So Much to Learn

Each year around this time the boys and I put together a learning plan for the year.  We're very relaxed about them, we find it fun to discuss what we all would like to learn about and what we want to focus our resources (time, energy, and sometimes money) on.  We usually jot down lists of interests and have a couple times done some mind-mapping learning plans (very fun!).  W, at almost 16, is very self-directed and motivated in his learning.  He has been organizing high-school age workshop courses for the local homelearners for the last two years and needs very little help from us planning out his year anymore...actually, we sometimes find it challenging to even keep up with him anymore and, at times, it feels as though we just sort of scurry along behind him with whatever support we can give if and when he needs/wants it.  The other day he was making some plans for this fall and it reminded me that E and I would need to do our learning plans soon.  I mentioned to E that we should think about what we wanted to put on them and E, being as much about efficiency and simplicity as his mother, replied, "Everything!". ;-)

I can see it now.

E's Learning Plan 2011-2012

This year I want to learn about...

Everything!

And I have to say I quite like it. ;-)

An Important Message

Do you remember these letters?  We had them when I was little and I can remember them being on our fridge.  I bought some from a thrift store for W when he was very little and he liked to play with them.  They've been packed away for years and I came across them when we moved and brought them up to the kitchen.  They've been a source of entertainment ever since.

The boys make all sorts of messages and whenever we have company over people seem to find it hard to resist making some sort of message.  Sometimes I'll make one...

only to have it changed into something different the next time I come into the kitchen.

The messages get changed with surprising frequency and quite often I find myself giggling at what I read on our fridge. 

FYI - that message was not done by me (therefore not MY breath) and, as far as I know, not done by our dog either.  Hmmmm....

Kildeer Mama and Babies

I keep forgetting to share these photos of the mama Killdeer with her babies.  This is the second batch of chicks (four of them) this year that have hatched right by my garden in town.  The owners mark off the nests so that the eggs don't get stepped on when we're working in the garden (that's what the bamboo poles are).  If you look closely you can see one little chick poking its head out.

I was there just as all the chicks were heading out of this nest where they had hatched and moving out into the field. In the photo below you can see the last little chick just thinking about leaving with its Mama.  They sure don't seem to stay in their nest very long and they grow up fast.  It's fun to see them getting bigger each time I go to garden.  You can usually spot them just by watching for their parents - they try to distract you away from their babies by calling out and pretending to be injured -  then you can catch a glimpse of their babies on legs that are exceedingly long for their bodies.

We also have loads of quail babies at home here.  Yesterday morning our cat had a close encounter with one, I snatched her up (by her tail, actually) and made her drop the little chick.  Thankfully the chick was able to makes its way back to its family.  Kitty was in the dog house for the day!

More Strawberries...With Chocolate

We went back for more strawberries on the weekend and came away with 10 more buckets.  I've got plenty in the freezer now (for our winter smoothies) and we had enough to make Rebecca's chocolate shortcake that I've been meaning to make since last summer.

Yum!  I followed the recipe this time and the boys loved it but I have a few changes in mind for next time which include making only half the cake batter (for a thinner cake part) and then letting some of the juice from the strawberries soak into the bottom cake layer for a bit (possibly also putting a bit of liquor of some sort in with that strawberry juice!).

So now we're done with putting by strawberries and next up will be cherries and raspberries.  The neighbourhood where we are now was a cherry orchard at one time and there are still cherry trees everywhere so it will be fun to see which neighbours put up "Cherries for sale" signs.

The other day we all decided to have some fun with our cameras.  Each day we pick a different subject and we all take a photo of it and then decide which one we find the most interesting.  S started off with a flower and then came in to show us and told us we had to figure out which flower it was and then go take a photo of it.  E was not impressed.  "It's not a treasure hunt!", he said.  He just wanted to know which flower it was so he could take his photo too. ;-)

Then E chose the next day's topic and it was super macro close-up.  He has taken several interesting pictures and tonight we will see them all and then pick the next subject.  Quite fun to see the different perspectives each person has.

There are so many gorgeous blooms here that it is quite easy to get carried away with photo taking but I noticed yesterday that I can't help myself from being drawn to taking photos of veggies.  I really do find them utterly beautiful.

(first peas in my home garden which is a little behind compared to the garden in town)

First ripe cherry tomato in home garden, this one is planted in a big herb box on our side patio.  It is a wonderful place to have herbs growing.

Low Sugar and Delicious Strawberry Freezer Jam

I've posted before about how much I love Pomona's Pectin.  I've always loved to make jam but I do not like the amount of sugar most jams call for - I like to taste the fruit not just sugar.  I've made a freezer jam for years with dried pineapple as the sweetener but this year E wanted to make strawberry freezer jam "like Gramma's".  Who can resist that?? 

So, I told him how much sugar goes into regular freezer jam and we agreed that we would use Pomona's to make a sweet jam with sugar (rather than dried pineapple)but with a lot less sugar.  He made one batch (4 cups strawberries to 1 cup sugar) tested it out and was delighted with it. 

The next day he easily convinced me to help him make another batch - a double batch this time.  It literally takes minutes and then he was filling jars to tuck in the freezer with his year's supply of strawberry jam.

How to explain how much I love that my kids can do this...it truly fills my heart with joy.  I have a feeling when I look back on all the things my kids "learned" at home with me during these growing up, home-learning years that this - this knowledge of how food grows and what to do with it - will be what stays with me and what I'm most pleased they learned.

Since we had so many strawberries (my husband did point out that no one else was leaving the berry farm with 12 buckets full in order to illustrate my craziness, I think, but I know he'll be asking me in the next couple days if I am ready to go picking again because we are all looking forward to try the other even sweeter variety of berries on the other side of the field!) I decided to try out Jamie Oliver's Quickest Strawberry Jam. It is delicious and we've decided to keep the jarful in the fridge to use a sauce on icecream and yogurt this week as well as for jam.

 I have many memories of waking up for school on June mornings to the smell of my mom making strawberry jam.  I would come down to the kitchen and there would be a plate of strawberry "foam" that I loved putting on my toast.  I was thrilled to make this jam and be able to skim the foam for my boys. 

Such a simple thing but such a treasured memory because it reminds me of how lucky I was to grow up in a home where these simple pleasures mattered and yet were also so every day.

Watermelon and Carrots

E had his own garden bed in our old garden for several years, he loves to graze in the garden and has always been proud of growing his own food.  This year, since we are gardening on borrowed land, he helped me plant his favourites in our joint beds.  He Loves watermelon and was keen to grow some this year.  Our Sugar Baby plants are growing like crazy and we have one melon already ready.  E is going to pick it today and we'll enjoy every bit of it for dessert.

These carrots are absolutely beautiful to me.  Originally E got the seeds from The Cottage Gardener and they were beautiful (and delicious) the first time we grew them (you can find them here, they're the coloured mixed ones), but these ones I find even more beautiful because they come from E's first saved seeds.  Two years ago he let several things go to seed in his garden and he saved lettuce seeds and carrot seeds. 

I love that he does things like this - that it is just natural to him to save seeds and grow food.  Such a delicious and useful skill to have.

Comfrey Salve

E takes part in an online wild foods conference for homelearners.  He decided to make a how-to demonstration of his salve making to share there.  I thought it would be fun to share it here as well so without further ado...salve making by E.


This is some comfrey. I am going to make a salve with. You can do this the same way with lots of different plants like calendula, plantain, chickweed and lots more.

This is me chopping some fresh comfrey leaves that I am going to use.

I have chopped them smaller.

Here they are in our chocolate fondue pot. I have used a crock pot when I made calendula salve. You can also use a regular pot but you have to make sure it does not burn because my mom did that once with calendula. The oil is really fast at heating up so you have to watch the temperature. This chocolate fondue pot uses a candle tealight for heat and so it never burns.

This is a picture of a big tub of olive oil.  We use olive oil usually, this time we used grapeseed oil.

This is the comfrey with the oil poured in.

Here is the candle. I heated it for about 5 hours. If you are using a pot on the stove you don't heat it so long. In the summer we use a glass jar put in the sunshine instead, the sun heats it and we leave it for weeks.

Here is the comfrey after a few hours. See that the oil is green.

Here it is being poured into a jar. It is being strained so there are no leaves in it.

Here it is strained and green. This can be used like this as an infused oil.

I have chopped off some of my beeswax. This will make it thicker and creamy. If you add lots of beeswax then it will be pretty hard. I like adding not that much because I like it creamy and easy to spread.

I melted the beeswax in a pot.

Then I poured in the comfrey oil. I mixed it together for a few minutes on very low heat.

Then poured it into jars. It still looks green and liquid but not for long.

Here it is all hardened and ready to use. Sometimes you can add a couple drops of lavender essential oil to make it smell nice and help preserve it.

Have you ever tried making a salve? If you have I would like to hear what kind and what you used it for. I have only made comfrey and calendula salve.

Peanut Butter Biscuits

Yesterday E decided he wanted to make something "sorta sweet and cookie-like" and it couldn't have any eggs because...well, we didn't have any.  He decided to make a sweet biscuit dough and add peanut butter and chocolate chips to it.  He was quite confident that they would be good and assured me that even if they didn't quite turn out the way he thought they would they'd still have chocolate chips ergo...still good.  Sound logic, I thought.  Off he went to make this creation on his own with No Help from me so  I happily amused myself with other distractions.

This is such a fun set of CDs.  I've been waiting impatiently for my turn for it at the library since a friend told me about it. It has several songs that I adored as a child - Rhinestone Cowboy, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, Let

Your Love Flow, Put Your Hand in the Hand, Rose Garden and many more.  I clearly remember singing along to Rhinestone Cowboy on my way home from riding lessons in 1975, I think I must have thought I was going to be a cowboy and, if you're going to be a cowboy why not be a Rhinestone cowboy?  It just sounds so much more interesting, doesn't it?  Just in case you can't remember it and want to hear it you could click here.  Hmm, better get back to E's biscuits before I start talking about Captain and Tenille too.

Here are Ev's biscuits in progress.  He made the biscuit dough.

2 1/2 cups flour

1/4 cup dry sweetener

2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup butter (if I had been there while he was mixing it I would have suggested reducing that, especially as he was adding peanut butter)

1 cup milk (soymilk, nutmilk or what have you)

Mix dry.  Cut in butter.  Add milk.  Now here is the good part.  He added:

3 blobs (?!?) peanut butter (next time he would add 4 blobs)

3/4 cup chocolate chips

Mix until everything is well worked in.  Roll out and cut with biscuit cutter.  Bake at 400 for 12 minutes.

And they really were delicious, especially when they were straight from the oven and the chips were still melty.  I love having boys who, not only love to cook but, feel confident enough in the kitchen to create their own recipes.

And this morning I came down to a delightful surprise in the kitchen, not only was E up before me (very unusual) but he had made breakfast for us and cleaned up the mess.  I do so love eating food prepared lovingly by someone else.

E's Big Idea

We were talking about making a gift for our friend's birthday the other day and that night while E and I were having a cuddle (and he was holding his wheat heater bag) he came up with the idea that we should make our friend a "heater" bag.  But not just a heater bag...a personalized heater bag.  I loved the idea and love the E came up with it on his own.

He picked out the fabric from our stash of bits and pieces - soft flannel for extra comfort.  He traced letters onto fabric. 

He cut and then decided how the letters should be arranged "just so", adding an ' s to make it an even amount of letters.

I sewed the letters and then he sewed.

We filled it - the boys decided we should use rice rather than wheat (I think partly because they think it will smell better and partly - a big partly- because they don't like the short grain brown rice we have a massive bag of right  now and were happy to use up about 6 cups of it.  Now he has a gorgeous, useful gift that he is very proud to have made and can't wait to give to his friend.

Children as "Teachers"

I always thought it was sort of strange that adults are usually the "teachers" and it is often believed they have the most to teach to children.  I've undoubtedly had my best, most important lessons from my children.  Theirs is such simple, true wisdom that I think it is often overlooked and that is a great loss, in my opinion. 

Today I am trying to get a lot of things done at once as well as finish canning all those tomatoes and so this morning I made a list to divvy up the work amongst the three of us in the hopes that we will have time for a tea break in the sunshine before  our company arrives.  I just checked "The List" to see how we were doing and noticed an addition from one of the boys.  It's a good thing I have them to remind me to live in the present and remember what's important.

After all, what would life be if we never took the time to play or to dance?

Hoping you take time to play and dance this weekend too. ;-)