This weekend's work

Some weekends I am really on top of things and get a lot of good food prep done.  This was one of those weekends.  I will recap for the sake of offering suggestions and encouragement to others and to remind myself of what things work for me.

The first good news is that the gluten free mix I make myself and store worked wonderfully in our standby pancake recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook that is a tradition in our family.  This good news goes perfectly with the other good news which is that I found and used the griddle attachment to our stove top which has been sitting in the garage since we moved in two years ago.  (You know some of those pancakes went to the freezer for after school snacks during the week)  To continue with the gluten-free theme, my daughter made a batch of iced cookies that just really hit the spot, and now we are both so excited to continue experimenting with our homemade flour mix in other dessert items.

So I got out my biggest pot, bought a 105oz (or so) can of tomatoes, an almost ridiculous amount of tomato paste, and 4 pounds of ground beef.  I stirred a pot of tomato sauce for a few hours on Saturday to achieve 4 portions of meat sauce for the freezer. Some for lasagna and some for spaghetti dinner.  I'm really excited about those.  That was a lot of meat sauce.

Another exciting adventure was making yogurt with one of my daughters Friday night.  It was a success and we are all enjoying the yummy yogurt even though it is not very thick.  I hear this is a common issue in homemade yogurt. Still working on that one.

To continue, I boiled and shredded a chicken breast to be dressed up and used for lunches, stocked up on fruits, veggies, and a few obligatory salty snack foods for the kids' lunches this week. 

I found a few recipes for the crockpot and made one of them.  It was a sesame chicken recipe that turned out kind of plain.  No one is going to ask for it again, but in a bind I could use it.

That's a lot of cooking and food handling.  Throw in a trip to Costco and Safeway, and we should be good for a while!  Tonight, Monday, there will be leftovers from the not-so-great sesame chicken plus some leftovers from the lunch restaurant we ate at.

Kindy Science getting done/file folders

I've made a goal this year to do one experiment a week with my kindergartner.  I used the great book More Mudpies to Magnets as a starting point.  The experiments are simple and give the parent and child an ideal environment in which to use science terms and to share scientific ideas.  Because I'm using a file folder system (I got my ideas from here and here) I am able to print out the experiments that interest me and just tuck them into week after week of folders in our large box.  Bam, I've just done all the hard part (planning ahead), and all I need to do is make sure to actually do the experiment each week with my little one which shouldn't be so hard since that's kind of the idea of homeschooling.  Since all the details are at my fingertips, I can easily plan ahead for any materials or things I need to have on hand.

Here's today's making playdo activity. The book guides you to use science specific vocabulary as you describe the activity.  She got her hands in the flour and salt, poured the liquids herself, and felt how sticky the dough was.  Great fun.
 

 

And this is a snap of the file box I have for the Kindergartner.  I have a separate one for my 4th grader where I file sheets I want her to complete each week.  There are all sorts of great uses for this method of filing!