- Broccoli, Basil and Prosciutto Pizza (Broccoli, Basil and Prosciutto Rice Salad for Dad)
- Orange Sections
- Chocolate Spinach Smoothie
- Blueberry Yogurt Cake
- Turkey Black Bean Enchiladas
- Green Salad with Ginger-Carrot-Miso Dressing
- Montreal Arm Roast
- Vanilla-Flecked Homemade Yogurt (sweetened with agave)
- Homemade Granola-Crispy Rice Blend
- Multi-Grain Struan, Homemade Almond Butter
- Szechwan Celery and Chicken Stir-Fry
- Hummus and Crudites
- Salmon-Pasta Salad (Rice Pasta for Dad)
- Black Bean Brownies
- Broasted Tomatoes
- White Tea
- Dark Chocolate
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The oldest boy is reading Cry, the Beloved Country. Here’s a set of questions from LoveToLearn.net if you want to go that route. I’ve watched the movie and highly recommend for late teens to adults. The younger ones are reading Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales and Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. For dessert tonight — melktert!! Made with homemade buttermilk from my cultured butter experiment the other day. It should work, given that it’s apparently very similar to buttermilk pie. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. We’ve made butter often enough in our DLX, but I’ve been wanting to try making it with Snowville Creamery’s heavy whipping cream (*not* ultra-pasteurized) since it became available at Whole Foods. The other — also important — reason for making butter is that I’m in love with Kerrygold’s Cultured Irish Butter…. and don’t mind paying a higher price at Costco for their 24-oz box… BUT I also would prefer to buy local when at all possible to support the farmers around us. The savings in cost, it turns out, isn’t anything to sneeze at either. Two cups of the half-gallon of heavy whipping cream went with the strawberry shortcake I mentioned in an earlier post, so I had 6 cups left to work with. I added 1/3 + 1/6 cup of Seven Stars Farm Yogurt (my favorite store bought variety when I’m not making my own) and left it for about 13 hours in a bowl (whisked first of course!), covered with plastic wrap, at room temperature. After the overnight stay outside, I put it in the fridge to chill for a few hours. I’d have preferred to culture it a bit longer, but decided to make the butter in between lunch and dinner, since I figured by the time I got dinner started I’d be too tired to make it, and will have to put it off ’til tomorrow, which does me no good since I’m making our favorite loaf tomorrow, and it will not do to not have that butter ready!
So anyway, into the DLX mixer it went. And yes, some people don’t like making butter with anything plastic but my DLX has served me well all these years and has made me so much butter that it just tends to laugh off the criticism. What’s great about making butter in the DLX is that I can just plop a piece of plastic wrap over the top of the machine and I can observe what’s going on without getting all splattered. It’s almost like having an old fashioned glass butter churn, except this is for lazy people like me. Just whirrrrr, whirrrrrr, whirrrrr….. it will thicken and turn into butter rather quickly. You’ll know because liquid (the buttermilk) will start splattering the plastic wrap. Let this go on for a bit, say, a minute, to get all that good buttermilk out (yum… for pancakes, dressing, any other recipe you like that calls for buttermilk!). Pour out the buttermilk (I used a plastic sieve but didn’t really need it much since the butter stayed put in the mixer bowl. Added (filtered) water, whirred again on high so that the butter leaves the beaters and gets slapped back to the sides of the bowl before coming together in the center again. Pour out the water and discard. Do this several times until the water runs clear. This is another reason I love the DLX! The washing part is a breeze! The hardest part was squeezing out all that water at the end. I’m still not done. I’ve wrapped mine in plastic, parchment, foil, freezer paper, etc. Parchment is best but I’m out, so right now I’ve got it in a log-shape (kinda like those Amish butter logs) in paper towel and foil. All in all, great results. I got about 2 1/2 cups of buttermilk, and 28 oz of cultured butter. (Not bad at all. I think the Kerrygold is $8(?) at Costco (sorry I forget the price)… the half-gallon of cream was $7.99, and I only used 3/4 of it. I love European butter, but I love my local farmers more.  That foamy stuff? Buttermilk! Twenty-five pounds of these gorgeous beauties. Picked up Saturday from Adam Batson of Ohio Brush Creek Cooperative, at the Montgomery Farmer’s Market. Processed and packed for consumption! And going, going, going…. fast.
First up was the must-have summer treat: Strawberry Shortcake. I firmly belong in the camp of “cake” over “biscuit”. Yena made the cake recipe from her favorite cookbook. The flour was freshly milled, using wheat grains I picked up from Tiffany Shinkle on the same day (from last year’s harvest). I whipped the cream and macerated the strawberries in a bit of sugar and lemon juice. Unfortunately, the baker didn’t like the combo and settled for a bowl of strawberries after everything was assembled. And ugh, no pics — the batteries died soon after I took the pic above. Steve Ray is scheduled to be in Manila next month. The Defensores Fidei Foundation is organizing a gathering with him for apologists on July 17, 2010 from 9:00AM-12 noon. Fee is P300 per person. The organizers are organizing Read Aloud: Chidi Only Likes Blue. Make a color wheel. You can use this blank wheel if you like. In each section of the wheel, write down your notes or draw the items Chidi and Nneka like. Put this page in our African scrapbook. Read Aloud: The Jungle Grapevine. Make sure you read the Author’s Note at the back of the book! Music:: Listen to (and dance to, if you like) Kronos Quartet’s Pieces of Africa all day. Movie for Mom and Dad: Amistad. Must-read reviews. Older Kids: Read Amos Fortune. There is a sample study guide here, but we probably won’t use it… dinner time discussion should be good enough for this, and maybe a one-page narration. I’m also letting the kids peruse some links:
Today’s Menu Chicken Stewed in Coconut Milk This is my list of what *not* to include in our study. For various reasons. The White Giraffe I’ll go ahead and add comments here too about the movies we picked: Casablanca we saw because I’ve been wondering forever, hearing those quotes all the time — “Here’s looking at you, kid”, “Play it again, Sam”, “We’ll always have Paris”. We didn’t love the movie, though it wasn’t a total waste of time. I like that Bogart’s character was honorable and decided to do the right thing in the end. And the plot twist made things more interesting. Major disappointment was King Solomon’s Mines — I picked the highest rated one featuring Stewart Granger (unknown to me prior to this), because the book was just so funny that I even chose to read aloud parts of it to the kids and actually let my 11-yo read it, with a stern warning that he was not to make silly jokes about certain anatomical parts referenced in the book. I was hoping the book would at least stay true to the story. It had won awards, apparently because of the authenticity of the setting (real tribes, language, costumes, etc.), but it was not H. Rider Haggard’s story. Adding a romance to it did not help at all. Part of the appeal to me of King Solomon’s Mines, the story, was the masculinity of it. My kids were so looking forward to “beautiful white legs” and the story around that. The humor in the movie was non-existent and we were given, instead, stares and kisses and romantic tension. Blecch. I’m not optimistic, looking at the other options, with Patrick Swayze and Richard Chamberlain. *Someone* has to do this movie again, the *right* way. How timely (and ironic, but more on that later) that we’re doing our Africa unit study and today is the feast day of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions! I’m keeping it simple (everyone’s still recovering, bad coughs all around) so we’re simply going to read from the Liturgy of the Hours, which includes a portion of the homily delivered by Pope Paul VI at the canonization of these martyrs of Uganda. Here are some useful links: Catholic Culture for June 3 Our library doesn’t have a copy of African Triumph by Charles Dollen and I didn’t look for it in time to purchase it for today Ironic that this day is the feast of African martyrs who gave their lives for purity and for the Christian faith, in a month which our African-American president declares LGBT Pride Month. These martyrs died just 125 years ago. St. Charles Lwanga, pray for us! From Liturgy of the Hours: Father, The kids are tired of oatmeal, so today I did a variation of my Choc-Ban-Oat-Cran-Wal Cookies…. except I didn’t want to spend time scooping out cookie dough. Hubby is home helping me take care of the sick kids, for the second day, but the little one woke up early with a terrible sounding cough, reminding me of that bug he gut when he was just two weeks old. That time, dh had a trip to Germany and left me almost in tears, scared of the baby’s illness that made him sound pitifully like an old man with something blocking his throat. I really should write up the recipe for next time…. but it goes something like this: about 6 tablespoons of my favorite Kerrygold Irish butter, salted, which I broke into bits and mixed (with my hands, too lazy to start the mixer) The rest of the procedure is simple: Spray baking sheet, the large one (I think mine is 10 x 15) spread evenly, and bake 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees. Whoops. I should have said *preheat*. Oh well. ETA: I forgot to add. The inspiration for this comes from Really exciting news landed in my reader box today: They have pricing info so far on the Faith and Life series. I’m interested in the Didache as well. Strongly considering signing up. I’m not giving up the one-on-one and the group discussions as those are vital, but this should free up some time so I can do some of the fun liturgical stuff as well which is usually what falls through the cracks. Besides that, I am excited about the Steve Ray videos incorporated into it, and all the neat features they’ve built in. An enthusiastic two thumbs up for Faith and Life Online! one kid still sick, three recovering, mom too… so keeping it simple the next few days. this week’s offerings: Hotdog Fried Rice (hah! using leftover Coleman hotdogs from Memorial Day Weekend) Coming up:
A bit more involved thinking:
Vocabulary: Extra credit: Copy and color the picture on p. 34. Answer the questions on page 278 of All Ye Lands. Read aloud: 14 Cows for America. Today’s Menu: Shrimp Curry, Cape Malay-Style All Ye Lands, pp. 273-278. Take notes and make entries into Book of Centuries/Adventure: Africa scrapbook. Read Aloud: For You Are A Kenyan Child Tea Party!!! For an African Princess, from Princess Tea Continue working on mural/Flora/Fauna. Read aloud: Beatrice’s Goat. Start a collection box for Heifer International-Uganda. Play Mancala. Read the Wikipedia entry about it and take notes for the scrapbook. Compare it to our Filipino sungka. Mom and older kids: Read Our Lady of Kibeho. There are a few sections suitable for copywork. Mom and Dad: Watch Casablanca. Continue working on mural/Flora-Fauna pages. Today’s Menu: |
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— leave a comment if you want to attend and I’ll forward your info to them.
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