Category Archives: Cooking

Tasting Summer

Posted on by
4

It is always this time of year we begin to feel impatient for spring at our house. The holidays are over, we’ve spent several beautiful months enjoying the special vastness that comes with Kansas winters. There have been a few bitter, cold snaps this season and only one snow, we’ve rarely gone more than a week without the weather being nice enough to play outside in the afternoons. And yet we are waiting, looking for things to green up and realizing how far away that really is.

It’s not even lent yet.

Oh my, that makes warm weather seem far away.

My Farmer asked for taco salad for supper this past weekend, and as a side dish I pulled out one of our favorite summer recipes. My mother-in-law gave me this recipe a couple of years before she died. She probably clipped it from Country Woman Magazine. I think of her every time I make it; I remember many of the times we shared in the kitchen, prepping food together for our hungry farmers. This recipe is quick, easy, healthy and delicious. How many wins can you get in one dish?

Corn and Black Bean Salad

2 cups each (cooked and cooled – I usually just use frozen) sweet corn and black beans
1 chopped sweet onion
1 chopped sweet bell pepper (I really like using orange in this salad)
Juice of 1 lime
dash of hot sauce
1 Tbsp oil
Spices of your choice (I added ground red pepper, chili powder, salt, pepper and cilantro)

Mix veggies with corn. Stir spices into oil and lime juice. Mix well with veggies. This is even better if it can sit for a couple of hours in the refrigerator before you serve it.

As it turns out, it is also delicious ON taco salad. And it makes picnic season seem much closer.

WARNING: This dish will also make you long for a Margarita, so plan accordingly. I did not, and alas, had to make due with beer.

Do you have a favorite recipe from a relative you miss either because of distance or death?

.

Pioneer Day, Part #2

Posted on by
5

We spent a lot of our time traveling in our covered wagon when we began our pioneer day. We are fortunate to have acres of virgin pasture behind our home, so besides opening and closing a couple of gates (and the fact that our animal had a motor) it felt pretty authentic. I, for one, had a wonderful time except that I did not enjoy tramping through tall grasses in my pioneer dress. Those weed seeds are not comfortable when stuck to ones stockings.

We stopped at the old water pump next to the pond, and (pretended to) fill a bucket for the animals.

As I try to do as much as possible in our homeschool (despite my tendency toward being a control freak) I let the children choose the route, the activities and the timeline of our journey. I did, however, make it very clear that if they ran out of gas they were on their own in hauling a gas can down to the pasture. (They watched the tank pretty carefully after that declaration.)

It was a perfect, beautiful morning.

We drove – I mean traveled – all over the place, changing our route to get around ravines, muddy patches, thorns.

I was so glad to have saved this costume my mom (an incredible seamstress – she made my wedding dress as well) made for me to wear during a play in high school. Little Cowgirl and I sewed the rest of our costumes, which is saying A LOT considering the fact that I don’t really sew (mostly because I don’t really know how).

Shooter and Farmer Boy were much less into their costumes – but I know they felt very ‘pioneer.’

After an hour and change months of traveling, we reached the perfect place to homestead. We unloaded our wagon, built a temporary shelter out of our canvas (ahem, sheet) cover, and got to work.

The young men took turns plowing the field,

and raking up hay to feed the lawnmower and stick horses animals over the winter.

Little Cowgirl got to work on gathering burning materials for the fire and cleaning potatoes for lunch.

We boiled potatoes from our garden, then added chunks of ham and cracked in a few eggs.

We ate in the grass and wiped our plates in buckets of water drawn from the sink in the utility room well.

Then, we harvested our REAL LIFE patch of sweet potatoes so we would have some root vegetables to get us through the winter. Cowgirl clipped the vines for us.

As an aside, this is the third year I have attempted to grow sweet potatoes and the first year I’ve had any success at all. I think this year makes up for the two years of failures.

If I were a county fair sort of person, that purple ribbon would be mine, em effers. That is all.

After the harvest, mommy was pretty much D.O.N.E. with pioneer day, so she took a long, hot shower and sat down at her macbook. (insert contented sigh) My young pioneers, however, had so much fun they decided to sleep outside without a modern tent. The littler one made it until she could hear the coyotes. The biggest one came in when it started to thunder at around 3:00 am.

But the next morning, they were back outside immediately. Everyone wished pioneer day could last forever.

This is still not the end, one more installment of homeschool pioneer days is yet to come!

.

Five Reasons I’m Not A Great Homeschooler

Posted on by
9

There is no such thing as a perfect fit. How often do we find ourselves saying, “Well, in a perfect world…” but the ellipsis itself answers the question. Here are some reasons I’m not the world’s best homeschooling mother.

1) I have too much to do.

We run a large (comparing acres to number of employees) family farm. I do a large chunk of the office work, along with being ‘on call’ to run parts, people or vehicles at any time. I’m not sure it adds up to 40 a week, but it’s not too far from that. I volunteer in our Parish. I run (almost) every day. I blog (albeit inconsistently). I am obsessed with nutrition and want to make everything from scratch and have sliced, fresh, *living* food every day. I’m sure I don’t’ have to explain to you that there just aren’t THAT many hours in a single day. So I’m constantly juggling what needs to be done RIGHT NOW and what can wait a few days. Which brings us quickly to number two:

2) What can “wait a few days” is typically housework.

I have an entire category named “our house and the drudgery that is cleaning it.” Seriously, need I say much more? I try to stay on a schedule but honestly, it is never going to be as important to me as the items I just listed in my first reason. Which is such poor way of managing life because the secret here is that I absolutely HATE when the house gets away from me. It makes me crazy. And depressed. And I’m mortified when someone drops by, which is always (literally, without fail) one of the two weeks of the year I’ve literally let everything go.

3) Lack of patience.

Many of you who read this are going to laugh. How could a person who homeschools be impatient? Many of my friends will protest, “You are SO patient! I’ve seen you! You handle your children so well!” And to you my dear friend I say, could you please-please-pretty-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top come and hang out at my house all the time? Because I am ever so much more patient with an audience.

4) I am overconfident.

I tend to be like this in every aspect of my life until reality (or having a baby) knocks me back with a hard punch of humility. I have an “everything is going to work out just perfectly” attitude about most everything, most of the time. It’s unrealistic and unfair. It sets me up for disappointment, and worse for disappointing.

5) Can anyone say scatterbrain?

My mother is still horrified because I admitted to her that (already) once this year I forgot to take my sixth grader to band. I mean it – completely forgot. Didn’t even realize it until the next day. I’ve done the same thing with tutoring. And playdates. And a dentist appointment. Once, at the end of a school year, I found an entire piece of curriculum I’d purchased and totally forgotten to use at any point. It wasn’t written on my schedule, so I never thought of it again (even though it was sitting right there on the school shelf alongside everything we were applying each day). Honestly, that’s quite ridiculous.

So there you have it. The top five items that create a poor fit between myself and our lifestyle. Yet I’m doing it, and it is going really well. Proof, once again, that if I can homeschool, anyone can.

Predictably, you can look for a post about why I’m great at homeschooling coming soon.

.

.

We’re simmering now…

Posted on by
3

This past week there was not a lot that happened around here. And yet I was swamped.

Lots of things are *getting ready* to happen around here, so I’ve been knee-deep in preparation.

We rolled the combines into a corn field for the first test cut on Wednesday (the moisture content was still too high – a farmer would say “It’s too wet.”) and are now rolling full-bore. This lands me back in the camp of spending most of my time in the kitchen prepping harvest suppers, in the fields driving a tractor to pull the grain cart, on the road helping move people from place to place, or at the computer tallying results and tracking inventory. While I’m at the computer I promise to do my best to upload some pictures from the time I spend in the field.

I’m also ready to begin school again. The kids are excited too, but they are making sure to enjoy their last un-scheduled days as we count down to changing our routine back to active homeschooling. In preparation, everyone will spend the weekend cleaning their rooms and building as much lego as they can.

I have used this past week to put the finishing touches on my lesson plans and preparing materials for the first few weeks. I have also been cooking like mad. Last year, I made several meals I could freeze and just pop in the oven on school mornings so we could have a hot lunch with no effort on my part. It worked so well I’m repeating it this year. I have some spaghetti casseroles, rice/mushroom/broccoli bakes, salmon and noodle dishes, and creamy mac and cheese waiting patiently in my deep freeze.

I made meatloaf, except it was meatsheet. I mixed up our favorite meatloaf recipe, but instead of cooking it in a loaf pan, I spread it out on a cookie sheet with edges as if it were a sheet cake. It cooks much faster (around 30 mins) and is easy to cut into bread-sized pieces. I freeze those pieces between sheets of wax paper so I can pull out one at a time for a meatloaf sandwich or a single hot serving. I also made my mother-in-law’s famous sloppy joe meat and froze it in serving-sized balls (in a muffin tin). They are so simple to pop out of a bag and zap in a dish for a fast, hot sandwich.

I also made our version of granola, which my children love to have with plain, non-fat yogurt and honey…or all by itself. Here is the recipe:

3 cups rolled oats,
3/4 cup EACH: sunflower seeds, walnut pieces, sliced almonds, macadamia nuts,
Mix dry ingredients.
Stir together 1/2 cup oil (I used organic olive oil from Azure Standard) and 2/3 cup maple syrup.
Poor over the dry mix and stir with a spatula until incorporated.
Spread into a large, oven safe dish or sheet. Bake at 250 degrees F (I used my convection setting at 225) for around an hour, stirring every 15 minutes or so, until crunchy.
Store in an air-tight container.

What is your favorite make-ahead meal?

.

Put on a happy face

Posted on by
6

My friend Marla, who writes with me at Growing Your Homeschool, is so creative with food for her toddler.

Even though my children are older, they still enjoy fun, silly or interesting food presentations.

Here is the clown-face breakfast I made last week:

Hard boiled egg whites, blueberries, cashews.

I’m a late-comer to the idea that food presentation really does matter. I’m also not terribly talented at it. Decorating and artsy stuff is not really my forte. I’m better at talking, singing, explaining, encouraging…you get the picture (noise-related areas are where I excel). However, I’ve discovered that any little bit of effort counts. Fresh fruit is wonderful.

Arranged (even poorly) on a fun tray is better.

Personally, I’ve found that crystal filled with very good wine or a hand-crampingly cold bottle of citrusy wheat bear placed at the top of my place setting makes everything present well. What do you do at your house to make good food more attractive?

.

It’s barbecue time!

Posted on by
5

The only thing I love more than being invited to a barbecue is eating the food at said function.

We’ve been to several this summer and I’m in a rut with what I am bringing to share; a good kind of rut! I wanted to share my recipe, keep in mind none of this is exact. I copied off of my brother-in-law for this.

Creamy, Dreamy Guacamole

6 avacado, split, seed removed, sliced
1/3 cup (or so) plain yogurt
1/4 cup mayo of your choice (we use safflower oil mayo right now)
juice of 2 limes (I like it really limey)

Blend together with whatever method you choose (fork, blender, mixer – I used a stick blender).

Chop up two luscious tomatoes, throw in some spices and salt, stir it all together.

I'm in love with it on these blue chips.

Adjust your wet ingredients based on how creamy you like your guac. I have also drizzled in some olive oil and that’s wonderful as well. It’s delicious as a dip or on top of a burger, and while there is no guarantee children will like it, I did have two that were at least willing to try!

.

Tortilla Success

Posted on by
Reply

I have a son who L.O.V.E.S. tortillas. He could eat them morning, noon and night and never tire of their soft, roll-y goodness.

Except they are full of so much badness! Or the store-bought ones are, anyway.

So I have been trying out tortilla recipes and I am ready to announce a winner. This is from a site I have linked before, OAMC (once a month cooking). My life on the farm is not predictable enough for actual once-a-month cooking to work, but I DO try to utilize power cooking ideas (double and triple recipes to freeze, doing meal planning and prep work on the weekend for the five day school week, that sort of thing).

Cut 10 Tsp of butter into 6 cups of flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour). I use my mixer and paddle attachment to do this. Dissolve 2 tsp kosher salt into 2 cups of HOT water (I think you could get away with less salt). Mix water into flour slowly and let it form a soft dough. Roll out on flour-sprinkled wax paper (you’ll need to be generous with the flour) and cook on an ungreased skillet until each side bubbles.

My kids think these are absolutely terrific. I made quesadillas last night with the tortillas, and stuffed one with tuna, spinach and red onions. The kids did NOT think that was fabulous but that was okay by me because that meant I needed to eat all of it.

Let me know if you try this out, or what you like best to do with tortillas at your house!

.

A tester and a teaser

Posted on by
1

Good morning! Even though cooler weather has moved back into Kansas this week (we are back in the 70s this week – hooray!) it still feels like summer is upon us at my house. It looks like June outside after this mild, early spring, and we are on our last days of the school year. The kids are putting finishing touches on their end-of-the-year projects. Everything will be finished come Friday. I have been itching to get to some desk, home-improvement and cooking projects that I’ve set aside for summer. I imagine with glee all the free time I will have once our homeschool year is over for a few weeks (This is like the first time you are pregnant and you are imagining all the free time you will have and everything you will get accomplished after you have the baby).

Planning for these projects has led me down many internet rabbit holes, and here is a great one I want to share with you. It is a once-a-month cooking site filled with recipes. You can search the recipes by cooking method, food type (I linked the whole foods approach) or even by ingredient. (AWESOME – I KNOW!) They even create monthly menus based on in-season items; you can print out grocery lists, recipe cards and labels. Seriously, be still my beating heart!

And the teaser portion of this post is as follows: I ran a Warrior Dash with my running buddy on Sunday. It was da freaking bomb. She is emailing me pictures and I am going to post them here for your blog-reading enjoyment. Never heard of a Warrior Dash? Please click this link.

Come back soon for details…

Copy Cat Cookie; a successful FAIL

Posted on by
2

My children really like a certain store-bought cookie that I won’t (usually) buy because it has ingredients I don’t like to have in my house. These would include the following things: More than five total ingredients, ingredients I cannot pronounce, ingredients I don’t keep in my own pantry for baking, vague ingredients like “natural flavors” or “spices” which are often a loophole way of labeling MSG.

The cookies are still better for you than most packaged crackers and chips, so they can be a good snack alternative depending on the direction your food choices take. We have used them before as snacks to share at a class when I forgot it was our turn. They are tasty and have some nutritional value, as well as a better ingredient list than most all other packaged cookies. Here is the link to the nutritional information, if you are interested.

I found a bulk bin of dried, organic blueberries at my grocery store last week, and decided to make a go of creating similar cookies at home. Here is a record of the first attempt.

I tweaked a cookie recipe I found (here is the original) and came up with this:

Cream 3 Tbsp butter and 1/2 cup packed brown sugar. Mix in one large egg and 1 tsp vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine 1 and 1/2 whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup oat flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp cinnamon. Stir in about 1/4 to 1/3 cup dried blueberries (sorry – I didn’t even measure these – I just tossed some in so I’m guessing here).

Spoon flour mixture into wet mixture, beating slowly until just combined.

I used a triggered cookie scoop (like this one) to place melon-ball sized pieces of dough on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Bake at 350F (I have a convection oven so I set mine to 325F) for 8-10 minutes. When they look cracked, but not liquid inside the cracks, they are done. Cool on a rack.

The results? Well, my food critics tell me that (a) this makes a pretty cookie, (b) these taste absolutely nothing like the cookie I was aiming for a resemblance with and (c) these are delicious and would be great in place of said store-bought cookie anyway.

.

You know how I love a great deal…

Posted on by
2

So I couldn’t pass up this offer. And it is so incredible, I felt the need to share.

I started reading Renee’s blog over at FIMBY after discovering some of her writing on Simple Homeschool. Her ebook is one of 35 being offered as a package deal during this special promotion. All the books are designed to help you simplify your life.

S. O. L. D.

Let me know if you also purchase the books, and if so, which ones you particularly enjoy or find a great help to your family life.

The sale only runs through Friday morning, sorry for the late notice!