PortSchooling

We're homeschoolers. Not the strict school-at-home type, not the completely unschooling type, but somewhere in between, like almost every other homeschooler I know.

Today has been an excellent example of how it works for us.

We woke fairly early, at 6:30 instead of the usual 8am. The weather forecast was set to AMAZING. A little cool, a little breezy, everyone in pants and sleeves.

After walking the dog, and returning her home, J, C and I went to the coffee shop where the kids shared a gluten-free muffin and I had a gigantic coffee. J said, "It's such a nice day, can we walk around our neighborhood?" The extreme heat and humidity of this summer had really put a damper on our favorite activity, and he was clearly excited to be outside without being miserable.

He asked to go see the "Fred Head," the giant hollow head of Frederick Douglas, on display outside of the Frederick Douglas Issac Meyers Maritime Park and Museum on the opposite end of the Point. On the way there, he asked, "Who was Frederick Douglas anyway?" So we talked about slavery, both historic and modern, about racism, and about how important it was to stand up for human rights.

The Maritime Park also has a shipbuilding shop, and we took a peek. We'd been inside a few years ago, but it's not toddler-friendly, so we'll go back when it's just the two of us sometime.

When went back home, kitted up with water and snacks, and went to Irvine Nature Center . The displays there are great for all ages, and the grounds are just beautiful. We built a fairy house, talked about snakes, and took lots of pictures in the woods, like of the PigTree above.

After lunch, J will go to a yoga class he attends twice a week at a local private school, and then we'll come home, and maybe throw in a worksheet for fun. Or not, considering C had a ten minute nap in the car and will probably be a screaming hellion by the time 5pm rolls around.

Not every day is as wonderful as this one, but if I had to say what a perfect day was for us, this would be it.

Thanks for reading,
Anne

Pizza -sort of

Alright, this is the second time I've tried a mix from this company that has turned into paste, not dough. I wonder what I'm doing wrong?
I made blueberry pie for Father's day, and instead of rolling out the pastry dough, it was so sticky that I had to sort of mash little chunks into the pie plate until it was all covered. It came out too thick, and even though we ate some, I don't think I'll be going that route again.

Tonight we tried the pizza/ french bread mix. I let in rise in the oven, following my neighbor's instructions of lots of pans of water and low heat. It is super hard to get anything to rise in my house at all, and I was pleased how well this worked. But when I took it out to put on the pan, it was all sticky again. I managed to mush out slightly larger discs, and pat them down, by covering my hands in rice flower. I put olive oil on the pan and Borsari seasoning on the prepared dough, whch was bland, bland, bland.
I used the Cabernet marinara my son likes on his pasta, made by Muir Glen. I use them because they're one of the very few companies I've found who have an organic sauce with no soybean oil. Then I only had Mexican mix shredded cheese, and no mozzarella in the house, so I added Parmesan to the cheese to Italian it up.

We were all starved, so we ate most of it, but again, the dough was just too thick. Thank goodness a good sauce and tons of cheese can cover for a dough fail.

I'll keep looking for a GF dough that feels like dough. My favorite part of making pizza with the kids is kneading, and there's none of that with this kind.

Not just beets

I love beets.

I love the way they feel, heavy and dull in my hands. Their dirty skin, all lumpy and coarse and hairy. I especially love how my hands stain when I peel them after they've roasted.

Beet-stained hands make my think of my mother-in-law, and the ease with which she cooks everything so well. I think before her, I hadn't ever eaten beets that weren't from a can, and I'd had no idea how good they could be. On top of just the cooking, her hands are always busy. Preparing food, working with the children, moving the family business forward, creating amazing works of art, and generally keeping everything flowing smoothly in her life and everyone else's around her.

I remember when I first started to ask her about food, she'd start her descriptions with, "Oh, it's so easy!" Then she'd rattle off the recipe, from memory, complete with quantities and cooking times and temps and variations. I'd get lost after the second step and grab a pen. Then I'd ask her to repeat it very slowly so I could write it down. Then I'd still have to call her when I was in the middle of things and get clarifications about what certain terms meant, like braising, or what a rolling boil actually meant.

A few years ago, I had a friend ask me about something I was cooking, and I started off by saying, "Oh, it's so easy!". Then I rattled off a fifteen-step recipe while my friend's eyes glazed over. That moment, I understood something about cooking, and maybe even more than that. You just have to do the thing you need to do. Eventually, everything will just be so easy if you do it long enough.

Without my mother-in-law, I wouldn't even know how much I liked beets. Or parsnips, or lamb, or whatever that magic salad dressing is that she makes. I'm grateful for what she's taught her son, what she's taught my son and daughter, and what she's taught me.

Taco Truck

Obviously, I don't cook EVERY meal, but I do try and make good decisions about where we get our take-out.

Around the corner from J's gymnastics is a Taco truck that I absolutely love. Peek through the window and you can see the fistfulls of fresh cilantro, the limes, and best of all, the stockpile of Coca Cola, Fanta and other carbonated beverages made with actual SUGAR and not corn syrup. They're imported from Mexico, where the government doesn't dump huge subsidies on corn, so they have no need to make up ways to shove corn in everything. They also come in glass bottles, which are biodegradable, and are only 355ml (12 ounces), so you're not guzzling a gigantic tub of Coke.

I usually only stop by for the soda, but James said he wanted tamales for lunch, and since he's so picky, of COURSE I said yes. We got two pork and two chicken. They were both delicious, although the kids thought the pork was a little too spicy.

And then for dinner we had crabs. Better eat them while they're still around.

Thanks for reading,
Anne

How To Cook

I've been talking about this off and on with a few friends lately, so I thought I'd share some of it here.

I didn't grow up in a home where food was important, other than just trying to have enough. Powdered milk and government cheese, and that awful black-and-white "Value Checked" box of cornflakes were standard. Fruit was so precious that it was ingrained in me to only eat one piece a day, a habit which I only broke about a year ago.
Although I'm sure I had favorite foods, I only recall eating as being a massive inconvenience. Mealtimes were stressful, and I don't remember eating many things I actually liked, much less looked forward to. It was mostly a problem of resources, but overall, I didn't really have a positive experience with food.

I didn't cook much more than pasta until I was in my early 20's. I think the first thing I baked was chocolate chip cookies, from the recipe on the Nestles package, and I was surprised at how much better they were than any packaged cookies I'd had. From there I branched off into pies and cakes. I'd always bring desserts to potlucks, telling people that while a chicken dish might be delicious, EVERYONE remembers cheesecake.

I didn't start seriously cooking until my son was a toddler. Being responsible for his nutrition really inspired me to cook more, and better foods. I read books about food, watched TV shows about it, and talked to people who cooked a lot. I learned to listen to my body and how it felt after eating certain foods, and not surprisingly, I preferred fruits, veggies and sea creatures to cheese, red meat, and bread.

So I started cooking. I made lots of dishes, lots of mistakes, and kept cooking. Just like with so many other things, if I just kept at it, it got easier.

One of the most common obstacles people have to cooking is time. I share Anthony Bourdain's aversion to the Rachael Ray style of cooking. I think he said something like, if you're buying chopped up onions, you're not cooking.
Oh wait, here it is...

"We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit..Sleep…sleep…” "

From a guest blog post on Michael Ruhlman's blog from Feb 8, 2007.
http://blog.ruhlman.com/2007/02/guest_blogging_.html

I think if buying chopped up onions gets you in the kitchen instead of passing out the Lunchables, then that's great, but don't STAY there. You're only going to get better at it by doing it. That's kind of my mantra. For everything.

A meal that used to take me 2 hours to get on the table now only takes about 30 minutes. Practice, practice, and more practice is the way to go.

Start with a good, basic cookbook. I'm partial to Joy of Cooking, because it teaches you about the food, and uses ingredients and kitchen tools you probably already have.

Just keep cooking.

And thanks for reading.

Oh, I also like what Bourdain said about Paula Dean in the same blog post, mostly for the John Waters reference.

Plantains

There's a grocery store a few blocks from my home that carries lots of Hispanic food to meet the tastes of the primarily Latino neighbors. We don't go there often, but I always try something new when we do.

Last week, C insisted on plantains instead of bananas, so we picked up a few. I read about them in my Joy of Cooking, my all-time favorite cook book, and decided to wait until they were ripe enough to fry outside the peel.

A few days after the purchase, we made pancakes in the morning, using Pamela's Gluten-Free Pancake and Baking Mix. Since there was already butter in the pan, I peeled a plantain, sliced it a few different ways, and fried it up. This was my first time eating them, and both C and I found them so delicious, I bought more at the store last week. I can't wait for them to ripen so I can eat them again!

Ten Minutes

Now that it's winter, I'm cooking again. I made a weird chicken stew the other day that was so unremarkable, I didn't eat it. It's hard to have interesting food on a budget. Everyone else liked it, but I think I am just sick to DEATH of chicken. I could live on sea creatures the rest of my life. Unfortunately, the mercury would probably shorten that somehow. Isn't there ANYTHING we can eat without worrying about it poisoning us?

J is doing well on his gluten-free diet, and has healed enough to actually have an appetite again. I got so used to not really having to feed him much that its taken a while to get back in the habit, but we're doing much better.

C is walking, and helping out, and a teency bit better in the car. She still outshines her brother in the sleep area, but being my child, is by no means one of those babies you read about. I keep meaning to nightwean, but she'll get sick, or a holiday pops up, or the dreaded 18-month developmental spurt/sleep regression that it keep getting pushed further away.

I nightweaned J when he was about 21 months. He had finally gotten all his teeth, and spontaneously slept 5 hour stretches on his own for several nights, so I figured he was ready. It only took three days, but he still woke up twice a night or so for another year. Blegh. I'm guessing I'll wait that long for C, also, since that's when the 18 month thing usually is over.

I promise the next post will be more coherent. And maybe even about food!
Thanks for reading,
Anne