Learning two Cook for Two: A Victory!

Prior to last week, my blog friends, the only way I'd ever cooked pork chops was by baking them. This is not a bad way to do it (one of last autumn's best meals was pork chops baked in cranberry sauce with a baked potato on the side), but I have just tried out something new for me, although probably not for many of you. Emboldened by the wonderful instructions in the Joy of Cooking, I decided to try cooking the chops on the stove top. Melting a bit of butter and olive oil in a frying pan, I cooked the chops (salted and peppered to taste) on high for a minute each side. Then I turned the heat to low (temporarily removing the pan from the burner, as my electric stove takes a bit to actually change temperature) and cooked them, covered, for five minutes on each side. I removed them to a warm plate and made gravy with the left over pan juices...flour, milk, 'til thick. This stuff was goooooood, folks! The pork was moist and tender, the gravy warm and comforting.

While the chops were cooking their five minutes per side, I threw together the zucchini side dish. I chopped the zucchini ahead of time and then sauteed it with olive oil and garlic. Onion is supposed to be in this dish too, but we were out. Part way through the cooking I added corn, heated it up, and then added freshly chopped basil leaves. This was also good (how can zucchini and basil be otherwise?!), but I rather wish I'd used a larger pan. I picked one that was too small and the zucchini didn't saute evenly. Oh, well... there's always a next time. :)

Cantaloupe rounded out the meal...and was the only thing that we had left-overs of. Hurrah! Left overs are not bad, but when you're *still* getting used to cooking for two, it's nice to have a meal with no left overs!

So. I am a fan of this way of cooking chops and don't know that I'll be able to go back to baking them. They just went on sale for .98/lb at one of our local grocery stores, so I've stocked up the freezer. A meat meal that good taking twenty minutes from start to finish is just fabulous. Strider loved it ~ and since he asked three months into wedded life if we could please try to have more meat with our meals, this seems like just the perfect sort of meal for that wish.

Still working on the bedroom

So, on that rearranging project... I changed the cushion cover on the wicker chair- I already had this vintage pillow cover on some hideous old crocheted throw pillows on the cedar trunk in my room. I just took that cover and put it over the wicker chair chair cushion (and put the hideous crocheted throw pillows in my closet while I decide what to do with them).

We do school a lot in my room.  The Cherub takes the wicker chair.  The FYG spreads out on the loveseat, and the FYB prefers the green rug on the floor.  I take the bed.=)
Small bookcase to the right- walnut wood, handmade by my grandfather in shop class or something like it- when he was young, anyway.  That makes it about a hundred years old.  One really cool thing about it is that the draw opens from the front or back- there really is no 'back,' the book-case is the same on either side.  So you can turn it so it is perpendicular to the wall, put it between two chairs, and open the draw from either side of the shelf.

Here's a closer look at the cushion:

I don't know if you can tell or not, but the flowers on the cushion on the wicker chair are violets.  Pink violets. It's quite possible they once were purple but the this hand embroidered pillow cover is so ancient and has been through so many washes that it's faded to a more pinkish-red color than true violet.
The FYB made me the pillow on the loveseat, but I decided it didn't quite strike the right note here, so...

I moved both the rose pillows to the cedar trunk at the foot of my bed.  My quilt (handmade by lovely ladies who love me) can handle any competition.

That stuffed camel?  Strider gave it to us when he asked for the HG's hand in marriage.

Yah- I think the loveseat looks better without the pillow, and I like this cushion cover here.

NOT for Arachnophobics!

Updated to fix the missing pictures.  They were here- but I tried Blogger's "Jump break" button, and it didn't work.

Seriously. If you freaked out by spiders, do not look at the rest of this post.


I really, really mean it.


You do NOT want to look and see what the FYG found in the mudroom while she was cleaning.


I did not want to look either, but since she took the time to photograph this speciman before exterminating it, I thought I should look.


And then, of course, I had to share it with you.


But you've now been warned, and I've tried my best to protect you. Proceed at your own risk...

Yummy Breakfast

Sunset Ideas & Recipes for Breakfast and Brunch

Cottage Cheese Pancakes
You make these in a blender and then you pour the batter right out of the blender onto the griddle so you have fewer dirty dishes to clean after breakfast. Very, very tasty pancakes.

3 eggs
1 cup small-curd cottage cheese
2 Tablespoons oil
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup applesauce (add ground cinnamon and nutmeg if desired)


Break eggs into blender, add cottage cheese. Blend until well mixed, add oil, flour, and salt and blend until nearly smooth (this doesn't take long, about a minute at most).
Pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto a hot, oiled gridddle. Cook just until there are bubbles on the top and the top is dry, flip and brown other side.

Serve with pancake syrup, or warm applesauce (you can serve them like crepes, spoon warm applesauce down the center and roll), sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon, top rolled, applesauce filled pancakes with sour cream if you like (I preferred syrup, and these are rich enough they did not need butter).

This makes about 8 pancakes. We doubled it and a double batch fit in the blender.

We had it with an egg casserole as we had some extras for breakfast this morning.

LInked at Beauty and Bedlam's Tasty Tuesdays, where you will find other delicious recipes, and this week your hostess wishes to know the weirdest thing you have ever eaten.

Reposted at The Common Kitchen

Making a Game of It

Don't miss our book giveaway!!
Previously

As Joyce finishes setting her hot cake on a 'cake cooler,' (which I presume is a cooling rack) Mrs. Powers suggests she run upstairs and wipe up the bathroom tiles as well, as her son left pools of water on the floor when he bathes earlier that morning. Joyce's are 'bits of blue ice.' But she bites back her unhumble, ungentle words and decides not to walk off the job in a huff.

"Why not" she asks herself, "Make a game of it, something that had to be overcome and won?"
And so she does. Making a game of it is an excellent way to gain a new approach on old problems as well as new ones.

She tells Mrs. Powers she will do her best if she has time, and then reminds her that she is wishing for a position as a teacher next fall and Mr. Powers is on the school board, and Mrs. Powers is supposed to be putting in a good word for her. She does this as a subtle way of reminding Mrs. Powers that she is not an ordinary servant, but a lady. Mrs. Powers stares at Joyce "as if suddenly some ribbon or powder puff or bit of lace she had been using had risen up and claimed a personality..." and she says any recommendation from her will depend on whether or not Joyce does a good job, something she is clearly doubtful of. Joyce recognizes that Mrs. Powers has no intention of telling her husband that he should consider Joyce's application to teach at his school.

On that pronouncement, Mrs. Powers leaves to pick up her out of state guests from the train station. Joyce is near tears and in despair, wondering if she made a mistake in taking the job, but decides to finish what she started. She frosts the cake, gives the bathroom a quick wipe of the floor and brief tidying (it needs serious cleaning, she feels, but she's not the one to do that job), then she shells peas and scrapes potatoes. She diced a stalk of celery and stuffs the tomatoes with celery and chopped English walnuts, because that will look prettier. The lettuce goes into salt water (not sure why). For the next hour she rushes 'from table to range and from refrigerator back to the kitchen," and then all over again.


She gets the biscuits in the oven and potatoes and peas 'bubbling gaily on the stove,' chops in the broiler, and sets the table. Since biscuits only take ten to fifteen minutes (at most) to bake, she must have set the table in five minutes.


Mrs. Powers returns with the guest from the train station and sees the

'orderly row of salad plates, daintily and appetizingly arrayed on the kitchen side table, and caught a glimpse of the two cakes in the pantry window smooth and glistening in deep frosting.'

Oh, what vistas- a kitchen with a 'side table' (well, you'd need one when your kitchen has few cupboards and fewer counters), and a pantry large enough for a window!


But back to the book...She had asked Joyce to set the table with the rose napkins, which Joyce tells her are not where she said they'd be. Mrs. P realizes that they must not have been sent to the laundry after all, and says Joyce will just have to take them down to the laundry and rub them out. She'll have to iron them dry.


Joyce runs down to the cellar where,

'with a quick turn of the faucets and a fling of soap she... rubs out the napkins and gets them soaking while she finds the iron and gets it heating, then dashes up stairs to turn the lights under the vegetables down and back down again for the napkins.'

There are sweet potatoes, too, browning in a sugar bath, and the olives, ice water, and cream of the coffee, not to mention putting on the clean white apron for serving.


And with all that, dinner is precisely on time.


Will Mrs. Powers be pleased? Will Joyce get the teaching job? Will there be any more delectable cooking and making-do stories?


From Not Under the Law, by Grace Livingston Hill

Saturday Review of Books

It's up, and it's good reading.  Pay a visit, leave a link to a book review post of your own.

Notes from The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition) (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

Pollan points out that the governtment subsidies on crops artifically skew our our food supply, as it depresses prices of corn and soy products (and also, I think sugar) artificially.  Essentially, this is a problem in my view because it's not a free market (and note well, I don't know when we last had a free market economy- it's certainly not been for at least a dozen decades).

This is why when you go to the store, junk like chips, packaged bakery products, and crackers seem like a better buy per ounce than good stuff like apples, berries, peppers, carrots, and eggplant.  Those foods do not get government subsidies to offset their prices to the consumer (or to the grower).  Pollan says that before the 1970s government policy was designed to support small farmers, not agribusiness, but I think that's wishful thinking.  Any government regulation automatically plays into the hands of larger businesses, not small cottage industries, whether that cottage industry is making baby booties or growing broccoli or pears.

He claims that in the 1930s the government's involvement 'protected consumers from having to pay too much for food' and it protected farmers.  But I disagree.  I think it led directly to the problems we have now.  Pollan's concerns are with which people the government subsidizes, that's all. My issues are with government subsidies, period.

In the 1930s the government's involvement skewed the market and influenced farmers as the government paid farmers NOT to grow foods.


"Big agribusiness corporations... " helped write laws "that set farm policy ...." complains Pollan,  and this is a problem, we both agree.  But unlike Michael, I do not think politicians are any purer than the businessmen who work for big agribusiness corporations.  This isn't an evil inherent in agribusiness or the corporate world. This is the nature of bureaucracy and government intrusion.

If the government stayed out in the first place, permitting farmers and their own customers decide what to buy and sell, then there would no excuse for big agribusiness corporations to get involved.

Fingerplays with the Dread Pirate Roberts

The Dread Pirate Grasshopper will be one in a couple of months. Hard to believe, especially since his mama was one just last year, or that is how it feels.=)

These are the finger plays and action songs he enjoys (he doesn't do all the actions, he just likes to watch and do some of the actions:

The itsy bitsy spider
The Wheels on the bus (loves this one, and does his hands 'round and round')
The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock
In a cabin in the woods

Fingerplays:
This is like this little piggy, but it goes:
This little froggy broke his toe
This little froggy said, "Oh, NO!"
This little froggy cried and was sad.
This little froggy laughed and was glad.
But this little froggy was kind and good, and hopped to the doctor's as quick as he could.

Grandma's glasses:
Here are grandma's glasses (make glasses on face)
Here is grandma's cap (put hands on head)
This is how she folds her hands (fold hands)
and puts them in her lap (obvious)

These are grandpa's glasses (same as above, perhaps a big bigger)
This is grandpa's hat (grandpa's hat in my version is a tophat)
This is how he folds his arms-
Just
Like
That.

The Beehive:
Make a fist and say "Here is the beehive"
Look around as though looking for something and say, "But where are the bees?"
Cover one fist with open palm of other hand: "Hidden away, where nobody sees" (I whisper this one)
Watch, and you'll see them come out of the hive: (open fingers one by one as you count)
One
two
three
four
five
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! (tickle baby)

Around and 'Round-

This is another tickle game. There are two varations. As you say them you trace your finger around and 'round either baby's tummy or the palm of his hand (the palm works better for children about age 2), and then you tickle them either under the arm or under the chin:

Around and round the garden (or haystack)
Ran the little bear (or mouse)
One step, two steps (walk your fingers up the baby's arm if you are using the palm of his hand, or up his front if you are using his belly)
tickle under there! (or straight into his house!)

What are your favorite fingerplays or action songs with the little people in your life?

Book Giveaway!!!

 And the winners are...!

I have five extra copies (each) of this very good book, given to me by Thomas Nelson expressly so I could pay the shipping myself to pass them on to you, my dear readers:

Friendship for Grown-Ups: What I Missed and Learned Along the Way by Lisa Whelchel (I really liked this book, and I really expected not to be very thrilled with it)- not to be mean or harsh, but previously, what little I have read by Lisa Whelchel has been okay, but not very much 'there there,' if that makes sense.  I had a sense of something lacking, although I couldn't have told you what.  In this book, Lisa explains what was missing, and she explains how to develop friendships and how to be a friend.  It's both very practical and very poignant.  There's a sense of vulnerability here that really touched me. In fact, Thomas Nelson gave me six books, and I planned to give them all away, but I am keeping a copy for me to read again.  It's good stuff.  I blogged about it when I read it.
I think the book could make a great book club read for a small group. 

To enter the drawing, here are some things you can do:


Be a pal.  Go here, read the post, and then leave a comment there telling me whether or not you think I should paint the white wicker chair, and if so, what color.  I have NOT made up my mind this time.=)


Pass along a link to this giveaway or any blog post of mine you liked via twitter or facebook (leave me a note here telling me you did and where to find it)


Leave a comment here telling me why you would like to win this book OR something fun you like to do with your friends


If you have a blog, link back to this post on your blog (let me know you did so I can credit you with an entry)


Best wishes!!  


I'll draw the winner's name Friday, August Sixth

This post linked at Look What Mom Found (and Dad), with other cool giveaways!

LInks and Thinks, July 30

Did the Coast Guard response cause the worst parts of the Gulf Oil Spill?

Ooops. The President's recent hard luck story of a woman who is living proof that we need to extend unemployment benefits is, um, not so good an example. Leslie Macko's criminal history of fraud might have more to do with her lack of employment than the general job market.

Charlie Rangel fights ethics charges with some real tone deaf ethically dubious assistance.

How many 'defining moments' can the Obama administration have? Jim Geraghty wants to know.

This fill in the blank news gatherer would be a fun school assignment- somebody needs to make up a fill in the blank section for the Republican party, too.

The NEA apparently read WND. Who knew? At any rate they scrubbed a note which included the establishment of Communist China as part of a celebrate diversity calendar. They still recommend their members read Rules for Radicals, however.

Anne McElhinney:

“So when my husband and I came to America, we heard a story about conservatives. We heard that these conservatives are a really really weird lot. Nutjobs, basically. And these conservatives, they’re obsessed with sex. They’re obsessed with sex and they’re obsessed with what you’re doing in your bedroom. It’s all they think about. They’re just constantly worrying about what you’re up to in your bedroom.

But you know something? Since we’ve moved here, we haven’t found that. But what we have found is that liberals, are in every other room in your house. They’re in the fridge. They’re in your car. They’re in your air miles. They’re in your clothes. They’re in your hair. They’re in your cleaning products, and your washing machine and the refrigerator. They’re all over the place! And they’re in your light bulb! And I want to say them .. This is America! Get out of my light bulb!!”

Isn't that sad? Keep in mind that yes, the left is everywhere- in your fridge, in your decisions about whether or not to buy a Happy Meal once a year for your kids, in your clothes, and hair- in your books, and they want to control what you listen to as well. And compare this to what John Holt was able to honestly say to his fellow Mother Earth News readers in 1980:

Many of you folks who read this magazine believe--and with good reason--that government interferes too much in our lives. Well, I think that there is no place where this interference is less justified, more harmful, and more easily resisted than in the education of children. So it would seem to me that those who want to minimize the power the government has over their lives would find the area of their youngsters' learning to be the first place where they'd want to work toward that goal.

Shirley Sherrod says she's going to sue Breitbart, which should be fascinating, and continues to lie about Fox News having anything to do with getting her fired.


Oh, come on. I liked that the President told The View he did not know who Snooki is (I don't know who she is, either). But apparently he even lies about something as stupid as that? He actually named her in one of his jokes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Okay, No. I mean, yes, he did, and it's a contradiction, but I think what is far more likely is that he didn't know who she was (except this White House is obsessed with Hollywood), even when he named her in that joke- he didn't write the joke, he just read it off the teleprompter. And even if he asked his script writers who she was at the time, there's no reason he should remember that. I give him a pass on this silly controversy.

But he really shouldn't be smoking near oil spills.

When is a tax cut a tax increase?

Brent Bozell has a score of questions to the Washington Post about Journolist and the alleged neutrality of the Post.

The Tenth Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

I don't know what is so confusing about that.


The racism charge is losing its force, thanks to the cynical and unsavory use of it solely as a political bludgeon:

UPenn professor Mary Frances Berry, a leader of the "far-left black political scene," as NB Executive Editor Matt Sheffield wrote,  penned this astonishing email to Politico, published on July 20:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

Dick Armey could not have said it better.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/#ixzz0vBkOMixs

GLH on Cleaning the Kitchen

Yesterday, our heroine sewed herself a dress, excepting a few final touches, cleaned her little house, washed the windows, made cheesecloth curtains, and accomplished a few other small tasks before finally putting herself and her aching back to bed on her little bed of crumpled newspaper.

In the morning Joyce makes a hasty breakfast of crackers, cheese, and the last of the milk in the little cupboard she made the day before by hanging on the wall two wooden boxes with hinged lids. She finishes hand-sewing the collar and cuffs on the dress, hems it, and adds pockets.  She even has time to stop at the store yet again to get a clean gingham apron for cooking in and a white apron for serving. If only she had two more hours, she laments, she could have made the white apron and saved a little money, but she is out of time.


Today it's cheaper to buy most clothes, especially if you shop second-hand.

As you no doubt recall, Joyce is going to earn another ten dollars today for cooking a dinner and serving it for a family who are expecting company (two people from out of state).  In order for dinner to be ready by seven p.m. (on the dot), Joyce is to start at noon.

Mrs. Powers, the woman she is helping, turns out to be an unpleasant, impossible to please, very slovenly woman.
Joyce is to clean the kitchen first- the breakfast and lunch dishes have been left, and then she can begin the meal.  Later, when she begins cleaning the kitchen, she realizes that the dishes from yesterday have probably also been left behind for her.

Mrs. Powers also tells her the menu is written out for her so she will make no mistakes, and then she goes over the dinner plan:

"Fruit cup. You'll find the things in the storeroom, oranges, grapefruit, some white grapes skinned and seeded. I like plenty of grapes in it, and there's a can of pineapple. Then we'll have a clear soup. Do you know how to make soup? I'm sure I don't know what you'll make it out of. You can look around and see. Perhaps there's some stock.

Then for the meat course we'll have chops and creamed potatoes and peas. There's lettuce in the garden, and tomatoes in the refrigerator. You make mayonnaise, do you?... Then ice cream and cake and coffee. I've ordered the ice cream, of course, but Ill need two kinds of cake. I always like to have two kinds...

Now, I'm going up to lie down. I really must or I'll look like a rag, but I shall expect you to have the dining room and kitchen cleaned, the peas shelled, and the mayonnaise on the ice by the time I come down. Then I shall feel easy. You'll need to scald and skin the tomatoes too, and get at your cake as soon as possible. It'll need to get cold before icing..."

All this stuff?  It's a treasure trove of little delights to me.  I love to find a passage like this in a GLH (or any period novel).  But more on that later.

It's now just shortly after noon, and all that work has to be done by 7:00. There's not a clean spot to work in the kitchen, nor are there any clean dishes or dishtowels.

'numerous dishes standing under the sink out of the way with fragments of food burned hard to them showed discouraging impossibilities ahead.'

As a matter of fact, she cannot even clean first because there is no hot water and no wood for the fire for the stove which heats the water, so she goes to the cellar to cut wood first, starts the fire, puts on pots of water, and while that is heating, looks through the refrigerator for soup materials. The refrigerator is also a nasty mess, but she cannot spare time for it.

She pulls out some chicken bones, a small piece of boiled beef, a leftover lamb chop, a bowl of chicken gravy, a few lima beans, and a cup of mashed potatoes. She skims the grease from the gravy, cut the fat from the meat and put it all on to simmer. She found some carrots and onions which she diced and added to the soup.   I am reasonably sure that reading about this soup or something like it seeped into my subconscious in college and was the creative impetus behind many a leftover soup made from bits and pieces of leftovers (the water from cooking spinach and peas, a few snippets of the green end of an onion too long in the back of the bin, some salt and pepper and some gravy whisked into the vegetable stock- we often had a lunch with a cup of soup like this on the side back in the days of beans and rice).


So, she gets the soup on the stove to simmer, and then the water is hot enough to scald the tomatoes, so she scalds and skins them, and puts them on ice to harden.

Next she spends ten minutes getting the sink and dishpans in order, and washes out the dish towels and hangs them out in the back yard. This has all taken her 40 minutes.I love this next bit- it's like a choreographed symphony of dish-washing and cooking:

Now her second batch of hot water is ready, so she fills the dishpans with hot water, and then refills the big pans and puts them back on the stove so they will be hot when she is ready for them.

She starts the utensils soaking in a pan of suds while she scrapes the dishes and sorts them in orderly piles. Then she washes the silver, puts it in the rinsing pan and puts plates to soak in the pan the silver was washed in. While those plates soak she washes the drainboard and shelf so she can drain the dishes.

"Inch by inch she cleared places and filled them with clean, steaming dishes, filling her her pans again and again with hot water. The laundry stove was getting in its work by this time and the water from the faucet facilitated matters, nevertheless, it was half past two before she had every dish subdued and standing in clean, dry rows on a clean dry table ready to be marshaled into pantry shelves that sadly wanted cleaning, but could not have it now."

She gets the fruit salad done and on ice, then makes a chocolate layer cake. While it is in the oven she makes the mayonnaise and then bakes a sponge cake.

But she still has more to do...

Rearranging the Room...

(don't forget our book givewaway- we have five copies of Lisa Whelchel's latest book on friendship!)

When I went to bed last night, comments were up to 43, and I just assumed in good faith that there would be at least seven more by morning, so I scheduled the post. (but I was wrong- there are only 44 comments!)

What did I decide?

There are a lot of green and reds and pinks in my room, and I know that seems weird but I do think it works. The 'new' desk for the HM is a vintage green. The pitcher the red roses are in has green trim. My curtains are a combination of green, with a cream netting sprinkled with rosebuds. The quilt has all kinds of pinks, reds, and greens with the rose them (which is carried out over on my side of the room as well, and it just seemed to me that the green worked best.

I really did like the red right up until the moment I was about to hit send on that earlier post, and then it suddenly seemed so obvious that the pattern was just too busy. Pip, the Equuschick and I noticed that with the green cover over the loveseat, it really brought out all the green accents in the room.

As it is, I'll probably replace the cushion cover on the white wicker chair. It's just a round pillow with a pillowcase on it that I picked up at the thrift shop.

I might even consider spray-painting the white wicker chair. Hmmmm. What do you think? Green or pink? Or some other color altogether?

Meanwhile, the red cover is back where it's been for the last three years- upstairs in a reading nook in The Common Room:

Oh, wait. That's so two years ago. That lamp is now in the garage waiting for somebody to love me enough to fix the switch (I really like this lamp), and so now this hanging lamp is in the corner instead:

(Photograph courtesy of the FYB, who also cleaned up the corner before he took the picture)

Back to the bedroom, here's a wider angle shot:

The plate in the center is actually waiting for me to get out a hammer and nail and then I am hanging it on another wall. The roses have been trimmed back- those much too tall ones now fit in with the rest.

You can tell my husband is the sentimental one- that's his corner of the room, and he put up all those pictures. My side has things like framed redoute rose prints

books, books, and more books, two sun-bonnets, one pink and one green and blue, candle holders in little china teapots with pink and green roses all over them, more books, and William Morris postcards in a ribbon bulletin board

This is what this window looked like a while ago:


The curtains are the same. The green vase was a gift from my uncle, and I cherished it, and in a fit of despair I sent it off with a lot of other stuff to an auction because we needed the money, and now it kind of hurts to look at it (it was a McCoy, but we didn't get that much for it).
The green chipped cabinet (this green is the same color green as the HM's new 'desk') is now in my bathroom.

Thanks for all the suggestions- I do appreciate them, even if this time just the act of writing the post and loading the pictures helped me make up my mind!

This post linked at The Gypsy Corner's Three or More Tuesdays, and Rednesday at Sue Loves Cherries.
Click forth and see other pretties.

Help Me Decide... a room rearranging project

This is a small rearranging as it goes.  It really only involves swapping out a mere-schmere two items of furniture, some cleaning, sanding and refinishing, and swapping around some furniture covers.
We'll get to the decision part in a few photos.  First, to the left, this messy corner is my husband's desk- It's messy because I stopped to take the picture in mid-rearranging.
It's been his desk for about three years, but he doesn't really like this for his desk. It's too small.  He uses it for storage and does desk work at the dining room table, which  I really do not like.

So... Monday...  IDEA!

Clear off desk: Check

Clean up floor beneath and around desk: Check

Move desk out of bedroom with help from devilishly handsome son and sons-in-law: Check


Move HM's former desk into sunroom: Check
Take plants off old table collected from shed at the homestead house farm and put them onto HM's former desk instead: Check
Have devilishly handsome and helpful son and son(s)-in-law move former desk /new plant table back against the window in sunroom, while moving fifty billion blocks out of our way and keeping grandbaby, Blynken and Nod out of our way: Check


Have devilishly handsome and helpful son and son-in-law move former plant table (once a kitchen work table in the mid 1800s at the Homestead farm) out to the front drive, where this devilishly handsome and helpful son-in-law has offered to sand the top for you (but not sides, because you love the chipped paint and even the scrapes where raccoons and other critters chawed on it during the decades it sat outside in a shed with only three walls). He will also give it a coat of polyurethane, even though it is his day off (it was not other son-in-law's day off, so he left for work)

After it dries, have Pip help move the new desk into the bedroom (it has to be Pip because the sons-in-law have both gone home by now), and the Boy returns everything to the desk: Check

Make one coroner of the bed so you can get a decent picture without being humiliated for all eternity in the snug and private space of the internets: Check.
Now feel dissatisfied with the ugly gold loveseat to the right of the wicker chair (loveseat not pictured here) as well the rust William Morrisish print fabric that drapes it to hide its gold ugliness.  Neither gold nor rust is working here.

Ruminate on this for a couple of days: Check

Thursday:
Send Progeny to fetch two alternative slipcovers, and try them both on to see which you prefer: check

Can't decide: check
Ask the Progeny what they think.  Check.
There are only four Progeny home.  The verdicts are:
Pip: Green
FYG: Red
FYB: Doesn't care, can he go eat now?
Cherub: Doesn't speak, but am sure she prefers yellow.  She always does.
So.......
Make corner of the bed that will show up in photographs (I can't make the whole bed, because I have fifty books and the laptop spread out over the part you cannot see for a project.  I exaggerate.  I just counted - it's  only 24 books and three notebooks and my pencil bag, as well as a basket of baby toys for bribing the Dread Pirate Grasshopper to play with me instead of the more entertaining FYG): CHECK

Post pictures to the Internets: CHECK, and BEHOLD:

Still can't decide, so decide to ask a thousand of my nearest and dearest strangers: check

So which do you prefer?

Side track self: check.
Weird how the picture with the red makes the couch look so much smaller- that's mostly because I had moved further away but didn't realize it.  Do you see that rug?  I LOVE that rug.  I found it at the thrift shop and it is so thick and cushy.
Do you see my quilt?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE that quilt- a group of Christian homeschooling moms we camp with made it for me because they are lovely, loving, wonderful ladies.


Pitcher of silk roses- I get one silk rose each anniversary.=)


Oh-- the red fringed cover came from the Rattery (as does the cedar chest) and the green and blue one from a thrift shop.  I like them both.  The FYG helped spread them out for me, and then said with a sniff, "Really, Mother.  I prefer modern things."  Since she wants a bedroom in colors of rainbow sherbet I didn't let that bother me too much.

Kiss the grandbaby, because, well, LOOK! CHECK

P.S. Actually, I have already decided. I'll tell you which one when I have fifty comments on this thread.;-D

P.P.S. I only decided just before I hit post, so I went ahead and posted.  The fifty comments: duplicates count, as do my own comments.

Update: See HERE for a bit more

LInked at My Romantic Home

Cheesecloth Curtains and More

Previously our heroine bought some cheesecloth, some nails, needle, thread, and other supplies.

Joyce takes the cheesecloth, cuts it into lengths for the curtains, and hems it (with long,even stitches, naturally.  A GLH girl would never make uneven stitches).

There are strings enough on all the packages to run in the hems and hang the curtains, but the windows have to be washed first, so she goes to the store for a broom, a scrubbing brush, soap, a galvanized pail, and a sponge. She asks if the store has any boxes, and they take her toe cellar where buys two nice clean sugar barrels, two delightful boxes with lids swinging on tiny hinges and several other boxes for ten cents each.

Her landlady stops by with some rags she thinks Joyce might want for cleaning, and offers her the use of her stove and kettle for hot water as well. Incidentally, the landlady paid her ten dollars for her help with the dinner the night before and for putting out the fire in the stove before the house caught fire, so Joyce is still ahead in the money department.

Joyce exchanges her serge dress for the blue and white gingham apron, fetches the hot water from the big house, and goes to work cleaning her little room. Then she tacks in the curtains. She plans to buy some cretonne fabric for inner curtains, so she can drawn them at night to screen her from passersby. She wants five cent rods for them so she can draw them back and forth.

She wonders about getting enough for a curtain across one end of the room to screen her bed from view until she finds a more respectable bed than piles of crumpled newspaper topped by more newspaper..

Next she goes again to the grocer's to get materials for dinner- bread, butter, dried beef, milk, and some candles. She plans to make the two barrels into chairs, but that will have to wait, and she puts the biggest square box between the barrels where it will be a table. The two boxes with hinged lids are nailed to the wall, where she puts her cups and plates in one, and the cracker box, milk bottle and other supplies in the other. She plans to add shelves once she can get the use of an old saw.

She's trying to think how she can spare the funds for cretonne for curtains (for her bedroom area, for a closet, for the furniture), when she learns of another job she can do the next day to earn some money.  Her landlady has found this job for her, but is a little uncertain about it, though she doesn't explain why.  Joyce will be helping a lady whose husband is on the school board. She's to cook dinner, wait on the table, and do the dishes for ten dollars. She will start at noon the next day. There are three hours of daylight left, so she flies 'at the bundle of chintz with swift fingers.'

She folds the chintz crosswise in the center, spreads it out on the floor, lays the blue serge smoothly down on it with the shoulders to the fold and the kimono sleeves stretched toward the selvages. Use the serge for a pattern, she cuts out a 'straight little simple slip of a dress.'

She makes a slit for the neck for trying on and sews up the side seams and tries it on, using the reflection in the window for a rough idea of what changes she needs to make, then she turns up the hem. Her back aches by now, so she lies down on her newspaper bed for ten minutes. She cuts out the neckline further, using her little hand mirror to examine the fit of the dress as best she can. Then she uses a newspaper and tries various ideas for a pattern for a collar, which she cuts out of the organdy she purchased. She makes cuffs for her sleeves to match.

She takes the pieces cut off the sides of the dress out to her front step, as it is growing dark, and there she

'cut from the longest piece a string belt, and several long strips of bias binding about an inch wide. Then rolling up these with the organdy collar and cuffs, her scissors, thimble, needle and thread, she put on her serge dress and hat and hurried down the street. She had thought of a way to work a little longer that night without burning a light. She would just sit in the station waiting room for a little while and sew.'

On the same principle, years ago when the air in the house was too stuffy for words and we couldn't run the air conditioner, we would pack up and spend the afternoon at the library.

"her swift fingers had soon run on the bias bands around collar and cuffs, and turned down the binding smoothly. She just loved the hemming of them down. It was alike a bit of fancy work, and they looked so pretty- the blue edging around the sheer white. Of course the dress could have been bound around the neck and sleeves without the white collar and cuffs, but this touch of prettiness made it look more comely, and she must remember her appearance if she was to hope to get a school around here sometime. Mrs . Bryant had given her the reputation of a lady and she must keep it up, even if it meant a little more work for her.
By the time the half past nine train had gone she had the organdy bound, and was sewing up the string girdle. She lingered only until the seams were run up before she gathered up her things and hurried back to her little dark house"

She will turn the girdle inside out in the dark by the help of a safety pin, and then she only needs to hem the skirt and put on the collar and cuffs in the morning before noon.

This night she goes to sleep in her gingham apron, the one she wore to wash windows and clean the little house.

Although I have never come close to being as resourceful as a GLH character (who could?), I suspect that frivolously reading a bunch of Grace Livingston Hill books in college when I ought to have been studying contributed to my 'what's in my hand' approach to life.  I did make a game of it when we were young and poverty stricken, and I am sure some of the soups we had were a riff on a GLH theme.

The Grocery Store With Nod

(Be sure to visit the 239th homeschool carnival, history of home education in America edition! click here.)

... That's Nod, the Three and a half year old ever ready, energizer, perpetual motion, question machine.

So... picture this. I am at the store buying good foods from the perimeters of the store- mangoes, avocadoes, watermelon, chicken, cheese, ground beef (I am shopping the whole foods section of the sales flier, doing what those in the industry call 'cherry-picking'). I have the 3 year old in the cart. I have the 6 year old bagging my produce and doing math (Blynken, put two plus two mangoes in the bag. Put 7 plus 2 peaches in the bag...). The 12 and 14 year old are looking for Sobe drinks because they have scored BOGO coupons, and on their journey, they are looking for a couple other things that are on sale for me, and periodically returning with gifts from the center aisle (peanut butter, toilet paper, etc)

A young man comes up to me at the produce section and says something like, "Excuse me, I saw you at the library, too, and I just feel the Holy Spirit's leading and guiding directing me to pray with you, so could I do that? Would you mind?"
I don't mind, and I tell him so. He doesn't bow his head or close his eyes- he looks straight at me, staring, and begins by asking God to bless me and let me know how much he loves me, but then starts 'praying' by telling me what a wonderful mother I must be, to love these children so much. "you are pouring yourself into your children," he said, "and your love and devotion to them is just showing and you are so kind and loving a mother and your heart is so big and etc, etc, etc."

He went on in this vain (ha!) for a bit, then we talked briefly (what do you say? I asked where he went to church, turned out he was from out of state, here for a camp program), I thanked him, and he walked off. I turned to continue my shopping and the rest of it... well, I am just glad this young man had already left AFTER telling me what a marvelous mother I am:

Nod was sitting in the the shopping cart scowling, pointing at the goodies on the aisle caps (oh, those dastardly grocery store designers know their bidness), cookies, cupcakes, pop-tarts, potato chips, sugary snack bars and nutrition-free salty flake things.
At each one he says, "I want you to buy me that."
Me: No.
He: Why?
Me: Because it's not healthy.
He: But I LIKE it.
Me: I don't care. It's not good for you, and I am not buying you that junk.
He: I want you to buy me those cookies.
Me: No.
He: Why not?
He: But I LIKE it.
Me: I don't care. It's not good for you, and I am not buying you that junk.
He: I want you to buy me those t'ings (he doesn't even know what they are, except they look good and utterly devoid of anything resembling real food)
Me: No.
He: Why?
Me: Because it's not healthy.
He: But I LIKE it.
Me: I don't CARE. It's not good for you, and I am not buying you that junk.
He: I want you to buy me that chok'lit t'ing.
Me: No.
He: Why?
Me: Because it's not healthy.
He: But I LIKE it.
Me: I don't CARE. You have lousy taste in foods. It's not good for you, and I am not buying you that junk.
He: I want you to buy me those cookies.
Me: No.
He: Why not?
He: But I LIKE it.
Me: I don't CARE. It's not good for you, and I am not buying you that junk.
He: I want you to buy me some candy. And my brudder.
Me: No.
He: Why?
Me: Because it's not healthy.
He: But I LIKE it.
Me: I don't CARE. It's not good for you, and I am not buying you that junk.
He: I want you to buy me those cookies.
Me: No.
He: Why not?
He: But I LIKE it.
Me: I don't CARE. It's not good for you, and I am not buying you that junk.
Repeat some variation of the above at least ten times- because you know there is an aisle cap at both ends of each row
He: I want you to buy me-
Me: NO.
He: But WHY?
Me: Because it's not good for you, it gives you cavities, it stops you from growing up as healthy as you can, and I do not spend money on that junk.
He: Why not?
Me: It's rude to ask for other people to buy you stuff.
He: But I want it.
Me: But it's rude.
He: Why.
Me: Because it is not YOUR money. You do not ask other people to spend their money on stuff for you. That is selfish.
He: But you are supposed to share with me.
Me: I am sharing. You rode here in my car, you are sleeping in my house, you are eating your meals at my house with food that I bought and sleeping in a bed that we share with you. You are wearing clothes I bought you and you play with my toys all day long.
He:
He:
He: I want you to buy me those doughnuts.
Me: No.
He: But WHY?
Me: Because. I. Said. NO.

And then at the check-out line when he asked me what the microphone was for, I told him it was for the cashier to call for help from the back when naughty little boys were misbehaving at the check-out stand.

The clerk gave him a sugary lollypop.

Blynken to the baby

Overheard in The Common Room, where six year old Blynken was playing with my grandson, the Dread Pirate Grasshopper, proud owner of four shiny pearly whites he loves to grind together, click, and...:

"Hey!  I did not grow all these fingers just for you to bite them off, you know!"

Music Lessons

One of the articles in yesterday's carnival of homeschooling was a post on the importance of music education.

Here's a post with some ideas for making music lessons more affordable.  They will still be outside the reach of some, but maybe this post will spark some other creative ideas.

Nice picture book

Be sure to visit the 239th homeschool carnival, history of home education in America edition! click here.

The Gardener, by Sarah Stewart- reminds me of Miss Rumphius, a little. A young girl moves to the city to stay with her uncle during the depression. He is not unkind but he is not happy, either. She helps him with his business and gradually creates a beautiful rooftop garden on top of their building.
The story is told through pictures and her letters home. Lovely.

A Literacy Test

Be sure to visit the 239th homeschool carnival, history of home education in America edition! click here.

I came across this while researching the 239th Carnival of Homeschooling post:

"At [the elementary] school shall be received and instructed gratis, every infant of competent age who has not already had three years' schooling. And it is declared and enacted, that no person unborn or under the age of twelve years at the passing of this act, and who is compos mentis, shall, after the age of fifteen years, be a citizen of this commonwealth until he or she can read readily in some tongue, native or acquired." --Thomas Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:424

Note, too, the 'native or acquired' tongue.

Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case, Not Small Potatoes

Commissioner Thermstrom has backtracked a small bit in her claim that the Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case is political gamesmanship- you can read about her many concessions here. But Hans von Spakovsky doesn't think she's backtracked enough yet:

Perhaps Thernstrom has forgotten that at the first hearing the Commission held on this case, where the other roving poll watchers who came to the precinct testified, including Bartle Bull, almost a dozen members of the NBBP in their paramilitary uniforms showed up. I was at that hearing and I personally saw — as did everyone else there — one of the Panthers get up and move to the front of the room with a camera, where he proceeded to take pictures of the three witnesses who were testifying against them. What purpose does she possibly believe there was for taking those photographs other than to intimidate witnesses? What does she think would be the reaction of the witnesses from that neighborhood in a deposition after experiencing such intimidation? Any change in testimony by these individuals showed just how intimidated they were and how scared they are of retribution. That in itself makes this an important case, not “small potatoes,” and I am frankly shocked at the commissioner’s seeming lack of concern for those poll watchers and what happened to them.

Seriously?

Numbers That Aren't Nice

Be sure to visit the 239th homeschool carnival, history of home education in America edition! click here.

According to this story, almost 1/3 of American births are C-Sections. A panel convened by the NIH also discovered (not shocking to our readers, I know) that too many women are not being given the option of VBAC births.

A Glass of Good Milk and Three Butter Thin Crackers

Looking for the homeschool carnival, history of home education in America edition? Scroll down, or click here.

Not Under the Law, Grace Livingston Hill:

After sleeping on her newspaper bed, Joyce Radway rises early (though not as early as she intended), smoothes her hair with the small comb and mirror in her purse, and decides to go to the railway station to wash her face.

The little washroom at the station is only four blocks away and is in 'tolerably clean condition,

' so that she was able to make herself quite respectable, although her serge dress did look a bit rumpled from sleeping in it.'

At a drug store she gets

"a glass of good milk and three butter thin crackers at the soda counter."

She comes to a 'small utility shop' where she buys

"thread, needles, a thimble, a paper of pins, enough cheesecloth for window curtains, some blue and white chintz that the woman let her have for fifteen cents a yard because it was all that was left, half a yard of white organdy, and a big blue and white checked apron of coarse gingham that would cover her dress from neck to hem and was only fifty cents."

At the hardware store she finds

canned alcohol and a little outfit for cooking with it... some paper plates and cups, a sharp knife, a pair of good scissors, a hammer, a can opener, some tacks, and a few long nails.

At the grocery store she gets a can of vegetable soup, a box of crackers, and some bananas, having spent just 6.23 on all this.

She takes her purchases home and gets right to work making... well, that's our next post.

Tuna with Sundried tomatoes (cooking with kids)

Be sure to visit the 239th homeschool carnival, history of home education in America edition! click here.


Open and drain 2 5-6 ounce cans of tuna, dump in bowl, fluff with fork (little kids can fluff if the bowl is big enough, big kids can open the cans)
Add 4 Tablespoons Mayo
2 Tablespoons ketchup
4 sundried tomatoes in oil, diced with kitchen shears (if you have a good pair of children's scissors this is a nice job for kindergarteners- they cut the tomato in strips, then snip off bits from each strip into the bowl)
4 tablespoons corn, fresh or frozen (we didn't even defrost it)

Mix well. Dice a sweet onion or scallion and put it in a bowl for those who like onions. Any child with muscles strong enough to handle a food chopper like this can dice onions

Serve over open-faced sandwiches on artisan bread picked up for under a dollar at the day old section of the grocer's baker department.

We had it with mangoes and grapes on the side (they were on sale this week). I would have loved avocado on mine if I had remembered we had some.

Verdict- served 6, no leftovers, and I know the 3, 6, 12, and forty something year old liked it. I didn't ask the 14 or 21 year old.

Adult help was needed only to slice the bread because it was a long, thin, baguette sort of thing (like a cigar, but about two feet long) full of seeds and whole grains and yummy, but stiff work cutting.
Nod, 3, said he did not like the 'red stuff' but Nod doesn't like a lot of things on principle. He ate all of his food and there were no complaints- just commentary (I do not like the red stuff, well I like it but I do not want it because I do not feel like red stuff... Nod is a walking commentary)

From the book Lunchboxes and Snacks

This post linked at All the Small Stuff, Tuesdays at the Table
And also Blest with Grace Tempt My Tummy Tuesday
And the terrific Pennywise Platter, where the emphasis is on nourishing and frugal.

FLDS Update 7/2010

(Don't miss the 239th Carnival of Homeschooling, History of home education in American edition. Either scroll down, or click here!)

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to FLDS matters because, in my opinion, there's nothing of huge interest to outsiders going on yet.  I always said that it was likely that there were some FLDS men who were marrying underaged girls, and I even listed some specific names based on the Bishop's Record, and I was right.
Those half dozen cases are moving slowly and steadily through the legal mills with no real surprises.

It is going to get really interesting to outsiders again (at least this one), when those cases file their appeals, seeking to have the charges thrown out on the basis of illegal search and seizure of private information from YfZ ranch in reponse to a hoax phone call and a lack of due diligence in comfirming details.  The YfZ case, in my insignificant and merely personal opinion, won't really get interesting again until those cases face another Judge besides Walthers, who signed the search warrants in the first place and isn't about to over-rule her own action.  The first appeal is in mid September.  Oh- and I do recognize that these cases are intensely interesting to those with some personal connection to the FLDS, sometimes painfully and gut wrenchingly 'interesting, as well as those who are so invested in stamping out this religion that they don't care whether or not the initial search was illegal.    I don't mean to be insensitive about that.  It's just that this part of the legal stuff is pretty predictable.

But here's something that is a bit of a surprise to me (not to Hugh, although even he is amazed that it was unanimous)- Warren Jeffs' conviction has been reversed, unanimously, by the state Supreme Court,

Background:  The head of the FLDS, Warren Jeffs, has been in jail for a few years now, convicted as an accessory to a rape (even though the alleged rapist has never been charged or tried) that allegedly occurred before he was the head of the group.  He was charged and convicted as an accessory because he performed the wedding ceremony (at her mother's request) between a 14 year old girl and her 19 year old cousin.  The cousin was not charged (and I think still has not been tried) until after Jeffs' conviction, and his attorneys suggest he was only charged because the media started asking uncomfortable questions about whether this was really about this marriage or about taking down an unpopular leader of an unpopular religious group.

But the real problem according to Utah's Supreme Court, is the instructions the Judge in Jeff's case gave to the jury (The Judge in the Jeffs case gave jive instructions, can you say that three times fast?).

According to CNN:

"We regret the effect our opinion today may have on the victim of the underlying crime, to whom we do not wish to cause additional pain," the court said. "However, we must ensure that the laws are applied evenly and appropriately, in this case as in every case."

Jeffs' defense attorney is understandably chuffed:

Jeffs is "an unpopular religious figure in our state," Bugden said, and the media have "had a field day portraying him as an evil, horrible, pernicious individual." The court, he said, was able to put that aside and base its decision on the evidence and legal theories, not on emotion, and determine that the erroneous instructions led jurors to "an erroneous result."
The defense has always maintained that marrying someone, encouraging them to make their marriage work and "be fruitful and multiply ... that is not the same thing as saying to a husband, 'I'm encouraging you to rape your wife,' " Bugden said.

The law required that in order for a conviction to occur, Jeffs must have known that the girl was opposed to the marriage (unproven), and that his intent was that a rape would occur.  Jeffs defense lawyers asked the judge in the case to so instruct the jurors, and the Judge refused.

It really doesn't matter what you think about Jeffs or the FLDS, even if you think he's the Great Satan- the law is the law, and it either applies evenly to all of us, or it isn't the rule of law at all, it's the rule of arbitrary whims against those we do not like.  The Utah court explained that they feel sorry for the victim (although without this case there is, legally speaking, no victim) but :

"...we must ensure that the laws are applied evenly and appropriately, in this case as in every case, in order to protect the constitutional principles on which our legal system is based. We must guarantee justice, not just for this defendant, but for all who may be accused of a crime and subjected to the State’s power to deprive them of life, liberty, or property hereafter.”

Jeffs' attorneys explain how they see the arbitrary way the state handled this case and the possible consequence:

As we’ve said before if Mr. Jeffs would be convicted under this legal theory, then mothers who encouraged their children to stay in an unhappy marriage, parents that encourage their child to use birth control they would be guilty of being an accomplice to rape.

A commenter at the Polygamy blog at the Salt Lake Trib says he thinks the state botched it by not focusing on the age of the girl, as a 14 year old, he says, she could not legally be in a consensual physical relationship with a 19 year old.  I see a couple potential problems with that- is it possible that she could legally be married?  Laws are funny things, and sometimes it is the case that girls of a certain age may be legally wed (with state or parental approval), they cannot consent to a sexual relationship outside of wedlock.  Once wed, it maybe that what was illegal outside of marriage is legal within marriage.  I also wonder if this is something the state did not want to approach because of the girl's subsequent adulterous relationship with a man even older than her cousin (and also equally consanguine in relationship) .  This may not matter legally, but it might have made things difficult with a jury.  I don't know- those are just guesses.

In the discussion at Save the FLDS, a number of people (not all of them friends of Jeffs) are suggesting that there is a reasonable case for doubting if the state will even choose to retry Jeffs.  They may choose to drop the case. 
There was another case against Jeffs in Arizona that was also dropped, and there remain pending charges from Texas through the YfZ case.
I doubt if Jeffs' will be released on bail, given his history of flight it would be most irresponsible of a Judge to permit that.  He still has to face the charges in Texas, which are the most serious.  However, the legal ground there may be just as dubious, given the shaky search warrent they stem from.

Another Lunch at Strider & HG's

(Don't miss the 239th Carnival of Homeschooling!)

Something I failed to mention in our last post is that lunch is our main meal of the day. Strider works second shift, so our meal schedule is a little bit off the norm. We eat a light breakfast, a fairly heavy lunch, and then I send him off to work with sandwiches, veggies/fruit, nuts, chips, cheese, etc. for a late night supper and I just snack on left overs and such for my dinner. It's taken some adjustment to get used to having a full, main meal ready to eat at 3 p.m. instead of at later on in the day. Certain crockpot meals don't work as well and things work so much better if I plan meals in advance. I may change my schedule at the last minute, but at least I have a schedule of some sort.

This lunch is an example of a schedule that shifted. Earlier in the week, I did main meal planning for the next 7 days, and found a yummy looking Tomato Mac & Cheese recipe in one of my cookbooks. It used on hand ingredients (except for the white cheddar cheese it called for, but I figured the orange stuff I had in the fridge would work) and looked fast, easy, and filling. I planned it for one day last week and then found myself (in true pregnant fashion) wanting it over what I had originally planned one afternoon. The cookbook said it could be fixed in half an hour; I don't think it was far off. Thus, fairly quickly we had a lunch of cheesy, homemade macaroni and cheese with grapes and salad on the side. Yes, that's more salad and grapes and two people eat in a meal... Strider took the extra grapes to work and the salad is something I occasionally eat as a snack.

The recipe came from Taste of Home's Simple & Delicious Cookbook.. This was a bridal shower gift from a woman in our congregation. Making it one of the most creative gifts I've seen, she also made one of the desserts from the cookbook and included it with the book.

I haven't made many recipes from the book so far, although I've had fun browsing it and drooling over the gorgeous photography. Many of the recipes require more ready-made ingredients than I'm comfortable using (for the sake of both health and finances), but there are still many gems in the book... the mac & cheese I made, or the fajita frittata I want to do for a Saturday brunch, or the cheddar ham soup I'm determined to make this autumn. I think this would be an excellent cookbook for new brides who are unfamiliar with meal planning and grocery shopping: almost the first eighty pages of the book are devoted to weekly meal plans, complete with shopping lists andrecipes. The recipes are clearly written, with handy general cooking tips. For experienced cooks, I'd recommend More-With-Less Cookbook or Joy of Cooking.

Funny note: I'm slowly getting used to cooking for two. I realized right before starting the macaroni and cheese recipe that I could cut it in half for four servings instead of eight. Duh! I'm used to doubling or tripling recipes, but it takes some thinking to remember that halving recipes works too. ;-)

LINKED AT:
Tuesday Tastes Party at Crazy Daisy

It's a Blog Party Delicious Dishes

Beauty and Bedlam Tasty Tuesdays

Carnival of Homeschooling #239

(Updated at 2:33 Central Time to fix some formatting issues, clarify some wording, add a bit more history and early homeschooling books, and correct a link)

Although a theme is not necessary to host the homeschooling carnival (I have hosted with no theme before), it can be fun. This week's theme is a bit ambitious. It is... the history of homeschooling in America. Please understand this history is somewhat subjective and is in no way intended to be comprehensive.

For easier reading, I have tried to sort the posts into categories and have those category headings in boldface type. The homeschool history information will be italicized and in green, so I hope that makes it easier to read, and to skim ahead if you just wish to find the articles of interest to you.

I read all the entries I received, and I deleted spammish entires. I have tried to give good descriptions of the content (except for a couple last minute entries where I lacked the time for descriptions). 

Please be sure to visit as many of the bloggers below as possible- they help make the carnival possible by providing good content and promoting it to others, so it's nice to pay them a visit and give them some comment or link love if you can.  If you are in the carnival, please show good bloggy manners and link back to it, and if you have a FB or Twitter account, pass it along there as well.

1. Homeschooling in the 1700s:  Most of our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) were educated at home. Nearly all of them had their educations personally directed by their fathers, as this was seen as a father's Duty. Consider this statement by Thomas Jefferson on the education of his daughters:

"... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive. My surviving daughter accordingly, the mother of many daughters as well as sons, has made their education the object of her life." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, 1818. ME 15:165

Encouragement:

Take Kim's advice- she says: "I panic needlessly. Don’t we all?" posted at Life In a Shoe. Unschoolers take heart. Schoolers take heart. Parents, relax.=)

Heather Mac presents A Keepers Circle: He sees the bigger picture posted at The Mac RAK: Adventures of a Homeschool Wife & Mother- a very thoughtful post (with cool pictures!). Sometimes we just need a different perspective!

1700s, cont. Jefferson did institute a plan for public education to be paid for by wealthier citizens by taxation, but the compulsory part of that education plan was in the taxes, not in attendance. He wanted public schools available to those citizens who lacked the necessary resources to provide a good education to their children. He wrote:

It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible absorptation and education of the infant against the will of the father...--Thomas Jefferson: Note to Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:423

And he believed strongly that control of his public education plan should remain in local control, more specifically, in the hands of parents.

Open House

Didja ever want to get a chance to peek into other homeschooler's houses and see what they look like and how they arrange things? Well, you can! See my post on the places we've lived and find out about the upcoming blogger's virtual open house!

Jessica Snajder presents Growing posted at Teachable Moments. Turns out homeschooling doesn't just help the children grow!

1700s, cont.   George Washington did not enter school until he was around 11 years old, and he would only stay for two years. He already knew how to read and write and handle numbers when he started school. His late age for starting school was really not all that late- 5 would not be seen as an appropriate age to begin formal schooling until the forties. The NINETEEN forties.

More on early American statesmen and homeschooling here.

Reporting your homeschooling to the state:

Jenn Casey writes: "I recently received a packet of homeschooling forms from the state (I live in Georgia) and looking through the forms, I quickly realized that they sent me many things that I'm not legally required to complete. I strongly urge every homeschooler to familiarize yourself completely with your local homeschooling laws!" Check out My Official State Homeschooling Packet. posted at Rational Jenn.   I am also a big fan of minimum compliance- just as much as the law requires, no more.

1800's: There's not a lot to say about homeschooling in America for the next century or so- it was the norm, and even when it wasn't, parents were still seen as ultimately and primarily responsible for the education of their children. They might choose to get together with others in the community and hire teachers, build a school room, and see to it that their youngsters were educated there.  They might collectively or individually hire a tutor to come to individual homes, or the parents might themselves supervise lessons with their children, but the institution of public schooling didn't exist in mass numbers. Public school attendance was not compulsory where it did exist.

In 1852 Massachusetts passed the first compulsory attendance law in America. However, in 1893,

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts permitted home education (as opposed to child labor) in Commonwealth v. Roberts, 34 NE 402 (Mass. 1893). The court emphasized that the object of the statute is that "all children shall be educated, not that they shall be educated in a particular way."

General Discussions

Katherine shares some shocking information about the Montana school's new sex education policies (first graders need their teachers to tell them about that? Seriously?) collapse the system posted at No Fighting, No Biting!. You know, it's fine by me if the parents in favor of this either teach it to their kids themselves or hire somebody to do so. But making it a part of required curriculum is just wrong.

It was hard to know where to categorize this post- is it about teaching sign to babies, about special needs kids, about how children learn, about communication, or about mothering? And then I realized that, why, yes, yes, it is. From a new blogger, it's her first contribution to the Homeschool Carnival.

Linda Dobson (her name shows up in my history of homeschooling as well) asks:

Who was it that decided to force your attention onto Japan instead of Sweden? Japan with its long school year and state compulsion, instead of Sweden with its short school year, short school sequence, and free choice where your kid is schooled? Who decided you should know about Japan and not Hong Kong, an Asian neighbor with a short school year that outperforms Japan across the board in math and science?

That's a really good question. There's more at her post The Best of John Taylor Gatto’s “The Public School Nightmare” posted at PARENT AT THE HELM.

It is interesting to note that age segregated schooling didn't really start in American until mid 19th century (borrowed, like so many other bad ideas in education, from Germany, or rather, Prussia as it was then),  and in 1912 one critic would write :

It is constructed upon the assumption that a group of minds can be marshalled and controlled in growth in exactly the same manner that a military officer marshalls and directs the bodily movements of a company of soldiers. In solid, unbreakable phalanx the class is supposed to move through all the grades, keeping in locked step. This locked step is set by the 'average' pupil--an algebraic myth born of inanimate figures and an addled pedagogy. The class system does injury to the rapid and quick-thinking pupils, because these must shackle their stride to keep pace with the mythical average. But the class system does a greater injury to the large number who make slower progress than the rate of the mythical average pupil . . . They are foredoomed to failure before they begin.

Home School Methods and Styles

Amy Mossoff presents Mossoff Montessori posted at The Little Things. She is putting her toes in the water with a Montessori style preschool at home for her daughter, and explains how she's set up a school room and a couple of the activities she does. Love the polishing pennies tray!

Some of you have already seen this post on one aspect of a Charlotte Mason education, The Power of Narration.
 

The 1900s:
An Indiana court  permitted formally recognized the right of parents to educate their children at home in 1904 in State v. Peterman, 32 Ind. App. 665, 70 N.E. 550 (1904). 

The court defined a school as 

"a place where instruction is imparted to the young..... We do not think that the number of persons, whether one or many, make a place where instruction is imparted any less or any more a school." (Peterman, at 551.)

 Quoting the Roberts decision in Massachusetts, the Indiana court said:

"[T]he object and purpose of a compulsory educational law are that all the children shall be educated, not that they shall be educated in any particular way." (Peterman, at 551.)

 The Court concluded; 

"The result to be obtained, and not the means or manner of attaining it, was the goal which the lawmakers were attempting to reach. The [compulsory attendance] law was made for the parent who does not educate his child, and not for the parent who ... so places within the reach of the child the opportunity and means of acquiring an education equal to that obtainable in the public schools...." (Peterman, at 552.)

Oklahoma has the distinction of recognizing home education in its state constitution, deliberately recognizing the right of parents to educate their children at home in 1907- one of the legislators explained that it was too far for his sons to walk to school, so their mother educated them herself for four hours of every day.

The Arts:

Margaret Garcia-Couoh presents The Vital Need for Music Education posted at Parenting Squad.

Four&Twenty writes a very moving post on Da Vinci moments. Beautiful.

Michelle presents Gold in Florence posted at Lionden Landing.

The Illinois Supreme Court recognized a right to teach a child at home in 1950 when it decided People v. Levisen, 404 Ill. 574, 90 N.E.2d 213 (1950). This landmark case held that a

"private school" is "a place where instruction is imparted to the young ... the number of persons being taught does not determine whether a place is a school." (404 Ill. at 576, 90 N.E.2d at 215.)

The Illinois Supreme Court emphasized the right of parents to control their children's education:

"Compulsory education laws are enacted to enforce the natural obligations of parents to provide an education for their young, an obligation which corresponds to the parents' right of control over the child. (Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 400.) The object is that all shall be educated, not that they shall be educated in any particular manner or place." (Levisen, 404 Ill. at 577, 90 N.E.2d at 215.)

Books and Reading

ChristineMM presents My Thoughts on Various Homeschool Phonics Reading Curriculums posted at The Thinking Mother. She and I both found success with the same program, and I agree with her explanations about why she likes it.

Connie at Smockity shares this fabulous tutorial for helping kids to make their own books. This is so easy and so much fun. They use their books for their copywork, drawings, stories they write, nature notebooks, presents for Grandparents (how about with their own poems or poems they have copied because they think their grandparents will love them?) or diaries. Cool!

Nadene presents Partnered Reading Helps Improve Reading posted at Practical Pages.

The Story of the Buccaneer-Scholar at Barbara Frank: A new book offers encouragement for kids who learn best outside of school....and for their parents.

Pamela shares a book review of a recent Caldecott winner, The Invention of Hugo Cabret posted at Blah, Blah, Blog. The Caldecott medal winner: This is probably the most unusual Caldecott winner ever. We are fortunate enough to know one of the people who served on the Caldecott committee this year, and when I asked him to tell me about the book they'd chosen, and that was pretty much all he could say about it, "This is a really unusual book, you should look at it!"

We were also blessed enough to see an art exhibit of some of the artist's original work, and it was amazing!

Denise presents Another Contest: Spilling Ink Giveaway posted at Blogging 2 Learn, a contest to win a book on writing.

The 20th century:   There have been homeschoolers from the beginning of this century, just as there have been in every century.  However, they have been largely isolated from one another rather than a 'movement' for the first few decades of the 20th century.  Gradually, however, the climate was changing to favor a more structured, institutionalized, government controlled approach to education rather than parent-controlled, and parents began to see a need for more support.

Jonathan Holt is known as the grandfather of unschooling

He began as a teacher in alternative schools, places that ought to have been progressive oases for creative learning. He grew disillusioned and by 1970 was known as an ardent proponent for school reform. He advocated for school reform in the books he published such as  How Children Fail, published 1964; How Children Learn, published in 1967.

There were a surprising number of books published in the 70s which influenced readers and thinkers like Holt to reconsider  institutionalized schooling and look for educational alternatives, even radical alternatives such as homeschooling. They began to recognize that 'school reform' was merely a way to perpetuate the existing problems. Here are a few of those influential titles, all published within a year or two of each other:

Everett Reimer, School is Dead: Alternatives in Education (Garden City, NY: Anchor, c. 1970)

Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society (1971) Reimer and Illich were friends and colleagues, and Illich said that Reimer was the first one to open his mind to the idea that universal compulsory education through the state needn't be a given. In turn, Illich and Holt corresponded often, and Illich influenced Holt.

Dr. Raymond Moore also published an article in Reader’s Digest, October 1972, “When Should Your Child Go To School?”, and this was excerpted from a longer article in Harper’s magazine, July 1972,

Hal Bennett, No More Public School, published in 1972


And...What Do I Do Monday? by John Holt, published in 1972.  He had crossed over from school reformer to home education activist.

PE!! And Science!! Nature Study!! And FUN!

Kimberly at Raising Olives blogs about hiking with kids- and you don't get just get cute pictures of cuter kids, you get tips on what to bring along on a hike as well- and more ! Check it out.

Robin Phillips presents 10 Unusual Birds to Spice Up Your Nature Study - Crack the Egg posted at Crack the Egg.

NerdMom presents WooHoo! PE And a Giveaway! posted at NerdFamily Things.

By the eighties, however, he realized that most of those within institutional schooling simply did not want it reformed, therefore it could not be fixed and so he advocated for home education. He coined the term unschooling.

The 1970s: There were enough parents now interested in abandoning Institutionalized Schooling that John Holt published the first issue of the newsletter/magazine 'Growing Without Schooling' in 1977.

In 1980 he had this fascinating interview in Mother Earth News, a crunchy leftist/progressive publication. Holt was a subscriber and frequently sent the editors letters with ideas, suggestions, and criticisms.   In that interview he appealed to his fellow Mother Earth readers thus:

Many of you folks who read this magazine believe--and with good reason--that government interferes too much in our lives. Well, I think that there is no place where this interference is less justified, more harmful, and more easily resisted than in the education of children. So it would seem to me that those who want to minimize the power the government has over their lives would find the area of their youngsters' learning to be the first place where they'd want to work toward that goal.

 I would guess this probably did for homeschooling in the left-leaning communities what the Moore's appearance on Dobson's radio program a couple of years later would do for homeschooling in the Christian community...

Math:

Dan Scott presents Teaching Kids Estimating: 3rd in Our Math Teaching Tips Series posted at Math Learning, Fun & Education Blog : Dreambox Learning.

Jamie Gaddy presents a link to math website s/he finds helpful posted at Parent Community and Forum. I took a peek. There are electronic flash cards for those moments when you don't have time to flip the cards, a selection of science songs and vidoes (There Might Be Giants and the rainbow song, for instance), and more.

ChristineMM presents Pre-Algebra Plan Decided Upon posted at The Thinking Mother.

Denise presents Introduction to Probability posted at Let's Play Math!.

Naomi presents Revisiting Math posted at Living Charlotte Mason in California.

The Moores? Oh, yes. These devout Seventh Day Adventists were friends and colleagues of John Holt, and, somewhat briefly, Gregg Harris more or less interned or apprenticed with them (the partnership did not end amicably).

Raymond and Dorothy Moore taught their own children at home in the 1940s. There were also pockets of homeschoolers through the sixties (I have met a couple), but they tended to be isolated rather than a movement- mostly, they didn't know anybody else doing what they were doing, and sometimes felt they needed to keep it quiet for their own protection.

IN 1969, however, Dr. Raymond Moore and his wife Dorothy began research on education. They were searching for answers to questions like "Is institutionalizing young children a sound, educational trend, and what is the best timing for school entrance?" Their conclusions led them to homeschooling, and they concluded that formal schooling should be delayed until at least 8-10 years old. They wrote two books, published in the early 80s, Home Grown Kids and Home-Spun Schools, and other books followed. They also, as I said, appeared on Dr. James Dobson's radio program Focus on the Family, which is where I, and many others, first heard of homeschooling as something viable.

The Teacher's Desk: I have a desk, but I do my best planning sitting up in bed with my laptop.=)

nak presents Fall Planning posted at Sage Parnassus. She gives us a glimpse of a typical CM day with her children ages 5,7,9,11 and 17 years old (the 19 year old is at college).

By the eighties, homeschooling had exploded- it wasn't necessarily popular, and people were still going to jail or being taken to court, but it was gaining ground.  As I understand it, tax laws changed in the early eighties, taking away a tax advantage that private Christian schools had, and many of them folded, leaving parents with a dilemma on their hands- could they pay enough to support a school, should they put their kids in public school, or would they be really radically nutty and homeschool?  Many of them chose homeschooling.

Home Education Magazine first published in 1983. Helen Hegener was co-owner.

The Teaching Home started in 1983 as well- HEM was secular, but sought to be inclusive. The Teaching Home was unabashedly Evangelical. Gregg Harris also started his ministry about this time, and that's the year Mike Farris and Mike Smith started HSLDA.

Susan Schaeffer MacCaulay would publish For the Children's Sake, a book promoting a Charlotte Mason education in 1984

Linda Dobson began homeschooling in 1985, and had one of the first, if not the first, articles on homeschooling to appear in a mainstream magazine- Good Housekeeping. There's a 1997 interview with her in HEM posted here.

Curriculum Reviews:

Marbel at Two Kid Schoolhouse reviews a new Bible curriculum by Starr Meade. It's called The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Study: A Complete Survey of the Bible.

Beverly Hernandez of Beverly’s Homeschooling Blog (About.com) writes a review of teaching textbooks.

1986, Helen Jackson, mother of five, African American, homeschooler- appeared in court to defend her homeschooling. The lawyer for the state thought he was going to eat her for lunch.

"Have you ever had a job?" He asked.

Homeschooling Grandfather Raymond Moore was there as an expert witness, and he gives his remembrances of her testimony here.

The questioning moved along in what seemed a taunting or disrespectful tone, including his eyes and body language, as if to find out what kind of broom Helen had pushed. She took it all patiently, even sublimely. The attorney seemed irritated at her quiet freedom.
"Yes, sir," she replied.
“Where did you work?”
"In Houston." She was brief, determined not to reveal her surprise until the last moment.
“Where in Houston?”
“At NASA.”
"What did you do at NASA??" At this point he smiled indulgently, as if wondering if she worked in the restaurant or in housekeeping. This was the opportunity she had patiently waited for.
“Well, you see, I am a John’s Hopkins University astronautic electronics engineer. At NASA, I was promoted to be the first black woman in space when I discovered that my oldest son was developing serious emotional symptoms and needed me more than NASA did. So I returned to teach him at home. And he is doing very well.”

Jackson (and others with her in that class action suit) prevailed, and homeschooling in Texas was now safe.

History

The Carnival of Homeschooling has been around for 4.5 years (I hosted the fourth week). Our blogfather Henry Cate keeps an archive of the carnivals and which blogs they can be found here. Heather provided a nice list of the themes which have been used for the Carnival of Homeschooling over the last 4.5 years.

The Archive was updated to include the themes.

In 1988 my husband and I began homeschooling our own children- then just two of them, by 1998 we had seven children at home.  
That year Gregg Harris published The Christian Home School and at some point in the eighties he began a series of homeschooling conferences designed to encourage Christian homeschoolers.  He put them on video so our homeschool group was able to have a small 'video homeschool conference' in Okinawa, Japan in the late eighties.

Also in 1988, the NEA began voting in approval of this statement on a regular basis:

The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. When home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state requirements. Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents/guardians. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used.

In 1988 when we started homeschooling on an American air base overseas there were at least thirty other military families that I knew of homeschooling. These are the books one of those other homeschool moms gave me to introduce me to this new venture.  Believe it or not, I read them hungrily, avidly, as quickly as I could, immersing myself in them to the point that I was waking up in the middle of the night having actually reviewed them by rereading entire chapters in my dreams.  It was an exciting, heady time.

• For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School 
• The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality 
• What Are They Teaching Our Children? 
• The How and Why of Home Schooling 
• Child Abuse in the Classroom
• The big book of home learning 
• Teach Your Own:A Hopeful Path for Education by John Holt
• The big book of home learning by Mary Pride (it was one or two volumes then, a couple years later it would be four.  It also wasn't the first comprehensive listing of homeschooling resources, though I didn't know that then.  Donn Reed wrote the first ever homeschool resource book in 1981: The First Home-School Catalogue, and it went into several printings.  (Read more about pioneer homeschoolers Donn and Jean Read here) 
• What Do I Do Monday, by John Holt
• Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax 
• NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education and a couple others by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

 As I said, by the eighties, homeschooling had burst into a fully fledged movement, with rivalries, unlikely coalitions, group cultures, and dozens, and then hundreds of books, magazines, and curriculum choices- and so, here we are.  Thanks to all those, left, right, and middle, who have gone before us.

 

This concludes this week's carnival. I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for joining us, and be sure to leave a comment (here and on other blogs) and visit those other blogs!

You can find out more about the carnival at these links:

What the Carnival is About

Where the Carnival will be in the Future

Where to submit your Carnival links

Bookmark us so you don't miss the Four Moms Open House.  It's going to be a lot of fun, I think.=)