Hobbit Homeschool

We've just begun The Hobbit, and I'm trying to employ some of the kinds of living book activities that we've enjoyed in the past: recipes, crafts, research, and field trips, etc. We started creating our own Hobbit books to fill in as we read; and we enjoyed a Hobbit-style afternoon tea.

Hobbit Tea:  Our little tea party was full of seed cakes, pork pies, and ale - served on bright colored dishes and a green tablecloth. We found hobbit-inspired recipes that we followed loosely:

• this recipe for our pork pies, but really we just stuffed them with some leftover pork roast. 
• this seed cake, baked in small bowls to make multiple little cakes, although we actually left out the seeds.
• Henry Weinhard Root beer made a nice ale for some of us (and the rest had cocoa)
• And we enjoyed decorating our pies with some of the tips we found in this cool video.

An unexpected tea

Seed cakes, pork pies, and blackberry tarts

Root beer for our ale

Hobbit Book: We like the Waldorf practice of making books to illustrate what you have learned, and kept using the idea even after we moved away from Waldorf curricula. For our Hobbit books, we stapled together 12 pages of construction paper, leaving us 1-2 pages per chapter (and we decided we can unstaple and add more if needed).

Each child spent plenty of time making their books cozy-looking and just the way they wanted. They decided not to glue their Bilbo's behind the door, as we originally planned, but keep him loose so that he can walk throughout the book. We'll try to illustrate characters, copy quotes, and answer discussion questions in the book as we go. For this first chapter, we focused on the characters.

We found this cool interactive map of Bilbo's journey, printed it and glued it on the back cover for reference.

the beginnings of a Hobbit book: Bilbo and his Hobbit house

Gandalf and the bearded dwarves

Gandalf and the bearded dwarves

Who knows if I'll get around to sharing the rest of our Hobbit adventures, but I'm keeping my Ideas for Living Book Activities in mind: we'll try some dragon crafts, and I'm eye-ing Hobbit legos for Christmas. We have a hike planned later this month, and I think that will be a nice venue for field-trip reading. I'm also reading the Cliff's notes, so we don't miss out on important themes, and we'll watch the movies when we're all done. Anyway, we're off to a promising start!


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St. Lucia Day

On the heels of St. Nicholas day, comes St. Lucia day! We've enjoyed learning about these people of both history and legend, whose memories have become so closely associated with Christmas in various countries. We like to keep Christmas about the nativity, but learning about these special people who loved Christ is a fun way to prepare for Christmas.

Lucy of Syracuse, according to the stories, carried food down to the Christians hiding from persecution in the catacombs. With her arms full of bread, she put candles in a wreath on her head to light the way. She was martyred for her faith during the reign of Diocletian in 304 AD.

Lucy Cats

We made bread the day before so that we could have them for breakfast this morning. I was confused why the buns, called Lussekatter or Lucy cats, were shaped like an S, or what cats had to do with St. Lucia! Quite the mystery, until I read this:

The Lucy cat is an interesting little cake. If you look closely it has the appearance of two eyes. We remember that Jesus told us how the eye is the light of the body. Yet, in the tradition of St. Lucy, her physical eyes were gouged out. Yet, she saw the light of Christ with her spiritual eyes. And so, in the Lucy Cats, she reminds us that we need to open our spiritual eyes so that we can also see the light and not fear the darkness.  During the longest night of darkness, and with a simple pastry, she tells us to have faith and to rejoice and sing. As St. John wrote, “And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.” (John 1.5) - source

 What a sweet story for the weeks leading up to Christmas, while we are anticipating for the coming of Christ the true light!

Materials: felt cut in squiggly-leafy shaped strips,
green and yellow (and orange) pipe cleaners,
white pony beads and a bit of fabric glue.

The girls and I made St. Lucia wreaths from pipe cleaners and felt. I don't use pipe cleaners often, but a friend suggested this activity and we thought we'd give it a try. The original tutorial is from here, but I used felt cut into leaf shapes instead of fabric. 

fun with beads and pipe cleaners. 

The girls really liked twisting the pipe cleaners and putting the beads on. Getting the bead-candles to stand up was definitely the hardest part. I let the girls go play while I wound the leaves on, and was able to prop the candles of with the leaves. Then they came back to help me glue the berries on. 

We were pretty pleased with the results. :)

They make a cute table decoration as well, and will store nicely for next year I hope. 

Happy St. Lucia day! May your eyes be full of light!

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. - Matthew 6:22

Share Birthday

We decided to have one party for both girls this year, and the girls started calling it a "Share Birthday." They really latched onto the sharing idea in a way I hadn't anticipated. For all the effort of trying to teach them, beg them, force them to share... sometimes it just flows naturally - and isn't that beautiful? And maybe I should remember to stop lecturing and just spend more time baking with the kids, eh?

When we prepared the cakes, we baked  the batter in tuna cans, making two very small, very tall cakes. I thought this was a lot of fun, but I was also worried - how exactly do you slice and share a very skinny cake? My mom, my trusty baking guru who is always on the other end of the phone, suggested cutting each layer in half, height wise - making the layers shorter and making more layers. Enough so that each guest could have their own little cake.

I told the kids about this idea, and explained that they could pick what color layers each guest received - so it would be a little gift they gave their guests. They pretty much thought that idea was AWESOME, and immediately had me call everyone to find out what their favorite color was.

[A couple of side notes about the cake:
1.) Making the layers shorter also meant that the birthday girl cake layers were a little neater and straighter and made the cakes tidier all together. Nice.
2.) One cake mix made about 14 tuna can size cakes, which I cut in half, so we had 28 layers. Each birthday girl had 6 layers, and each of the 5 guest cakes had 3, except for Daddy who got an extra 4th layer. You could also make nine 3-layer cakes.
3.) Even the small 3 layer cakes were really too much for a guest to eat in one sitting - it would have been super cool to have a little take-out boxes for the guests to take their extra cake home. Alas, we kept the leftovers.]

After choosing the colors and arranging the layers, I finished icing the cakes on my own. But the girls wanted to do more. They wanted to make more surprises for their guests! As I was icing the cakes, I realized I was going to have trouble telling them apart - so I had the idea that the girls could make cake toppers. I drew a set of circles on cardstock and had them draw a picture of each guest (and themselves) in a circle. There was probably a neater way of assembling them than what we did - but with a little scotch tape, blue paper and some grilling skewers we ended up with these cute cake toppers.

Our guests were also super gracious when I required each of them, one by one, to carefully cut their cake in half and pose for a picture with their cake and cake topper. It was exciting for me and the girls to see them opened as well, since they were pretty messy looking pre-icing, and so lovely when cut neatly open. Each cake got some oohs and aahs.

The cake toppers made nice party favors for grandparents and aunts. I think they would be cute in a potted plant. I love the set of our family that each girl made, and will probably do something with those soon...

I had a lot of fun doing all of these things with the kids - baking and scheming, color matching and drawing.  It seems to be the best of parenting, the easiest and most fun part, and the part too easy to forget at times - the being together, sharing our days. This was so hard to grasp in the beginning, but its becoming clearer to me now. Here's to togetherness and the passing of time. Many years, my not-so-little ones!

Please, let me know if you have any cake questions. Although I wrote more about the cakes here and there are a million rainbow cake tutorials on the web. Much fun and great wow factor - I definitely recommend it!

Baking Together

We're getting ready for some birthday celebrating this weekend, so the girls and I baked their birthday cakes today. Usually, I like to make the cake a surprise, but this year the girls both wanted rainbow cakes, and since that wasn't a surprise I thought they'd like to play with the food coloring with me.

We'll celebrate both birthdays together this year, so we're making two cakes. L is having a true rainbow, and J chose a pink value scale. This was a fun follow up on the recent color wheel lesson we did. I think they'll both be beautiful!

We used one cake mix (yes, friends, a mix!) and baked 12 little cakes in washed tuna and pineapple cans. I put a 1/4 cup of batter in 12 little bowls and we added food coloring, then baked them 4 at a time (because we couldn't eat 12 cans of tuna on such short notice).

After baking, I sliced off the rounded tops with a bit of thread so they will stack more neatly, and the girls and I ate the little cut off pieces. I will decorate and assemble them later so that there is at least a little surprise - but I'm glad we did this part together.

The girls and I thought that even the mess we made was beautiful. It's nice to have something to celebrate when there has been so much sadness in the news and from friends lately. In the picture below they each just happen to be wearing their favorite colors, which nicely match the cakes we made. I can't believe how quickly they grow, and how precious and beautiful they are! 

Koulourakia

A friend of mine asked me to try his recipe for Koulourakia. And given my love for baking things in funny shapes, I've made these many times now. They're kind of like the Christmas butter cookies I grew up with, but not nearly as dry. Plus, they're super pretty with sesame seeds sprinkled on top, and they go nicely with hot coffee in the morning. 

There appear to be as many variations of this recipe as there are Greek bloggers. :) This recipe is close to the one I used, but this one is nice, too, with lots of pictures. I took some pictures to show how I twisted the shapes. A good recipe will make a strong dough that's not too sticky so they twist up quickly and nicely. 

Happy New Year!

The holidays are so often a rush and a whisper - a whirlwind of busy-ness and a call to peacefulness.  Ours has been a bit paradoxical, both lovely and lonely. And I am eager to hold on to the lingering lovely moments that we have before our routine returns, to hold on to them and plant them into our routine.

I made an absolutely beautiful loaf of bread, but didn't bother to photograph it until it was almost gone. Yet, its beauty persists each morning as we eat another toasted slice. 

And despite our abnormal schedule and irregular appointments, we are still pouring two cups of coffee each morning and washing the dishes [most days]. This is beautiful, too. This is life and it persists despite our disrupted routines.

I have no idea what is in store this year, what projects we will undertake, what joys and tragedies we will face, but I am going in with my eyes wide open. I am determined to make this a year of love and not argument. I am looking and looking. Wishing you much love and beauty this year!

"Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to him. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty none the less, and what he did was to call out this beauty... 

And this is what we must learn to do with regard to each person as an individual, but also - and this is not always as easy - with regard to groups of people or a nation. We must learn to look, and look until we have seen the underlying beauty of this group of people. 

Only then can we even begin to do something to call out all the beauty that is there. 

Listen to other people, and whenever you discern something which sounds true, which is a revelation of harmony and beauty, emphasize it and help it to flower. Strengthen it and encourage it to live." - Met. Anthony Bloom

American Lussekatter

I might as well say "Lucy Cats" since there is nothing Swedish about my bread. I saw lots of talk about St. Lucia day, and since I love an excuse to make shaped bread, AND I loved Kirsten as a kid (and in fact have her tucked away in the attic. Shhh! I don't want to tell the girls I have her until they finally sit through one of the books!) I thought we should have a little last minute St. Lucia day celebration, too. 

At first, I dreamed of the girls letting me sleep in, and then waking me, dressed in pretty gowns and bearing fresh-from-the-oven sweet bread and hot coffee, to serve me breakfast in bed.

But then I woke up and decided a tea party was a better idea.

Unfortunately, I had already started mixing the ingredients before I learned of the vital (and rare and expensive) ingredient saffron. Even more unfortunately, I realized too late that I didn't actually have enough flour to turn this batter into bread. So I stuck the goopy mess in the refrigerator. Yes, this is how I roll.

The next day, I added some flour and cinnamon and a few other entirely non-Swedish-tradition ingredients and braided up this bread.  I intended to shape them all into the cat shapes (sort of a cross made of 2 S's), but it was messy and the kids were yelling, and so I quickly braided the rest into a Lucia crown, and threw them in the oven. 

It was quite ill-planned - nevertheless, we sat down to our tea party with sweet bread, cocoa, candles and a little reading from the end of the Kirsten book. (spoiler! It's St. Lucia day and guess who gets to be St. Lucia!) The girls loved the story and (surprisingly) the bread, although the cocoa was a touch too hot. It's amazing how sticking a candle into your food can get everyone in a festive mood, and plenty of sugar glaze will keep everyone quietly licking their fingers while you read. Yes, it was a good time. 

Doughnuts, gob style

I've been experimenting with the Artisan Bread in 5 minutes A Day book all summer.  The texture of the bread, and the rise all work out so beautifully.  I still seem to be struggling a bit with getting the same yeasty flavor, but I'm persevering because this method is so so practical.

I was reading my old Beard on Bread the other day looking for a doughnut recipe because my kids are really into doughnuts right now.  I noticed the recipe for Dough Gobs, which is essentially fried bread dough.  He says traditionally mothers would take a bit of the dough they had left to rise over night, fry it and serve it with maple syrup for breakfast.  I love the old-timey practicality of this and though it would work nicely with the 5 Minutes dough made from their master recipe that I already had in the refrigerator. 

These are half wheat and rolled in powdered sugar.  I fried mine in coconut oil, partially because I love the sweet flavor of it, and partially to make myself not feel so bad about serving my kids fried bread for breakfast.  I thought they turned out excellent, and went nicely with strawberries.  I see lots of serving variations in my future (cinnammon, chocolate, raspberry sauce?)   Plus, I like that I can serve them to my vegan friends, too, because they're nice to have around.

Hmm, I think I'm going to go make some now...

Olive Fougasse

I got Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day for Christmas, and I'm on my fourth or fifth batch now.  It took a little adjusting to the idea of wet dough, but once I got the consistency right, everything has turned out excellent.  I love baking bread, but I can appreciate the time saving factor anyway, because it makes it so easy to make something every day.  The only drawback is that it makes me want to buy a bunch of stuff: a larger container so I don't have to keep making new batches, a pizza peel and baking stone (which I should probably have anyway), new flour canisters, cut bread serving platters...  Okay, maybe that's just me.

I made the Olive Fougasse from the olive oil dough.  It is excellent and beautiful, and even easier to make than some of the other breads.  It is basically focaccia bread with olives mixed it.  I took it to a gathering, and felt like a heel every time I said, "fougasse," but everyone liked it anyway.  

No Knead Bread

I know every time I post about bread, I say something like, "this is the best bread ever!"  So maybe I'm overdoing it?  But I recently tried this No Knead Dutch Oven Bread from Mother Earth News, and it is pretty awesome.   The inside is so moist, it's almost "eggy" - except there are no eggs in the recipe.  The outside is a gorgeous and crusty.  The only drawback I can think of is that you're limited to the round shape.  But I cut mine into fourths and then sliced the fourths, so it made nice triangular sandwiches. 

I've sort of ignored the no knead stuff for awhile, because I don't really have any problem with kneading.  It was interesting, and easy to do, so that was good.  But the dutch oven is the real cool factor. 

The recipe is basically a french bread recipe, and the dutch oven creates a similar steamy-heat environment of a bakers oven, so this made the best french bread that I've ever made, and perhaps the best bread altogether?

I'm planning on making all my bread in the dutch oven now.  You should too.  Here's a good video of Mark Bittman talking about no knead bread. 



you tube:

Hamburger Buns

After my recent experimentation with sandwich bread, I realized I needed a good hamburger bun.   So, I tried Julia Child's french bread recipe made into 12 small round loaves.   Her recipe is definitely different that white bread dough - much wetter, and a little different to knead.  But, whew.  It was awesome.  I mean, awesome. 

When I think of hamburgers, and I spend a plenty of time thinking about burgers, I rarely think about the bread.  But the truth is, I hate that soft white bread that most burgers are served on.  It gets stuck in your teeth, and has no flavor.  So, when we made these burgers, I realized that the bread part of the burger should not be forgotten. 

I have made this recipe several times since then, and it turns out it makes great sandwich bread too.  It's got such great flavor, and because they are buns instead of bread slices, you never have to worry about them falling apart.   My favorite sandwich of late is avacado.  Just mushed avacado on this bread.  Yep.  It's the new peanut butter.

This recipe only makes 12 buns, which we go through pretty fast.  I tried doubling the recipe and ended up with a sticky mess that (as Julia says) still made bread, but was too sticky to form into buns.  I'm playing around with the recipe now to try to figure out a way to make more at a time, and be able to knead it in my stand mixer.  I've been making all of our household bread the last couple of months, and it's been really exciting.  I'd love to get a recipe together that is easy enough to repeat on a weekly basis.  I'll let you know how it goes.   

More Sandwich Bread

After I tried my regular recipe three times, I decided to try something different.  So I decided to try Julia Child's Pain de Mie (a good tutorial here).  It beat my last sandwich bread by a mile!

A few important things:

I have a great warm spot to let my bread rise in, but Julia says that warm temperatures speed up the process at the expense of the flavor and texture.  I knew extra risings were good, but I didn't know about the temperature thing.  Wow.  So, this bread rises in a NOT warm spot, for almost double the time, with three risings.  The result is a close grain, flavorful bread.  Awesome.

Julia has you knead in the butter after the initial kneading instead of mixing it in the beginning.  I'm not yet sure why, but it was fun.

Also, this bread was baked covered by a pan with a brick on top.  So instead of a rounded top, it makes  regular square/rectangle for fancy sandwiches.  That was a lot of fun - I enjoy trying different bread shapes almost as much as bread recipes, and this made a neat sandwich slice.

Thumbs up for the best sandwich bread yet.

p.s.  If you bothered to read this whole bread post - you earned a head's up to a new pattern giveaway coming very very soon!

Sandwich Bread

After I posted about my grilled cheese sandwiches, a couple of friends asked me about my bread recipe because homemade bread doesn't always make great sandwich bread.  The recipe I used was the plain old "Basic White Bread Recipe" that you can find in most bread cookbooks.  They're usually pretty much the same - I found one similar to mine here.

And in fact, my bread was a little crumbly for sandwiches - even though it was great bread.  Which got me wondering - how do you make great sandwich bread?  A good sandwich bread should be soft, not crumbly or dense, and strong and flexible enough to support it's filling.  This week, I made the recipe three more times, after reviewing some good bread resources (see below).  Here are the three most important things I found for making your homemade bread a little less rustic, and more sandwich worthy:

1.  Give it time. Let the dough rest for a couple minutes before kneading.  This gives the flour a chance to absorb the liquid and prepares the gluten for kneading.  And then, be sure to give the dough plenty of time to double in size during the first rise.  Don't just go based on time.

2.  Knead until the dough is flexible enough that it springs back when you poke it.  Sometimes I stop when it looks smooth, but this can make it crumbly.  When in doubt, knead a little more.  You are more likely to under knead, than overknead. 

3.  Use bread flour or hard wheat.  I usually use half white and half wheat for a plain loaf like this, but I found swapping the white out for bread flour made a much nicer sandwich slice.

All three of these tips acheive the same goal - enabling the gluten to really develop makes a soft flexible bread.  My third batch made the best sandwich bread I've ever made, even getting the toddler-peanut-butter-sandwich seal of approval.  I've been enjoying the reading and baking so much, I think I'm seeing a lot more bread in the near future.  I think Julia's French Bread is next...

 

Beard on Bread, and Julia Child's chapter on yeast bread's are great resources.  And they are both illustrated beautifully.  Seriously, can I illustrate a bread book, please? 

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Another attempt at meals all three of us can eat during the day. I got this one from Wholesome Baby Food. There website is a great resource for baby food recipes, as well as good information about when to introduce what foods. Most of the information is available free on their website, but you can also buy a downloadable cookbook, which I think is a much easier way to browse and save the information.

This one was exciting for us, because J has just started eating wheat, which is making our lives much easier. L and I had ours with cinnamon and sugar on top, and we just ate them with our fingers. Awesome. The recipe is meant for baby, so if you wanted to make it a family meal, you'd need to double or triple it. As is, it made about 10 cookie sized pancakes.

You'll find the recipe on this page if you scroll down a bit. We haven't introduced eggs or dairy yet, so I used substitutions for those. Their book also has lots of information on varying recipes based on your child's needs, with a long list of egg substitutes for different needs, as well as chapters on other common food intolerances.

Crazy Amazing Banana Chocolate Waffles

A little Christmas Eve fun. Crispy outside, soft inside, crazy good. I think they're yummy plain, but butter and maple syrup are good, too. I started from this recipe. Below is my version.

John is spending the day in the garage finishing the girls' Christmas gift, so I'm making christmas-y crafts and waffles inside with L. Who knew being a mom at Christmas would be as much fun as being a kid?

Banana Chocolate Waffles
1 cup wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking cocoa
2 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 cup milk
1 cup banana, mashed
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 - 1 cup chocolate chips

Blend flour, baking powder, salt, cocoa and sugar together; set aside. Beat egg yolks and milk together; add flour mixture, stirring until just blended. Fold in banana and melted butter; mix well.

In a small mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff and peaks form; gently fold into batter. Add chocolate chips to taste (I made these a second time, and realized I originally told you to put in way too much chocolate - wishful thinking, I guess!). Bake on a waffle iron until the steam stops (or almost stops if you're a little impatient).