.00
Roast Chicken cost of meat $4.00
Shrimp and pea pods on rice cost of meat $4.00 (Aldi’s)
Pizza with peperoni cost of meat $3.50
Swamp soup cost of meat $0.00

This does not include all the other things needed to make dinner, but it does show that a good and simple diet can cost less. This, of course, is for a family of four. It does not overdue the meat but it does provide with an adequate amount.

Cheese sauce recipe:

1/2 stick of butter melted in a sauce pan.
Add 1/2 cup of flour and cook for about a minute.
Add 2 cups of milk, 1 tablespoon of chicken bouillon, 6 slices real American cheese
bring to a boil, remove from stove and stir in 1/2 cup sour cream. It’s ready to serve.

Next week: vegetables

Momapedia.com

Andrea Evenson sent this to me. Thought some of you might be interested.

There is a new site that is helping parents find the answers to all their fall related questions, it’s momapedia.com

From keeping your kids healthy through cold and flu season, to Halloween preparation tips, mamapedia.com has all your answers. This great new website allows you tap into the wisdom of other parents to get inside scoop! Mamapedia.com is a unique website that gives parents access to answers from other moms and dads. You can type a question/topic into the search engine and find similar questions posted by other parents to get help you get the answer you are looking for. All the answer are provided by other parents themselves, so your getting great info from people who have experience it first hand! The site is completely free and very user friendly. You can even look up questions asked in your own area!

A good week, all in all. We looked at Columbus. It was amazing how much the children learned and remembered when asked. We drew ships, pasted ships, painted ships and listened to the story of how Christopher came to the new world. We even navigated his boat across the water using longitude and latitude lines. The kindergarten did a first rate job.

We’ve been re-organizing the playroom for winter and for more floor space. Some of the toys taken and put away are re-appearing. The boys got their trucks and cars back and seem to be enjoying them.

We tasted a pomegranate in Nutrition class, and every child but one tasted it and enjoyed it. One little boy loved it so much, his mom promised to buy one for him to eat. Pomegranates make a wonderful TV snack.

We had some trouble with spitting this week. Spitting is absolutely not tolerated. Please remind your child, if he or she is a spitter, that the consequences are dire. I have a place for spitter’s medals that’s hard to get to and harder to retrieve.

Next week: the farm.