Beautiful Colors, Warming Tastes and Other Things that Tickle Me

Tags

chef amber shea, fair trade chocolate, fall, homeschool, napping, roasted tomato soup, simple mom, theo chocolate

I wrote this post a while ago, and it’s been sitting as a draft for several weeks.  It’s had good company with many other drafts, sitting for months…I do hope to write more regularly around here soon.  As an update to “what I’m thinking” below, we have had changes in napping – for the better! Motherhood is just amazing as life unfolds before me…sometimes the greatest effort is not meant to be and things happen on their own.  Onward…

What I’m thinking:  Cooking, while happening every day, is still taking a backseat to other things in our home.  I usually have enough food to feed us, but not as much surplus as I’d like! Napping – usually not me, unfortunately – is a top priority.  Have you ever constantly “chased the nap” with a child who doesn’t care to sleep during the day? I did have a realization yesterday that despite my attempts and love of the outdoors we are not getting enough outdoor time.  And, I am placing too much emphasis on the nap and not on life.  If I flip those things around, the sleep will come, right? Anyone care to back me up on this theory? I know that it shouldn’t be this hard.

What we’re doing:  Learning and reading, along with our children, is a constant.  Our rich homeschool curriculum, courtesy of Ambleside online, coupled with a pretty amazing new Charlotte Mason-inspired co-op has us reading, discovering, handicrafting, running…

Our nature study walk earlier this week (updated:  a few weeks ago) led us to a surprise chestnut tree, bearing smooth gifts inside the spiny and prickly balls.  What a treat to walk under this immense tree and collect chestnuts that had fallen and also try to pry open the cracked sharp balls that protect the chestnuts.  We had a wonderful time foraging and I remembered how my great grandmother had a chestnut tree in her yard.

We took the air conditioning units out of the windows last weekend (updated:  a few weekends ago).  Exhale now. Except…just one tiny problem…the heat and humidity came back! This week (updated:  actually, that was a couple weeks ago) was met with highs in the 80s with humidity near the 90% mark.  A great big “ugh” from me.  I was just getting into the swing of roasting in the oven and soup making in my beloved enameled cast iron pots.  More to come…patience, my dear.  (updated:  most days are now cool; nights are for socks now!)

A chili contest at our local library.  We’re so proud of daddy for entering.  What a great time he had dishing out chili to friends and hearing many lovely compliments.

What I’m feeling:  It’s finally fall and I’m slowly settling back into myself.  It’s a time of year that I relish (too short in the Northeast as the temps dip very quickly after the heat and humidity of the summer).  This is a time of reflection for me, as well as a time of change in attitude.  Overcoming disappointments is difficult when the body is out of balance (as mine is in the summer) and so as I take the upward swing, I can see action plans abound with how to deal with challenges.  I will be OK.  We will be OK and move forward.  Life has been great to us; we have amazing things ahead of us.  We are blessed.

What I’m cooking:  This stir fry was made over the summer.  I could not resist taking a photo of the amazing colors.  Talk about eating the rainbow.  I just look at this and feel my pains go away.

This slow baked sweet potato (baked almost two hours and incredibly soft and sweet) was topped with a kale, apple and butter bean saute.  You can see the caramelized onions peeking out underneath.  We love to put caramelized onions on everything!

And, this picture shows the lime cilantro cashew cream sauce that was drizzled on top.  A big hit with everyone.

Rosemary onion socca.  Have you made socca before? It’s a gluten free, vegan cake-like flatbread that is so easy to make.  Add a few ingredients to your blender, pour into cake pan, add a few more ingredients and bake! Total time takes about 40 minutes.  This is a nice side to the one pot meals we make.  Last night (updated:  a few weeks ago) I made a caramelized onion version of it to go with our roasted tomato soup (really delicious – well worth the effort).  This is the socca recipe I use.  I have never let it sit for the two hours and it turns out great.

A very dear friend of mine, trying to reduce lunchtime dishes, suggested this wonderful idea to have a dip and veggies.  Here’s an example of one of our lunches.  The kids loved this idea! I loved the reduced amount of dishes, of course.  The dip above is one of our favorites from Dreena Burton, Eat Drink and Be Vegan.  It’s the sun dried tomato and olive version.

I’ve been making this caramel apple dip nonstop.  It’s really delicious.  I’ve used it as a dip for apples and asian pears, and also as a frosting for cupcakes.  And, as a super special treat, I have been dipping pieces of my favorite chocolate – Theo 70% dark chocolate – into it.  It reminds me of the caramello bars of my youth that I wouldn’t touch now (too many junk ingredients and GMOs).  We love Theo chocolate because it is organic and fair trade.  We’ve been having dinner table conversations about fair trade lately.  It’s a lot for an almost 8 year old and 4 year old to grasp, so we are keeping it basic while introducing awareness to the importance of buying fair trade.  Simple Mom’s Tsh wrote about the importance of fair trade chocolate recently, in anticipation of the big chocolate holiday Halloween (updated:  how was your Halloween?).  A really important piece worth reading.

What I’m reading:  Although this blog post by Chef Amber Shea is months old, I was touched by it and wanted to share.  No exclusionary labels.

The New Persian Kitchen by Luisa Shafia – my eyes have been opened to Persian cooking and I’m so trying these recipes! I love the colors in this book, the flavor combinations and the philosophy behind Persian cooking.

Money, a Love Story by Kate Northrup – I have been a fan of Dr. Christiane Northrup since I was a teenager and read Women’s Bodies Women’s Wisdom when it was first published.  Dr. Northrup’s daughter, Kate, wrote a book about money and our relationship to it.  This is on my to read list, for sure.

As a long time fan of Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, I’m soaking up all he says about unschooling on his new blog Unschoolery.  It all resonates with me.  In many ways, I find him to be the voice of the future of education.

Celebrate the beauty of real, whole foods with me this Fall.  What are you cooking/reading/thinking?

Healthy Chocolate Smoothie (oh yes) and Easy Olive-Fig Tapenade

Tags

black mission figs, dip, hemp seeds, homeschool, kalamata olives, raw cacao smoothie, smoothie, Trader Joe's

We seem to have fallen into a rhythm after lunch where mom cleans up dishes and the little ones read.  My eldest loves to read to her little brother and today was probably the most fantastic story time experience to date.  No fighting, no loud thumps, just my girl reading a fire truck story to my boy (who was sitting next to her listening intently).

It was one exciting story – full of emphasis in all the right places (maybe our years of reading stories to the kids are paying off?) – lots and lots of questions from the little one with just the right answers from my girl.

I had the water on low at the kitchen sink to listen in on all the fun.  If only the video camera was on and they didn’t know it (so dad could see).

I was one proud mama and thought “this is why we are homeschooling”:

a healthy lunch followed by a casual story between a sister and a brother forming a lifelong bond,

after a leisurely “recess” in the park playing with good friends,

collecting and studying fallen leaves and

making homemade applesauce.  And that was only the first half of the day!

But I digress.  You’d like the recipes I promised in the header of this post, right? On to the food!

I am always creating new smoothies – a tweak here and a substitution there.  Every day we have a different kind.  Some days we have green smoothies, other days there are berries and other days there is chocolate!

This chocolate smoothie is nutritious and filling.

Chocolate Banana Coconut Hemp Smoothie

Serves 2-3

• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 1/2 frozen banana
• 2T hemp seeds
• 1 1/2 pitted medjool dates
• 1T raw cacao
• small handful of ice
• splash vanilla extract
• pinch of sea salt

Add all ingredients to the blender and blend until smooth.  If you are not using frozen bananas, just add a bigger handful of ice.

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My kids love to snack (well…so do I), so dips are a big hit in our house.  The dips I make are full of whole foods, and dairy-free.

Here’s a dip that I started making years ago, but forgot about until recently.  It’s a dip that was inspired by a fancy pants natural food brand.  (Although, don’t ask me the brand because I don’t remember! I do remember the little tub I bought was expensive.)

Olive-Fig Tapenade

• 1 cup pitted kalamata olives
• 1 cup dried figs (I use black mission from Trader Joe’s – see above)
• 1 T extra virgin olive oil (I suppose you could use flax oil here)
• pinch of sea salt

Add all ingredients to a food processor bowl fitted with the metal S blade.  Process until all the ingredients are mixed well and close to a paste.

here’s a great shot of the texture

We love this dip on rice crackers, but it would be nice on crostini, or even spread on a crispy apple or pear.

What’s your favorite smoothie flavor or favorite dip?

A Difficult Decision, Soda, and a Science Experiment

Tags

everything kids easy science experiments, everything kids science experiments, homeschool, soda

To all of our East Coast friends and family:  we wish you safety during Hurricane Irene.  A very diligent husband and dad has provided us a dry basement and, luckily, we’ve had minimal impact so far.

Our family has made a difficult decision that I would like to share because the topic, especially at the start of a new school year, will be infused into my posts going forward.

We have chosen to discontinue conventional education for our daughter and homeschool.

Whoa! You say. Did that come out of left field? You might think so after two years at a wonderful pre-school and Kindergarten – a school that I took every opportunity to boast about to all our friends and neighbors.  A school where my daughter made countless friends, and I made wonderful friends as well.  We really did love that school.

Homeschooling was never really considered by me prior to the end of 2010 (although my husband has an entirely different position; he has preferred it for years).  After all, six years ago we bought a house in a great town and highly respected school district (with “great test scores”)…all with the plans that our children would attend school here.  (I can’t say that they never will.  We will reevaluate the situation each year before school starts to ensure we are making the best decision at the time for each child.)

However, after visits with many schools – both public and private –  on the basis of philosophical reasons (too many to mention) we have decided to school our children in our home and with other families who have decided to do the same.  If you know me personally,  this probably comes as no surprise to you as I have always had that “do it myself” approach to nearly everything.

So, to jumpstart our new life as homeschoolers we started with a science experiment a couple weeks ago using key lime soda (leftover from a party two years ago) and some raisins.  Both kids nearly fell jumping up into their chairs, so excited to watch the raisins “dance” as the experiment promised.

look at that enthusiasm!

I was happy I found this experiment because I really wanted to use up this leftover soda.  We don’t typically drink soda (the kids never do) and even though it was a no-high fructose corn syrup variety, the amount of sugar per serving was alarming! A win-win all around…

The experiment we did was from the book The Everything Kids’ EASY Science Experiments book.  We have done a couple experiments from this book thus far.  My five (almost six) year old loves them and so I would say this book is perfect for ages 5 and up (the publisher states 9, but, with parent involvement, younger kids can enjoy, too!).  We recently picked up the older version of the book with different experiments called the Everything Kids’ Science Experiments at our local Borders going out of business sale (I am SO sad to see Borders close shop.  We had so many fun years hanging out in their kids section at storytime – and of course I memorized the cookbooks section just as long as they didn’t move things around).

This experiment showed how the carbon dioxide in soda created bubbles on the raisins which made them float to the top of the soda, then fall down “dancing” after the bubbles popped.  It was really fun and even I enjoyed it!

see the raisins “dancing”?

As we approach a new school year (some of you may have already started school), from our family to yours, we wish you many fun-filled days ahead.

If you have used these books, what was your favorite experiment? Do you have another science experiment book that your kids love to use?

For any homeschool mom or dad readers, what advice would you give this homeschool newbie?