Learning Al Pi Darko

The Menu

2012-01-27T02:40:00.002-05:00

Hooray, shabbos!

For dinner:

challah
caesar salad
roast
yorkshire pudding
steamed collards
mashed potatoes
roasted carrots
cookies and pareve ice cream

For lunch:

challah
caesar salad
fish cakes
beef and cabbage with fried rice sticks
Asian coleslaw
edamame
eggplant w/miso dressing
cucumber salad
Romanian apple cake

And good company. :)

Chickens and Garden

2012-01-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

The chickens have been doing great, and are getting so big! Taking care of them has been far easier than I had even imagined. I fill up their feeder and waterer every three days or so. Once a week I scoot the pine shavings in their condo down onto the floor of the run and replace it with new shavings. The 10' x 10' run has a deep layer of wood chips and pine shavings (8–12"). From time to time I sprinkle some of their food on the ground and they peck and scratch at it, stirring up the ground and helping to compost their own droppings. The run smells sweet (6 weeks into it) and, if all goes as it is supposed to, should remain sweet-smelling until its annual rakeout. I try to let them out once a day to run around the yard. They are always supervised, however, since there are birds of prey here that reportedly love chickens. That's pretty much it! Having the chickens is what really makes it feel farm-like here. They are so much fun to watch as they peck around the yard. They're just so... HAPPY!

The garden is getting there, slowly but surely. DH made a 5' x 32' bed with a protective hoop cover on it. Inside we now have 480 pots of seeds (and a few seedlings!) and 22 fruit trees waiting to be planted when the danger of frost has passed in another month or so. We've also arranged for a dump truck to bring us eight cubic yards of the county's free compost on Thursday. DH planted our peas on Sunday too; it's nearly too late to plant the peas! (I still am not anywhere near getting used to Savannah gardening rhythms.) All the boards that we originally got for fencing are now stacked up and cut to the right lengths to make the rest of the beds, so bit by bit we'll get those built and fill them with the wood chips, nitrogen, and the giant pile of compost coming soon. With only eight 8–10 person-hours on Sundays, and little bits of time here and there it's slowly coming together. So fun to see things growing.

Quote of the Week

2012-01-23T18:29:00.001-05:00

Eli: Mama, I think you're really good at cooking, even if I don't like much.

Duck for President

2012-01-22T15:31:00.002-05:00

That is all.

The Menu

2012-01-20T13:31:00.003-05:00

Shabbos, again. B"H!

For dinner:

challah
caesar salad
chicken w/bbq sauce
baked potatoes
tofu sour cream
roasted asparagus
sweet and sour cabbage
roasted cauliflower
ossi dei morti (bones of the dead) cookies

And for lunch:

challah
surimi salad
beef vegetable soup
chicken salad
cucumber salad
spinach kugel
arugula salad
chocolate chip cookies

Good shabbos, all!

Pesach?!???!!

2012-01-19T01:54:00.003-05:00

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I just spent a couple of hours on pesach menus! We're spending pesach on Tybee Island (thanks to the generosity of Doda S.!), and while I won't have to clean my house for pesach I think the logistics are no less staggering. Kashering a strange kitchen for pesach (at least we'll get there three days before pesach). Fitting everything in one (!) refrigerator (maybe we can bring the chest freezer with us? Would that be nuts?). Imagining feeding 14 people, 3 meals per day, plus a few more for the seders. On the other hand, I can delegate! Several good cooks will be there so we can take turns with cooking and cleanup. Maybe it won't be so crazy. We have our own pool and a beach. I'm voting for late-night women's swims. :)

So... I've organized my thoughts a little, looked at last year's menus, plugged in some of my old standby dishes and if I plug away at it a bit each week and start stocking up groceries now, we should be in good shape... please, Hashem!!!!

Mozzarella Recipe

2012-01-16T22:51:00.002-05:00

Here's the "easy" recipe! :)

2 gallons milk (2% is best)
2-1/2 tsp. citric acid powder
1/4 cup cool water
1/2 teaspoon liquid rennet (or check the strength; mine only requires 1/4 tsp)
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup kosher salt
1 gallon water

Dissolve the citric acid in water, then add to milk in stainless steel or enamel pot. Mix for 2 minutes, until dissolved.

Heat the milk to 88 degrees, then turn off the heat. Dilute the rennet in the water, then mix into the milk. Stir for a few seconds, then let it sit for 15 minutes while the curds develop.

Cut the curd into 1/2-inch cubes. Cut straight down in 1/2-inch rows, then make cuts perpendicular. Last, make cuts at a deep angle to (sort of) cube the curds. Let them rest for 5 minutes. Put heat on low (2?) and slowly heat to 108 over a period of 15 minutes or so while gently stirring the curds. Turn off the heat and gently stir for another 20 minutes.

Remove the curds from the whey (using slotted spoon or colander). Lay curds in a bowl. Mix up kosher salt and water and heat to 170. Cover the curds with the water (you'll have more salt water than you need). Gently stretch the curds up the side of the bowl, using the back of a spoon. They'll start to get more stringy then shiny. Turn the curds out onto a board and gently knead it. You can then put the cheese into a mold, or braid it. It will harden as it cools. It should yield 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of cheese. YUM!

Cheese Math

2012-01-16T22:38:00.002-05:00

I made mozzarella cheese a couple of years ago, but for some reason just hadn't made it since. Now that I have new rennet and culture, yesterday I decided to finally make another batch. But it didn't work. It started out as expected. Add the citric acid to the milk, heat it up, add the rennet. Let it sit while the curds develop. Cut the curds. Heat up the curds. Oops? Where are the curds? They're gone! Frizzled. Nothing but little tiny pieces instead of nice lumpy, squeaky curds. Where are my curds?????????

Fortunately, DH had just been reading the cheesemaking book while resting and recovering from his stomach bug. "The book says when you use too much rennet it won't work," he kindly informed me.

But impossible. I had measured everything exactly. No room for... oops. I had used two gallons of milk. The recipe was for two gallons. I thought I was supposed to be doubling the recipe for two gallons. Nope. Okay. No harm done. A little grumbling about time lost. But the cheese frizzles turned into a nice batch of ricotta cheese. Perfect for lasagna later in the week. Yum.

So, not to be deterred, I set out again this morning. The intrepid cheesemaker. Same thing happened. Frizzles. All frizzles. Granted, I only had 1-3/4 gallons of milk at this point, but I had very carefully calculated everything for a 1-3/4 recipe making sure I didn't use too much rennet. But obviously I had! Hmmmm... I then double-checked the website and discovered that the rennet I purchased is double-strength! OH! I only need 1/4 teaspoon for two gallons!! So I had used too much rennet... AGAIN! Oh, well. This ricotta was great on tonight's pizza along with some cheddar and feta to kick it up a notch. And we sure are looking forward to lasagna later this week.

As soon as I get new milk I'm going to give it another shot and hopefully it will be as smooth and easy as the first time I tried it, IY"H! (Do you know they do look at you rather oddly when you go through with 7 gallons of milk... 4 for cheese, 2 for drinking, and 1 for yogurt?) Here's to perseverance!

The Menu

2012-01-13T15:01:00.002-05:00

Ooftie, pooftie. We got papa and Eli through a (thankfully short) stomach bug this week. Now on to better things, like shabbos!

For dinner:

challah
stuffed eggplant (eggplant, onion, anchovy, tomato paste, herbs, garlic)
caesar salad
coq au vin blanc (chicken stewed in white wine)
linguini with garlic sauce
roasted curried cauliflower
roasted asparagus
mashed potatoes (for the girl who just can't have a shabbos w/o potatoes)
apricot squares

And for lunch:

OUT!

Bringing challah and salad...

Good shabbos, all!

Now I'd better actually finish up! The clock is ticking...

And a P.S. to the Fun Week

2012-01-10T01:17:00.003-05:00

I can't believe I forgot. Yesterday we went to Animal Control and picked out two cats to adopt! Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to fill out the paperwork before they closed, so Dean returned on his lunch hour today to hand in the paperwork and bring them home (while I dashed from dentist to home to have lunch and see kitties and then to doctor). One is between 1 and 2 years old and the other is 2 to 3 years old. A dainty little brown tabby and a medium-sized tortoiseshell. Both free, since there are so many cats there. And their names (we think): Lucy and Florence. (But Amirah insists their names are Betty and Florence.) Both are very unassuming and sweet and happily moved in. Not sure when they'll meet the chickens. :)

And can I just say... the roasted berbere (Moroccan spicy herbs!) chick peas I'm munching are one of my favorite snacks. WOW. Made them myself. We like roasted chick peas (just roast cooked chick peas at 450 until crunchy), but I'd never put this wonderful cayenne-y berbere mix I made on it. Oh, YUM.

What a Fun Week!

2012-01-10T00:07:00.002-05:00

And it's only Monday (??!?!!).

For several days now I've just been feeling particularly... hummy! I love having different projects happening. :)

Here's what's been going on:

•We're all finally up to date with doctor and dentist visits. Hooray! It feels like we've had an appointment or two for months for one reason or another.

•Two thirds of our fruit trees arrived today. We need to find out if we can plant them now, with preparations for keeping them warm if it freezes (one suggestion I found was to string them with holiday lights - FUN!). Or we'll just keep them potted until after danger of freezing has passed (mid-February).

•I (finally) got around to ordering yogurt culture and was THRILLED to learn that now my usual suppliers are kosher-certified for repackaging. Hooray! That means I can order just the amount I need. So while I was at it, I got yogurt culture, rennet and citric acid for mozzarella-making (thereby gleefully lopping $100 off my co-op order), and a small "try-it" kit for making two small bries and two small bleu cheeses for $7. I'm so excited! Mozzarella cheese is the highest-yielding cheese and you can get between 3/4 and 1 pound of cheese from a gallon of milk. So cheese will cost $3–4/lb instead of $5.19/lb. And basic mozzarella is pretty easy to make (though you can make fancier, more involved mozzarella too!). I'll b'n post the easy recipe I've used before... Now I have visions of a cheese-curing fridge (just alter a regular, probably small, fridge and keep the humidity high. Eventually I want to try hard cheeses too...

•I am realizing that paint stripping is much more difficult than I had imagined! The paint on our kitchen cupboards has many layers, the oldest probably being 50+ years old. In other words, stubborn. Aargh. Oh, well. I'm in no rush. The plan is to strip the cupboards, paper bag decoupage the insides, paint the outsides, paint the counters with Rustoleum counter paint, and do the floor in paper bags. I only have about 5 hours per week to devote to it. It will take a while (60–80 hours?), but eventually it will be done! It really is fun. Especially the part about it costing less than $300 to redo the whole kitchen... Please, hashem!

AND OUR LEARNING...

•Amirah has, at last, finished 2nd grade math and we are going to be zooming into 3rd grade. If we keep to the same pace we have been we *should* be caught up by July-ish. The important thing is that she understand the concepts before moving on, and I'm so glad we finally found Math Mammoth for her. It has worked SO much better than any other math curriculum. It's worked well for all the other kids too.

•Amirah has finished Lech Lecha!!!! We spent a lot of time there, having not skipped any of it. Her reading has gotten much faster, and her ability to translate is pretty good. There have been generally only one or two words in a pasuk (verse) that totally stumps her. Vayera, here we come! Avraham and Yishmael just got circumcised, and Sarah is about to find out she'll give birth to Yitzchak when she is 90 years old. I love our chumash time. I think it's the highlight of my day. The other highlight is on those days here and there when ALL FOUR children are davening together, out loud. And we love, love, love L'shon Hatorah. What a great grammar book, and not overwhelming in the least. I did decide to really plow through L'shon Hatorah to help our chumash studies. My original plan was to do 3 days of LHT/2 days of Rashi. But I've decided to do 5 days of LHT so we can finish by pesach, then we'll do Rashi after that. Learning the script won't take too long, and I've been reading many Rashis out loud to her as we go through the text. I think that will put us in pretty good shape by summer.

•Raizel has finished another level of Hebrew in Aleph Champ. She's starting Level 5 (of 8), and Eli is almost done with Level 5. Raizel should finish it in about two months. After Level 5, they're ready to start chumash (the first seven days of creation!). For efficiency's sake I'll probably have Eli wait about six weeks so they can start chumash together. Exciting!

•Eli is happily zooming through 2nd grade math. Concepts that Amirah really struggles/struggled with are second nature to him. He often pipes up with the answers to her math problems without skipping a beat! :) She takes it in good stride. He's in the second grade Handwriting Without Tears and very happy with that. Explode the Code 4 has him very fired up reading and writing lots of compound words right now. He also started spontaneously reading whole books. So Raizel did too! They both like to sit in the kitchen and read various Dick and Jane stories to me. Eli is very happy with his Hebrew too. He's overall just very enthusiastic about all of his learning.

•Raizel's most striking skill right now is her beautiful printing. She's using a 2nd grade book now too (Zaner-Bloser). Her fine-motor skills have always been excellent. She makes the daintiest, most intricate little drawings. Her writing really is better than both Eli's and Amirah's. Everything else is great - Hebrew, Writing With Ease (w/Eli), Explode the Code 2, grammar (1st grade), English reading, everything... She's a smart little cookie.

That's just a rough, hitting-the-highlights summary. Lots of blanks, but it's good for me to write it all down for my own memory.

Vine Borers... Grrrrr...

2012-01-07T23:06:00.004-05:00

Vine borers were our biggest nemesis in the garden in 2011. They completely destroyed all of our summer squash and a few of our cucumbers. The mother of the squash vine borer is the hawk moth. She lays her eggs near the base of a stem of a cucurbit (melon, squash, pumpkin, cucumber). When flying around, she flies and behaves a bit bee-like so no one realizes they are actually a moth. In retrospect I did see several of these flying around but didn't think much about them!

When the egg hatches, the caterpillar burrows into the stem and eats it from the inside.

The first evidence of vine borers is matter called frass that looks like sawdust protruding from along the stem. There are a few ways to do them in. You can poke needles through the stem until you find the offender and kill it (bleah). You can re-bury the stem at various points along the vine and it will grow roots. So even if the vine borer is digesting part of it, it can still get nutrients from the soil. Or you can use this nifty trick I learned—when the plant is young (6+ inches long) you can take toilet paper or paper towel roll and cover the base of the stem. It's apparently pretty effective at discouraging the vine borers from digging in. You can bet these will be all over our garden this year! I read elsewhere that nylons can work too. I'll be saving these as they expire both for this use and for holding heavy fruits on trellises as needed. I'm hoping (please, Hashem!) to get to complain about how I have zucchini coming out my ears. :)

Really enjoying this southern gardening thing, but I feel like I continually have whiplash.

Spring/Summer Planting Dates

2012-01-07T22:50:00.004-05:00

This matters only to fellow Savannahians, but I calculated all the spring planting dates and thought it would be useful to store it here. It doesn't include any vegetables we don't eat. :)

1/1
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
lettuce
onion
peas

1/8
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
lettuce
onion
peas
potatoes
spinach

1/15
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
peas
potatoes
spinach

1/22
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
peas
potatoes
spinach

1/29
asparagus
beets
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onion
peas
potatoes
spinach

2/5
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onion
potatoes
spinach

2/12
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
potatoes
spinach

2/19
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
potatoes
spinach

2/26
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
potatoes
spinach

3/4
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
cauliflower
corn
watermelon

3/11
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
cauliflower
corn
tomatoes
watermelon

3/18
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

3/25
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

4/1
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

4/8
bush beans
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

4/15
bush beans
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini
watermelon

4/22
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini

4/29
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
peppers
sweet potatoes
pumpkins
zucchini

5/6
canteloupe
corn
peppers
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

5/13
canteloupe
corn
peppers
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

5/20
canteloupe
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

5/27
canteloupe
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

6/3
pumpkins

6/10
pumpkins

That's for all the spring/summer crops. I'll work on the fall planting dates later, b'n. The original dates came from the University of Georgia in Athens, but since Savannah's last frost is two weeks earlier than in Athens I moved all the dates up by two weeks.

We've got work to do!!!!!

The Menu

2012-01-06T15:14:00.002-05:00

Again, shabbos. B"H! I'm just not sure where the rest of the week went. Here's the plan!

For dinner:

challah
teriyaki salmon
whipped butternut squash
mashed potatoes
roasted sweet and sour mushrooms
roasted zucchini and carrots
homemade butter
pumpkin cheesecake
sugar cookies (by Amirah)

(Haven't had a shabbos dairy meal in AGES!)

And for lunch:

challah
sushi (surimi/avocado/cucumber and sweet potato/omelet/spinach)
baba ghanouj
bbq sauced chicken wings
cabbage apple slaw
rice sausage salad
cucumber tomato onion salad
pumpkin kugel
barley mushroom tomato stew
carrot salad
roasted pears
cake (from guest)
pareve ice cream (from a different guest)
and lots of wines (from two other guests)

We're having a lot of guests. :)

Gardening!

2012-01-06T15:06:00.003-05:00

We've been working hard on the garden in the small cracks of time available. We've nearly got a plastic-covered hoop up over our 32' x 5' bed to grow our seedlings. The wood chips from the former trees are starting to smell like sweet growing dirt. We found someone with a dump truck who might be able to get a (HUGE!) load of compost for us. The compost is free from the city, so we'll just pay the cost of transport. The fence panels that we bought many months ago have turned out be so very useful for everything but a fence. We're so glad to have them! They made a first-rate roof for the coop, and now they're making fantastic raised beds all around the garden.

Last night I wrote out our whole planting schedule, which took some doing since Savannah's weather is quite different from the rest of Georgia for which readily-available planting schedules are made. We have to start spring/summer veggies about three weeks sooner and fall/winter veggies about two weeks later. My oh my, was I surprised to discover that our busiest planting weekend will be the last weekend in January! And the bulk of this is direct-seeding the vegetables, not starting them indoors or under cover. So, we've got to hurry up and get those beds done! No rest for the weary in Savannah's 11-1/2 month growing season!

Seed & Tree Order

2012-01-03T02:42:00.002-05:00

Here's what's in the mail for us!

TREES
2 mandarins
1 Meyer lemon
2 pineapple guavas
2 paw paws
6 kiwis
1 fig
1 pomegranate
1 hazelnut
1 almond
1 quince
1 Methley plum
2 persimmons
1 mulberry tree
1 kumquat

SEEDS (some here; some in the mail)
winter squashes (Banana Pink Jumbo, Red Kuri, Tromboncino, Hunter Butternut)
beans (Negreta, Pinto, Scarlet Runner, Disoy Soybeans)
eggplant (Nubia, Long Purple)
greens (Mesclun, Bibb, Parris Island Romaine, Arugula, Malabar Spinach, Basil)
peppers (Jalapeño, Rainbow Mix Bell Peppers)
tomatoes (Better Boy, Big Boy, Brandywine, Supersweet 100)
peas (Melting Sugar Snow Peas, Super Sugar Snap)
beets (Cylindra, Early Tall Top)
cucumber (Boston Pickling, Lemon)
tomatillo (Purple)
watermelon (Georgia Rattlesnake)
bok choy
broccoli
cabbage (Chinese; everything else is really cheap at the store)
carrots (A#1, Danvers, Nantes Half Long, Short 'n' Sweet)
cauliflower
sugar pumpkins

ALREADY IN THE GARDEN:
onions
shallots
garlic
collards
cabbage
broccoli
mustard
lots of herbs

IN THE WORKS:
asparagus crowns
ginger
horseradish
lemongrass
mint
and enough strawberries for 100+ square feet!

We'll have our work cut out for us! Got great prices on seeds, and it should be enough for two years.

The Menu

2011-12-30T13:27:00.002-05:00

Ah, shabbos. Early to bed tonight! Snore... :)

For dinner:

challah
beef roast in homemade bbq sauce
roasted balsamic sweet potatoes
roasted potatoes
mixed roasted vegetables
arugula pesto pasta (the garden currently has a nice arugula patch)
roasted beets
peach cake

And for lunch:

challah
liver puff pastry rolls (I called them liver puffs, but no one but me seemed to think that sounded delicious; I LOVE liver in any form...)
pastrami deli meat
spinach/mandarin/almond salad
arugula pesto pasta
apple coleslaw
beanless cholent (AKA not-cholent; we usually have beans a few times a week, so I just can't eat them on shabbos too)
homemade kishke
peach cake

Paper Bag Floors

2011-12-29T00:02:00.003-05:00

A few days ago I was racking my brain about what to do about our kitchen. The paint on the cupboards started peeling a few weeks after we moved in. The former owners had just slapped down latex over oil without preparing the surface. In addition, the floors in the kitchen and dining room are bleah. On a lark, I entered "alternative flooring" in a search engine. After looking at a few other things, I stumbled on paper bag flooring and fell in love. It's beautiful!

This afternoon I set to work to make a couple of samples. I took a paper bag, tore it into pieces and glued it to a scrap board with a 50/50 mixture of Elmer's glue and water. After it dried, I painted it with a pecan stain polyurethane. I only did one coat for this. If I actually do the floor, I would use three. I meant to paint half the board with a clear polyurethane and half with the tinted one, but I forgot. It's a little darker than I want, but I sure love the idea. Here are some pictures:

And here's a sample I mocked up using light green stationary. It's a good bit lighter and greener on the original!

Doesn't it look wonderful???

We also learned tonight that the paint on our cupboards does NOT contain lead. Phew! Now I can have fun with that too. I'd like to use paint stripper outside on all the cabinet doors, then either sand and paint the interiors, or sand and decoupage (like above) them. I'm thinking of maybe a light gray paper floor (I know, sounds crazy!), light pink cabinet interiors, pewter gray counter paint on the counters, and bright white everywhere else (walls and cupboards). Or??? I'm sure I'll rethink it quite a few times, but I am having so much fun pondering the possibilities... I think the paper bag effect is nothing short of amazing.

Meanwhile, we're making oodles of plans for the garden. Hundreds of starts to plant in a couple of weeks, hopefully under a plastic rowcover on top of a layer of black plastic. Right now I'm facing a dizzying job of trying to estimate how much of a particular vegetable we'll want (for fresh eating? frozen? can it be canned?), researching what a typical yield per row foot is, and figuring out how much we have to order or, if we already have the seeds, if it is enough. OY! At the same time, I'm making a plan to group our crops and map out a sensible crop rotation so diseases and pests don't develop. It's a little overwhelming to plan it all out. But how fun! 1,000+ square feet of veggies. That's triple what we did last year. Like an e-ride at Disneyland, if anyone remembers those tickets. :)

Back to planning and plotting...

Weekday Menus

2011-12-26T00:09:00.001-05:00

Sunday: OUT!
Monday: fish cakes, salad, baked potatoes
Tuesday: shabbos leftovers (salad, rice w/pareve sour cream, cabbage rolls)
Wednesday: hamburgers and taco salad
Thursday: pancakes and omelets

The Menu

2011-12-23T12:32:00.003-05:00

Ahhhh, shabbos again. B"H!

For dinner:

challah
cabbage rolls w/homemade bbq sauce
baked chicken (for the non-cabbage roll eaters)
mashed potatoes
green salad
roasted cauliflower
roasted carrots
a dessert assortment

And for lunch:

challah
Mexican-flavored beef cholent
meat tacos w/pareve sour cream, veggies, etc.
lime cilantro coleslaw
guacamole, salsa, chipa
green salad
a dessert assortment

Good shabbos, all!

Music Joke

2011-12-22T13:19:00.001-05:00

I enjoyed this one! :)

C, E-flat and G go into a bar. The bartender says, "sorry, but we don't serve minors." So E-flat leaves, and C and G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and G is out flat. F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough. D comes in and heads for the bathroom saying, "Excuse me. I'll just be a second." Then A comes in, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender notices B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and says, "Get out! You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight." E-Flat comes back the next night in a three-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender says, "you're looking sharp tonight. Come on in, this could be a major development. " Sure enough, E-flat soon takes off his suit and everything else, and is au natural. Eventually C sobers up and realizes in horror that he's under a rest. C is brought to trial, found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of D.S. without Coda at an upscale correction facility.

Library Experience

2011-12-21T22:33:00.002-05:00

I have been experiencing some frustration with our local library. Some of the issues have been:

• a lack of many of the books (mostly historical fiction) that I would love access to for our homeschooling

• the fact that they hold books you reserve for only 5 days (which means if you go to the library once a week, you need to make a special trip to get your holds before they disappear)

• my account being frozen more than once for reasons that made no sense, cutting off my ability to reserve books

• the $2 they charge for sending out a late notice

• the limit of 2 renewals per book, instead of just continuing to renew it for as long as you need it (assuming no one else needs it); you can bring it in to show the librarian and then renew it again, but sometimes I just want to renew it again (and again) until it gets un-misplaced (doo-dee-doo)

• the prize drawing for the Winter Reading Program was for a gift certificate to a video game store (WHAT?!?!!??!!!!)

In the e-mail I sent requesting to have my account unlocked a few weeks ago I mentioned a couple of these things that were making the library (one of my favorite destinations normally!) a less friendly place to visit. My account got fixed right away (they are terrific at responding to e-mail requests), and they said they would forward my comments to the branch manager.

Yesterday evening, I popped in for a few minutes just to pick up some holds. The man at the checkout desk had a badge that identified him as the associate branch manager. I handed him the holds, along with an audio book that we had checked out that was missing one of the fourteen cds. He took the audiobook and apologized that the missing cd had not been noticed before we brought it home. Then (before I handed him our library card) he mentioned that he recognized my name and knew I had had a few issues recently and hoped that everything was working better now. (WOW!) I took the opportunity to mention the 5-day holds would sure be a lot more convenient if they were 7-day holds.

He said that they had recently changed their policy at that branch, and that they would now hold books for 7 days, even though the official library policy was five days. He said that's why he had recognized my name, because it was one of the comments discussed at the meeting and used to MAKE A CHANGE. I nearly fainted. To hear an institution actually took a patron's comments and right away made a concrete improvement based on those comments (and probably other similar comments!) just thrilled me. And that's what I do find about living in a small town over and over again. People really do look out for each other here. I expect those kinds of relationships in my own Jewish community, but when you can also find it in the community at large it's a very special thing.

So, for the 1,000th time, I am so very glad we moved to Savannah. I think it suits us very well! And I have many more warm feelings towards the library now.

Weekday Menus

2011-12-19T10:16:00.004-05:00

We've been out for channukah many nights, but here's what we ate last week!

Sunday: black bean veggie burgers and french fries (basically, felafel recipe w/black beans instead of chick peas)

Monday: leftover beef roast from shabbos and roasted veggies

Tuesday: OUT!

Wednesday: OUT!

Thursday: taco bar, latke bar, lemon cake, chocolate trifle (and Happy Birthday to AL!)

Tired Muscles

2011-12-19T01:43:00.003-05:00

We had quite a full day of hard(ish) labor!

DH worked hard to tweak and almost finish the chicken coop. We bought the "condo" a few months ago. D added the hardware cloth to the back, and re-purposed fencing for the side, and for a while we let them out and just blocked off the other side so they could hang out under the condo. Today we took fence panels that we already had and lay them from the roof of the condo to a support beam on the fence. Then lots of tweaking (to make the rain roll the right way), and the large side panel went in. All that's needed is to add the gate! The chickens love to hang out under the condo. You can just make out their shapes through the hardware cloth.

While DH was tweaking the chicken coop, I was working on our beds and paths. Our entire yard was covered in 5-12 inches of chipped wood from the trees we took down several months ago. B"H it killed most of the grass, except in one corner of the yard where the layer was thinner than elsewhere. I dug out a main 4-foot path, and several 2-foot paths. It's not all that visible in the picture. It's much clearer in person! The middle circle on the right is where BE"H the fish pool will go. There's a 4-foot path around that circle for full access. Then lots of rectangular beds. I piled the composting wood chips from the paths onto the beds. Some of the beds are built up a good 15 inches. Next we're going to keep it well-watered and add great quantities of nitrogen to help break down the wood chips. If all goes well, we should have plantable soil by February. We also would like to get a fresh delivery of (free!) wood chips to fill in the paths so if all goes well we can repeat the process next year. The price sure is right! The city recycling center has free compost, but we would have to hire a dump truck to get the quantity we needed. We have a very miniscule budget for this, and the idea was given to us by Dave, our local county extension advisor. With so much mulch, the nice thing is that even when it pours we don't get muddy areas.

We had such a great day today. It is very satisfying to work hard like this all day and then sit back and feel like you've really accomplished something tangible. And D. and I are both so enthusiastic that it is a big pleasure to share the time together. The kids had a great time too! Eli's becoming very handy with an ax. Amirah loves to snuggle with the chickens. Avi likes to walk around banging the ground with sticks. And Raizel loves to keep everyone organized and on task. :)

On a completely different subject......... this is my sweet little talmid.

He loves, loves, loves this Hebrew book. Can you see how utterly plain it is? He loves it, and his reading is getting much faster and I am so much looking forward to reading chumash with him, especially now that he has a more experienced chumash teacher! Poor Amirah, my guinea pig. :)

And now to bed, to, please Hashem, wake up with renewed muscles and a good Monday. The last few Mondays have been much too whiny/grumpy so I'm really hoping we can get this one off to a good start! We're not really taking much time off now - maybe a day or two - since we had our nice two-week vacation in November. So... onward!

The Menu

2011-12-16T13:26:00.002-05:00

Shabbos, almost! B"H!

For dinner:

challah
persimmon spread
tilapia (from our guests!)
beef roast with cranberry sauce
roasted butternut squash
pumpkin kugel
spinach salad with macerated kumquats
roasted beets and carrots (pretty!)
roasted garlic potatoes
apple crisp
persimmon sorbet

For lunch:

challah
persimmon spread
cholent (from our guests!)
pastrami
pumpkin kugel
cole slaw
spinach salad w/mandarin oranges and almonds
beet/carrot salad
apple crisp
persimmon sorbet

Good shabbos!

Weekday Menus

2011-12-15T09:09:00.002-05:00

Here's what we've eaten this week. Haven't posted that in a while!

Sunday
eggplant/onion/tomato/feta pizza and a plain cheese pizza
(for savta and kids; we went to the shul fundraiser)

Monday
stir-fried beef and broccoli (a lot more broccoli than beef!)
rice
chicken noodle soup

Tuesday
eggplant parmesan
cheese lasagna
spinach salad w/macerated kumquats* and almonds/onion/feta
rosemary onion rolls

Wednesday
crockpot chicken and rice w/preserved lemons
salad
broccoli

Thursday
breakfast night! (eggs and pancakes)

*I love kumquats, and am so excited thinking about planting a kumquat tree in the front yard! I slice the kumquats thinly and let them soak in a combination of rice vinegar and sugar. After a few hours, they can be used in salads. I also put some cream cheese on a cracker and topped it off with a few slices of kumquat. WOW! Delicious. They're pretty expensive - $4 for (I think) 12 ounces but it only takes about 3 ounces to have a nice effect on a salad.

Weaving

2011-12-06T01:07:00.005-05:00

Usually, I'll bring out a new activity and know right away who will glom onto it. Sometimes I get a surprise! A few days ago, I took out a loom that I had never taken out for the kids before, and guess who was immediately interested and has been working on it diligently ever since? ELI!

He is fascinated with how the strings connect together, with weaving terminology, with the colors and textures of the yarns, with thinking about how this could be his new pillow. Here's what he said yesterday about it all: "Mama, when you first showed me it, I thought it would be so, so boring, but it's NOT, not at all, not one bit. I love it!!!!" I'm glad he's enjoying it. And if he ever pauses long enough to let someone else weave, maybe the others will too.

Chickens!

2011-12-06T00:55:00.003-05:00

We are loving our little chickens. They've been staying outside for the last six nights. I miss hearing their peeping all the time, but it sure makes cleanup easier. They're now 6-1/2 weeks old, and look at their feet!

They love pecking around the yard when we let them out under supervision. (Their condo is all set for them, but we're still working on the enclosure. The proverbial "we" that is!) They stretch their wings and race at lightning speed across the yard, then settle into a close little group by their condo pecking around the ground. Sometimes they follow us around too, looking at us expectantly. They love to be picked up.

And their names? Drum roll...

EGBERT

COFFEE
PECKSY
SAMMY
&
GERTRUDE

Yes, Egbert is a boy's name, but Raizel was absolutely set on it and wouldn't hear of a name like Eglantine. And can I tell them apart? NOPE! :)

The Menu

2011-12-03T23:45:00.002-05:00

This is the FIRST time I've cooked for shabbos since, well, um... October 28! I think that must be a record. :)

Here's what we had this shabbos:

challah (made by Eli)
roast chicken
roasted bok choy
roasted mushrooms/zucchini/onion
roasted eggplant halves
green salad w/kumquats (macerated in rice vinegar/sugar), pears, avocado, crushed almonds
mashed potatoes w/gravy
chocolate/vanilla marble cake (made by Raizel) with raspberry sauce

and for lunch...

beef tacos
beef barley soup
lime cilantro coleslaw
guacamole and homemade pareve sour cream
veggies from diner
cake from dinner

YUM!

The tacos were really great. Those will definitely have to make a regular appearance. And I love the pareve sour cream. I think it tastes better than dairy! :)

Garden Improvements

2011-11-30T22:42:00.006-05:00

We've been having a great time in the lovely weather getting some things fixed up around here!

First, when we put up our (now permanent) sukkah, we decided to extend it by another 6 feet beyond the sukkah. So, now we have wonderful trellising for IY"H future kiwis and tromboncino squash. We're dreaming about these:

And these:

On this:

Here's a view of the whole thing, with the sukkah enclosed in the lattice. Later, we'll install an outside door on the sukkah. For now, it's a kind of cage with an entrance on the right side from the music room and a pass-through window from the kitchen to the sukkah.

All of the wood chips are from the trees that formerly stood on the property. They make a GREAT mulch, and anytime we need more the tree cutter is happy to dump a load (saves him a trip to the mulch pile at the dump).

Then, while we were in California, Dean surprised all of us by getting the side yard completely fenced in. Hooray! It was so exciting to see it all done.

Here is the view from the front, with a nice wide gate for easy access. Later, we want to bust up the driveway in front of the fence. We have a driveway that enters on one street and exits on another, but we can just use the end by the front door just as easily.

When you come in through the gate, that's where our chicken yard will be. The chicken condo is on the left side of the picture (waiting for a nice barnyard-red paint job!). We may get a rabbit to live in one of the five condos to get some of that good bunny manure (can go fresh into the garden, unlike other manures). Dean is right now working on the chicken yard fencing and roofing. More pictures when that is done! It's more than halfway there now. :)

Here is the vast emptiness that is our side yard (1,800 square feet!!!!). Plans include fish tanks, 800 more square feet of veggie beds, a couple of fruit trees (20+ more in front), lots of berries, a tilapia above-ground pool (hopefully a test run of 50 fish this spring). The large white box is a water collection tank, which we want to secure to a tall stand so we have some water pressure from it.

And here is where the side yard turns a corner and goes to the back yard. You can see the tip of the kids' summer pool (well, spring/summer/fall pool!), which will become the future tilapia tank IY"H. The grey bricks are from the wall we knocked down in front of the house, and bricks from a shorter wall in the back that we knocked the cement off of. We hope to use those for paths and veggie beds.

A fun project! The chickens are growing, and are so, so sweet to watch and play with. When we walk toward the dog crate to say hello, they all fight over who gets to be closest to us. I never realized birds really did that! They peep happily all day long and love to sit in our laps and eat from our hands. They're getting bigger quickly. Their tail feathers are rapidly IY"H I'll post a picture soon. They'll be six weeks old tomorrow! They're ready to go live outside, so we may move them into their condo this week.

And now we'll wind up with a few pictures from our winter garden!

I took this picture a few days ago. Now the onion, garlic, and shallot shoots are a good 6+ inches tall.

This bed is full of cabbages in the foreground, and the last of the peppers in the green bush at the back.

In the foreground bed here, there are several varieties of greens - lettuces, chards, shiso, collards. Beyond that are cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, and a few more greens.

The herb spiral has been VERY happy! The rosemary is doing beautifully. Thyme, oregano, parsley, tarragon are all going strong. I'm going to trim back and dry a bunch of herbs this winter. The only herb that is all done is the cilantro.

And finally, the undisputed supertstar of the garden — the Japanese eggplant. I can't believe I'll be picking more eggplant IN DECEMBER (!). Next summer, I don't want to plant any Italian varieties. These were so far superior. What a pleasure.

To be continued! :)

Math

2011-11-21T00:58:00.002-05:00

Okay, one last post, just to say that Raizel is VERY excited to have finished her Kindergarten math program, and Eli is VERY excited to have finished his first grade math program. They both seem to love math. I think Eli stands a good chance of catching up to his older sister before too long!

Tour de Coop

2011-11-21T00:41:00.003-05:00

We had such a great time riding the trolley around Savannah all afternoon, visiting six different backyard chicken coops. One of them was even on our block, so we got to wave to our house as we went by.

A side perk of visiting the chicken coops was getting to admire several lovely gardens.

The tour started at Southern Pine Company, which reclaims materials from tearing down houses and buildings then reuses them to restore and build other structures. We had a lot of fun wandering through their huge warehouse full of all kinds of interesting "junk."

All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. They had chicken trivia games on the trolley, with raffle tickets and prizes being passed out. All the kids won something. Then when we returned to Southern Pine we actually won a raffle for a lovely, wonderful, unfiltered bottle of non-kosher olive oil. I was so happy! I was so sad. :( I'm sure we'll find someone who will cherish as much as we would have, could we have used it. :)

That's all for now!

Reptiles

2011-11-21T00:35:00.003-05:00

Found some interesting reptiles recently...

This Eastern Glass Lizard (looks like a snake) was in our front yard when we were building our sukkah. It just didn't bend quite like a snake, so I looked it up suspecting it was a legless lizard, and sure enough, it was!

This cottonmouth passed us while hiking at Ogeechee Canal.

Had I realized it was a poisonous snake, I don't think I would have paused long enough to take, er, several pictures. I think I ought to make myself more familiar with the local fauna...

Chickies

2011-11-21T00:20:00.006-05:00

Upon arriving home, I learned that our local Victory Feed & Seed had little chickens available. I had pretty much figured we had missed the current season (most hatcheries seem to have a break about now) and wouldn't be getting chickens until January/February. Turns out the ones I wanted to get—Plymouth Barred Rocks—were EXACTLY what the feed store had! They also had six available, and we wanted five. I would have taken all six if Savannah didn't have a limit of five.

These cute little chicks...

Will turn into these cute little chicks, G-d willing:

Right now they are living in the learning room in a dog crate. They have to be kept at 75+ degrees right now. In a few weeks they'll be ready to go outside. They're already very sweet. They all run chirping to the window of the crate whenever somebody walks in the room. They eat a TON and are growing before our eyes.

Barred Rocks in general are very docile and easy to handle, and get along well with other pets. (We're thinking of getting a dog in the spring...). They're also chatty, but generally pretty quiet about it.

We love them already!

California!

2011-11-21T00:11:00.003-05:00

A few short updates. :) We had a great trip to Manhattan Beach to visit grandma and grandpa. Here are a few pictures... more to come IYH. We also got to spend shabbos with the L Family in Atlanta on the way out and shabbos with the F Family on the way back. It was all so nice, and just as nice to come home to sleep in our own beds.

Grandpa and 4/8ths of the grandkids!

Eli & Avi in the Rose Garden

Raizel with her Uncle Dan

Skating on The Strand

So much more, but bed is calling.

Chemistry!

2011-10-27T02:06:00.003-04:00

We finished our astronomy unit just before sukkos, and now we're on to chemistry. We'll pretty much just be exploring through experiments. We're using Janice Van Cleeve's Chemistry for Every Kid: Experiments That Really Work.

What I like:

The experiments are very easy to do, and they use materials that we already have or that I could easily pick up at the grocery store. So far, they all work too! :)

What I don't like:

I wish the explanations for the results of the experiments went into a little more depth. I would like more details both for myself and to be prepared to (inevitably) explain more than what is provided. Of course, I can look up the information easily enough; it would just be nice if it were there to begin with. The explanations are perfectly adequate for a bunch of beginning chemists.

The kids have had a great time with the eight experiments we've done so far and we're looking forward to doing more. I may be overlapping this with the Happy Scientist's units on Rocks and Minerals. Physical science is fun!

And, yes, I managed to pack 5 people into one suitcase that only weighs 33 lbs. Four outfits for eleven days. We'll just plan on washing lots of clothes! That leaves 17 lbs to bring home Jeff's Kosher Gourmet Sausage from Los Angeles. :) And then there's plenty of extra room in our carryon bags too! Hmmmmmmmm........ I wouldn't mind finding some real cheese too...

Packing

2011-10-26T16:03:00.003-04:00

Wow.

One airplane bag for mama.
Four airplane backpacks for kids.
One papa bag.
One Los Angeles suitcase. (I'm an optimist; surely I can pack 5 people into 1 suitcase?)
One Atlanta big backpack.
One toilet bag for everywhere.
One backpack for the two 4-hour car rides.
One cooler for bringing things home from Big City #1.
One small cooler for bringing home things from Big City #2 (Jeff's Kosher Gourmet Sausages!!)
Six lunches for car ride #1.
Six lunches for airplane ride #1.

It's a bit mind-boggling...

Avi's Birthday

2011-10-26T00:52:00.002-04:00

Avi is four now!!! We had a nice little birthday dinner and cake for him last week in a friend's sukkah. He received a number of sweet little presents, and when he had finished opening them he put them in a pile in front of him at the table, hugged the whole pile with his arms and in a little earnest voice he said, "Thaaaaaaaank you! Thank you so much for all of my presents! Thank you!" He is so sweet, and always happy with whatever he has B"H.

Every year as the kids get a year older I think that THIS is my favorite age, and I still haven't experienced the feeling that time is passing too quickly. Time is passing in real time, I suppose because their lives unfold in real time before my eyes. Large chunks aren't missing for school or anything else. I love the time I have with them. I so appreciate that I have been given these wonderful gifts of husband and children, and so grateful that at the age of 32 I became Jewish and thereby opened a flood of untold blessings. I just feel myself sinking into each moment with complete gratitude for each day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AVI!

Menu Addendum

2011-10-26T00:51:00.003-04:00

I forgot... one of the best things we ate during yom tov was the home-cured lox with garlic bagels. YUM. And tonight I made four loaves of whole wheat rosemary onion bread. Hadn't made that in ages!

The Menu(s)

2011-10-19T12:30:00.004-04:00

Here's what we're eating over the next few days... Some good company and good food, and a little time left in the sukkah!

apple cinnamon challah
lemon garlic chicken
spaghetti w/meat sauce
broiled chicken w/chimichurri sauce
"refried" pinto beans
guacamole/chips
Mexican rice
lime cilantro coleslaw
Mexican chicken noodle soup
crazy spaghetti*
Greek potatoes
balsamic glazed onions
sauteéd mushrooms
caesar salad
baguettes w/olive oil/sea salt/garlic
roasted veggies
strawberry coconut sorbet
apple cake
roasted apples with coconut honey custard (for a gluten-free/sugar-free friend)
date squares
apple cheesecake

*Saw this on a friend's facebook page. Take pieces of hotdogs, spear them with uncooked spaghetti, then boil. SILLY SPAGHETTI! :) :) :)

Good yontiff and good shabbos!!!!!!

The Menu(s)

2011-10-19T12:30:00.001-04:00

Another Menu!

2011-10-12T00:26:00.002-04:00

Another week whizzing by... What a strange time it's been. I had odd symptoms; odd symptoms fixed. Van had odd symptoms; odd symptoms fixed (for free!). Now the phone line has odd symptoms, and who knows when that will be fixed. If you're having trouble reaching me, it's because it's no problem to dial out, but dialing in is very iffy!

The sukkah has been going up, slowly but surely. I really wish it were all done and ready to go, but B"H another family is coming to the rescue early tomorrow afternoon to stay for the chagim and I can hand off the final decorating to them. Probably keep it kind of simple with two posters, lights, and whatever I have from previous sukkahs. I had grand ideas for this year's sukkah but, well... The sukkah will still be nice; it's 24' x 10' so lots of room for guests. The kitchen window will be a wonderful passthrough right into the sukkah. It will easily seat 20, plus a 6-foot table at the end for candles, food, etc. We added trellises extending out into the front yard from the sukkah structure for future BE"H kiwis, grapes, or other climbers. I'll post pictures soon, BE"H!

Now, for the menus...

SALADS:
caesar salad
green salad with pears and pear vinegar dressing
green salad with avocado, anise, grapefruit, and grapefruit dressing
surimi salad with spinach and fried wontons
carrot salad with honey, apples, and dried cranberries

VEGETABLES:
carrot rutabaga purée
roasted potatoes
glazed cipollini onions
maple sweet potatoes
roasted mixed vegetables
roasted carrots
baked potatoes

SOUPS:
chicken won ton soup
butternut squash soup

MAIN DISHES:
chicken with roasted pears and mushrooms w/balsamic glaze
shepherd's pie
chicken w/homemade bbq sauce
fish cakes
brie with raspberry jam and puff pastry
zucchini quiche and cheese quiche (unless I cave and just do deli sandwiches!)

DESSERTS:
almond macaroons (had to hide these in the freezer; WAY TOO GOOD!)
strawberry coconut sorbet
date squares
apple cake
apple strudel

And of course - CHALLAH! Mostly apple challah, plus a couple of raisin challahs.

Wishing everyone a good yontiff! :)

2011-10-06T01:35:00.002-04:00

So many things this week. Rosh Hashanah was lovely, despite a scientifically as-yet-to-be-explained invasion of hundreds of incapacitated dragonflies on our block. Very odd. Our car had a bunch of work done in the last few months (including a new-to-us transmission), and now all the same problems are back. For a while the transmission would work if parked on a flat surface, but that no longer seems to do the trick. Then erev Rosh Hashanah I got a toothache. On Monday I discovered that tooth needed a root canal, which will BE"H be done tomorrow.

Then today I went in with some potentially very serious health symptoms. B"H it was nothing a couple of prescriptions couldn't take care of, so tonight I'm feeling incredibly grateful that it's very minor (but it certainly kicked off a round of getting a regular doctor set up for myself!).

In addition, without going into all the details, I had a very upsetting encounter with a nurse tonight and told her that I thought she was being very unprofessional and inappropriate and requested that someone else tend to me. I was extremely upset by her comments (compounded by the fact that I had the exact symptoms of something very serious). The NP I saw both apologized and defended the nurse. I was livid and ready to walk out of there, but the dear friend I was with calmed me down enough that I was able to move forward with the exam. (And those who know me know that ordinarily I am a VERY calm person!) So, I got the good news (HOORAY!) and then my dear friend suggested that perhaps the nurse could come back and apologize. No, no, no I thought. I don't ever want to see her again, let alone talk to her. But of course, my friend was right once again.

The nurse came in, complete contrition written all over her face. She apologized profusely, said she had handled it incorrectly every step of the way, and to please forgive her. She did not offer any excuses, but took full responsibility for her poor judgment, and her eyes were full of tears. I extended my hand immediately and we ended up in a hug. She said that if I chose to ever come back here again she would take very good care of me and make sure that I got everything I needed. It was sweet and genuine and full of true remorse. And such an "odd" timing on the Jewish calendar, the week when we are paying extra attention to where we still need to make amends and apologize to those around us and to Hashem for everything we've done wrong this year and not yet done teshuva for.

It was very moving to witness someone do real teshuva (repentance) and to feel all my anger at her utterly dissipate in an instant. Just like when we turn to Hashem this week and ask him to forgive us for the aveiros we have done against him and he immediately scoops us up and forgives it all. And so too do I hope I will be able to ask forgiveness from other human beings as beautifully as that nurse did tonight.

A day of great anxiety had a sweet ending and for that I am most grateful - grateful for the loved ones around me and the loved ones who gave birth to me and cared for me as a child (and as an adult!), grateful for every moment I spend with my children whether it's tearing our hair out with math or chasing lizards or putting away laundry, grateful to have a husband who is as dear to me as he ever could possibly be, and grateful to be drawing breath each day. It is all a great gift from Hashem.

The Food

2011-09-28T13:31:00.002-04:00

There's a lot more to Rosh Hashanah than the food, but there sure is a lot of food for Rosh Hashanah! Especially when it runs up against shabbos.

Here are the various things I have (mostly) cooked for the next three days:

challah (4 kinds - brown sugar, apple cardamom, raisin, and plain)
chicken won ton soup
apple chicken
meatballs with currants
butternut squash kugel (thanks, ET!)
spinach salad w/mandarin oranges and pomegranate
roasted beets
red pepper salad
brisket
mashed potatoes
roasted cauliflower
tzimmes (carrots, sweet potatoes, apples)
green salad
stuffed cabbage
roasted eggplants/peppers
broiled fish
miso soup
spring rolls
sushi
onion and mushroom tempura
beef barley stew
yam cake
date bars
apple tart
apple strudel

It should be a yummy few days, and a wonderful start to the new year. Twenty-something for dinner tonight. I lost count. :) A dozen at most of the other meals. Looking forward to it very much, especially if my dull toothache would go away. I think it's the dentist for me on Monday!

Wishing everyone a shanah tovah u'mesukah!

Two Successful Resources

2011-09-26T23:24:00.004-04:00

I just had to share our favorite recent finds. The Homeschool Buyers Co-op has a $10 deal to get 50% off a one-year online subscription to The Happy Scientist. The website includes video lessons (LOTS of experiments!), daily science photos (w/a question!), and really nice curricula. This website is well worth the full price of $20. Robert Krampf is a warm, sincere teacher with a great sense of humor. We have learned a lot on this website. The kids clamor for him as much as they clamor for David Attenborough. It's a wonderful resource and we have thoroughly enjoyed it for a few weeks now. The special deal expires September 30, so join soon!

In addition, having completed the family Chofetz Chaim book on lashon hara and having completed a nicely written biography of the Chofetz Chaim, we have now moved on to Chofetz Chaim: Lessons in Truth.

We are reading one or two lessons each night. Each one only takes a couple of minutes, and then we can talk about the ideas afterward. We place a lot of emphasis with the children on not speaking lashon hara (quickly translated as gossip, but much more complex than that) and on speaking emes. Bit by bit the lessons trickle down, and when you see them naturally applying the principles in their day-to-day life it is very gratifying.

So, there you have two top-notch resources! :)

The Menu

2011-09-23T17:48:00.002-04:00

Well... there was a little mix-up. We were supposed to be having a sushi feast tonight (we have a SCAD friend who gets whole salmon, yellowtail, and tuna flown in and we were going to pick some up. There was a mixup and the end of the story is we have none. SO, at 3:30 I still didn't know what we were having for dinner! But I've managed just fine, and now I know what we're having!

For dinner...

challah (which, at last, came out PERFECT because of the new oven!)
honey pecan chicken
green salad
roasted eggplant/carrot/pepper/onion
roasted asparagus
roasted lemon garlic potatoes
toasted barley pilaf (after toasting the barley and making barley tea!)
iced barley tea
date bars

For lunch...

challah
sushi
beef barley stew
spinach salad
deli sandwiches
leftover veggies from dinner
watermelon
date bars

And the rest of this week? CRAZY! New oven and new meat dishwasher put in. This will sure beat previous yamim tovim where we couldn't use our oven at all! This one is star-K certified. YAY. Kashered my mother-in-law's kitchen and got everything dunked in the mikveh. Great start for a new year there.

We cleaned up the junk in the front yard (finishing the demolition of the cement wall). Tried to take the debris to the dump, but our helper couldn't get here in time. Tried to take it again, but the dump hours on the website were not correct and it wasn't open yet. Finally realized we could just have the city pick it up. Oh. Hm. Meanwhile, all the transmission troubles, EGR troubles, and anti-lock brake troubles have made a reappearance in the van. Hm. We had spent untold dollars to have all those repaired. Hm. Well. Hm. I think the van will be spending Rosh Hashanah at another mechanic to get a second opinion and his take on the work that has already been done. Yeah. Hm. So.

We also hit the library's used book sale. $1 per book, and we got some wonderful books. We've got enough reading to keep us busy for quite a while. Each year, we also get so many really great science and history books there. Yay.

Time for shabbos, baruch hashem! Good shabbos, all! :)

A Great Sunday

2011-09-18T23:36:00.002-04:00

Sunday always starts with a cup of coffee with my husband. Of course, he's accomplished a great deal more than I have by that point. For my part, I am up and dressed. For his part, he has usually paid bills, davened, done a bunch of dishes, and said good morning to the kids. Today was the day we began to kasher my mother-in-law's kitchen. All week I had been anticipating a huge bal egan. Mountains of kashering. Sinks, counters, dishwasher, stove, oven... it would take a gazillion hours, and how would I squeeze out all that extra time? I was embarrassingly dreading it and wondering if we should just wait until after the holidays.

Today (and last night), all it took was two hours of kashering her counters and large appliances, a 30-minute consult with the rabbi, and ninety minutes of kashering utensils. Another 90 minutes of kashering utensils and a trip to the mikveh to dunk a box full of things and we should be DONE! Perhaps in my mind I was envisioning a kitchen like mine which is rather more involved. But a kitchen for one? Simple!

Once I got going, what a pleasure to do the mitzvah. My heart was happy, and ima was so joyful that her kitchen would be kashered as we begin a new year. Doing something leshem shamayim (for the sake of heaven) is just, well, delicious. Why do we keep kosher? Because Hashem told us to. That's it. Taking part in the process today of another Jew keeping this huge mitzvah just made me very, very happy and peaceful. I reveled in the steamy pot of boiling water and piling up all the gleaming utensils. It was sweet and holy.

And after that we piled into a great big U-Haul truck with another friend and went off to Eden, Georgia to collect a chicken coop (30 minutes away). We wended our way through the backwoods and finally found the right trailer, proudly flying the American and confederate flags. A man came out on the porch and put his boots on. Our friend took one look at the scene and said, "Well, he hasn't shot at us yet..." :) All went well, they were very friendly, and happy to tell us about their chickens, turkeys, turtles, cow, and wild pigs (300 pounds each in the woods nearby!). Somehow the three of us (+ a little help) lugged the great big 500?-pound coop into the truck. The "coop" looks more like rabbit hutches on stilts. Kind of nice to have it up high with easy egg access, and the stilts should make it more snake-proof... I hope! Each chicken will have his own apartment. We'd like to build ramps going down, and enclose the chicken area with the fencing we have. They should have pretty good digs by the time it's ready, BE"H. Nothing like an adventure!!

About the time we got home, Amirah came back from a 4-day adventure in Atlanta. She had a great time, of course, and had expressed a desire to just stay until Rosh Hashanah. Unfortunately, homeschooling is flexible but not THAT flexible! :) She had a great few days, and I'm so, so glad to have my snuggly, yummy girl back.

A good Sunday with many things accomplished. And tomorrow, just in time for the holidays, a Star-K certified oven will be arriving at 7:00 a.m. (EEK!). Our old one had clogged gas jets, a thermostat that was WAY off, and NO sabbath mode, which made yom tov cooking tricky! And while we were at it we got a meat dishwasher. Bring on the chagim!!

The Menu

2011-09-16T15:13:00.003-04:00

Taking it easy this shabbos. Just one guest for each meal, and I made really simple things...

challah
lemon garlic chicken
roasted lamb (our last of the whole lamb we purchased in 8/10)
baked potatoes w/tofu sour cream
roasted asparagus
roasted carrots/zucchini/onions
roasted eggplant
pasta with mushroom sauce
cranberry banana bread

and for lunch...

corned beef sandwiches
potato chips
green salad
and some kind of salad based on Friday's leftovers

Good thing it's simple. I didn't start cooking until 2:00 pm! Oldest DD is on an Atlanta adventure this shabbos (she's blissed out!), so just the five of us plus company. Should be a very restful shabbos.

Good shabbos, all!

Rosh Hashanah Art Project

2011-09-15T23:25:00.003-04:00

We had so much fun making these yesterday and today. I based it on another project at my favorite art blog. We typed the text on the computer, then searched for Rosh Hashanah images. They picked what they wanted in their picture. They put together a "poster" of their images and text on card stock and taped that down to the table, then we taped the muslin down over that. They traced the lines with Elmer's blue washable glue.

The next day we colored in the images and text with acrylic paint and let that dry. Then we soaked the fabric until the glue came off and — voilá — batik! Afterwards we sprinkled the blank spots with liquid watercolors. I plan to get some dowels to hang them on and we'll hang them on the dining room wall. Savta thought we should get hangers for them and put them out like banners along the wall outside the front door! That could be fun too, but a little more involved. We'll see!

Here are some pictures. :)

by Amirah
The text says "Muchos años," Ladino for "many years"
as in wishing someone a long life.

by Eli
The text says "Shanah tovah u'mesukah,"
a wish for a good and sweet year.

by Raizel
The text says "Shanah tovah,"
a wish for a good year.

by Avi
The text says "Gut yar,"
a Yiddish wish for a good year.

The Menu

2011-09-09T16:03:00.003-04:00

Another shabbos! Baruch hashem! Looking forward to a nap already. :)

Here's the menu!

For dinner:

challah
homemade egg rolls w/sweet and sour dipping sauce
bulgogi (Korean bbq)
rice
spinach with miso dressing
turnip pickles
cucumber salad
broiled miso eggplant
chocolate covered strawberries

And for lunch:

We're out!

Good shabbos, all!

Laundry

2011-09-07T00:35:00.002-04:00

Each month, I'm focusing on training the kids (1–4 of them) for a new chore. For a couple of weeks I've been training them to do their own laundry. So far, so GREAT! We got them each their own lightweight pop-up hamper. They each have a day to take their laundry to the washing machine before breakfast, return the empty hamper to their room, shuffle it into the drier after lunch, and put away their own clothes after dinner. So far, it has worked great! I've also been grabbing Eli's and Avi's shabbos clothes from the basket and putting it in a separate box in their room. Then I can pull down the box of shabbos clothes on Friday afternoon for them and they'll have everything there for getting dressed. On Fridays while preparing for shabbos I do my and DH's laundry. We also each have our own hamper so ALL of the laundry is pre-sorted before it goes into the washing machine (all whites get pulled out and put into a trash can next to the washing machine for a separate load on Friday too). On Sundays I do all the sheets, towels, etc.

This morning, Raizel came into my room and said, "Good morning, mama! When I woke up I did morning washing, brushed my teeth, and got dressed. Then I put Avi's laundry into the drier and my laundry into the washing machine. It's almost time for Avi to put away his laundry!" All of this while I was still asleep. Sweet girl! She's been especially observant of the comfort of others lately. Savta mentioned she was warm, and Raizel went unsolicited to get her a glass of water and set up the fan (which was in another room) so it would blow gently on her where she was sitting. When friends are visiting she notices right away if they are looking for something. If someone is hurt, she rushes over to them to make sure they are okay. She's keenly aware of the things going on around her. I'm sure she notices more details at once than any of our other children. I can't wait to see where her quick, empathetic mind will take her. It's a pleasure to see her channel her very powerful spirit for the good! :)

Team Eli Raizel!

2011-09-06T00:42:00.003-04:00

Teaching Eli and Raizel together has worked extremely well. Linguistically, she's miles ahead of Kindergarten and Eli is egged on by her linguistic talents. Eli is far ahead of her in math, but it's very easy to teach them simultaneously. Raizel is halfway through Singapore Kindergarten math, so as long as she does one page per day, she's doing enough. I can usually tell her the gist of the page and she can do it on her own there next to me. Ditto for Eli. I just lightly bounce back and forth. Raizel is also doing great with 1st grade Writing With Ease, and she and Eli love doing it together. At this early stage, it pretty much consists of listening to short (but dense) stories and answering oral questions, condensing a thought about the passage into a single sentence, and doing copywork. They're both very capable, and I'm thrilled that Raizel can join in. She loves the physical act of writing and works hard to make beautiful letters. I'm very happy that it has been good for her too.

With them working together in language arts and math, it eases our schedule a bit. Right now, we're finishing our day in 5 hours (10:00-1:00 and 2:00-4:00). I had thought it would really take us 6 hours. Those hours don't include history or science which I generally do outside of normal learning hours, i.e. evenings and weekends. All of this comes together to make the day not quite as pressured as I had anticipated.

And one more thing... WE ALL LOVE XTRAMATH.COM! Amirah has been making terrific progress, much faster than at any other time in her math facts history. B"H! She has utterly detested any other way of practicing her math facts. She and Eli both really enjoy doing it, and it only takes about 10 minutes per day. Very happy about this one. I'm really hoping it will help shoot Amirah on to the next level. I really think that once her computation speed is faster she will enjoy math so much more! And what happens to the students who are pushed beyond that point to where they can't do the basic computations easily and are frustrated beyond belief with higher mathematical thinking?? I'm so glad we didn't have to just rush merrily along and could take the time to cement the basics.

Razed!

2011-09-06T00:15:00.003-04:00

I haven't yet taken any pictures, but on Friday and Sunday the last of the trees that we wanted to remove (to make way for fence and fruit trees) were all taken down. All of the bushes on the whole property went also. Pretty much everything but two tall pines and one tall oak and our loquat tree. All of the branches were chipped and placed in dauntingly large piles in the front and side yards. We spent a (HOT!) 90 minutes shoveling things around (a familiar thing around here!). We got maybe 1/6th of the front spread out. OY. More sweat to come. When it's spread it will make a wonderful, very thick layer of mulch all over the yards. I'm really hoping we can get a good one-hour mulch-shoveling session in each day. The holidays will be here soon enough, followed quickly by a 12-day trip to Los Angeles, followed (BE"H!) by an orchard planting! Meanwhile, I'd really like to get some greens, garlic, onions, and a few other thing into the ground... Is it too early to call a learning vacation??!? :)

Making Room

2011-09-02T15:03:00.004-04:00

And here we are again! Another shabbos, with guests tonight and tomorrow. :) As I speak, several trees are going down at our house - 3 pines in front (one dead, two in the way of the sukkah pad) and 3 trees on the side (in the way of our future BE"H fence and fruit trees), and a multitude of useless (as in non-fruit bearing and pretty only 4 weeks out of the year!) bushes and large plants. Hopefully we can get working on that fence and enclose the side yard, thereby tripling (at least) the outside space the kids (and fruit trees and plants) have to roam in.

We also expanded other space. I got a door at the Restore (Habitat for Humanity) for $10, and voilá, DH turned it into another 8 feet of counter space! We went from 12 feet to 20 feet of counter space by doing this! It's better than I dreamed. We'll keep that counter generally clear. It will be a worktable for fix-it projects, a laundry-sorting table, a home-from-the-grocery-store table, and whatever else it's needed for. LOVE IT! There's also a window between the kitchen and the music room (which used to be the carport). We're going to cover the whole wall with peg board and then place a curtain over that. Now we'll have a better place to keep our tools!

So... lots of fun little projects and DH has been working as hard as he can so that we have a real 3-day weekend this weekend. A whole TWO DAYS to get things done!!!! We're very excited about that! We'll also do a for-fun outing sometime over the weekend. It's been ages since we've had an outing with all six of us.

The Menu

2011-09-02T15:03:00.003-04:00

Guatemalan tonight! YES!

For dinner:

challah
roasted carrots/zucchini
roasted asparagus
chicken mole (aka chocolate chicken)
green salad
brown rice
black beans
fried plantains
chips
guacamole
homemade salsa
assorted accumulations of desserts - sorbets and mandelbrot

And for lunch:

challah
red pepper salad
surimi/avocado/won ton salad
eggplant potato tortilla
beef barley stew
turkey deli meat
turkey wings
coleslaw
angel food cake

(I might run out of time to make the tortilla... we'll see!)

Great Math Flashcard Website!

2011-08-29T23:02:00.002-04:00

In the ongoing quest to find independent activities for Amirah and Eli to do, I stumbled on this website thanks to a recommendation from someone on the Well-Trained Mind forum. XtraMath starts with a diagnostic test on the addition math facts, then proceeds to create daily tests (fairly short!) tailored to the student's needs. I can log in as a parent and check their progress. I love it! And B"H so do they! At least it's been a hit for the past week.

I do wish there was an exercise that included getting acquainted with number geography on the computer keyboard. This greatly reduces their speed in answering the problems (which affects their score), but I'm sure they'll figure it out soon enough. It has no bells and whistles, just nice flashcards, with honest feedback (as in NOT over-the-top woohoo you're amazing!!). I'm very pleased and hoping it will really help Amirah who just cannot get those math facts in her head. It has really slowed us down this past year in math. But B"H we're learning al pi darko, so she can take the time to develop and learn at her pace instead of being rushed right ahead because she's in a new grade now. I am so grateful that each of their abilities can develop as they will without being held back or pushed forward artificially. This is absolutely the number one reason I homeschool.

Oh, and that Mennonite curriculum I tried for spelling and penmanship - BLEAH! The samples were much better than the real thing. I'll blog later b"n about what we're using in real life...

Good night!

The Menu

2011-08-26T18:33:00.002-04:00

Hooray! Shabbos! B"H! Woohoo!

For dinner:

challah
super duper extra-fancy (really!) shabbos burgers
French fries
asparagus (to make it feel shabbosdik)
kiwi strawberry coconut sorbet

(Yes, that's it, there is no more, that's ALL!)

For lunch:

challah
tilapia cakes with tofu sauce
antipasto plate (homemade olives, pepperoncini, roasted peppers, roasted zucchini and squash, roasted carrots, garden tomatoes, marinated mushrooms)
beef barley stew w/homemade kishke
turkey deli meat
coleslaw
taco salad
sorbet

And for the afternoon:

N-A-P!

Phew! What a week. Overall, had a great first week back at full-time learning. Everyone was very cooperative, no review time has been necessary for anything, and we're zooming along. Very satisfying and I think we all really like being back on our regular schedule.

Good shabbos, all!

Quote of the Week

2011-08-24T13:33:00.002-04:00

Eli: I wish I could get married right away.

Mama: Why???

Eli: Because I have a lot of money right now, almost ten dollars, and I could marry a really poor person and we could go out and get a lot of groceries with all that money.

:) :) :)

Fancy Word Game

2011-08-24T00:06:00.002-04:00

We had a lot of fun playing a new game. I have a place on our bulletin board called "Fancy Word of the Week" (though it's more like "Fancy Word of the Half-Week"). This week's word is "velocity." Yesterday and today we used it whenever possible. The kids were giggly-happy whenever they found a way to work it casually into the conversation. Tonight at dinner we played a game where they each had to use the word whenever possible, and at the end of dinner papa had to guess what the word was. Eli said he didn't want to play and I said that was fine. He got more into than any of them, though! They asked several innocent questions about hurricanes, bullets, and airplanes, and didn't even crack a smile. At the end of the meal, papa honestly couldn't figure out the secret word until we told him to really think about the topics of conversation that night. Then he got it! :) They all thought it was really funny. A nice way to add a little spice to our routine.

The Lake Trip

2011-08-23T00:47:00.009-04:00

Here are pictures from our lake trip. What a great time we had!

Lake Ben Hall (with lots of boat houses along the shore)

At sunset. The pedal boat was a bit difficult to pedal...

AVI
Avi was always busy doing either this...

or this.

And sometimes this.

RAIZEL
Raizel has a million different expressions.

She loves those big splashes!

ELI
Eli was at LEAST this happy the entire time.

Sometimes this happy (lying down on a deck chair)

Water play is his favorite thing.

AMIRAH

Amirah learned the joy of kayaking and had a superb time.
We enjoyed paddling across the lake intending to buy popsicles,
only to discover that the little store had only about 5% of its shelves stocked.

What a pleasure to paddle with my daughter!

Jumping off the dock into the duckweed.

All smiles, all the time.

Amirah caught a crayfish.

We also enjoyed the wildlife at Magnolia Springs State Park.

B"H what fun we had!

The Garden

2011-08-23T00:24:00.002-04:00

Things are petering out in the garden. The champions have been the Japanese eggplants, the cucumbers, the basil, the tomatoes, and the peppers. Eggplants and basil are still going strong, the peppers are several but small, the cukes are totally done, and the tomatoes are nearly done (while those in Oregon have barely started!!). We have yet to see what all is happening to the sweet potatoes underground. We'll be yanking a bunch of stuff out in the next couple of weeks and seeding the ground with a cover crop - probably red clover. We're hoping to add a couple of beds of fall plantings - onions, garlic, peas, beans, greens, etc. if this weather EVER cools down!!

Here's Eli doing his favorite job - harvesting! He is blissful in the garden, checking out every detail and he is so excited that when we finish astronomy we'll be studying botany. He's so curious about everything out there!

Here's a bowl of things from the garden - YUM! We've really enjoyed our weekly basil-garlic-onion-anchovy-eggplant-zucchini-tomato pizza with lots of hot red peppers.

And last of all, isn't the eggplant pretty? :)

Back At It!

2011-08-22T01:25:00.002-04:00

We're back to learning tomorrow! They each have a daily ticket hanging on their clipboard, which lists their learning tasks, chores, and other activities for them to check off. We'll be doing about 80% of what we would normally be doing. I'm waiting on a couple of books, and am going to do some review before we move forward in chumash. They're looking forward to it, and already started doing some work this afternoon on their own.

It was a nice Sunday. The only thing I can't figure out is how I can have four simple things on my list and I can only get two of them done. The list was do laundry, make bread, clean up kitchen, and clean out the veggie storage bins. The last two got done, at least! And we did stop at 5:30 for dinner and 6:30 to watch John Huston's Moby Dick (this version remains fairly faithful to the original source). Amirah has read the Step Into Classics version twice, and begged to watch a movie version. All of the children liked it (!!!???!). It's so hard to find good-quality, torah-compatible family movies that we usually end up watching various science or history documentaries (definitely easier then good fiction-based movies, but not a LOT easier!). I just wish Sundays would stretch a little longer.

Dean did get halfway done with a project to add a worktable into the kitchen. He would have finished it, but he took the time to have the kids help him and they had such a sweet time working together. It was so fun to watch. We managed to eke out a space for a $10 seven-foot door that will be used as a work table (thanks, Restore!). Great for staging shabbos food, and as an extra workspace for the kids to do their learning! We'll have a pegboard hidden behind a curtain for all the tools to hang on, plus we'll add shelves to the walls above the work table and take advantage of the cupboard that is already hanging there. It's going to be nice not to have the tools all scrunched in the laundry room. I'll be able to move all my glass mason jars out there and make a little more space in the pantry. Then a few more things can move out of the kitchen and into the pantry. I love re-arranging things, and making them more efficient.

To bed now, up on time tomorrow and we'll GET GOING! Eek. :)

The Menu

2011-08-19T12:23:00.002-04:00

A few days away, and suddenly shabbos is upon us again. I have no idea HOW I'll be ready, but somehow we're always ready when it comes.

Highlights of the week:

Kayaking every day (Amirah learned to go solo!)
fishing
one-hour coffee breaks on the screened porch overlooking the lake
exploring random red-dirt roads
great food
great conversation
a late-night champagne w/a toasty brie/raspberry jam/filo concoction
swimming
farm-admiring, and
a pitstop at Magnolia Springs State Park - GORGEOUS!

Pics to come as soon as I can locate the cable...

So... for dinner:

challah
wonton soup
teriyaki beef and chicken skewers (w/zucchini, onion, and tomato)
rice
roasted potatoes
roasted asparagus
eggplant with miso sauce
green salad w/miso dressing
coconut lemon sorbet

And for lunch:

Sushi extravaganza
green salad w/miso dressing
miso soup
Amirah's chocolate chip cookies

And a G-R-E-A-T B-I-G N-A-P!

Good shabbos, all!

The Menu

2011-08-12T19:05:00.003-04:00

What a *great* relaxing week, and only three more days until 5/6ths of us go on our not-back-to-school vacation! :) More on that later. :) And now for a wonderful shabbos with lots of guests for dinner and lunch.

So.

For dinner:

challah
caesar salad
red pepper spread
roast chicken with balsamic onion gravy
mashed potatoes
roasted carrots
spicy cabbage and mushrooms
stewed eggplant, tomato, and green pepper
corn kugel
strawberry cake

And for lunch:

challah
caesar salad
tilapia cakes with special sauce
eggplant spread
beef stew with kishke
turkey salami
chicken taco salad
coleslaw
mango cucumber salad
peach challah pudding

HOLY SHABBOS NACHAMU! May we be ever closer to the geulah!

Our 2011–12 Learning Plan

2011-08-10T23:32:00.004-04:00

Phew! Well, I think I've worked out most of what we're doing, at least for August through January. It's been a lot of planning during the last month!

FOR AUGUST
For the last couple of weeks we've been polishing our Hebrew reading skills using the nicely plain workbooks from AlephChamp. I purchased the reading books, the medallions (for fun - turned out to be a BIG hit!), and the color word flashcards (not completely necessary, but I got them anyway). I bought a sample workbook, and did not care for those at all. Since we're basically using it for review, they weren't necessary for us anyway. They're reading 1-4 pages per day (1 for Avi, 2 for Raizel, 3 for Eli, and 4 for Amirah). It only takes 10-15 minutes per kid per day and the review has really upped our speed. Hooray!

We've also gotten a head start on history. I tend to do a lot of history in the "between" times so we don't have to do so much when we have our full learning schedule happening. So history has been an interesting study of Mary Queen of Scots, the Protestant/Catholic squabbles (and worse) in Europe, King James, Jamestown, and Pocahontas.

We read Blood on the River as our historical fiction book to go with the times. Made us all glad not to be among the first colonists! The book was historically accurate and incorporated many primary resources. All four of them enjoyed it and couldn't wait to read another chapter.

Next we're on to Henry Hudson and the search for the Northwest Passage!

Next week 5/6ths of us will be joining friends for a not-back-to-school vacation for four days. We're looking forward to that very much. After that, we're back at it, and this is what we'll be doing...

EVERYONE - KODESH
• davening
• parsha stories (The Little Midrash Says, Simcha's Kinderlach, and Tales of Tzaddikim (new for us this year)
• Hebrew vocabulary of the week (4 words to memorize/use in addition to what they learn
individually)
• gadol of the week (every two weeks we'll learn about a different gadol; his picture is posted on the wall, and we'll learn biographical information and stories about him; first one is Rashi!)
• middah of the week (often connected with the parsha)
• family lessons from Chofetz Chaim: Lessons in Truth based on his books, Sefer Sefas Tamim and Sefer Shem Olam (we recently finished the wonderful book Chofetz Chaim: The Family Lesson a Day on the laws of speech)

EVERYONE - CHOL
• Story of the World 3: Early Modern Times (From Elizabeth I to the Forty-Niners)
• completing Apologia Astronomy (up to Saturn now!), and hoping to cover Botany and Human Physiology in the coming year
• fancy word of the week (I just used dictionary.com to come up with both useful and amusing words to learn for fun that we'll try to use here and there throughout the week. (Our first word is "velocity.")

AMIRAH - KODESH
• reading from the chumash and siddur! (using lots of flashcards I created)
• Aleph Champ (for speed-reading practice; should be done by mid-fall)
• Rashi script (with the P'tach workbook available here; the same one I used!)
• Lashon Hatorah Bet/Gimmel for biblical grammar

AMIRAH - CHOL
• Math Mammoth 2 (last little bit) + Math Mammoth 3 (so far so good!)
• Rod and Staff Spelling 3 (a Mennonite curriculum that we're going to try out; seems like it could be a good fit; Zaner-Bloser is a bit b-o-r-i-n-g...)
• Rod and Staff Penmanship 3 (ditto, but it's Spelling Workout that is boring and full of more busywork than Amirah needs... I thought about just making my own penmanship book, but this was cheap and my time is limited!)
• Piano lessons! (Faber Piano books - still my favorite after all these many years of teaching)
• First Language Lessons 3 (we continue to be very happy with this great grammar program)
• Writing With Ease 3 (ditto here; teaches writing skills very pithily!)
• McGuffey Reader 3 (read aloud 2x/week to work on oral expression and fluid reading)
• assigned reading (about 30 minutes per day) related primarily to our history studies
• choir!
• recorder class!
• free reading (she does plenty without any encouragement!)

ELI - KODESH
• Aleph Champ
• beginning chumash and siddur reading
• learning Hebrew script (using Migdalor workbook)
• Lashon Hatorah Alef

ELI - CHOL
• Math Mammoth 1 (half-way done) + Math Mammoth 2
• Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading
• Explode the Code 3 + however far we get! (I have decided to forego a formal spelling program for first grade; I honestly don't think there's any need; also, Eli loves Explode the Code and that provides plenty of writing/spelling opportunities!)
• Rod and Staff Penmanship 1
• First Language Lessons 1 (grammar)
• Writing With Ease (composition)
• Piano lessons!
• Orff-Schulwerk music class!

RAIZEL - KODESH
• Aleph Champ

RAIZEL - CHOL
• Handwriting Without Tears 1
• First Language Lessons 1 (with Eli; she already memorized it all anyway!)
• piano lessons!
• Ordinary Parents Guide for Teaching Reading
• Explode the Code 1 + however much we do!

And Little Avi will be learning his alphabet and his alefbeis, and rolling around gathering in things by osmosis, and just generally being really cute and funny and sweet!

As for how it's all going to work out... I'm basically organizing our day into blocks. They'll all be working on the same subject areas at roughly the same time and I'll be bouncing back and forth. B"H Amirah is at an age where there are many things she can do independently, checking in with me before and/or after she does the work. I'll give each kid a daily ticket and they check things off as they go. Their daily ticket will include several chores that need to be done at different parts of the day. The ticket will go on their clipboard that is hanging in the learning room.

The learning room is nicely fixed up and organized! Some pretty things are on the walls, all the drawers are organized, and we're pretty much ready to go.

If you made it this far - MAZAL TOV! :)

The Menu

2011-08-05T13:35:00.002-04:00

Another week of just menu posting. I've been so distracted by all the organization we've been doing and with helping as I can to get ima settled in (a little tricky with three puppies and four kids!) that blogging time has been set aside this past month. There have been lots of fun things to share, so hopefully my memory will hold on to a few of them! :)

So, for dinner:

challah
Italian bean dip
taco salad
broccoli/sundried tomato pasta salad
chicken skewers
mushroom rice
roasted potatoes
roasted veggies
chocolate covered orange biscotti

And for lunch (lots of guests!):

salads from dinner, plus
apple honey coleslaw
shuba (beets/carrots/onion/potatoes/lox/mayo - a layered salad)
asparagus/egg/tarragon/arugula salad
macque choux (corn/pepper/tomato)
beef barley stew
frozen lime pie

Good shabbos, all!!!

The Menu

2011-07-29T16:43:00.003-04:00

Not much posting, but lots of lesson planning and house organizing. Mostly the former this week! So many things I'd like to have ready ahead of time... Meanwhile, B"H, there's shabbos.

For dinner:

challah
surimi salad w/fried won tons
chicken with lemon rice
roasted okra
roasted carrots/zucchini/mushroom/onion/garlic
mango cucumber salad
roasted potatoes
pasta with almond spinach sauce
peach cake

And for lunch:

We're O-U-T!

Feeling a bit worn out and accutely three weeks-ish. Monday is the 1st of Av and it all just feels very weighty right now...

Good shabbos, all!

The Menu

2011-07-22T13:16:00.002-04:00

For dinner...

challah
butternut squash soup
caesar salad
baked Japanese eggplant w/an anchovy/garlic/matzo meal/olive oil topping
roasted garden veggies with preserved lemon
potato wedges
oven-fried chicken (topped w/mayo, mustard, garlic, matzo meal, lemon juice)
spicy ginger cookies
chocolate covered orange mandelbrot
chocolate-covered meringue
iced blueberry tea and lemonade

And for lunch...

some of the above, plus:
turkey pastrami
egg salad
guacamole and chips
eggplant dip w/dried tomatoes, fresh basil, and garlic

B"H it's shabbos! Good shabbos, all!

Culinary Adventures

2011-07-22T09:42:00.004-04:00

First of all, I have to thank my friend RP for so much inspiration! She is very creative and very wonderfully frugal (the kind of frugal that feels more like abundance than frugality because she makes so much more from so little!). You must visit her blog and enjoy her creativity.

So... here's what's going on in the kitchen right now...

•Drying tomatoes. We have a couple of tomato bushes that are loaded with mediocre tasting tomatoes. I cut them in half and put them on the fruit drier and WOW now they're delicious. I'll totally dry some of them, and partially dry the rest to put in salads. They taste as good as our ever-dependable Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes when they are half-dried. The Sweet 100s have just been served in a bowl for meals, or just eaten while we water and weed the garden.

•Pickles. I did 7 quarts of pickled cucumbers and 2 pints of pickled jalapeños. I love jalapeños! To preserve them, you can also just toss them whole into the freezer. Their skins fall off effortlessly when you defrost them. The pickled ones are good in salsa, or just diced and put on top of... whatever! :)

•Roasting coffee beans in the Whirly-Pop. After exactly two years, our $100 coffee bean roaster gave out. Shortly before it gave out, I got a Whirly-Pop (usually used for popcorn). I love this low-tech solution! Instead of roasting 1/3 cup at a time (enough for 2 days), I can roast 2 cups at a time (probably even more). It takes about 10-12 minutes. DH figured out the best setting on the stove was one notch below mid-way. For the first 5 minutes you can just let it sit over the flame. After that you need to crank it until it's done. I love how the beans start to crackle as they get near to being done. They keep on crackling for quite a few minutes after they're off the stove too!

Some things that only live in my head so far:

•Last year Kroger's lowest price for peaches was $0.58/pound. Right now they're at $1.00/lb. A good price, but I'm hoping for less. It's the only reasonably priced fruit for quantity jam-making around here! As soon as it goes down I want to make a year-supply of peach jam, while I daydream about the endless quantities of cheap raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries in Oregon... YUM! Those berries were about $1.25/lb in Oregon. Here, the cheapest is about double that or more. :( But we sure can grow a lot of things I could never grow well there — peppers, eggplants, tomatoes (ripe ones before September - a thrill!), watermelons. Very fun.

•Get koji (aspergillus mold) and make homemade sake, fermented black beans (which are actually soy beans that turn black during the fermentation process), miso, and soy sauce. Well, one of these days...

•Make my own tofu more often. It's fun and easy to make. The only thing I'd like to get is a tofu mold so it's a little neater looking. :)

•One of these days I'm going to get a grain grinder. One of these days. Not only is freshly-ground flour delicious, but you can also make all sorts of flours that are more expensive to buy (but very cheap to make) like chick pea flour, rice flour, etc.

Okay, enough daydreaming. On to shabbos prep. Keeping it simple-ish this shabbos. First shabbos with savta here (she moved here on Tuesday!).

P.S. Our best investment ever? The 12-foot above-ground pool. The kids swim 2x/day most days. We might use it for fish next year (tilapia!) and get a larger pool for the kids. Once you get the chemicals down then it's no trouble to maintain at all. It's a little tricky since there's no single recipe - it depends on what's in your local water. And here algaecide is a must! It doesn't take long for a pool to turn green...

The Menu

2011-07-15T14:40:00.002-04:00

For dinner...

challah
tilapia za'atar fish cakes w/Thai chili garlic mayo (it works... really!)
lamb with rosemary and garlic
pesto pasta
roasted eggplant, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, onions, garlic, preserved lemon
tomato cucumber salad
carrot kugel
mashed potatoes
peach cake

And for lunch....

A special seudah at shul!

It's been an intense week with all the organizing and I am looking forward to a good sleep! I feel so good about how much I've been able to do around the house. And just having thinking time about our learning while I do that has been good too. On our regular schedule it's all I can do get dishes in the sink and shuffle laundry during the day. I'm putting a weekly chore-training time in our schedule so that the kids are able to do more and more around the house. I think having a regularly scheduled training time is going to be a big help in increasing what they're able to do. Must run! Good shabbos, all!

Cleaning and Organizing

2011-07-15T02:08:00.002-04:00

July is zooming by. A&E are in camp at shul from 9-3 every day, and I've been busy completely decluttering and organizing the house. I made a list of the 69 places there were to do, and I have now finished 43 of 69 areas. Checking off boxes is a big motivator to me, as is seeing all the jobs in one room being checked off, making the room "complete." We have quite a bit of storage in this house, and even more now. We're going to eke out a workspace in the kitchen for tools and projects. I bought a door at the Restore to use for a work table. I've got the learning room REALLY squared away and that made me most happy. Old learning materials were boxed up, and the new ones went onto the shelves. The learning closet got decluttered and straightened (there are long narrow shelves all along one wall). Things are getting polished and dusted and the walls are getting cleaned. It's so nice to have the opportunity to do this so thoroughly! Raizel and Avi have been good sports too. It's too hot to go out anyway, so we're hibernating indoors. At night, I've been working hard on our learning projects for the coming year. I'll go into more detail in a different post, but I've been able to get a LOT planned without needing to have anything in particular ready for the next day. Off to sleep...........

The Menu

2011-07-08T13:06:00.002-04:00

For dinner:

challah
Chinese fish cakes
wonton soup
chicken with Chinese sparerib sauce (thanks to RP and RP's dad for the inspiration!!)
rice
broiled eggplant and zucchini
roasted cabbage
roasted potatoes
cucumber salad
green salad with crispy won tons
iced vanilla chai
pavlova with strawberries, blueberries, and mangoes

And for lunch:

everything we had for dinner, plus:
Chinese chicken salad

Good shabbos!!!! B"H! It's been a bit of an intense week around here. Decided on no lunch guests for shabbos and lots of SLEEP. :)

The Menu

2011-07-01T17:02:00.002-04:00

Thai!

For dinner:

challah
coconut lemongrass soup
eggplant basil stirfry
roasted garden veggies
two cucumber salads (one w/tamarind and ginger, the other with rice vinegar and sesame)
broiled coconut curry chicken
coleslaw w/almonds and Thai vinaigrette
rice
mango coconut sorbet

And for lunch:

We're OUT!
And bringing challah and salad.......................

Good shabbos!

The Week

2011-07-01T16:47:00.004-04:00

The kids and I got back from a very nice few days in Atlanta. My first time in a big city since we left Portland! :)

Highlights included:

•A great visit with my Atlanta "sister" and her kids and other former Savannahians!

•A splurge of a meal at Fuego Mundo (delicious Argentinian barbecue; to be worth paying for a restaurant meal it has to be REALLY good and this passed the test)

•Fernbank Science Center (free), planetarium show (not free, but reasonable), and great walking trails behind the center (pond and creek!) (Had we been there on a Thursday night we would have hit the free observatory program too!)

•A day for the kids at Camp Shamayim

•The indoor Farmers Market (cheese, coconut milk for $0.89/can (vs $2!), lemongrass, Thai basil, sesame seeds, green and orange lentils, admiring (but not buying) the huge variety of whole fish, several varieties of bok choy, oyster mushrooms...)

•Costco for incredibly cheap grape juice, kashkaval cheese, and deli turkey

•Last Chance thrift store

•Sensations Therafun (a little expensive at $8/kid, but LOTS of fun!)

Very fun, and all the kids were saying they didn't want to leave when it was time. But, as we rolled into Savannah and started to see familiar landmarks Amirah said, "Mama! This really feels like home! I mean, I can really feel it!" :) I agree! Nice to visit other places, but I love being home.

And B"H it's shabbos!

The Menu

2011-06-24T01:17:00.002-04:00

FOR DINNER!

challah
home-cured olives
eggplant zaatar dip
chicken w/bbq sauce
potato wedges
coleslaw
garden salad
roasted corn
peach cake

FOR LUNCH!

challah
eggplant zaatar spread
home-cured olives
beef stew
turkey deli meat
coleslaw
corn salad
peach cake

The Menu

2011-06-17T18:09:00.002-04:00

It's a birthday shabbos! Amirah turns 8 tomorrow (on the English calendar). So... mostly her requests, with a few of my own thrown in for good measure. :)

For dinner...

challah
lamb skewers marinated in garlic, rosemary, thyme, mustard, oil, and red wine vinegar
roasted potatoes (same marinade)
wonton soup (instead of actually making up the wontons I made little chinese meatballs and sliced the won ton wrappers into triangles; I was a little, er, short on time)
pickled beet salad
pickled cucumber salad
roasted garden vegetables (YAY!)
oyster mushroom sauté (got these at the farmers market; very meaty and delicious; we want to grow some here)
tomato basil garlic salad
meringues (supposed to be chocolate chocolate chip meringues, but that time thing got in the way again)

for lunch...
challah and salads from Friday, plus
beef barley stew
pesto pasta

and at 5:00ish...

angel food cake and watermelon for whomever shows up!

Another Week Done?

2011-06-16T23:45:00.002-04:00

How could it possibly be erev shabbos already??? The week went by very quickly. Today we had a lovely outing to the Bluffton Farmers Market, with the mother and baby from a visiting family for good company. I got tomatoes, corn, carrots, onions, beets, red and purple peppers, oyster mushrooms (apparently easy to grow here!!), and a giant watermelon. From our own garden now we have a medium supply of eggplant, basil (large supply!), greens (large supply!), cherry tomatoes (miniature supply compare to what we want!), cucumbers, zucchini, and yellow squash. Lots of good veggies for shabbos, B"H.

Amirah was blissed out on a wonderful birthday gift of all kinds of beads and beading tools and other materials from grandma and grandpa. It was really cute to watch her unwrap each thing, with Eli by her side telling her how beautiful everything was. She was one happy girl. Her English birthday is on shabbos, so we can't unwrap presents then so we started a little early. Yesterday, she and I went out to get her ears pierced. We had a lot of fun and she loves her new earrings. After she got the first ear pierced, she looked at the ear-piercing lady, held her hand up a little and solemnly said, "Please, just give me another minute before you do the next one. (LONG PAUSE) Okay. Now I'm ready." I tried to suppress the desire to grin from ear to ear. LOVE HER!!!!!!!! :)

Database of Historical Movies

2011-06-14T01:31:00.002-04:00

I just stumbled on this. It looks like a good resource if you're looking for documentaries and historical fiction movies to supplement your history curriculum. I noted 16 that appear to be of interest for our study of history from 1600 to 1850. A bunch won't be available on Netflix, I'm sure, and what remains may not pass the kosher test, but it's at least a very long list of potential candidates! I'm happy if we can find 4-6 (fiction/non-fiction) per year. We'll see!

In other news, DD8 is spending the night in Atlanta with a dear friend. She's having a great time and hasn't missed us one bit. :) It's nice to see her having adventures!

Today I started tutoring a bas mitzvah student! We had a wonderful hour together, studying a book called Halachos Bas Yisrael (The Laws for a Daughter of Israel). We're incorporating a lot of the narration techniques I use for learning with my kids and it was very interesting to do it with an older (almost-11-year-old) student. Loved it! Today we read the introduction, mostly focusing on women's mitzvah obligations and exemptions. Next week: morning hand washing. I feel like I have a chevrusa again (study partner) and it's very nice.

So, a good day today, in stark contrast to my decidedly sluggish Sunday. Oh, well! Now to bed so I can have a not-sluggish day tomorrow!

Garden PIctures!

2011-06-12T14:06:00.004-04:00

Now that I've found our camera, I can add pictures of the garden!

We currently have a total of 350 square feet, and we're hoping to add another 142 square feet of raised beds by August. Our ultimate goal is 1,200 square feet of vegetables to supply our year-round vegetable needs. We'll see!

Here's what it looked like before we erased the front yard and started over. :)

Here's the whole front yard:

On the right is the raised bed with tomatoes, cucumbers, various greens, eggplant, and flowers (for bees!). In the front center is a flower bed. In the middle of that bed is part of a brick gate support that was coming loose so we knocked it down. Makes a great flower planter. I'm thinking of turning the satellite dish on the roof into a bird bath and mounting it on the brick "planter." Towards the right you can see the herb spiral that we made out of the part of the driveway we had to break up to fix a pipe.

Off of the herb spiral are four beds: sweet potatoes, zucchini, zuchinni/watermelon, and tomatoes/peppers/watermelon. Too much zucchini but it was one of the few things left that could be planted in late May! We were caught by surprise this year. I'm sure two zucchini would have been more than enough, but we have eight. Plenty to share! Couldn't just let the ground sit there.

Here's a good view of the herb spiral:

And a sideways view of the whole thing:

That's what I see out my kitchen window! I really want to take down all of the cabinets in there and add more window so I can it all better. It's fun to look out at it and very fun to eat it! We're looking forward to getting more and more done. Bit by bit. We pretty much only have Sundays to get much work done, but we've managed to get to it nonetheless. To maintain it really doesn't take long at all during the week. Maybe 15 minutes of weeding per week, and 10 minutes of my time per day to hand water and sprinkler water it. Soaker hoses are in the future, BE"H!

The Menu

2011-06-10T13:05:00.002-04:00

What a great shavuos! Lots of lovely grownup time. Great conversations. Fun visits. Good food, though I was tired of dairy after one dinner and lunch, so we switched to meat. We mostly eat pareve during the week, with one meat night and dairy more as a garnish than a main focus. :) So... we're having a light-ish meal tonight...

For dinner...
challah
shabbos ground beef sandwiches (AKA BURGERS!) with fancy shabbos-worthy toppings
french fries
garden salad
sorbet

And for lunch...
bringing an eggplant tomato something or other
and a surimi garden salad

I might even get all the laundry and cleaning done with a menu like that. :) :) :)

And the other good news... our car is FIXED. Computer chip has been replaced and now we can travel more than 30 minutes-ish from home! :)

Good shabbos, all!!!!!

Shavuos Food!

2011-06-07T00:19:00.002-04:00

It's been fun cooking dairy for a change! We're also out for two of the four meals, so that has made it pretty easy to prepare.

For dinner #1: OUT!

For lunch #1: dairy sushi blowout - sweet potato, spinach, tamago (egg omelet), cream cheese, krab, tempura (in sushi and not in sushi!), cucumber, avocado... YUM!

For dinner #2: challah, cream of carrot soup, fish cakes, sweet potato corn muffins, baked potatoes w/lots of DAIRY fixings, green salad with won ton strips and goat cheese balls w/preserved lemon (I think a Chinese, French, Moroccan sort of blend will work, won't it?????), kiwi strawberry tart, strawberry cheesecake, strawberry (or maybe a different flavor...) ice cream

For lunch #2: SHUL!

There's a lovely family here for a couple of months, so they'll be joining us for shavuos. Had lunch here with 2/3 of them today. They're considering moving here, so we'll have to show off the best of Savannah in the next few weeks. We need more people with young children!

Happy Shavuos, all!

Camera FOUND! :)

2011-06-07T00:11:00.003-04:00

I have been without a camera since before pesach. I thought I had absentmindedly left it in a bag that we had taken with us on one expedition or another. But no! I was looking around one of the lowest shelves in the walk-in pantry for a cheesecake pan bottom and there was the camera wedged between the edge of the shelf and the wall. HOORAY! I've been wanting so much to take a picture of the garden at each stage for our records and haven't been able to. Now that can be done. So very happy.

And as a bonus I can FINALLY post a purim picture. :)

And a cute picture of Raizel (now 5!) that was on the camera. :)

Now shavuos can come!

The Menu

2011-06-03T17:11:00.002-04:00

For dinner:

challah
miso soup
broiled teriyaki mushrooms
teriyaki chicken
sesame noodle salad
green salad (from the garden!) with miso dressing
brown rice
potato wedges (Amirah says it's not shabbos w/o potatoes...)
cabbage salad
peach cake

And for lunch:

all the same salads, plus
beef barley stew
surimi salad with corn and avocado (maybe, if DH gets lucky and finds a ripe one on his way home!)

No guests tonight, but a bunch for lunch. Looking forward to it!

Good shabbos, all!

Small Homes

2011-06-02T14:03:00.002-04:00

Things like this make me grin from ear to ear.

Satisfying Sunday

2011-05-30T00:47:00.003-04:00

It really was a lovely day. A bit hot, but that didn't stop us! First, there was a lovely bas mitzvah celebration and lunch, then I got home and rolled up my sleeves. We had two boys over who can wield a mean wheelbarrow, so between us we got LOTS of dirt moved from the front to the back yard. We flattened out the place where our above-ground pool will go by using a 12-foot piece of lumber with a level strapped to it. Eventually we got it just right and spread a tarp over it. Tomorrow - the pool!

I also got a flower bed planted near our veggie beds. I put in salvia, lavender, and primrose. We also had half a brick column that had been holding up the gate on the side of the house to get into the back yard. It had become loose, so Dean knocked it over so there wouldn't be an accident It's about two feet tall and hollow in the center, so I rolled it over the flower bed and plopped it in the middle. We filled it with soil and I'm hoping to get some of those cascading purple petunias to put in the middle of it, and then find some kind of raised support to add to the top so we can put a bird bath on it. It looks really nice, even without flowers or bird bath on it!

Raizel went to play with a friend (and is spending the night). The boys went to a friend's house for a little while, then youngest boy came back. The visitor boys stayed here a while, then oldest daughter went to dinner at their house. Avi fell asleep on the couch, and Eli had a snack when he came home then didn't want dinner. So... a rare event - only D and I were at the table for dinner! I made a pizza with arugula, basil, chopped garlic and tomatoes. YUM. Then D went out to get one thing at Home Depot for the pool and took the two bigs, and Avi and I went down the street to bring R. her overnight bag and to visit with a good friend and her new baby. Another YUM. I've never seen so many REAL smiles in a little baby. Definitely not gas. Totally precious. A nice way to end the day. Tired muscles, but not sore, and looking forward to another day tomorrow. Hashem is good!

The Menu

2011-05-27T15:18:00.003-04:00

Here 'tis!

DINNER:
challah
steaks
gravy
mashed potatoes
mint cucumber salad (from the garden!)
roasted bok choi
roasted beets
angel food cake
lemon curd

LUNCH:
some of the above, plus
deli meat
fresh corn
pasta salad (orecchiete, roasted asparagus, tomatoes, basil, artichoke hearts, garden greens in a vinaigrette)
watermelon

YUM!

Had a fun shopping experience yesterday. I went to Fresh Market (kind of like a small-scale Whole Foods) for the first time. I usually avoid those places because they are WAY overpriced. Amirah and I had fun, though! Certain vegetables were the same price as Kroger or CHEAPER! We got zucchini, bok choi, beets (can rarely even get at Kroger), Vidalia onions, asparagus, probably some other things too. And then I found two things that I've not been able to find anywhere else (kosher, that is) - sesame oil, artichoke hearts, and hoi sin sauce. HOORAY! I was really lamenting my empty bottle of sesame oil.

Enchilada sauce is another thing I haven't been able to find kosher here. I finally ordered a case from Amazon. It arrived and 9 of the 12 cans were dented (no padding!). I let Amazon know, and they gave me an immediate credit and said they couldn't take it back. So, I right away made enchiladas with one of the cans (divine!). Next, I'll boil the cans to see if any of them are leaking, and just toss the ones that have a broken seal. Hopefully, most of them are still fine despite the dents!

Good shabbos, all! (That is, all 5 or 6 of you that actually read this.) :)

Math Mammoth

2011-05-26T00:51:00.002-04:00

My first glance through the first chapter (2nd grade) of the Math Mammoth curriculum looks good. Things I like about it so far:

•All the instruction is located on the actual workbook page, not in a separate teacher manual. (I'd been wishing this forever, and I HATE using Saxon's scripted teacher manual!)

•The approach to mental math is very similar to Singapore Math, which was something I really liked, but the explanations look much clearer and are directed to the student.

•The price! It was (I think) $35 for all of 2nd grade, BUT it's a pdf so I can use it for all four kids. The price probably comes out to comparable to Singapore, and MUCH less than Saxon.

•Saxon had a little bit of 6-7 different subjects on each page and I just didn't like that. I much prefer Singapore's mastery approach, while also having the flexibility to start different topics in other sections of the book at the same time.

So, wish us well! I pulled out all the pages for things that I know Amirah has mastered. We just took two weeks off, and with three weeks of at pesach, then only two full working weeks after that, we've had a lot of off time. On the other hand, all we really have to do between now and June is 14 spelling units (each unit takes 2 days), 3 chapters of astronomy, as much math as we can manage, and continue with our chumash work (plus our usual davening and parsha study). The astronomy and spelling are even semi-optional, so we're in really good shape.

And today they all had a piano lesson! Raizel was first, and so very excited. We did the first couple of pieces in the Faber primer, did some improvising on the black keys, and learned some keyboard geography (10 minutes!). Then Amirah had a lesson. We got through the first seven songs and she had a great time. She also played by ear some of the songs she's learned on recorder. Hooray! Then Eli had his lesson and he LOVED it! He reminded me so, so much of a student I had from age 4-11. AW looked a lot like Eli and was so very sweet and enthusiastic. And very talented, especially when it came to Bach. I just loved the fond flood of memories of former students as I taught them.

So... back to semi-normal tomorrow! :)

Savta

2011-05-26T00:39:00.002-04:00

Savta is coming! She has an offer in on a house 5 houses down from us on the same street. It has been beautifully fixed up and she could move right in. So we're anxiously waiting to hear if it's a go. :)

She was here for 12 days and we spent all 12 days inside, going not much of anywhere, taking care of sick kids. Amirah went down first (and needed some doctor intervention!), then the rest. Last to get it is Avi who started yesterday/today. Eli wasn't doing well at all for a couple of days then took a BIG turnaround when I used a powdered form of Mucinex that he can handle. (Liquid cough medicines don't agree with him at all...) So, that was a relief! I was afraid he was going to get as bad as Amirah, but no B"H.

So Savta got to just live life with us the whole time. Lots of laundry, dishes, and more laundry, and more dishes. A few stories. Pretty much just seeing us all at our worst and loving every minute of it anyway. :) And she quietly did more than her part and clean dishes magically appeared every day and she even guessed where everything went really well!!

In the beginning, while Amirah was sick, D and I were able to go out and get many errands done (including some secret birthday shopping trips!) and do some outside work. Despite not going anywhere, amazing things happened! The piano, the house, the fence delivery... It was a very full week, and very wonderful that it ended with Savta deciding to move here now while the kids were still little and could really grow up with her. Such a blessing!

So, stay tuned!

What a Day

2011-05-23T00:42:00.003-04:00

The morning was a long time ago! D and I did some work in the back yard, removing an old pond, chopping down some shrubbery, sledgehammering concrete, and starting to level out the back yard. We want to get it ready for our pool, which we could have really used today when it was in the high 90s! I've ordered a saltwater filter system for it, which will be great. No chlorine that is hard on eyes and swimsuits (and a dangerous chemical). Just plain old salt (salinity that is about 1/10th the salinity of the ocean), and copper to kill algae. You salt the pool once and you're DONE. You just need to replace water as it evaporates. Since the salt doesn't evaporate you don't have to replace it again. Here's hoping!

After lunch, we headed out to the bamboo test gardens (run by the University of GA extension services). D got lots of good information on bamboo and bananas. We want bamboo for a fence, for building garden structures, for weaving sukkah mats, and while we're at it why not do some art projects too? :) It was a really fun trip there.

Then we checked out a house with ima. Unfortunately, D sprained his ankle before he went in the house. :( I ran home for ice (one block!) and brought it to him. Ow. We went home after that. Ima looked at a couple more houses with her realtor. D went home and I took the kids to the lag b'omer barbecue at shul. I probably should have left Eli at home. I think it was a bit much for him. He felt much worse at the end of the day than he had in the beginning. Poor guy! It's been a rough 8 days with everyone sick. It's so much harder with each day not really having a MISSION to accomplish and everyone just trying to get rid of the bug. Keeping up with dishes, laundry, and other housekeeping as best we can. Not exactly a very lively life here right now! Oh, well... Soon, BE"H!

A GREAT History Lesson!

2011-05-21T23:44:00.001-04:00

This is a fantastic rebuttal to Obama's horrific speech...

Caveat Emptor!

2011-05-21T22:48:00.003-04:00

I took Amirah to the doctor on Friday afternoon after she got much worse and we came home with five medications for her. I rushed through the drive-through at the pharmacy and exclaimed at the very high bill ($110!), and the cashier said it was xyz medication, but I wasn't even sure what that was. I was in such a rush to get home so savta could meet the realtor and so I could go pick up Dean at work that I didn't pause to reflect on the bill.

Woe was me, since I quickly realized that the $60 medication was a topical analgesic for ear pain. I had been using tylenol and the doctor said ibuprofen would be more effective, so they dosed her with that at the doctor's office. (And ibuprofen worked just fine!) The $33 medication was albuterol and I had NEVER paid so much for albuterol in my life! We had paid for it many times when she was much younger since she a couple of years of asthma. The others were more normally priced - just some oral antibiotics and some antibiotics to go right in the ear. B"H I had turned down the spacer the doctor had prescribed for the inhalers. Very young children might need such a thing since they don't always keep their mouth closed after inhaling, but an eight-year-old????? I was very upset with all the prescriptions. They had been faxed directly to the pharmacy so I didn't even know what had been ordered, and at the drive-through I just didn't have the wherewithal to cross-examine everything.

After picking up DH, we decided to make a pit stop at the doctor's office to talk with her and to find out if all of these medications were really necessary. I talked through an intermediary who walked back and forth with our questions. She admitted the ear painkiller was unnecessary if we were getting enough relief with the ibuprofen, and she gave us a free sample of the albuterol (equal to the size that was prescribed). Unfortunately, once you walk out with prescriptions that's pretty much it - you can't return them. The total bill could have been $170. B"H by turning down the spacer it was "only" $140, but the depressing part is that it could have been $50 if I had been on my toes. Aargh. Lesson learned. I think I'll no longer have prescriptions faxed unless I review the list with the doctor first, and I'll certainly be extra careful before I drive away with them.

Shabbos was just at home. Everyone has some form of this bug, hopefully much more mildly than Amirah had it!! Poor savta, having come 3,000 miles just to spend time with all these sick, cooped-up kids. But we've had a good time regardless, and she's gotten to see (and help a TON!) with some of the vicissitudes and seeing us when we're not really at our best. I'm really hoping, please, Hashem, that we can get out to the bamboo test gardens tomorrow (we'd love to maybe see samples of ebony bamboo, something we're hoping to put near the sidewalk on the side of our house). We're also going to a look at a house that ima may be interested in buying, and then, PLEASE, HASHEM!, go to a lag b'omer barbecue at shul. We'll see!

Outside the Box

2011-05-19T16:51:00.002-04:00

D & I have been on an "outside the box" roll. We love figuring out new ways to use things (especially free or cheap things). So, two Home Depot trips ago we noticed these gigantic spools that hold bulk items like wire, chain, etc. The biggest of them (maybe a 3-foot circle) was exactly the perfect shape for a kids outdoor table! Or you could stack various sizes and make some kind of plant or seedling stand. Or you could put axles in them, use two of them, and make some kind of 4-wheeled vehicle. Or you could make stools. Or... :) So we put our names on a bunch of them and we should get a call when the spools are empty. That will be fun to play with and can join the rest of our (free) playground.

Last night, after celebrating Savta's birthday, we went out to some small town in Georgia and visited a man that sells junk. All kinds of great building junk, metal junk, wood junk. The best junk of all is very large fencing panels. Well, they're not actually fencing panels. They're Gulfstream packing crates for airplane tails and wings. They're made out of the pine heartwood (so the hardest part of the pine). Gulfstream used to just throw these in the garbage after opening the crates. They've been importing parts in from northern Europe. BUT (good news for Savannah), they're doing a huge ($500 million?) expansion in which they will no longer be bringing in those parts from overseas but manufacturing them right here. So the crates won't be available for much longer. Tonight, the wonderful junk man will be delivering all we need to do our side and backyard fences! Very exciting. And much, much (much!) cheaper than Home Depot.

But, wait, that's not all! They can also get a hold of 330-gallon liquid transport tanks that we can use for our tilapia growing tanks. They come with metal cages around them. Since they'll be in the front yard we have to think of a way to make them look, er, attractive. One way would be to plant something that vines and can take some shade. So, we'll see! We're going to start with just one for water collection and see if we can maintain a good water temperature for fish in it before we do the real thing with fish.

And then... they also had five-foot-tall translucent white containers that were maybe eighteen inches around. I just imagined it set up as a gigantic Japanese lantern by the front door, sitting just inside the garden, perhaps under our first water tank (which will up high so it has good water pressure). We could even rice-paper the inside (?), or paint the inside (?), or add a bamboo lid/cover (?), or ?. We're hoping to grow a lot of bamboo just outside our fence to use for garden structures, sukkah covers, or ? Dean is really interested in ebony bamboo, and he's figured out a way he could block it so it didn't invade the other side of the fence (i.e. our yard!). So... fun things to think about!

And the other good news... I FOUND A PIANO! A REAL PIANO! A piano that actually sounds very nice and has been taken care of. I'm the third owner. It's a Fischer piano, built in the 1970s. We're buying it from another piano teacher who was very nice to visit with. I'm beyond excited, having looked for a piano for about a year now (!). She also said when she first moved here she had a terrible time finding a piano. There just aren't that many available here. She said she's also had a hard time getting students. Much harder than where she lived in Kansas City. In Portland it was also easy to find students. I always had a waiting list and I often had to turn people down from the waiting list when I had ten waiting! But I also had a lot more exposure then, teaching 14 school classes every week. My studio location was also right at the school so it was very convenient for parents. It will be very interesting to see what happens when I decide to hang out my piano/recorder teaching shingle again!

I'm so excited. After excruciatingly doing all those choir/piano arrangements on a computer (easy if you an electronic keyboard hooked into the computer; SLOOOOOOOW if you don't!), it will be so nice to work at a piano. It also would have been nice to actually PRACTICE playing the pieces I was doing with the choir. I managed well enough, at least. I also really want to start Amirah on piano. It would have been nice to start at seven, but eight is still a good age to start. Nine starts to feel awfully late... I may even start Eli once I figure out how we're going to do Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 3rd grade without the day stretching out too long!

All right, time to go make Raizel's 5th birthday cake. Yum, yum. Chocolate. And beach picnic food, since we were supposed to go to the beach today. :( So turkey sandwiches, potato chips, salad. Happy Birthday, dear Raizel!

The Gardening Ropes

2011-05-15T22:20:00.002-04:00

Gardening in Georgia entails trying to rid myself of all the gardening patterns I ever learned in the West. None of those schedules apply here!! Planting time took us by surprise, and we didn't get starts going until April, when most of it needs to get going by January/February/March. Oops. It's only mid-May, but it's too late to plant anything but corn, sweet potatoes, and winter squash. I have whiplash. :) Of course, you can always run to Home Depot, eyeball the $3.88 per plant starts (OY) and give in to getting a couple of Japanese eggplants and a few $0.98 herbs so your herb spiral wasn't for naught. And some more-than-$3.88 salvia and primrose to bring in the bees. DH and I did have a lovely kid-less outing to Home Depot (thank you, Savta!) and got to relax and browse. We have heard rumors of $0.50 tomato starts at a local feed store and one can never have enough tomatoes, so we'll check that out tomorrow.

Now for the best news... we may have missed much of the spring planting opportunities, BUT in Georgia we get second chances! You can plant all of those delicious spring vegetables again... in August! And harvest them in October/November/December. There are two cycles of planting - February to May, and August to November. WEIRD! :) And there's probably only a month or so where NOTHING comes out of your garden. Just weird. So... this is our learning year and what a trial run. We've been having delicious salads, but I wish we had 10x the lettuce planted that we do now. The arugula is fantastic; definitely my favorite green. It's a good start, though. The tomatoes are coming along great, and there are little tiny baby cucumbers. Eggplants and peppers are moving along more slowly. Oh, yum. Such a joy after eating so much yucky, expensive produce that expires after 5 days. Wishing everyone a great week!

Quote of the Week

2011-05-12T00:04:00.000-04:00

Eli: So, you're 42, right mama?
Mama: Yes, Eli, I'm 42.
Eli: You're younger than papa?!!?
Mama: Yes, Eli.
Eli: When you turn 49 you will be a lady!

Performance!

2011-05-11T23:36:00.000-04:00

The girls did their performance tonight - five pieces from the choir and seven pieces from the recorder ensemble. A few hitches... When I got there, the keyboard was plugged into the sound system and it sounded HORRIBLE. Fortunately, necessity brings on ingenuity where none existed and I figured out how to fix it. Good thing we scheduled the rehearsal for 5:00, since we didn't get going until 5:30. Also, the air wasn't working and it was 90 degrees offstage, probably more under the stage lights. Phew! One sweaty performance. They did get it working, and by the end of the concert it was only 80ish on stage. Finally, after several iterations of the program had gone around, the recorder program ended up being utterly deleted. Not sure what happened there, but oh well. I might make my own to add to my own records. :)

The last glitch turned out great. The final recorder piece we were to play three times: 1) all recorders, 2) voice and barred instruments, and 3) recorder and barred instruments. When we got to #2, the voice people didn't transition to vocal parts quickly enough so they missed their entry. NO ONE was phased by this. The barred instruments went on with their parts and I signaled for them to do it again, and the voices came in and did their part. The same thing happened between the #2 version and #3 version, but it didn't matter. They pulled it off seamlessly anyway. I was so proud! Something like this, especially for beginners, can really throw you for a loop. They carried on as if it was supposed to be that way! Flexible thinkers. Improvisers. Excellent musical skills to have. Hooray!

Other than those things, everything went off without a hitch. Oh, wait, there was the little problem of having bifocals and no music stand on the keyboard. The music was lying flat in indirect light, so that was a little, um, challenging... But again, it all came out fine. Happy music teacher.

We have three more classes left before school is out, so we're going to spend them working on compositions and arranging them for the various instruments in the classroom. They're excited about that, and so am I!

Math, Math

2011-05-11T00:27:00.003-04:00

Still struggling a bit with math. I've been looking at lots of materials online for inspiration. One thing I have discovered - you can buy small sections of Math Mammoth to review specific concepts. We're doing GREAT on everything but math facts! I might go ahead and get the $5 Math Mammoth supplements for adding and subtracting (1 to 100) and place value. Between that, flashcards, and maybe locating some math fact (not-obnoxious!) music we could polish up our 2nd-grade skills. It's truly the only area of resistance there is right now and there has to be an answer for that somewhere.

It was a good day today. We had a tour of the airport with the local homeschoolers group. It was our first outing with them, and actually it was great. A Georgian secular homeschooling group is very different from an Oregonian one! Here, secular just means that we'll keep our religious beliefs mostly to ourselves. In Oregon, it meant (in my experience!) that you were in the midst of utter athesists and atheist ACTIVISTS. It was definitely not for us. So... this group will be great for the occasional field trip. Hooray. We got to see the airport fire truck and try on the firefighter clothes, and we mosied around the airport. The tour was a bit uninspired (lacking in information!), but we had fun with the fire truck.

After that, the day was so gorgeous we couldn't just go home for lunch and back to work, so we took our lunch to the park. We had changed into our swimsuits, hoping to splash in the water at the fountain. Unfortunately, they had blocked off all access to the water. :( Maybe it's permanent? There had been a lot of trouble keeping kids out of the pool part where the fountain mechanics were. I'm sure the fountain was subject to chronic damage from people trampling where they weren't supposed to. We were sad about not getting wet from where the water falls out below the fountain. Maybe it will be temporary. If not, next month they should have the spray fountains there up and running.

We got home just in time to clean up, get re-dressed, and have a recorder rehearsal for our concert tomorrow. The kids did great, and we're all excited about the concert - my first one in my new state!

Dean has started all kinds of new little seeds going inside over the last few days. He's been hauling dirt every day, and drawing up all kinds of homestead plans. He's having a great time. And so are the rest of us! Salads from our garden have been a huge hit with the kids. We're looking forward to planting the 5 beds that are ready for things to grow.

Time to rest up for another day. Get ready for Savta, do some learning, 5:00 rehearsal, and 6:30 concert. Should be fun!!

The Menu

2011-05-06T15:57:00.002-04:00

Wishing my kitchen had glimpses of loveliness, but instead IT'S A WRECK! But the food will be worth it. :)

For dinner, a Israeli-Spanish-American sort of theme...

challah
sangria
steak (the last of the 40% off meat!)
mashed potatoes and gravy
roasted asparagus
roasted bok choi
green salad with zaatar dressing
peach cake

and for lunch (throwing in Morrocan for good measure)...

fish cakes and aioli Worcestershire sauce
apricot chicken tagine
kishke
brown rice
Moroccan carrot salad
green salad with zaatar dressing
peach cake

Good shabbos, all! :)

Glimpses of Loveliness

2011-05-05T23:25:00.003-04:00

Today we had our weekly recorder class where we mostly just rehearsed the songs we are doing for our concert next week (shared with the choir). Even with only half of the eight students there, we managed a really nice rehearsal. There is one little piece I wrote for three recorder parts called "Shabbos." Even though each individual part is very simple, together the parts make for a really nice ensemble sound. Today they hit it. They hit the loveliness, the absolute sublimity that comes from total unison and perfection. Those fleeting glimpses we get of heaven that can appear when we make music together. It was so lovely, and they really got it too. They heard that moment. Lovely. I don't know if we'll hit it at the concert, but I don't think it really matters. They got it, and they understood what making music together can do. I'm a happy lady.

Then... I cuddled way past bedtime with Eli, then Amirah. Avi and Raizel had already fallen asleep during storytime (we started Kathryn Lasky's Lone Wolf tonight). Eli loves to talk about things he's interested in during the right before bed time. This is when you really realize that all those things he's absorbing during the day really stick for him. First he was telling me all about dry ice, and the temperatures on Mars, and how we would have to build a special ecosystem to live there, and how little he would weigh there, and the volcano that's there, and the meteor holes because Mars' atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's, and about how Hashem really did make Earth just right for us to live in. Then he moved on to coral reproduction and how coral is both male and female and they release eggs at night and how they serve as hosts to all kinds of sea life that depend on the coral to survive. He loves to chat right before sleep more than any other part of the day. It's a nice time to hear his thoughts.

Then cuddling with Amirah, who should have already been asleep, but how can I turn down my sweet girl? When it comes to cuddling, anyway. So we snuggled and talked for a little bit, and I tried to fix these moments into my mind so I can draw on them when I'm 12o, please Hashem! Hold onto the vocal inflections of my almost-six-year-old. Trace my almost-eight-year-old's soft profile in my head. Remember as many moments as I can. Such sweetness.

Good night!

Back to Normal...

2011-05-03T23:18:00.002-04:00

We had such a GREAT learning day today. We were back in our groove for the first time since pesach. Monday was okay, but today was really great. I got to everything I wanted to, other than wanting to have spent a little more time on Pirkei Avos.

We finished First Language Lessons yesterday (our grade 1 & 2 grammar book), and Amirah wanted to dive right in to Level 3. (Usually they can take a week of from the subject after completing a book, if they want to.) Over all, I really liked First Language Lessons (and get to start it with Eli soon!). I usually don't go for the scripted books (where teacher's instructional dialogue is written out), but this was easy enough to glance at the gist of the lesson and do it our way. The repetition of definitions, while the cause of some complaint, has really drilled the parts of speech into Amirah's head. Last week she couldn't identify parts of speech well at all, which surprised me, and I was worried we'd have to do a bunch of review, but yesterday she flew through it. Level 3 includes review of the parts of speech, so I think that will be good. We started Level 3, and after glancing through it, I think overall it's a better piece of work than Level 1/2. We'll see! We only have one more dictation left in Writing With Ease, then we'll be done with that too! It's nice to be finishing up a bunch of things!

Math, math. We're doing flashcards. Working to nail down our math facts. I think it's extra-important before we move on to 3rd-grade math, so I'll be postponing that until we've really got those down. We still have a bit to do in our 2nd-grade Saxon book. If we do 3 pages per day, we should finish at the end of June. Math is definitely her least-favorite subject, but there are so many wonderful things about math that I really hope we can enjoy it more after our facts become more automatic.

McGuffey Reader continues to get an A+ from us. Wonderful readaloud stories. I think there are only five or six more stories, then we'll start the third reader. We've been a little lackadaisical in getting to this... Maybe now that we're back in the swing of things. Her readaloud speed has increased a lot as we've gone through the book, and now she's reading at normal narration speed.

We did a triple history lesson today. The kids kept wanting to hear more and more. We read about the Reformation (the Lutherans) and the Counter Reformation (the Catholics), Queen Elizabeth, and Copernicus and Galileo (already favorite subjects of theirs). I want to find some good historical fiction for the Elizabethan age (any kosher suggestions, anyone????!?!?). Four chapters to go for history! And we'll be filling in the Jewish part of the Reformation/Counter Reformation/Elizabethan England. (The Elizabethan chapter will be quite short - Jews were exiled from England from 1290 to 1655, and only a very few actually lived there, and they were restricted to being money lenders or peddlars...)

We finished spelling around pesach time. We're on to Spelling C. She's a natural speller, so we don't need to spend too much time on this. We are starting to keep a list of words she tends to miss so we can polish up a little. And last, in astronomy, we're on to learning about Mars!

Chumash is going great. Her translation has gotten pretty quick, and she's usually able to translate about 80% of a pasuk the first time and master the vocabulary after three readings. It gets easier and easier (B"H!) for her. And we really ENJOY doing it together!!!! I'm starting to introduce an English Rashi here and there. I'm so grateful that she's enthusiastic now. She's also plugging away at Yesodot Halashon (working right now on this (m.) and this (f.) and these). She used to not like doing this very much either but she does it pretty happily now. We've not been doing Lashon Hatorah Beis (biblical grammar) very much, but we'll be getting back to it soon (BE"H).

Between Pesach and Shavuos, we always study Pirkei Avos (Sayings of the Fathers). I've kept our notebook from previous years, and each year we add more pages to it. We sing the songs we learned before, and add some new ones. We've read through the first chapter, but that's it, so I'm hoping to elaborate a little on the first chapter this week!

I just finished the attendance sheets we have to turn into Chatham County Schools, and we've officially had 170 days of "school." We're required to do 180, so we're almost there. We'll probably do another 33 days (our school year ends June 30), but at least I can stop turning in paperwork for a month!

That pretty much sums it up for now. Dean is taking the day tomorrow, and any day that he is home is a holiday. :) We'll be working on the garden, fine-tuning our new herb spiral, laying out the paths and preparing the dirt for planting. Once that's ready, we'd love to move on to preparing a (very) flat place in the back yard for the little above-ground pool we want to have there.

A few more things to do before sleep... Good night!

The Menu

2011-04-29T18:00:00.002-04:00

Ahhh... back to challah! :)

For dinner:

challah
lemon chicken (like we had for pesach!)
ratatouille
steamed broccoli
Swedish potato kugel (for kids)
anchovy onion potato something-or-other (for the grownups)
roasted cabbage with matzo meal and garlic
apple crisp

And for lunch:

some of the above, plus
green salad
beef barley stew
hamburgers (to replace the turkey deli meat that I was SURE was in the fridge until a few minutes ago!)
sorbet

Good shabbos, all!