In Which We Cook Chicken Scampi

I want to cook more.  I've gotten lazy, especially with couponing since it's so tempting to buy prepared items.  They're not good, they're not good for you (ahem, the recipe I'm going to share has 3/4 of a stick of butter, hem), and I love to cook.

To that end, Logan wanted to make "Olive-ah Garden" for his dinner night this week.  Enter, Chicken Scampi.

Olive-ah Garden Salad (Logan is specific about amounts): american mix bagged salad, 5 pepperoncini peppers, 2 thin slices red onion, 10 black olives, 1/2 cup garlic croutons, 2 roma tomatoes sliced, Kraft Zesty Italian (I hear the OG sells their dressing now- must look into this!)

Chicken Scampi- complicated, but delicious, and only 40 minutes WITH 5 year old "helper"!
1 box Angel Hair pasta, cooked

1 package chicken tenderloins
2T flour
Olive oil

2T flour
3/4 stick butter
3/4 cup milk

1 green pepper, sliced
1/2 large red onion, sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, sliced

5 T butter
3 T crushed garlic
1/2 t crushed red pepper flakes
3 t italian seasoning
pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups white wine
1 1/4 cups water

10 cloves of garlic


1. Wrap the unpeeled garlic cloves in tin foil or place in a small ceramic baking dish.  Place in oven at 375.
2. Lightly flour and sauté the chicken in a small amount of olive oil (or olive oil and butter...why waste that last teaspoon?) 
3. In the meantime, in another pan melt the butter and add the flour.  Cook for 1 minute to remove pasty flavor, and then slowly whisk in the milk.  Continue whisking until thick.
4. In another pan, melt the 5T butter with the garlic, pepper flakes, italian seasoning and pepper.
5. Remove the cooked chicken from the pan.  Add the 1 and 1/4 cups water to the hot pan to deglaze, scraping up the bottom of the pan as you go.  Add this to the butter/garlic/pepper flake mixture.
6.  In the former chicken pan, add the peppers and onions and cook to desired doneness using a small amount of water or oil to prevent sticking.
7.  Add the wine to the butter/garlic mixture.  Simmer for 8-10 minutes until the raw alcohol flavor has cooked off.  Add a heaping 1/4 cup of the béchamel (flour,butter,milk) mixture from earlier and whisk to combine.  Cook until slightly thickened.
8. Remove the garlic from the oven (should be soft and roasted in 35-40 minutes).  Remove skins and mash slightly into the sauce.  Combine chicken, veggies, and sauce.  Serve over angel hair pasta.  Parmesean optional.

Cute pfaltzgraff dishes optional, but encouraged :) We love this as is, but I read a few recipes that suggest adding cream.  I don't think that would be bad, either!

Reading list

My friend Jamie had this up- it seems appropriate for a classical leaning momma to fill out! 


Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes that most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this.
• Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
• BLUE the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 

4. Harry Potter Series- JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible 

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (in French, no less!)

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


Take that, BBC! 


I would include more classics on my "must read" 100, but that list is, to be fair, aimed at my kids.  Books like Trumpet of the Swan and Island of the Blue Dolphins and Treasure Island.  


How about you?

In Which We Tell You How to Get To Sesame Street

Backdating.  I love it.

:)

August 20-23rd we had a big trip scheduled for a combination of things.  When Austin's grandmother died, she, being the good Atheist and non-conformist that she was, donated her body to science and forbade a funeral.  That didn't leave anyone in the family a real reason to get together and mourn/remember her, so somehow we ended up doing it August 20th for dinner.  I have no clue, I would have probably picked planting trees or serving dinner at a shelter or something, but we did dinner at a super nice restaurant in New York (also not sure why, Emily lived in New York, but 4 of our party live in NH, 1 in California, and 5 in Virginia, so I feel like we could have met anywhere for dinner and at least skipped some hotel costs, but I think we were supposed to have had more of Emily's friends join us).  We got to see Gail, though, so that was fun!

We started our trip SUPER early on Saturday morning and drove to New York to the hotel.  When we got there, we met up with Kagen and Eliza and their daughter Zianna.  Anne (Austin's mom) and Nate (Kagen's dad) lived together for many years and Anne remains very close with Kagen and Eliza and considers Zianna to be her granddaughter.  The 8 of us decided that we would go check out a walking trail while we waited for Anne and Jordana (Austin's sister).  The kids were super cute playing together, and Zianna is the closest thing to a cousin their age they'll probably ever have, so we enjoyed watching! :)

Once Jordana and Anne arrived we talked about going to a playground near Emily's house, but ended up going to a place the concierge recommended which had a very interesting combination of amusement park and pay beach.  We skipped the amusement park but had a lot of fun humming at periwinkle snails and coating Aunt Jordana in muck.

She was a wicked good sport. However, the sand scrub my kids gave her did remove her sunscreen, which left her a festive shade of sunburn the rest of the trip :( Her hair feathers made it through okay, though!

Anne had made really early dinner reservations, so we left to get everyone scrubbed and dressed.  We ate at an amazing place that was part of a wine bar, and I didn't take pictures but should have.  My little gourmand, Logan, had an especially great time and loved how the food was presented.  I had lemon ricotta ravioli with sunflower shoots and a trio of creme brulees that I shared with our only New York guest, Anne's half-sister Barbara, who was very fun to be around.  The kids kept going and singing with her and had a fun time.  Riley had root beer braised spare ribs which included the large marrow bone au gratin, which he ate with great gusto.  Emily would have been proud.  We didn't really do any reminiscing or anything at dinner, but I ordered my water softly with very little ice and think she would have been proud ;)

When we got back, Austin fell asleep but Anne took some time to go through wedding pictures from Emily and Elkan's wedding, which I had asked for, and she also very graciously gifted Savannah and I each a strand of Emily's pearls.

Sunday morning we went to mass at St. John the Divine, which is probably melting from having me celebrate mass there, (I love me some Anglicans, but I'm way to conservative for the Episcopalians) but either way, I've always wanted to see the cathedral.  We had to go to the first reading of mass, which didn't have a choir and was only about 20 people.  It was strange to be in such a large space with so few people! There were ROWS of them filling up for the next mass before ours even ended, even though ours ended at 10 and the next one didn't start until 11!! Sitting in the nave, you can see 3 different types of architecture, it's really cool.

Our super-contemporary seeker-friendly church-I-don't-love but go to for my unchurched husband doesn't do communion but once a year, so even though I don't consider myself in communion with the Episcopal church, and it probably makes me a heretic, we went up for communion.  When we walked back I almost cried because Logan saved half the host and handed it to Austin saying "here Daddy, I want you to do this with us".  Austin palmed it back to me, of course.  Sigh.

Anyway, then we met up with Gail (Austin's Aunt who is one of my favorite people) at the Bronx Zoo.  It was a bit of a mess getting around since we all ended up at different gates and some of our party are more walkers (or runners!) than others, but we managed with minimal frustration.  Anne needed to get off her feet at one point and so we took a monorail ride, which prompted both Austin and Savannah to fall asleep:

"Oooh, we iz interesteds"

It worked out well that the Bronx Zoo is OVERRUN with peafowl since I had hoped to have time to see the two that reside at St. John the Divine's courtyard, but we were running behind.  The kids loved seeing these beautiful animals, and they were everywhere just walking around in the open!

Peacock says: You shall not pass.

I don't know how I didn't end up with a picture of Riley and Gail, but they were best buddies this trip! Riley held Gail's hand and escorted her around and was just adorably loving with her.  I did, however, score a picture of Logan with a butterfly from Jordana!

In all honesty, he's the only one gentle and still enough to have this happen.

After the zoo we had dinner in Chinatown.  In the pouring rain.  Not my favorite, but the kids enjoyed it and scored a new blanket from it since they were shaking half to death in the air conditioning while we waited for Jordana and Anne to arrive and the junk shop next to the restaurant had cheap ones.  We then drove to Langhorne, PA, where Jordana later met us, to go to Sesame Place.

I can't think of tons cute to say- Savannah had a great time, Riley was a good sport about the whole "baby" thing, and Logan was super fun to watch running around with Riley.  It was fun that Jordana got to join us, too! (FYI, when I found out about the earthquake, I was in line for a AbbyCadabby's Treasure Hunt show and then freaked because my mom texted me and the phone lines instantly shut down and I couldn't get ANYONE on the phone.  Thank God everyone was fine!) So, in lieu of me typing more in this insanely long post, pictures!

 Aunt Jordana and Savannah in the lazy river before Auntie left.  FYI- this water was FREEZING cold.

 In the hotel- the kids have commandeered Auntie's things.

 Good shot of the hair feathers ;) and Logan with Auntie.

 Riley being not-so-lazy in the river and getting ahead of everyone.

Savannah Lynn with Zoe at the Character Breakfast- she was at such a perfect age for this and very cute to watch!

Momma and the munchkins on the walk back to our hotel.

In Which We Bunny Party

Logan is OBSESSED with bunnies.  He always has been.  He pretends to be a vava (that's 1/2 dolphin, 1/2 bunny for those of you unfamiliar).  There are red vavas and blue vavas.  Red ones live on land and are good.  Blue ones live in the water and eat little kids.  I like to think this is a result of my years of training him to be a republican ;)

Anyhow, one day we came across this little gem on youtube:

And ever since, my sweet baby Logan has made me listen to that silly song 1,330,023,404,239 times.  He's also been asking for about a month to have his own Bunny Party.  With Hurricane Irene threatening our outdoor plans, including football, we invited Uncle Kevin and Miss Lauren (the love of Logan's life), and Gram and Papa over for a bunny party.  On the heels of getting home from New York, this involved some substantial laundry-doing on my part, but we got it done.  Logan worked very hard on everything from plates with construction paper ears to bunny-shaped foods.

 What a nosh, huh? There's chocolate fondue with strawberries and brownies, in the bunny ceramic there's Annie Organics Bunny shaped fruit snacks, there is a very lovely carrot centerpiece, crudite, chicken wings (I have no clue, but he insisted bunny parties have them), bunny pizzas, bunny pear salads, chips and salsa and veggie dip.

 This picture hates me and will not rotate, but it's 1/2 a canned pear in juice, well drained, with 2 sliced almond ears, 1 raisin split in half for eyes, and a dollop of cottage cheese for a tail.

Bunny pizzas! These are a split english muffin, the top half cut into two ears (leaving a middle triangle which I am using for breadcrumbs).  The ears get just a line of sauce, the "faces" get a pepperoni triangle for a nose and green pepper eyes and smile.  I think they're cute, and Logan was able to do it all by himself, minus cutting the ears.  He especially enjoyed smushing the ears onto the faces before adding the toppings, which really did work to make them stick!!

And, of course, there was cake for dessert.  Logan made this (minus the cutting), too! It's 2 round cakes (one 8 inch one 9 inch) the smaller of which was cut to make ears.  The remaining piece makes a bow tie if you so desire, but Logan did not.  The eyes are kissed, the nose and ears are strawberries and the smile is bunny fruit snacks.  The frosting turned out surprisingly good since I couldn't find my MASSIVE bottle of vanilla from BJ's wholesale ANYWHERE, and I ended up using Bailey's Warm Vanilla Toffee coffee creamer.  It was actually really good! (Note: the coffee creamers are non-alcoholic).

Gram and Papa brought Bun Bun Steve over in her cage, and a fun time was had by all.  Logan was so cute instructing us in the way of the bunny party, and after we put the kids to bed (We Finished Treasure Island!! My least favorite read-aloud ever because the kids insisted I do pirate voices and laughed at me all 34 chapters!)  the adults enjoyed some games....which, although not bunny themed, were quite fun!

In Which We Live and Let Live

One of the things I love about the concept of what we're going to be doing is that it gives us a great deal of time to explore when we're done with our core work.  And there's oh so much to explore. 

Meet Charlotte:

(Photo courtesy of Logan).  She's an ENORMOUS (probably a good 3.5-4 inches from leg tip to leg tip) black and yellow spider who has taken up residence on a hosta bush at grandma's house near the pool.  Also called writing spiders because of the distinctive zig-zag central line they draw in their webs, these scary things are harmless to humans (other than scaring the bejeebus out of you if you find one on yourself!) which was good news for this spider since the kids were certain it must be poisonous and wanted to kill it ASAP.  Now that she's non-venomous to us, they're fascinated with her.

These super neat spiders are different than almost anything in nature we've read about because the females are both larger and more colorful.  Males are small and brown.  Riley argued with me that I had it backwards and gave me specific examples of every bird we've spotted this summer.  Cardinals, blue jays, orioles, the boys are bright and the girls are ugly.  I liked that he remembered :)

The spider also eats the center of its web every night to recycle the chemicals used in web-making and then respins the center and the zigzag (called a stabilimentum).  The kids spent the night at grandma's last night and armed with the knowledge their would be a new web this morning, Logan was outside at the crack of dawn to take a good picture.

:)

In Which We Wonder....

How in the heck do I put this all together???

In the process of preparing to homeschool I believe I have over-educated myself.  It was clear VERY quickly that we are classical education adherents.  I read about unschooling, de-schooling, Montessori, Charlotte Mason, A Bekka, eclectic model, everything I could get my hands on.  But it was obvious that everything about our approach to parenting, and to life, firmly planted us in the classical school.
Why? Well, the highlights are:
We ask our kids to reflect.  
When our children ask us a question, I am infamous at playgroups for responding "Well, what do you know about that?"  This is especially true if I'm caught off-guard and need a moment to "chew it over" without a Twix :) When we read books and they ask us why a character did something, we ask them "Well, what do you think about that?"  When they tell us something like "I'd like there to be a president of the whole world" we ask them "Why would that be good?" and follow it with "Why would that be bad?"
We don't BS our kids.
Within the limits of what they need to know, when our children ask us questions, from the very youngest age, we give them real answers.  I have never EVER told my children that the rain is "Angels Crying, Sweetheart".  When Riley asked about September 11th as we passed the memorial going into DC, I didn't tell him about my experience watching on live TV as people lept to their deaths, but I also didn't tell him it was "just very bad men doing very bad things on a very bad day". 
We use big words.
We give our children the grammar they need now when all words are new so that later they won't be scared of it.  It's pretty funny to hear them sometimes, especially Savannah who'll toss out words just to try them out.  Lately it's been "Essentially".  "Essentially, what I'm saying is that I want to go and play with my doll."  When we talk about the leaves changing colors, we tell them it's the chlorophyll disappearing and showing the real color underneath, and we expect them to remember and use that vocabulary.

As we've gone on researching what that path really means, I've discovered subsets.  I believe in a Thomas Jefferson Style Education, or TJed.  I believe that by mentoring and encouraging rather than indoctrinating and stifling, we can create a better generation of leaders in anything from being a mom to being president.

I've read The Well Trained Mind, Amusing Ourselves To Death, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, A Thomas Jefferson Education, anything at all I can get my hands on.  At the same time, I was educated for 13 years in public school.  I also am deathly afraid of failing my children by taking them off the "conveyor belt".  I want them to have math and language and putting it all together using all the things I've read is scary. 

I think that what I need to do is start giving myself a little grace, and realizing that because I care so much, I necessarily have to do a better job than many of the teachers that I had growing up.  Because I want my kids to have a great education, I'll figure it out, even if there are hiccups.  But it's scary for someone, like me, who doesn't like to mess up.  It's hard to mesh all these genius observations in the books I've read together into a lifestyle and a plan that make sense when I'm taking us down a road that I can barely concieve of given the way I was educated.  But I think I see a light at the end of my mental tunnel- I just hope it's not a train :)

In Which We Figure It Out

Our CC Materials (well, most of them since some were on backorder) arrived this week which meant we could start CC! I started on Tuesday morning since we got the stuff on Monday :)

So far, it's going awesome.  All of one day ;) Riley loves Story of the World, which I bought on CD so it reads to them and I can rest my voice! I need to find a used copy of the book, though, because he asked if there was one for him to follow along in, and I make a rule of not denying my children words!! The memory work seems really easy and fun for them, and Savannah plays along, too.

We're on Cycle 3 Week 1, and that's Columbus, 4 types of tissue, Latin Prepositions, definition of an infinitive, 5 states and capitals, tracing the US Map, and skip counting by 1s and 2s.  The Columbus song is stuck in my head on repeat a la "It's a Small World", but hey, I definitely know that Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin 1492 Columbus took the first of 4 trips to the Carribbean on 3 Spanish ships, the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria.

Riley even memorized epithelial tissue.  I need to buy us a good kid's anatomy book- the resources I found online aren't cutting it for me.  Today at the library we'll pick up some reinforcements for the time being for history and science.  Our real math continues to plug along and Singapore materials should arrive on the 9th.

I drafted my NOI (Notice of Intent to Homeschool) letter and I'm a little frustrated by the process.  I went to PWC Schools so I don't see why I need to pay them to mail them a copy of my high school transcript- they should really just be able to look it up!! And, I don't see why I need to turn in a copy of Riley's records, because I feel like they should have those, too.  Oh well, I guess I should get good at jumping through hoops- it's not going to stop :)

I did writing samples with the boys for the beginning of the year so we'll have something for comparison in addition to their test scores and I'm in the process of finding someone to test their reading levels so that I can compare those, too.  Annnnnnnd.....well, and that's it.  It's going well, still, we've added in our real curriculum (mostly) and I'm still really excited.  Crazy.

Oh, and it probably didn't hurt that I supplemented our learning with a little blast from my past where memorizing the states and capitals are concerned....I believe in QUALITY educational materials people.  (Logan almost peed himself he thought this was so funny)