Snapshots: This and That

Cubby turned The Predatory Princess into a pick-up truck, which he then conveniently left smack in the middle of the hallway.

Bill the Pony has been getting a lot of attention lately as the older boys have been working on training him, but I still appreciate good old Samson and his steadiness. So does Jack.

Pony training in the paddock.

It's rhubarb and asparagus season, hooray!

The children's latest game is setting up their dinosaur toys in various tableaus of carnage. This one was my favorite.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Book Talk: Classic Elementary Fiction

As I mentioned last week, "elementary fiction" is a giant category, so this is another sub-category of it. 

I don't know the actual definition of "classic," but since I now hear songs from my childhood on classic rock stations, I'm gonna go with anything published before I was born in 1979. 

These were some of the most fun books to share with my sons, since many were books I had read myself and loved. One of the lesser known pleasures of parenthood is sharing things with your children that were special to you when you were a child. And for a reader, those things are often books. Like so . . 

The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder--Without question, the most beloved of my childhood favorites. I let Cubby have my old set of them when he was about nine years old, and he's read them all many times already. Jack is getting into them now, too, although I have to read them to him still. One woman's opinion: The best of these is Farmer Boy (so much delicious-sounding food!), and the worst is The First Four Years.

Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink--Often compared to the Little House books, which I suppose is inevitable given that the main character is a young girl living in a frontier community.

The Children Who Stayed Alone by Bonnie Bess Worline--Yet another pioneer story about children, this one set on the plains. I clearly had a fascination for this genre as a child. This one has a brother and sister as the main characters.

Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare--And yes, another pioneer story, this one about a boy who is left alone and befriends a boy from the local native tribe. This author wrote several great books, but they'll appear on later lists for older kids.

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White--I have some mixed feelings about this book, just because anthropomorphizing animals is not a great idea for kids like mine who will be eating animals they know. But the appeal of the book is undeniable. It's funny and sweet, well-written, and an excellent read-aloud.

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley--I actually never read this book as a child, but my boys loved it. As has every other child I know who has read it. I know an unusually large number of children who have horses, which may have something to do with it, but the story in the book is just a good one, regardless of whether you're a horse person or not.

Bill says black stallions are overrated, and why hasn't anyone written a book about a buckskin pony yet?

Pooh's Library by A. A. Milne--This four-book set includes Winnie the Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young, and Now We Are Six. The first two are the stories on which the classic movie are based. The last two are collections of poetry. I actually like the poetry better than the stories. The poems are just so spot-on in their depiction of the experience of childhood. They're funny, and well-written, and very fun to read aloud. 

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling--Speaking of classic books made into Disney movies . . . My kids love this book. The book includes more than just the familiar story of Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves. There's one about a white seal, another about an elephant, and, my favorite, "Rikki Tikki Tavi," about a mongoose who saves a family from a pair of cobras.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin--Oh man, this is SUCH a great book. It's a mystery. The characters have to solve a puzzle, and the one who figures it out gets a big fortune. The main character is a precocious 13-year-old girl. The characters are just so well done, and the book is fantastically well-plotted. It's just fun to read, and almost impossible to guess the ending.

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George--An enduringly popular book for good reason: What kid doesn't dream about running away and living alone? There are a couple of sequels, which are entertaining, but not as good as this one.

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell--A sort of female equivalent of My Side of the Mountain. It's about a 12-year-old girl who is stranded on an island and has to survive alone.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett--This author wrote a few books I really liked as a kid, but I find most of them to be somewhat off-puttingly sentimental now. The Secret Garden is less so, and much her best book, in large part because Mary Lennox is so refreshingly stubborn. And, of course, there's Dickon, who is one of the greatest children's fiction characters of all time.

My own secret garden, cleverly hidden inside milk jugs.

Great Illustrated Classics, various titles--I suppose a real purist would insist on a kid waiting until he's old enough to read Dickens in the original versions, but honestly, most people never will. I certainly never did. However, this series of books offers a way for kids to enjoy the stories and characters of great classic literature without wading through 18-century language and verbosity. This is a really good option for books like The Swiss Family Robinson that have awesome stories for kids, but are really difficult for a modern young reader to wade through.

I think this list is long enough, so I'm going to leave it here and probably continue it next week.

What would you add to this list of classic elementary fiction?

Friday Food: A Steak Discovery

Friday 

Short version: Chile, cornbread

Long version: I had about a pound of uncooked ground beef left from the day before's hamburgers and an opened can of black beans that needed to be used. Sounds like chile to me. 

This was not New Mexico chile. This was more basic, Americanized chile, but, if I may be so bold as to say it, I nailed it.

I made ground-beef-and-bean chile awhile ago after my kids had it and loved it at our friends' house. The problem with children is that the first version of anything they eat and like is the way it must be forever more. This is why it's so important to start them off with things like, say, natural peanut butter instead of the sugar+palm oil kind (I did not do this and still regret it) or homemade macaroni and cheese instead of boxed. For my children, their Platonic ideal of chile will always be the chile they had at their friends' house, and the one I made last time was not like that.

They admitted this most recent version was pretty close to that, though, and they all had two bowls. So now I must write it down so I can remember what was in it.

Ground beef, onions, bell pepper, green garlic, one can of black beans, one jar of pinto beans, the juice and half the tomatoes from a big can of whole tomatoes diced, a jar of beef stock, pureed calabaza, cumin, red chile pepper, paprika, salt.

The pureed calabaza is the secret ingredient here. Both because my kids didn't know it was in there (sneaky Mom), and also because it both slightly sweetened and thickened the chile. The ready-made spice mixture my friend uses has both brown sugar and molasses in it, as well as masa to thicken, so the calabaza replaced both those things.

I simmered it almost two hours so the flavors were completely melded, and also left the top off for the last 45 minutes or so of simmering to thicken it some more. This made a very mild chile. I put out minced raw onions and green chile paste for those who wanted to make it a bit--or a lot--spicier. As well as grated cheese, because everyone likes cheese on chile.

The cornbread was this recipe for corn muffins I always use, except I spread it out in a 13"x9" Pyrex because I loathe cleaning my muffin tin. Also, I use yogurt+milk instead of buttermilk. It makes a very different sort of cornbread due to the fact that it uses corn flour rather than meal, and an equal amount of buttermilk (or yogurt). The resulting cornbread is more like a tangy cake. But not sweet.

Saturday

Short version: Carnitas-style pork, mashed potatoes, sauteed zucchini/tomatoes/onion, raw tomatoes

Long version: This I mostly made ahead of time, because we were at church until 5 p.m. So the pork was cooked and just needed to be fried; the potatoes were peeled and in chunks in water, waiting to be boiled and mashed; and the zucchini was cooked. Dinner was on the table half an hour after we got home.

Sunday

Short version: Steaks, rice, asparagus, raw cabbage, custard

Long version: I finally cleared the meat freezer out enough on top that I could reach down to the boxes on the bottom. And one of them was a box of steaks. Steak bonanza ahoy!

Two T-bones and one large ribeye. With the asparagus from the garden, it made for a very high-quality meal.

Who needs a steakhouse when my whole house is a steakhouse? Or something.

I way overcooked the custard, because I put it in the oven and then the whole family went for a ride around our ghost village. 

The older boys have been working a lot with Bill the Pony, and he is now safe for even Poppy to ride. I was pretty impressed at how far Bill has come from his first bucking bronco ride with Cubby. The boys have done a great job with him.

By the time we got back, the custard was definitely in the grainy overcooked stage, but it still all got eaten. Custard's good like that.

Monday

Short version: Leftover pork, rice, cucumbers

Long version: We ended up being at a sort of unexpected church service until 7 p.m., after being at school all day, so I just heated up the pork with barbecue sauce, heated up the leftover rice with butter, cut up a cucumber, and called it good.

Tuesday

Short version: Breakfast sausage links, cafeteria rolls, green peas, pureed calabaza, asparagus, random chicken patties

Long version: I had to work again, and sausage links cook quickly. The rolls and chicken patties were cafeteria lunch leftovers. The rolls are homemade and incredibly good. The chicken patties not so much, but the kids still like them, and they all got eaten.

Asparagus from the garden again. The nice thing about asparagus season is that since you can only harvest it for about six weeks in the spring before you have to let the spears grow into mature plants, you never get sick of it. At least, I don't.

Wednesday

Short version: Beef and bean tacos, leftovers, radishes

Long version: The lady who delivers commodities dropped off a giant box of mostly pantry things this day (I am absolutely overrun with spaghetti and boxed macaroni and cheese now), which randomly included a pound of ground beef. It's been awhile since I had cooked store ground beef, and I forgot how . . . wet it is. 

I browned that meat (and poured off the excess liquid--gross) and then added a can of rinsed black beans, a little already-cooked onion, half a can of tomatoes sitting in the refrigerator, salsa, cumin, garlic powder, and chile powder. 

The kids had that. A. and I finished the steak, mine in a salad.

Thursday

Short version: Top sirloin steaks, spaghetti with pesto, leftover calabaza and cabbage, raw cucumber

Long version: Yes, we will be eating a lot more steak now that I've found that box. Also, warmer weather is coming, and steak is relatively quick-cooking so it doesn't heat the kitchen up so much.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

T.T.: Powdered Pills

In my experience, a kid has to be around ten years old to really be able to successfully swallow a pill. I don't know why this is. Something about the fact that they can't chew it makes it seem impossible for them to swallow.

This is why children's medicine is always sold in liquid form, of course. But my kids have always hated children's medicine. And sometimes, we just don't have it. When we run out of things, we can't just run to the store to get them.

This is why I have more than once needed to give my kids a regular adult pill in a smaller quantity*. 

But then there's the swallowing issue. What to do?

I know! Because I learned from the MiL when Cubby was very small and needed a dose of Tylenol for a fever and we didn't have any in children's form.

What you do is, you cut your pill into half or quarters or whatever dosage you've figured is appropriate for the child, and then you powder it by crushing it with the flat bottom of a jar or glass.

Next, you scrape this powder into the jar or glass, and then add a spoonful of something like applesauce or yogurt. You want something that can be scooped up with a spoon. Because that's exactly what you're going to do. Mix the powder thoroughly into whatever food you chose, get all the mixture onto the spoon, and feed it to the child needing the medicine.

Done. 

I don't have a photo of a powdered pill. It wouldn't be a very interesting photo, anyway, so here's a much better photo of the surprise lamb A. found in the pasture Sunday afternoon.

No pills needed for this healthy little boy.

* Obviously, I am not a doctor, and I am not going to give advice on dosing even over-the-counter stuff. But it's pretty easy to find dosages for different medicines by weight online and figure it out from there based on the milligrams or whatever listed on the medicine's package.

Snapshots: Easter, Garlic, Bubbles, and Animals

Some fine randomness for you this week.

I hid the Easter eggs last week by the light of a setting full moon.

Dramatic, but definitely more Halloween than Easter.

First Breakfast on Easter was deviled eggs made from the retrieved eggs, but Second Breakfast was chocolate from the baskets found after church. 

My hands smell like garlic all the time now, as I am constantly harvesting and chopping the green garlic from the pasture.

The chains for the fan and light on Poppy's bedroom fixture broke off too short to be easily reachable, and I discovered it is possible to buy replacement chains with dragonflies and butterflies on the bottom. This makes me happy every time I use them. Poppy loves them, too.

 

Fun with dish soap and a piece of PVC pipe.

A bull at sunrise in some uncharacteristically dull light, thanks to the hellish winds that have been blowing dirt all over the place. Also smoke from various fires, which is very much Not Good (although not endangering our house at the moment).

Hungry sheep waiting for morning hay . . .

Which was not long in coming. Those two on the left are the smart ones who discovered a whole other flake that the others ignored in favor of fighting over the first one I threw over the fence.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Book Talk: Elementary Fiction--Fantasy and Fairy Tales

Elementary fiction is a rather ridiculously large category. As we discussed last week, "elementary" spans a big range of ages and reading levels. And "fiction" has so many sub-categories, you could drive yourself crazy trying to classify everything.

So I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to highlight a few more-specific categories of fiction first, and then have a more general list later.

I'm starting with fantasy because that is a HUGE segment of fiction now. I noticed this when I was looking at books for our elementary library. I was never a fan of the fantasy genre, but I really didn't remember them being such a big part of fiction for kids. A. does like fantasy, so I asked him about it, and he said he had noticed something similar. 

My theory is that fantasy is a "safe" genre for children's adventure stories now. The authors can send their characters on these highly entertaining adventures that are entertaining precisely because they are dangerous. But the danger is okay, because it's not real. It's not so upsetting if it's, say, a dragon getting killed rather than a beloved dog, because no kid has ever had a dragon.

I have one kid who is Very Into fantasy, so we tried a lot of books in this category. These are the ones that the other kid who is not so into fantasy read, too, which I take as an endorsement. Almost all of these are series, which is great if you have a voracious reader. 

Most of these are meant for the older end of the "elementary" spectrum. I would say mostly grades 3-6.

Full disclosure: I haven't personally read most of these, because, as I mentioned above, fantasy is not my favorite.

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling--People have many, many opinions about Harry Potter. Criticisms may be valid, but so is the praise. It's just an incredibly imagined, carefully plotted series of books, with the whole arc of an epic adventure that makes for a satisfying story. It is also very satisfying for kids to read these giant books--and so many of them! Especially for what are generally termed "reluctant readers," finishing something like this series leads to a great feeling of pride, and might very well overcome that self-identification some kids have of being "not readers." 

Our set was given to me by my mother when the whole series was first released all together in hardcover. I think I was in college. They now live on top of the bookcases on my son's desk, very appropriately topped by these gargoyle bookends he received for Christmas.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins--By the same author as The Hunger Games series, but this series is geared toward a slightly younger audience. I have read these, and I thought they were fantastic books for kids. Very well-written and entertaining on the surface, but with some impressively sophisticated themes under that entertaining surface. I don't necessarily agree with all of the author's ideas, but within reason, I think it's healthy to sometimes read things that don't reinforce my own views. If you're into reading the same books as your kids and having discussions about those books, this would be a good series for that.

Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland--This is one of those never-ending series of what I suspect is kind of boilerplate characters and plots. They're pushed hard by Scholastic, which always makes me wary, but my older boys love them. I haven't read them, but have glanced through them and I would say the writing isn't great, but the story seems to be captivating. Despite the simplistic writing that seems more appropriate for younger readers, there is quite a lot of dragon violence in them. This doesn't bother my boys at all, but is something to keep in mind if you have sensitive readers. 

City of Orphans Trilogy by Catherine Jinks--I'm not sure how we ended up with this series, though I don't think I would have bought it myself if I had looked into it very closely. The story sounds frankly creepy. It's about children who work as Boglers in Victorian London. Boglers catch Bogles, which are monsters that, um, eat children. Yeah. However! The writing seems pretty good (again, haven't read them myself), and it's an original setting and period for a modern children's series. My older boys loved them and still re-read them, but be aware that the premise might be too much for some kids.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis--I had one child who LOVED these books, and one who didn't so much. They can be found in almost every library system--or even school library--so it's worth letting your kids read it and see what they think.

And in the fairy tale category . . .

The Castle Corona by Sharon Creech--My boys have re-read this book many times. They haven't much liked the other books by this author, but there's something about this one that they really loved. It's a fairy tale, but not so much in the vein of, say, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. There are multiple characters' viewpoints represented, and the story is not driven by romance, which pleases my romance-averse boys. 

Beauty by Robin McKinley--My older sister is a huge Robin McKinley fan, and although I was introduced to many authors by my sister whom I still read, I have never cared for Robin McKinley. Except for this book. It's a re-telling of Beauty and the Beast, and I just love it. It's very well-written. The characterization and relationships between characters are great. If you have elementary kids at a higher reading level who want to read more complicated books, but still need content that isn't inappropriate for them, this would be a good candidate. (I will be unforgivably old-fashioned here and say that those kids will probably be girls. Not that boys won't read it, but more girls will probably love it. Because of that romance thing again. As a general rule, stories featuring romance are not so appealing to young boys.)

What would you add to this list of elementary fantasy and fairy tales?

Friday Food: Ram, Deer, and Tripe

Friday 

Short version: Shrimp, tuna salad, spaghetti with pesto, raw cucumber, pureed calabaza

Long version: Last meatless Friday for Lent, better use the two pounds of shrimp I have in the freezer! They were already peeled and de-veined (ALLELUIA), so I just sauteed them in butter, then added a cube of frozen pesto at the end. Happy Cubby. And A.

I still have at least three meals' worth of pesto cubes in the freezer from last summer. That should last us until I harvest this year's basil. Very pleasing.

Saturday

Short version: Dad's chile, bunless hamburgers, leftovers, watermelon radish

Long version: A few months ago, Rafael brought us a bunch of deer pieces that he had salvaged from someone he knew who shot a deer. Rafael has this tendency to bring us these pieces of random meat, just so they don't get thrown to dogs.

Our dogs ended up getting some of it, though, when I put it on top of the freezer until I could make room for it, and they got to it before I did. Whoops. 

They only got one of the bags, though. So I stuck the other bag in the freezer until I felt sufficiently motivated to deal with it.

That took awhile. I finally pulled that meat out of the freezer, though, and dealt with it.

The way I did that was dump it out of the garbage bag it was classily wrapped in directly into my pressure canner. Then I covered the meat--it was the ribs--with water. And then I picked out the hairs and grass that floated to the surface of the water.

You can see why it took me awhile to find the motivation to cook this.

After removing the visible detritus from the deer meat, I added a package of tripe to the pot. A. requested I use that instead of the other package of pigs' feet that was in the freezer. Good call, since the "use by" date on that tripe was, um, three years ago.

So the venison and tripe were pressure-cooked for an hour, at which point I pulled all the bones out of the pot, added a chopped onion, a ton of chopped green garlic, a can of tomato sauce, and about 1/3 cup of minced roasted green chiles. And some cumin and salt. And a bag of posole (hominy) that's probably been in the freezer as long as the tripe.

I cooked all that for about four hours, until the hominy was soft and it was WOAH TOO SPICY. For me, anyway. It was fine for A.

I had a bit of uncooked hamburger from when I made the meatloaf a few days prior and the center of the meat still hadn't thawed in time for mixing the meatloaf. I made four small hamburgers from that, and half the kids had those. The other half had leftover meatloaf. All had leftover spaghetti with pesto and the biggest watermelon radish ever. 

I had ordered a one-pound bag of watermelon radishes from Misfits Market, and what came was one radish that was one pound all by itself. It was so big, I thought it was a turnip at first. The kids loved it and ate the whole thing. I wish I could tell them I'll grow them, but radishes don't do well here. It gets too hot, too fast for them.

Sunday

Short version: Easter lamb, sourdough pita bread, tomatoes and cucumbers, carrot cake (with pecan flour)

Long version: This was one of the boneless leg roasts from the ram we butchered a few months ago. We actually cut the boneless legs in half, because none of us particularly care for leftover lamb so smaller is better. I covered it in green garlic paste I had made the day before with a whole row of the dry-land green garlic in the pasture (meaning A. never waters those plants--they survived on the very little rain or snow we've gotten).

Green garlic paste is just pureed green garlic and olive oil, and it is the most vibrant green ever.

Spring in a food processor.

I made the sourdough pita using this recipe again, and have finally learned that the skillet they're cooked in needs to be wiped out with a damp cloth between each batch to get the loose flour out of the pan. In this way, I cooked pita on the stove without setting off the smoke alarm once. Yay me!

Yogurt sauce with lemon juice, more green garlic, salt, and pepper, plus cucumbers and tomatoes from Misfits Market and . . .

Happy Easter!

I decided last-minute to make carrot cake for dessert, mostly because everyone had more than enough chocolate in their Easter baskets. I used this recipe, but only made half for a one-layer cake. Good call, because most of the children weren't huge fans. They all liked the cake part--most remarked it tasted like zucchini bread--but not the frosting. Which is really weird, because I think cream cheese frosting is the best part of carrot cake. Although the cake part was good, too.

Anyway, I did have some very appropriate chocolate and hazelnut candies I had purchased for the Easter baskets but ended up using for cake decoration.

Probably could have arranged them more artistically, but whatever.

The recipe had the option of raisins (in a cake? no way) and chopped walnuts. I was going to forgo the nuts, but then Cubby decided to crack a bunch of the pecans we still have hanging around, and then use my very underused molcajete to grind them into a flour. So I used that in the cake.

It took him almost an hour to end up with half a cup of ground pecans. All hail pre-shelled nuts and the food processor.

Monday

Short version: Rooster and split pea curry, rice, carrot sticks, raw fennel

Long version: I still had three roosters in the freezer, so I took one out and simmered it to make stock and get the meat off. I used the curry powder left from dying eggs (I always drain the water off the spices and save the sludgy spices for cooking) to make curried split peas. It's just yellow split peas, sauteed onion, chicken stock, salt, curry powder, and sour cream at the end.

After pulling the chicken into pieces, I mixed it with some of the curried split peas. This was surprisingly popular with the children, all of whom ate two servings.

Tuesday

Short version: Polish sausage, leftovers

Long version: I had to work, so I decided it was a good night for quick-cooking sausage. I bought this sausage last month at a Walmart about a hundred miles away. It didn't have any weird ingredients and was from a family-owned business in San Antonio, Texas, so I had high hopes.

It was, indeed, very good sausage. I loved it. Everyone else did not. I guess they really just like Italian sausage. They mostly had leftover lamb, rice, and curried split peas. And there was actually enough sausage left for me to bring it for lunch at work the next day. Silver lining.

Wednesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, leftovers, fruit shake, and a restaurant

Long version: I went to the Junior/Senior banquet for school, so I fed the kids after I got home from work and before I went to the banquet. Three had the scrambled eggs in corn tortillas with cheese and salsa, plus curried split peas. One had lamb, curried split peas, and a piece of bread and butter. All of them had the fruit shake.

I don't like the word "smoothie." It just sounds unappealing to me. I call them fruit shakes, because then it sounds more like milkshake. Right? Right. Anyway, it was 83 degrees and I had a ton of yogurt on hand, so a fruit shake seemed like a good idea. This one had two pears that were sweet but never got soft when they ripened, frozen peaches and blueberries, honey, yogurt, and milk. I think this is the first time I have ever served a fruit shake with dinner. The children were pleased.

A. had more of his never-ending venison and tripe chile. 

I had brisket, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a brownie with ice cream at the restaurant that hosted the banquet. Yum.

Thursday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, potato soup, sauteed zucchini, raw cabbage

Long version: It was in the eighties again, and therefore not exactly soup weather, but I had half a gallon of  stock left from cooking the rooster on Monday. So. Potatoes, carrots, bacon, onion, milk, sour cream, immersion blender . . . soup.

I put the sliced zucchini right into the pan with the cheeseburgers, along with some chopped green garlic, and it was very good. The children did not agree. They had the raw cabbage.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?