Three Plus Two

Plan It, Don't Panic: Progress and Menu for Week 2

I'm participating in the Plan It, Don't Panic! Meal Planning Challenge at Keeper of the Home.  This is Week 2.  If you're curious, you can also read about my preparations and menu for week 1.

How did last week go?

The hardest part about this challenge seems to be... blogging it on Monday!

I have lots of ideas for blog posts that never make it to the blog.  Sometimes (often) it's due to lack of time, but sometimes...

 

It's the lighting.

In real life, a Spanish omelet looks much yummier.  Much less... Dayglo.

(And I know what you're thinking about this huge cooktop, because I thought it, too, when I first saw the house. But the grill does not work. I sometimes use it as a prep space by laying a cutting board there. Back in 1980, though, this thing rocked!)

Anyway, having the menu plan helped keep me on track, but there was still some unplanned pizza.  We were all sick with colds last week, and one night every time I tried to make dinner the baby pulled up on my leg and bit me.  He was not happy with his sisters or brothers either.  So pizza it was.  I just readjusted the plan and we had almond flour pancakes on Saturday instead of Friday. 

I didn't grind up any nuts and seeds for breakfast, and the chocolate coconut bark was a complete flop.  I was trying to use unsweetened chocolate and then sweeten the whole concoction with honey, but it just wouldn't combine.  We were left with a much too sweet layer on the bottom and a bitter layer on top.  I tried stirring my raspberry syrup in, but it didn't help much.  None of that seemed to matter to my 4 year old, however, as he came back for seconds.

The hardboiled eggs were lifesavers -- mostly for me as snacks in the afternoon, especially on meatless days.

Menu Plan for Week 2

Breakfasts:

I'd like to have some grain-free breads made up this week to use for breakfasts.  I also need to make yogurt. And I've had one request for soaked oat porridge, which we'll have on Weds.

Lunches:

Standard lunch fare.  Leftovers.  (On Monday I had a decent salad made from leftover cold chicken sausages, romaine lettuce, and tomatoes, dressed with oil and apple cider vinegar.  Simple, but good.)

Monday: Chicken cacciatore over zucchini, green beans from the garden, fruit

(Ok, so the almond flour I used to coat the chicken pieces turned mushy and my cast iron skillet was too small to hold everything, which meant I couldn't put it in the oven without it bubbling over onto the oven floor.  My small wall oven has no vent and functions mainly as a steam oven, so when anything bubbles over, even more steam comes out the top of the door -- yes, really.  In clouds.  I finished cooking it on the stove.  It didn't look anything like Ree's, but it sure tasted good! I'll have to keep experimenting with the almond flour. And ask for a cast iron dutch oven for Christmas.)

Tuesday: Crockpot Tacos/Taco salad (for me) using stew meat, with homemade fermented salsa, fruit

Wednesday: Butternut squash soup (enough to freeze some)/almond flour zucchini bread (to be planned over for breakfast), fruit... I'll probably cook some breakfast sausage as a stir-in for the soup, but I'll freeze the "planned over" soup without it,

Thursday: Slow Cooker Coconut Curry Chicken (without the rice, using free-range chicken), salad, peas maybe, fruit

Friday: I'm sticking this in as our pizza night, because we are going to be cleaning for family on the weekend!

Saturday: Crockpot roast beef w/carrots and assorted veggies from the garden,  potatoes for my dad, fruit

Sunday: We have some important family events going on, so we'll have a BBQ lunch with family and pick and snack leftovers for dinner

 

 

 

The Homeschooling Meme

Pam at Everyday Snapshots tagged me for the homeschooling meme that's been going around, so here goes...

1) ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED

Well, I was going to put a photo of my homeschool book bookcase here to point out the difficulty I might have with "one" book, but... I couldn't get the bookcase to fit in the frame! Actually, that's probably not as bad as it sounds, because it's a tall skinny bookcase, and there's not a lot of room to maneuver in the little piece of hallway where it resides, but still... I've collected a lot of books over the past 10 years.  For instance, I have all 3 editions of The Well-Trained Mind.  Does that sound nutty? I use it mainly for the resources.

Since I have a hard time following directions, here is a list of some of my favorite homeschooling books:

A Little Way of Homeschooling

(I love this book.  It is like having a good friend at your elbow telling you to relax, that it's going to be okay, really.)

Better Than School: One Family's Declaration of Independence  by Nancy Wallace

The Latin-Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell

Hard Times in Paradise  by the Colfaxes

How Children Fail   by John Holt

Homeschooling Our Children Unschooling Ourselves by Alison McKee

Pretty dang unschooly. With a little classical thrown in for good measure.

2) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN'T BE WITHOUT

Er... one? Well... if I was stranded without all my stuff, what I would absolutely want most would be a library card.  So I guess the one resource I wouldn't be without is ACCESS TO BOOKS, and lots of them. 

3) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT

Hmmm... Off the top of my head, I would say the IEW writing curriculum.  I don't know how I thought I could get past my deep aversion to teaching "dress-ups.

4) ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR

Gee, that's tough.  There were some good books last year, but I think one of the "resources" we most enjoyed last year was the Lego unit I blogged about here.

5) ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING NEXT YEAR

Would that be this year maybe?  Because I can't plan to the end of the week, much less know what we'll be using next year!

A few resources from this year...

Discovering Moths: Nighttime Jewels in Your Own Backyard  

Rosetta Stone French and Japanese

Other Worlds: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

Fieldwork Marine Biology plans

Holling C. Holling books

Among the Night People

Seeing Is Achieving: Improve Your Child's Chances For Success  

A really good voice teacher

6) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY

Does anybody have a schoolroom/art studio/home library space for sale, cheap?

7) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED

A schoolroom/art studio/home library space you could unfold and attach to your house.  Like the TARDIS -- bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

(This sounds like a good excuse to stick in a Doctor Who Youtube montage.)

 

Actually, Doctor Who has led to some good discussions in our house, so I guess it counts as one of my favorite resources, right? (Just smile and nod; it's easier that way.)

8) ONE HOMESCHOOLING CATALOG YOU ENJOY READING

Sonlight (although I don't like their new catalog as much as I liked the old format) ... Emmanuel Books... Montessori Services... (I guess that's technically not a homeschool catalog, but that's what I use it for, so I think it counts.)

Ok, so -- tag, you're it!  If you haven't already done the meme and you'd like to, consider yourself tagged!

 

 

 

Plan It, Don't Panic: A Meal Planning Challenge

Keeper of the Home is hosting the "Plan It, Don't Panic: Meal Planning Challenge" for the next six weeks to give those of us who need it (ahem) some accountability in the meal planning process.  Lately life has been so busy that grocery shopping gets smushed into whatever time slot happens to be available, and meal planning has been rudimentary.  As a result, we've been eating way too much pizza, and I end up feeding the kids toast for breakfast every day.  A low point happened at Costco two weeks ago when I bought a giant box of packaged granola bars to feed the kids snacks in the van on the way home.  Obviously they did not need 60 + granola bars to eat on the way home, so they ended up gorging on them for breakfasts and snacks, at which point it became apparent that my boys had eaten 60+ granola bars in less than a week.  (Like -- a lot less than a week.)  Granted, we were just coming home from vacation, but 60 granola bars??

I signed up with the Plan It, Don't Panic Challenge as soon as I saw it.

Our vital stats:

• Family of 9
• 6 boys, ages 14-1
• 1 nursing mom
• grain-free diet (at least for some of us)

Since I know that people are curious about the grain-free diet, I thought I would try to blog this challenge in a little more detail.  I hope to post not only my meal plans, but what we (and I, the most grain-free of our family) actually ate during the week.  As usual, I'll be keeping it real.  I like Mark Sisson's "Don't Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good"  and 80 %  principles when it comes to eating a grain-free/paleo/primal diet.  I am not perfect.  I have 7 kids. Things are going to fall apart sometimes.  They probably fall apart at your house, too.  But that's okay.  You don't have to be a superhero to make changes in the way you eat.

This what I'm hoping to accomplish with this challenge:

•  Stop eating so much pizza for dinner just because I haven't figured out dinner or managed any prep work.
• Make better use of my (minimal) garden produce as well as the store produce
• Start working in more grain-free breakfasts and lunches for the kids.
• Make it a regular habit to have some real snacks on hand that are a change from the everyday fruit and cheese, which are starting to get a little boring. In addition, I need snacks that I can eat, with a bit of protein in the afternoon.
• Start making my own yogurt and kefir again.
• Keep the grocery budget at a decent level.  I'm not aiming for the lowest level, but I do want to keep a top on it by weeding out the impulse buys (like 60+ granola bars). 

 So how am I doing this first week?

Thursday night I sat down and got some coupons together.  I don't spend a lot of time couponing, and am probably one of the more un-extreme couponers you'll find, but I do find that coupons help us on paper and cleaning products and our Whole Foods shopping especially.  I wanted Andy to make a run to Whole Foods after work on Friday, so I had to get everything together for him.  Our standard Whole Foods run usually includes whole fat yogurt, unhomogenized whole milk (not raw), good quality heavy cream (minus the carageenen), and whatever organic fruit is on sale for a good price.  We also stock up on free-range chicken and pastured butter if we need any (we didn't this week).  This week, in addition to the dairy, Andy bought a little over 4.5 lbs of plums, some chocolate for coconut bark, and got a deal on Clif bars by stacking some manufacturers coupons with Whole Foods coupons.  (He'll take the Clif bars with him when he travels.  No, they aren't grain-free.)   

 On Friday night I watched the videos from the Cook More Real Food Challenge (taking inventories of pantry, freezer, and fridge, and meal planning, all of which are good), so I was ready to jump in Saturday morning as long as Katydid and Andy helped by watching Leo, who was sick and prefers to live outside these days.  (Fortunately, they came to my rescue).  I finally got around to cleaning out the fridge, which I have needed to do for a few weeks now.  We recently bought a second fridge to store veggies and milk and cut down on trips to the store, but the luxury of space brought with it a disturbing habit on the part of all of us to disregard all former organizational rules for using the fridge in the kitchen.

(There are some pictures of a seriously organized fridge and freezer in this post from I Heart Organizing.  My fridge does not look like that, but it's a lot better.)

On Saturday afternoon, I finished up the grocery shopping at Kroger.  (Sure seemed like they raised their prices again.  Their "mega-event" didn't seem so mega to me.)

Stuff in the fridge and freezer I'll be using in my meal plan this week:

• black bean salad (homemade)
• romaine lettuce
• carrots that are looking a little hairy
• baby carrots in a giant bag from Costco (mainly for lunches)
• shrimp stock (freezer)
• chicken broth (freezer)
• stew meat (from a side of beef, freezer)
• gluten-free chicken sausages (from that Costco trip)
• almond flour (which I buy in bulk from Honeyville Grains)
• raspberry "syrup" -- organic frozen raspberries from Costco that had thawed and refrozen into a giant block, cooked down with honey because I had to do something with 3 lbs of raspberries at once... a yummy and sugar-free topping for yogurt and pancakes

Snacks and sweet stuff for the week:

I have the Healthy Snacks to Go e-book and am excited to try many of Katie's ideas.  But... everybody in the house (including me) is sick right now with a cold, so we'll see how much gets accomplished. 

Some simple ideas for this week:

• hardboiled eggs
• chicken broth (good for a cold!)
• apples and bananas with peanut, almond, or sunbutter
• applesauce rollups (from the Healthy Snacks book)
• coconut bark (from Primal Blueprint Quick and Easy Meals)

A Note on the Calendar:

Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday are Ember Days in the Church.  We'll be meatless for those days. Meatless and grain-free can be difficult, especially when your family doesn't like beans or lentils.

Breakfasts:

I am not awake enough in the morning to cook.  What I am aiming for this week is to grind up some nuts and seeds ahead of time in order to make grain-free porridge, which will be a nice change from my regular eggs.  (Our chickens are only beginning to lay, so I'm still buying cage-free eggs from the store.) Hopefully some of the kids will enjoy it, too.

Lunches:

My goal is to have leftovers.  With 6 boys, sometimes you plan for leftovers and in spite of your best efforts, you realize what you have left over is crumbs.  My own go-to lunch for days when there are crumbs is a peanut or almond butter/coconut milk smoothie.   

In other words, I'm still working on lunch.  I'll be getting up to speed on dinners first.

 

 

Dinners:

Sunday -- Black bean soup (leftover black bean salad, stew meat from the freezer)

(I did make this and it turned out well, but the little boys refused to eat it again for lunch on Monday and had cheese sandwiches instead.)

Monday -- chicken wings with baby carrots, fruit, possibly some bleu cheese dip if I feel up to it

Tuesday -- shrimp bisque (I'll be altering this recipe, since I don't have cognac or sherry, and I won't be adding flour) and salad

Wednesday (meatless)  -- Spanish Omelet (I add some cheese to mine, and of course, I use more eggs!), roasted eggplant from the garden, fruit

Thursday  -- gluten-free chicken sausages, green beans from the garden, fruit

Friday (meatless) -- almond flour pancakes with raspberry "syrup"

Saturday (meatless) -- cheese pizza out

Well!  I'm not sure how I spun a menu plan into such a long post, but if you're still with me, check out all the other menu planners at Plan It, Don't Panic! Week One !

 

 

Labor Day Week

 As our year goes on, we are settling more and more into the "relaxed" mode which seems to fit our family pretty well.  A case in point is the last two weeks.  We had many committments, Andy had to be out of town, and then we wanted to make a Labor Day visit to see Grandma and Grandpa.  While I could have seen this as a "break" and gotten frustrated at not being able to accomplish what I had planned, instead I viewed it as a less academic period and we got everything packed, social occasions were attended to, and Katydid taught a few of our friends how to take care of the chickens while we were gone.  When we came home, we had time to gear back up, go grocery shopping, and help another homeschooling family move back into area (from Alaska!)

Building train tracks at Grandma's house

So this was not really "a break".  It was a time simply less bookwork-focused.  And we managed, as a family, to listen to The Magician's Nephew, part of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and part of the Focus on the Family dramatization of The Screwtape Letters as well. (Gareth also managed some personal study of the Teaching Company's Story of Language course, and listened with his father to a CD from The Story of Philosophy, which is what Andy is listening to on his commute these days.)

A budding musician?

Other activities from the past week or so:

• Mass, Confession, and a class on the Latin Mass with our homeschool group, followed by lunch and play afterwards
• Voice lessons for Katydid.  She started these in August and loves them. We're both very happy with her teacher.
• Volunteering at an animal shelter for an afternoon with Katydid, Farmerboy, and a large group of kids.  We walked and bathed dogs. Some of the parents cleaned kennels.  On the way home, we had an interesting discussion about animals and theology, and whether we could put an animal shelter in our barn.  (Ummm... probably not.  Although we are currently a halfway house for our neighbor's escaped bunnies, of which they have many.  Their escapees hang out with our chickens.  One of them, a big black rabbit, has been christened "Midnight Ninja".  I'm sure the way he lounges around eating chicken feed and halfheartedly hopping out of your way is just a clever disguise.)

Yes, that is a little green tree frog in our coat closet.

A little serendipity, too... When we were visiting the grandparents, we went to Mass at the little church where I grew up.  The regular priest did not say Mass; instead, a Benedictine monk from St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Alabama said Mass.  Everyone was very impressed with his homily (although I did not hear it myself, since I was walking around outside with a baby).  Later that week, after we were home again, Andy was watching Life on the Rock on EWTN with Gareth when we all suddenly realized that they were featuring the same monks on their show!  And one of the brothers who appeared as a guest was the very priest who had said Mass in our little church on Sunday.  It turns out that he is the vocations director for the abbey.

So... hmmm... what are the odds?

 

Seven Quick Takes - Gardens and Floods

One

I have declared war on crepe myrtles.  I know they probably don't deserve it, but I have this thing about plants that everybody has.  And down here, everybody has crepe myrtles.  It's like monoculture landscaping, and it can't be good for the bees.  Anyway, the thing about crepe myrtles is that if they are sufficiently ignored for long enough, they will create many, many volunteer trees, most of them in places they have no business growing.  And the other thing about crepe myrtles is that many people regard them as bushes and plant them accordingly, smack up next to the house in the front flower bed.  But the crepe myrtle is a tree, and if you ignore it (sufficiently), it will turn into a tree, and there goes your gutter.  Our neighbor has a gorgeous, huge crepe myrtle in her front yard, but most crepe myrtles are never given that amount of space or time.  Instead, they're planted in the wrong places and then cruelly topped.  All of which is to say that I spent a beautiful late summer day wielding a pair of giant pruning shears against dozens of juvenile crepe myrtles growing in every single landscaped bed we have.  I even bravely made a start on the two trees in the front of the house that make eerie, creaky noises against the gutters when the wind blows.  Those, I'm afraid, will require a hacksaw.

Two

I'm working on crepe myrtles because my garden is defunct.  When we came home from visiting my parents Labor Day weekend, one of my bean towers was blown over and the other was leaning drunkenly.  It's not like I got a lot of beans out of them anyway.  Time now to get another load of dirt for the raised beds and plant some fall crops, like lettuce and kale.

Three

The blackberry bushes are bearing nicely, especially considering that this is their first year.  I love blackberries.  I often wonder about our big blackberry bush in the garden in New York.  Hurricane Irene devestated Schoharie County, but our old house was not in the way of the worst floodwaters.  Still, I wonder, did all the water coming down that hill demolish the orchard? What about the blackberry bush?

This is the risk of planting things.  A piece of you stays in the ground, too.

Four

Which is to say, we have been horrified by the news coming out of upstate New York.  Some of Andy's coworkers lost their homes.  The towns that formed the place we called home for 5 years are some of them completely obliterated.  It's all very surreal when you're this far away and friends send you photos and videos.  You just thank God that there was no loss of human life.

Five

Because I am a worrier, I wondered what Tropical Storm Lee would do if it dumped 10 inches of rain on my parents' house.  If the power went out, would we have enough food to feed our big family? Was there enough Chunky Soup in the pantry?

These are the things that will keep you up at 3 AM when you're trying to sleep in the 6 inches of space left on the bed beside the baby.

Fortunately for us, the rain and wind weren't that bad, although it was cold for the second week in September -- unheard of cold! 60 degrees and raining! -- and a dead tree did fall across the sidewalk. Of course they had to evacuate again in upstate New York. 

On our way home, we drove out of the rain into sunshine.  The rain gauge in our front flower bed held less than a half inch of rain.  The azaelas in back look wilty and parched in spite of the cooler weather.

And the wildfires in Texas... good night. My dad says this is how they make averages: floods and droughts cancel each other out. 

Six

Well, this didn't start out as the natural disaster Seven Quick Takes, but I guess it's been on my mind.  I went to Costco the day after we got back and stocked up on some things we were out of, or almost out of: canned salmon, olive oil, paprika.  (I guess sometimes I use a lot of paprika.)  They had tortellini, which I should have bought more of in case they don't have any when I go back, and I also saw organic strawberry spread, which I haven't seen in a year.  So I bought 3 jars.  If we were to have to eat out of the pantry now, our meals would consist of nut and seed butters, salmon, canned beans, tomatoes, pineapple, Goldfish crackers, and strawberry jam. 

Seven

In case you're wondering, I am still eating grain-free as much as possible.  In a little over a year, I've lost about 50 pounds.  20 pounds was cheating because it was baby weight, but 30 pounds was baby weight x the 6 previous babies.  I am getting to the point where I have been forced to buy new clothes.  I miss bread and my corn allergy annoys the heck out of me because I can't eat corn on the cob or Chinese food at a restaurant because there's cornstarch in the sauces, but otherwise, I'm ok eating this way.  My kids, however, are not.  Having enough meat on hand to fill them up with a grain-free dinner is a real problem, especially considering that my 14 month old has begun eating the same amount as the 4 year old or the 5 year olds.  That said, I saw a lot of benefits to the kids with grain-reduced eating, and I want to reduce the grains they're eating again, but I can't seem to stop feeding them toast for breakfast.

 

When you don't check your blog for a while...

... weird things happen.  My blogbar module was apparently linking to its homepage when my blog had partially loaded.   I have no clue why it was happening, but I have removed the offending widget and everything seems to be working again.

Apologies to anyone who was trying to view the blog!