September homeschool plans for Crayons

(Tentative plans!) [July 15, 2008: Updated version]

Crayons will be in Grade 2 this fall, and will be following a modified version of Ambleside Online's Year 2. Because she's been following along with many of Ponytails' readings over the last couple of years, I have had to substitute some books. She's also a very avid independent reader, so she may be able to handle some of these books on her own (although she likes to be read to as well).

Bible:
Term 1: 1 Samuel, Matthew, selected Psalms & Proverbs; Judy Rogers CDs
Term 2: 2nd Samuel, continue Matthew, read from Acts
Term 3: Life of Solomon; continue Book of Acts

Language Arts:
Specific grade 2 skills from Gentle Language (an outline by Karen Glass), Teaching Children (Diane Lopez) and Ruth Beechick's 3-R's booklets, taught as needed, using our own books and supplements (word puzzles, a couple of Gifted and Talented workbooks, magnetic words, Scrabble letters, children's dictionary)

Skills include:
Oral communication, including narration, telephone/manners
Listening skills (demonstrated by oral or other responses)
Capitalization, some punctuation, plurals, complete sentences, contractions, prefixes/suffixes, alphabetizing to the second letter
Copywork, simple dictation (spelling words with specific patterns as well as calendar words and holiday words)
Printing practice, using Canadian Handwriting workbooks
Memory work (see list for each term)
Reading silently and out loud, and being read to (see booklists)
Writing, mostly informal, e.g. short letters
Following written directions--cooking, crafts

Math
Begin Miquon Math Blue level (see their scope and sequence)
Typical grade 2 skills including number awareness, skip counting, understanding of place value, addition & subtraction, fraction concepts, money, time, measurement, problem solving, greater than/less than, multiplication & division concepts
Games, rod activities, hundreds chart, real-life math situations, commercial & homemade board games

History and Geography

Eh? to Zed--A Canadian ABeCeDarium
Choose one letter each week and find out more about the Canadian words on that page

Term 1: An Island Story chapters 22-32, Child's History of the World chp 45, 47-51
David Thompson activity book (and online supplements)--covers his life and explorations of the NorthWest; we learn something about the fur trade, mapmaking, and the Rocky Mountains.

Term 2: AIS 33-50, CHOW 52-54, Stories for Canada's Birthday, Kids' Book of the Far North (and library books about the Arctic)

Term 3: AIS 51-61; CHOW 55-58; Stories for Canada's Birthday; Bagley's Marco Polo (To Far Cathay)

HOLIDAYS
A Pioneer Thanksgiving
A Pioneer Christmas (both by Barbara Greenwood; read during the appropriate seasons)
"Journey to a First Canadian Christmas" (story from Stories for Canada's Birthday)
Festivals, Family and Food, by Diana Carey and Judy Large (good way to learn about British holidays like Whitsun and Candlemas)


Biography
Term 1--undecided, may skip
Term 2--Brother Sun, Sister Moon (St. Francis of Assisi)
Term 3--Mr. Pipes & the British Hymn Makers (I like this for Year 2 because it ties in with Pilgrim's Progress)

Science and Nature
Topics from Handbook of Nature Study (including the HNS blog), Natural Science Through the Seasons (Partridge), and Through the Year (Frasier et al), a simply-written science reader that is referenced in Partridge's book

Possible books by term:
Term 1: Flower Fairies of the Autumn; Among the Night People (Pierson)
Term 2: Continue the Pierson series of nature books; add Linnea's Almanac
Term 3: Pagoo; Linnea's Windowsill Garden

LITERATURE
Shakespeare stories, Pilgrim's Progress
Term 1--Poems of Walter de la Mare; Understood Betsy; extra reading (see AO lists)
Term 2--Poems of Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley; Wind in the Willows
Term 3--Poems of Christina Rossetti; Robin Hood

ART AND MUSIC
Artist and composer: More or less follow the Ambleside Online rotation. Possibly study Andy Warhol in Term 1 since a local museum will be hosting a Warhol exhibit starting in January. Possibly do Giotto in Term 2 (we did him a few years ago, but Crayons doesn't remember)
Drawing and painting activities
Singing--folk songs, hymns, Canadian songs
Musical instruments--maybe start some keyboard lessons

LIFE SKILLS
Crafts--Jumbo Book of Crafts; possible sewing club with some friends; make Christmas decorations; cooking, helping at home; add knitting frame/corking and cat's cradles in third term

Phys-ed type activities

FRENCH
Aux Yeux des Enfants, which we usually do in Grade 1 but didn't get to this past year

MEMORY WORK
(Bible work was taken from Teaching Children (Lopez))
TERM 1: Ps. 23, Matt. 2:1-12, poems, geography songs, names of Bible books
TERM 2: Ps. 117, Matt. 6: 9-13, Lutheran catechism, etc.
TERM 3: Ps. 121, Matt. 28:1-10, catechism, etc.

(I should note here that our plans for Ponytails are more tentative at this point, so I won't be posting them for awhile.)

No-bake Chocolate Fruit Balls

I've always been of the opinion that a cookie on the counter is worth two bags of chocolate chips in the cupboard--if you know what I mean. And I had half a bag of chips and half a block of dates just sitting around.

But it's too hot to bake today, so this is what I made instead; it's a close relative of Christmas "sugar-plums" or the dried-fruit balls I described at the end of this post. It's very adaptable to whatever you have, and shows the real magic of the food processor. (What I mean by that is that sometimes you need to be patient--run the ingredients through twice, or a bit longer than you'd think--and you magically have something that looks a lot better than it started out to be. It doesn't hold true for everything--if you over-process whipping cream, you'll get butter. But it's something to keep in mind.)

Chocolate Fruit Balls

In the food processor, I combined approximately equal amounts of chocolate chips, dates (the pressed-together-in-a-block kind, broken apart), and granola, plus a drizzle of orange juice. If you're doing this, you might want to put on your industrial earplugs, because the sound of chocolate chips grinding is not a nice one. I ran the machine for a couple of minutes until I had a bowlful of crumbly stuff.

But wait, because it's not done.

Crumbly was okay but not really what I had in mind--I didn't want balls that would fall apart.

So I dumped the bowlful back in, added another drizzle of orange juice and a little honey--not for the sweetness but because I really wanted to make sure it would stick together. I don't know if it made any difference, though.

And then I ran it for another couple of minutes--it wasn't so deafening this time--till all of a sudden I had a big pasty mass of stuff that was having trouble moving around the bowl. That's it, turn it off!

And from that point it was very easy to break off pieces and roll them into balls.

You could call them Chocolate-Date Balls if nobody in your house has date antipathies. Otherwise it might be better to say they're Chocolate Granola Balls or Chocolate Fruit Balls.

Boy, this WAS a good day (yogurt making)

I haven't been making yogurt much lately, although I had had some success with Seabird Chronicles' method. I would have a good batch, then a couple of so-so ones; and in between I had to clean the pint canning jars I made it in (yuck). With a bottle brush. (Have to get me some wide-mouth jars.)

OK, enough whining?

Anyway, I think part of the problem with inconsistent yogurt results might just be the kind of yogurt used as a starter. I've always tried to get natural brands (I know yogurt with additives won't work well), but as I said I've had varying degrees of success. I bought some Perth County brand yogurt last week (sorry, that one's just for Ontarians), liked the taste, and froze some to use as starter. I made a batch today and it's probably the best-textured, least slimy or strange, most acceptable yogurt-that's-like-yogurt I've made in a long time. I don't THINK I did anything different--just followed Seabird's instructions and let it set on a heating pad for about six hours--took the jars out and let them chill in the fridge for awhile before I dumped them out into a larger container (maybe that helped too).

Or maybe the very strange weather we've had (cold, hot, thunderstorms, sunshine, bouncing back and forth), that's played havoc with all my baking lately, is good at least for yogurt making.

Success! Yeah!

P.S. Crayons calls the heating pad "the yogurt maker." I explained that it wasn't actually designed for that, that some people actually use a heating pad for sore backs. She thought that was very funny.

Retro Sloppy Joes

We had a request for Sloppy Joes tonight--but we were a bit short on ingredients and didn't have a can of Manwich sauce around either. The recipe in our Betty Crocker cookbook calls for various chopped vegetables, none of which we had (too close to grocery day and anyway green peppers were $2.49 a pound last week. In June.). I looked around and found a more retro-style recipe in the Beany Malone Cookbook. This is my adaptation--since I didn't have the required can of tomato soup and decided to add a few extra seasonings.

The Sloppy Joes turned out impressively chunky (rather than too sloppy) and quite flavourful--Mr. Fixit says they tasted like his mom's.

Since we were doing the Retro thing anyway, we had them with cooked green and yellow beans, potato chips, carrot sticks, and a dip I made that looked like spinach dip but was actually made with broccoli--and that got eaten instead of ignored because it was also quite good.

Not-Too-Sloppy Joes

In a large skillet, heat 3 tbsp. oil.

Brown: 1 cup chopped onions, 1 lb. ground beef. (I started the onions first because I wanted them nice and soft.) Drain fat if needed.

Add:
1 can tomato soup OR 1 can tomato paste put into a measuring cup and topped up with milk to make 1 cup
1/2 cup chili sauce
1/2 cup water or as needed
1 tbsp prepared mustard
A dash of garlic powder, a dash of celery seed, salt, pepper to taste
A dash of vinegar (that wasn't in the recipe but I thought it needed a little more sour)

Simmer for half an hour to an hour, on low so it doesn't burn. Add a bit more water if you think it needs it, but don't let it get too wet unless you just like it that way. Serve on hamburger buns. The Squirrelings like hamburger-style toppings on Sloppy Joes (like sliced cheese, relish and mustard), but Mama Squirrel doesn't bother.

Books read recently

With Crayons:

George and the Chinese Lady, by Myra Scovel (we've also started Hana's New Home)

Three chapters of The Family From One End Street, but Crayons decided she'd had enough of that one for the time being.

Mostly library books:

Lawrence Block, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers (warning--Mr. Block has written some rough stuff and he draws from his own examples in this otherwise helpful book)

Joanne Greenberg, With the Snow Queen (short stories) (reread)

Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (reread)

Anne Tyler, Searching for Caleb
(I didn't think I'd like this one as much, but I got drawn into it more as it went on.)


On the shelf waiting to be read:

The Book of Sorrows, by Walter Wangerin Jr.

Where the Road Goes, by Joanne Greenberg

If you have to ask the price...

There is a store near us that sells rocks. It also carries jewelery, butterflies in cases, and ceramic gifts; but mostly rocks. Some small, polished stones for fifty cents; some medium-sized things that would look good on a coffee table; some large and expensive pieces that you'd really have to love to pay that kind of money for.

They have one particularly large and beautiful piece called an Amethyst Cathedral. It really does resemble a cathedral: it's quite tall and pointed at the top, and it opens from the front (like the one in the photo there) into the most beautiful interior.

It's priced at $1,290 Canadian.

The young Squirrelings eyed it appreciatively. One noted, "That's a lot of money."

"How much money?" asked the youngest.

"One thousand, two hundred and ninety dollars."

The youngest Squirreling chewed on that for a moment and then added solemnly, "And I guess there'd be tax on that, too."

Chicken Spaghetti: the recipe

The chicken part of the recipe is adapted from a chicken-sandwich recipe in Canadian Living. I liked the idea of marinating and pre-baking the chicken breasts, and they turn out very tasty that way (and can be used for quick fajitas or other cooked-chicken recipes as well). Unless you do have the chicken pre-cooked, this isn't a last-minute recipe; but it's something that can be made with mostly pantry ingredients.

Chicken Spaghetti

454 g (1 lb.) package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 3 pieces)
1 (680 ml) can pasta sauce (I didn't use the whole can, I don't like it soupy)
1 small can tomato paste
1 can mushrooms, drained (fresh mushrooms would be nicer, and peppers would be good too)
2 tbsp. oil (olive preferred)
2 tbsp. lemon juice (I squeezed a fresh lemon)
1/2 tsp. each dried basil and thyme
1/4 tsp. each salt and pepper
Enough pasta (regular, gluten-free, or what-have-you) to serve 4

Combine the oil, lemon juice, basil, and thyme. Marinate the chicken in it, in the fridge, for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a cookie sheet, or cover it with foil. Put the chicken on the pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes. If you will be using the chicken later, chill it until needed.

In a large skillet with a lid, combine pasta sauce, mushrooms, and tomato paste. Add the chicken, in large pieces or cut up if you prefer. Heat through (don't let it bubble too hard). Cook the pasta and serve with the chicken and sauce, and Parmesan cheese if you want.

Serves 4 average eaters.

You use what you have (meditations on what's in the fridge)

One essential element of being frugal is that you use what you have, the best that you can. Other people have said this over and over too--Amy Dacyczyn said that she didn't want to print her recipe for pumpkin-blueberry muffins because those things were cheap/free for her but not necessarily for other people. (And yet people are still after her to write a cookbook.)

And that's one reason it's difficult for me to plan menus ahead of time, because the leftovers from pre-planned dinners have to get accounted for too. Coffeemamma just posted a very sensible week's plan and notes that it's based on what's available to her this time of year. We are in that same kind of waiting-for-the-fresh-stuff place right now.

I find the type of groceries we have really varies, depending on where we've been shopping. Last weekend the weather was bad, Mr. Fixit wasn't feeling well, so we were limited to a Giant Tiger trip plus a stop at Bulk Barn. I wasn't about to pay $2.89 for celery at Giant Tiger (although I've noticed that it's expensive at other stores right now too), and for the rest of our vegetables I had to settle for frozen peas, a can of mushrooms, and a head of iceberg lettuce. (I already had carrots and onions.) I knew we'd stock up better later on, but that was what we had to work with for at least a couple of days. Anyway, all that is to say that we had a few a-la-can dinners this week, which isn't necessarily a problem--it's just that sometimes what you have is fresh, sometimes it's frozen, sometimes it's packages, and you have to plan your meals on your feet, so to speak. (Remember my food-box menu plan? In a similar vein, I like what the new Hillbilly Housewife is doing with the Angel Food Menus, based on what's being distributed through another food box plan.) One night we had Giant Tiger's frozen cabbage rolls, plus a package of wieners that I put, frozen, into the oven with a bit of barbecue sauce over top; later I added a can of baked beans. Last night we had chicken spaghetti, with a salad made out of the iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, and sunflower seeds.

And sometimes you just do what makes sense. I've had a bunch of things to do today plus I have a meeting tonight and I don't want to leave a lot of pots and pans. (The Treehouse doesn't have a dishwasher.) We have ground turkey and I was going to make turkey loaf and maybe have mashed potatoes and vegetables with it...then I thought of the loaf of bread that just came out of the breadmaker, and the homemade cream-soup-mix in the cupboard, and the bag of frozen Japanese-style vegetables we bought last night (we did go on another grocery trip--worth a post in itself), and I thought--Hot Turkey-Vegetable Sandwiches. Or Turkey a la King on fresh bread, or whatever you want to call it. It's not a meal I'd make all the time, it's just what works today. (I also had a gi-nor-mous sweet potato from last night's trip, and I cut that up (so it wouldn't take forever to bake) and put it in a pan in the toaster oven.

That's not exactly a leftover story, but leftover-using-up works the same way. Last night's dessert was a what-do-we-have story: plain yogurt (frozen in cubes but mostly thawed by dessert time), one small blueberry yogurt cup, some frozen blueberries and mixed berries (leftovers of each), and graham crackers. Recipe: break up the graham crackers and layer them in a glass bowl with the yogurt and fruit. Let sit until defrosted but not entirely mushy. Call it trifle.

I could have skipped dessert for tonight, but I had some crushed pineapple getting forgotten in the fridge, and part of an orange that nobody finished at lunch. I cut up two bananas, spread the fruit all out in a small pan, and stuck it in the freezer. At dessert time we'll run it through the food processor--instant sherbet.

(Well, I guess that does leave a few dishes. But you get the point.)

I'll take that as a compliment

Crayons and I were reading James Herriot's Moses the Kitten for school.

She snuggled against me and said, "I want to be close to you. Like Bertha."

(Bertha is the mother sow in the story.)

Saturday finds

In between getting ready for Crayons' flower-fairy birthday and getting the girls to their Saturday dance lessons, we managed to hit a church sale and a neighbour's yard sale this morning. Mr. Fixit found a "gossip bench" (otherwise known as a seat with attached telephone table, much like this one)--it's the right style for our entrance and living room, and we both liked it right away. We even have a good place for it, just inside the front door, where our front hall joins the living room with an open space. Our only problem is deciding which way to put it--facing into the living room, which kills it as a shoe-putting-on bench; or facing into the hall, which makes it more useful but makes it look pretty funny when you're sitting in the living room?

For now we've compromised by putting it sideways!

Mama Squirrel found books at both places--so did Mr. Fixit. A copy of Magic Elizabeth (a beloved Scholastic story that has become hard to find), Babar Comes to America, and hardcover copies of The Greek Way and The Roman Way. What Mama Squirrel enjoyed most was finding several Friendship Press books from the '50's and '60's--she rarely sees these, and these titles were ones that have eluded her at church sales for years. (That's the mostly likely place to find them, since they were common in church libraries and are often stored away in back rooms of churches, from long-ago mission band or C.G.I.T. (girls' club) days. Strangely enough, these were in a box at the neighbour's sale, and not at the church sale at all!

(Is Mama Squirrel an expert collector of these things? Does she go haunting sales for one particular book? Nope, it's strictly nostalgia for some fondly remembered books from a long-ago church library.)

If you're interested, some of today's finds were George and the Chinese Lady, by Myra Scovel; The Buffalo and the Bell, ditto; Hana's New Home (that's an E-bay link so it may not work long); and The Turquoise Horse.

Gluten-Free Pantry French Bread and Pizza Mix (review)

OK, I made it to the health food store today and got a package of xanthan gum and some other things, so no more excuses. I also picked up a package of Gluten-Free Pantry's French Bread and Pizza Mix, since I wanted to make pizza and had heard good things about that brand.

Price: $4.99 for a mix that makes two 12-inch pizzas seems fairly reasonable, but is a bit misleading because what you're basically getting is the flour mixture and the yeast. You have to add eggs, vinegar, salt, sugar, water/milk and oil, plus your pizza sauce, cheese and toppings. And pay for oven heat if you're making pizza. Still...considering the price of gluten-free flours, it doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

Ease of use / clear directions: Although I didn't bake it as French bread, the bread machine instructions seemed pretty straightforward. The pizza instructions, on the other hand, are a bit vague, and have caused trouble for some people. However, ours turned out fine (see below).

Taste / texture: Excellent. It held together (which is more than I can say for some regular homemade pizzas I've made), was crispy but not rock-hard around the edges, solid on the bottom and bready inside, and tasted more-or-less like regular pizza crust; I'd give the overall texture and appearance 9 out of 10 and the mouth-feel about 8 1/2. Since I bought the mix and prepared it myself (and cleaned up the mixing bowls) and we did not utter the GF word during the meal, the pizza was deemed to be acceptable by the Squirrelings. (As I said, they probably thought it was better than some of Mama Squirrel's previous attempts at pizza.)

Okay, so how did I make it turn out well with the sketchy directions from the package? I put all the ingredients in the breadmaker and put it on "pizza dough" setting--20 minutes to mix, 30 minutes to rise. It needed a bit of help to get mixed properly, especially with the very little mixing blade in our machine--I can see where a mixer might do a better or at least quicker job on that. Or it might even work in the food processor--no guarantees that the batter wouldn't gum things up, but it could be worth a shot.

When the cycle was done, I scraped the whole thing out of the bread machine pan into a bowl, just to see what was up and if it needed any more mixing. Like most gluten-free bread "doughs," it was more of a sticky batter at that point than a stretchy dough. I non-stick-sprayed our two 12-inch metal pizza pans, and used a rubber spatula to push half the dough out on each pan. It still looked a bit rough at that point, and trying to get it to form a ridge around the edges was pretty useless. But this is where I lucked out: since I had a bit of time to spare, I covered each pizza with a piece of sprayed plastic wrap and let them sit on the table while I grated cheese, mixed up sauce and so on. And lo and behold...that dough began to rise a bit, and to cover more of the pans. And I figured out that I could use the spatula, right through the plastic, to keep pushing the dough a little more toward the edges and push it up into a ridge. The dough sat on the table for somewhere between twenty minutes to half an hour, and I think that extra time helped it turn out. I would do it in the same way again next time, let it rise for a short time in the bread pan or a bowl, and then the rest of the time right on the pizza pans.

I was going to par-bake the pizzas and then top and finish them, even though the package just said to bake the whole thing at 450 degrees for 15 minutes; but the oven was hot so I ended up just topping them and putting them in. The time and temperature seemed right; I switched the pans halfway because the top of our oven is always hotter than the bottom. I let them sit for a few minutes when they came out, and cut them with a pizza wheel.

Sorry I didn't take a picture! We still have some leftovers in the fridge, because Mr. Fixit also made a potful of his grandma's potato-sausage-bean soup, and that's a filler-upper.

You know you're a homeschooler when...they HAVE to hear the Real Thing

Someone on another board asked what we're currently reading aloud with our children.

Crayons and I are reading The Water Babies.

We read a very short version of it in My Bookhouse, and I told her that that version left most of the real story out of it (Mrs. Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By hardly comes into it at all), so she wanted me to read her the real thing. I do skip a few pages here and there whenever Kingsley goes on and on about something (like the periods of architecture that made up The Place--we just agreed that it was a Very Big House). I skip his satirical bits as well-- references to people like Huxley--and four pages of philosophical meanderings on why there might or might not be water babies at all.

I don't know how far we'll get with it--Crayons is a bit young for some of it, but it's what she asked for--and I've never had ANY of mine ASK to be read The Water Babies. The Apprentice thought it was cruel and unusual punishment.

Mom's books, or each cycle of the tide

"Take any books of your mom's that you want," Dad said.

Aside from a few of Mom's longtime personal favourites, there really weren't many books left in the bookcase; she was more of a book-passer-onner than a book-keeper. I took only three.

One was a high-school copy of Heroic Tales in Verse, edited by the Canadian poet E.J. Pratt, with Mom's name and "10A" written inside the cover. Something from a young girl I never knew, the age of my Apprentice, with nothing more on her mind than scribbling the difference between blank verse and free verse in the back of her literature book.

One was a copy of Out to Canaan, that I'd given Mom a few years ago. Something from her last years; something about getting older.

The third was a late-70's paperback copy of Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Maybe I gave that to her too, I don't remember; but in any case I found it somehow appropriate. A 1950's book, in a printing from the time when Mom was about my age now. Again a re-read for me, but I drank in Anne's loving descriptions of channelled whelks and moonshells, her "time out" on a private beach, and her musings on the stages of our lives. She wrote that "woman today is still searching. We are aware of our hunger and needs, but still ignorant of what will satisfy them. With our garnered free time, we are more apt to drain our creative springs than to refill them....Mechanically we have gained, in the last generation, but spiritually we have, I think, unwittingly lost."

Did Mom ever nod her head at that quote? Did she wish, during the turbulence of our growing up, for a quiet week on a beach to pick up those same shells? I don't know; we shared books, but didn't often talk about them afterwards. I like to think she did, if only because she kept the book when she'd given so many others away.

I read (re-read) Out to Canaan over the next few days, wondering if Mom had gotten around to reading this, and if she'd enjoyed it; if she'd laughed when Gene stepped in Esther's orange marmalade cake; if she'd related at all to Father Tim's worries over retirement; and there's the unforgettable scene of the church ladies trying to get the aforesaid cake recipe out of Esther with her two broken arms and her jaw wired shut...("She blinked twice, that's no. Try again. One teaspoon? Oh, thank God! Vanita, one teaspoon.")

And then, near the end, this Christmas Eve vignette:

"He reached up to the closet shelf for the camera and touched the box of his mother's things--the handkerchiefs, her wedding ring, an evening purse, buttons....He would not take it down, but it had somehow released memories of his mother's Christmases, and the scent of chickory coffee and steaming puddings and cookies baking on great sheets....'Mother...' he whispered into the darkened warmth of the closet. 'I remember...'"

I was glad that part came so near the end of the book. I was glad it was followed by nothing but joy.

From Gift from the Sea:

"Perhaps this is the most important thing for me to take back from beach-living: simply the memory that each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid. And my shells? I can sweep them all into my pocket. They are only there to remind me that the sea recedes and returns eternally."

Booksale finds

This weekend was the annual University Women's Booksale. Some years I never get out of the main room to look at the kids' books or anything else. This year I didn't get out of the kids' room (which was the same room as the tapes and videos, so Mr. Fixit and the Squirrelings found some multimedia stuff there as well).

I was kind of going for the oddball stuff--the "maybe someday this will be worth something" or just for fun books.

I found several volumes of the Best in Children's Books that we didn't have, AND 11 volumes of a 12-volume My Bookhouse set.

Inside Music: How to Understand, Listen to, And Enjoy Good Music, by Karl Haas.
Ola, by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire.
How to Make Snop Snappers and Other Fine Things, by Robert Lopshire.
Mystery in the Night Woods, by John Peterson. Vintage Scholastic. For all the rodent/critter-story fans:
The Winter Fun Book, by the editors of OWL magazine. (One of Ponytails' favourite magazines.)

The Children Come Running.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, a souvenir book written for "young Canadians" at the time of her coronation.

Hiawatha's Childhood, illustrated by Herbert Morton Stoops. (really.) A 1941 picture book with lithographs.

The Greedy One, by Patricia Miles Martin, illustrated by Kazue Mizumura. 1964. A small hardcover story about Japan.

The Story of Grettir the Strong, by Allen French. We already have one copy of this, but I thought it was worth getting and maybe passing on to someone.

The Circus is Coming, by Noel Streatfeild. Like Ballet Shoes only about living in the circus.

Last but not least, one which I'd never heard of but thought looked interesting: The Land the Ravens Found, by Naomi Mitchison.
(And the whole lot cost under $7. That's the best part.)

Gluten-free Dutch Chocolate Chip Cookies, and a story

My mom, my aunt and my grandma used to pass recipes around to each other a lot. The interesting thing was that, like that old game show where moms had to guess which ketchup-chocolate-peanut creation was baked by their own offspring, each person's baking seemed to turn out differently--even using the same recipe. One recipe that they all had a try at, about thirty years ago, was what we called Dutch Chocolate Chip Cookies--because they came out of the Dutch Cookbook--which I can't remember the proper name of or even whether it really was a Dutch cookbook or Pennsylvania Dutch.

These cookies were like nothing I've had in years. They had approximately twice the fat and twice the sugar of any normal chocolate chip cookie (I seem to remember a cup of butter AND a cup of shortening); one cookie on a paper napkin would leave a grease splotch as big as if you'd put a piece of just-fried bacon there instead. The other notable thing about them was their fragility--you needed the paper napkin, because these cookies would break in half without warning and leave a trail of crumbs everywhere--greasy crumbs, of course. We kids thought they were wonderful.

I remember that recipe kind of running rampant for a year or so after my mom and her fellow bakers discovered it; they kept making batches and trying to figure out why one person's were flatter or puffier than another's. Then I think it died a natural death (probably of clogged arteries).

Flash-forward to this week when I got an unquenchable chocolate-sugar craving and decided to adapt (gluten-free, egg-free) an old chocolate-chip recipe from Family Fun magazine. (I looked online but didn't find it on their website.) Results: a pale, slightly fragile chocolate chip cookie with a tiny bit of sandy texture from the rice flour, but otherwise quite an acceptable taste. It was when I was eating a second, or maybe a third, that I realized what was tugging at the back of my mind: made with gluten-free flours, these are about as close to Those Cookies as I've had in about thirty years. Well, without the greasy splotches.

So here's the recipe. The only complicated thing about it (if you have the gluten-free flours) is that I cut down a flour mix from this wonderful post on the Going Gluten-Free blog. I didn't have enough of everything to make a big batch of flour mix, so I made a third-size batch, which was enough for the cookies and left a cupful of mix to use for something else.

Clear as melted chocolate chips?

Gluten-Free Dutch Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs or equivalent replacer (powdered replacer mixed with liquid)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/4 cups of this flour mix: 2 cups white rice flour, 1/3 cup each tapioca flour, potato starch, and corn starch; and 1 tsp. Xanthan gum (see note above: you will have some mix left over)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups chocolate chips or as desired (we only put in about a cupful)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream butter, sugars, eggs (or replacer) and vanilla.
Combine dry ingredients and add.
Stir in chocolate chips last.
Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 10 to 12 minutes (watch them, don't let them get dark). Cool on pans several minutes, then on rack.
Makes about 60 cookies.

Of birthday cakes and Raggedy Anns: a mom's life

In memory of Grandma Squirrel
1938-2008

My mother had a remarkable talent--which I do not share--for making things come out looking just like a magazine picture. Knitted sweaters. Smocked dresses, Halloween costumes, and Barbie clothes with impossibly tiny sleeves to set in. Birthday cakes covered with roses, hand puppets, painted ceramics, and rag dolls with dresses that matched their small owners'. About the only thing she never managed to do well was get everyone's heads in a photograph.

During an era when working outside the home took on a feminist face, she worked long, hard hours at jobs that had no glamour: teaching kindergarten, working for a catering company, taking orders at a flower store, wrapping chocolates in a candy store, clerking at Sayvette, and working in the supply room at the hospital. In between other jobs, she invented businesses: babysitting numerous children; making and selling wedding cakes, lollipops and Raggedy Ann dolls; baking cookies for the farmers' market.

And somehow she also had time for us. As preschoolers she read to us, helped us make all the crafts out of our Humpty Dumpty magazines, and helped us shape fondant and put toppings on the pizza mix--no takeout in those days! She bandaged the hurts and settled the fights, which usually meant kicking us outside for awhile. In those days you didn't think anything of telling a five-year-old to go ride her tricycle down the street or even go around the corner for a loaf of bread. We always made it back all right, and we always knew Mom would be there. When we took school lunches, there was no slopping bologna in a paper bag; we got cream cheese and cherry sandwiches, or maybe meat and pickle, with carrot sticks cut with a crinkle cutter. And she knew how to fold the wax paper so it stayed around the sandwich; I've never been able to figure that one out.

Mom was also one of my first Sunday School teachers. She was intensely practical, no-nonsense, organized, adult and frugal. And she occasionally got so tired of seeing herself that way that she had to invent a wild-and-crazy side, much like (if you ever watched Fraggle Rock) Boober's alter ego Sidebottom. This part of Mom usually surfaced on weekends away with my aunt and uncle, or when she was excited about going to a Burt Reynolds or Clint Eastwood movie, or when my dad's company had an Oktoberfest dance. Watching Family Feud or getting a small win on Wintario would do it too. She always liked a good New Year's party with a lot of yelling and kissing at midnight. It was very hard to take her by surprise, but we managed it just once, on her fiftieth birthday. I think it was the only picture we have of Mom with her mouth completely open.

She admitted to screaming at Elvis movies as a teenager, and often talked about a trip out west that she'd taken with some girlfriends before she was married: it sounded like the most fun and adventurous thing she had ever done. One year during university I wanted to go to Quebec City during Reading Week, but couldn't find any travelling company; so Mom and I went together. I think it was probably the only travelling that we had a chance to do just the two of us (trips to the orthodontist don't count). We had the most fun together that week, even though it was freezing cold: we ate duck with maple syrup, checked out all the craft shops, walked around when we could stand it and took taxis everywhere else. That was my mom, remember, who always worried about every penny, having a good time splurging.

Mom liked to try out new kitchen gadgets and recipes: I remember her granola and homemade bread period, and her experiments with the blender and the wok. But I think she sometimes found everyday cooking a chore, especially when she was working; so when I started making a lot of the dinners during high school, she was the most uncritical and ate the biggest helpings, even if it was Jamaican pigeon peas or fried tofu. She was sentimental about keeping anything and everything we'd ever made for her: Brownie Christmas decorations, shop-class flower shelves, and anything with a magnet on the back.

She liked to read: James Herriot, Erma Bombeck, the Rabbi mysteries, and the A is for Alibi books. She was a whiz at Boggle, Scrabble and crosswords; but never thought she had it in her to try anything very academic. When my aunt started taking university courses, Mom had the chance to audit a folk art history course with her. She loved it and wished she had taken the course for credit. I always wished she would have had the opportunity to try more things like that, but life went on in other directions.

Mom's stubbornness carried her through a thirty-year battle against her own body, against a nightmare of auto-immune issues and chronic pain, and against a medical system that is only now beginning to see the whole picture of women's health and wellness. She continued to make her own choices when she could, including moving to a care centre three years ago after a major health setback.

Mom lived as much for others as for herself. She gave away much of what she made, and found ways to care for others even when her limitations became overwhelming. Earlier this month she and Dad phoned me first thing in the morning to sing Happy Birthday: another tradition she never forgot.

I'm thankful that her pain is over. But I will miss her.

How to make a bowl of oatmeal when nobody else wants any

I learned this from a sugar-free website:

In a microwaveable bowl, put 1/3 cup of quick oats and 3/4 cup of milk. (The original recipe suggests adding a spoonful of nut butter for extra protein, but it works fine without it.) Cover loosely with plastic wrap. Cook on High for about 2 1/2 minutes; you're going to have to try this a couple of times with your own microwave to get it right. Watch it during the last minute or so; when you see it poof up as if it's going to boil over, it's done, turn it off. I usually let it sit a few more minutes while I do other things.

UPDATE: I figured out you can use large-flake oats for this too, and it's not as gummy. Just give it slightly longer to cook.

Winter By Ponytails

Guess what?
I went outside today and it smelled like spring sort of!
It smelled like mud actually.
But I guess it was a sign of spring even if tomorrow it's going to snow!



~~~Ponytails

Books Read in February

I didn't finish that many books in February; the length of things got away from me. (Unlike the Deputy Headmistress.)

I did finish two more Mitford books: In This Mountain and Light From Heaven. (Reviewed earlier.)

I can officially say that I finished Little Sugar Addicts, after weeks of browsing.

I finished one Caroline book with Crayons and am almost finished Eleanor Farjeon's The Glass Slipper with Ponytails.

In process: I'm working through the book of Jeremiah, still working on John Piper's Desiring God, and am only a bit of the way through Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel.

Cooking Without Recipes: Chinese Beef and Strawberry Cake

Uh, that's two different recipes--not a very strange-sounding cake.

This is what we had for supper last night...all amounts are very approximate.

Slow Cooker Chinese Beef

1 lb. stew meat, cubed (comes that way in the package)
good squoosh of hoisin sauce
8-oz package whole mushrooms
two cups leftover broccoli
squirt of soy sauce, 1 tbsp. cornstarch, half a cup of water

In the very busy morning, put the thawed stew meat in the slow cooker and add enough hoisin sauce to sort-of cover the top. Let it cook on low for the rest of the day. Or put it in later if you forgot, and cook it for a few hours on high.

Partway through the afternoon (so they don't get mushy), rinse and add the mushrooms.

About half an hour before supper, stir the cornstarch into a little water and add a bit of soy sauce for extra flavour. Turn the slow cooker up to high if it wasn't there already, and stir in the cornstarch mixture and the leftover broccoli if it isn't too mushy. If it's really soft, then just add it at the end. Let the whole thing finish heating together. If it's too thick, you can add more water.

Serve over rice or noodles. This has kind of a nice dark taste, I think because of the beef juices mixing with the hoisin sauce and the mushrooms. Warning: we ate it all, even with the youngest Squirreling offering regrets; so if you have more people or hungry eaters, you'd probably be best to double it. Just use whatever size package of meat you think will be enough and go from there.


Strawberry Upside Down Cake

about 3/4 of a bag of frozen strawberries, thawed and warmed in the microwave along with the end of a container of homemade pancake syrup (optional)

Standard muffin batter:
2 cups unbleached or all-purpose flour
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar or whatever you like to use instead
2 tsp. baking powder [corrected! 2 tbsp. would be horrible]
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
1 egg
1/3 cup oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease an 8-inch square pan and put the warmed berries into the bottom of it, mashing them slightly if they're large.

Mix the dry and wet batter ingredients separately, blend gently and spoon over the top of the fruit.

Bake 30 to 40 minutes, until the cake tests done. I put the pan on top of a cookie sheet because I was worried that the fruit might gush over the side, but it was fine. The cake was delicious but I think we could have happily used the whole bag of berries.

This world ceases to be one's enemy

From a rummage-saled book:

"....I wish to place on record that I am in unrepayable debt to Francis of Assisi, for when I pray his prayer [Make me an instrument of Thy peace], or even remember it, my melancholy is dispelled, my self-pity comes to an end, my faith is restored, because of this majestic conception of what the work of a disciple should be.

"So majestic is this conception that one dare no longer be sorry for oneself. This world ceases to be one's enemy and becomes the place where one lives and works and serves. Life is no longer nasty, mean, brutish, and short, but becomes the time that one needs to make it less nasty and mean, not only for others, but indeed also for oneself."--Alan Paton, Instrument of Thy Peace

Happy 3rd Blogiversary to us

You're all invited over for acorn cookies.
(Like the toy treehouse and the squirrels? Information here and here.)

A Love Story (review of A Severe Mercy)

(repost from 2007)

The best book I've read so far this year isn't on my Bookstack Challenge List, but it was on the shelf, so I guess it counts. I'd seen it recommended in one of Terry W. Glaspey's books, and had been meaning to read it for awhile--and one night I just picked it up and started in.

The book is A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken, published in 1977. The plot of the story is no secret (just read the back of the book): Van (the husband) meets Davy (the wife); they go sailing; they become Christians; Davy dies; and life goes on.Oh, and the middle of all that they go to Oxford and become friends with C.S. Lewis.

This is a book about falling in love: intensely, desperately, "intoxicatingly" (to quote Terry Glaspey). With another human being, and with Christ. Van and Davy don't do anything by halves. At the beginning of their relationship, they set up rules that most of us would find extreme: they will do nothing apart, they will have no separate interests or activities that would interfere with or change their love. In their view, that includes having children, since children might cause an imbalance in their two-ness. They are more interested in pursuing both outdoor and intellectual adventures--together, of course.

However, this isn't a brief "Love Story"; the Vanaukens' marriage lasts for about eighteen years, and they become Christians in their thirties. When they start to consider Christianity, naturally they turn to books: the whole Christian literary canon, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot's later poems, Chesterton, Sayers, Newman, the medieval writers. But, interestingly, it's Christians rather than books that help convince them that Christianity might be true. The Christians they meet at Oxford are intelligent, joyful, and not very "Puritan"; they drink wine, spend evenings (often at the Vanaukens' flat) discussing everything in creation, and sing liturgical goodnights to each other at unholy hours. This is community; this is a kind of magic circle that's all the more magical because of the realization that it's both temporary and eternal. Most of the people involved will leave Oxford for whatever comes next; but at the same time there are bonds being formed that will last the rest of this lifetime and into the next.

In the same way that Van and Davy first fall in love with each other, the two of them fall in uncontested, unswerving love with Christ; and one of the only points of friction between them is that Davy seems to take her new relationship with the Lord even more seriously than Van does, if that's possible.One might ask if this love story with Christ is just as much about falling in love with England, Oxford, and stimulating friends, including Lewis, as it is about God. Does that make it less true? Obviously not, because the real test comes when the Vanaukens return to the U.S. (Van gets a college teaching position). Although they are disappointed by mainstream churches and miss England a lot (they drink a lot of tea and find the houses way too warm), God begins to build a growing circle of believers and seekers around them.

This part of the story sounds much like the beginnings of L'Abri: a student has questions and comes over to talk; then she brings a friend...I found this fascinating because it proves you don't have to live in the Alps to reach out to people, or even hang a "Knock for Christian inquiry" sign on your door. If God's writing the story, He opens the door at the right time, or at least provides the right person to knock.

All too soon, the partnership comes to an end with Davy's illness and death at the age of forty. In some ways, I found this less interesting (or at least less surprising) than the first part of the story, although it continues to show the Vanaukens' devotion both to each other and to the Lord. (At one point, Van coaxes Davy out of a coma by talking to her for hours on end.)

The last part of the book focuses on the period afterwards, especially on Van's continuing correspondence and friendship with C.S. Lewis, through the time of Lewis's marriage and then his death.Would I want a marriage as intense as the Vanaukens'? Not if it meant forgoing our children--but they made that decision long before they became Christians. (Did they ever reconsider their choice?)

Still, there's much to learn from them about love that serves the other person's needs and pushes aside a lot of the small daily irritations, just for the sake of the relationship. The detailed discussions on faith (including C.S. Lewis's letters to Van) are worth reading and re-reading; we are privileged to observe great minds sharpening themselves on each other. Sheldon Vanauken's descriptions of that time at Oxford are so good that we can almost feel like we were there, on one of those unforgettable winter nights with bells ringing out all around.

Here's one to try (Low-sugar cookies)

Link updated April 2020

I just made this version of Breakfast in a Cookie (with adjustments) and I think they turned out pretty well. (Note they can be dairy-free too if you substitute for the butter.) I chopped up the dates and apricots with scissors and added them to a container of raisins in the amounts directed: but my baker's instinct told me (rightly) to hold back on adding the full amount of dried fruit. You want some batter around all these add-ins, after all! I kept the rest for another time.

I also used margarine (because that's what I had); cut the honey in half (to a quarter cup) and changed the flour to whole wheat. I think they're sweet enough with only a bit of honey, because you're adding all that dried fruit (even if you cut the fruit back). I also cut back a bit on the spices (personal taste). Also you might want to check before the 15 minutes are up, depending on how big you've made them--my rodent nose told me they were done a couple of minutes ahead of time.

The Apprentice was doubtful about adding in the Cheerios, but they seemed to work fine. The whole effect is a kitchen-sink type oatmeal cookie. If you didn't want to go to the trouble of chopping things, you could use packaged trail mix instead.

I got about three dozen cookies out of the recipe.

Bubba and me think that homeskoolers are not so freaky

(A slightly riled apology for what shouldn't need to be apologized for.)

I try to stay away from most of the ignorant anti-homeschool articles and letturs-to-the-edditor out there; and heaven knows, there are lots of them, especially after any homeschooler gets into any trouble with the law or does some other antisocial thing. Occasionally I've posted my own rebuttals about homeschoolers/homeschooling not being so weird/scary.

But it's time to set things straight.

The question is, who's weird here?

First, you go ahead and define weird. OK...

"Synonyms: These adjectives refer to what is of a mysteriously strange, usually frightening nature. Weird may suggest the operation of supernatural influences, or merely the odd or unusual: "The person of the house gave a weird little laugh" (Charles Dickens). "There is a weird power in a spoken word" (Joseph Conrad). Something eerie inspires fear or uneasiness and implies a sinister influence: "At nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold" (Robert Louis Stevenson). Uncanny refers to what is unnatural and peculiarly unsettling: "The queer stumps ... had uncanny shapes, as of monstrous creatures" (John Galsworthy). Something unearthly seems so strange and unnatural as to come from or belong to another world: "He could hear the unearthly scream of some curlew piercing the din" (Henry Kingsley)." (Bolds are mine.)

You know what's really weird, is that a lot of people looking up those synonyms (if anybody did) probably wouldn't have read anything by Conrad or Dickens or Stevenson. Whereas some--not all, mind you--of our unearthly and unsettling homeschoolers will take those books as their common currency.

If you read, you tend to go looking for friends who read...or you like to read about people who like to read, like Father Tim in the Mitford books who hangs out at the bookstore, pondering Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples and waiting for obscure books by John Buchan to arrive (also one of Mr. Fixit's favourite writers).

Not that Father Tim is a homeschooler. Just that he's weird in kind of the same way as some homeschoolers. (Not all homeschoolers are bookworms, just not all vegetarians eat nutritiously.
Some homeschoolers would rather be doing than reading.)

Weird is listening to little kids at the park talking about the sexy hot singers they're supposed to like.

And the rest of us just go on scaring people (unsettling them?), just by doing our thing. My six-year-old kind of blew some people away at church when she did a reading with her sister a couple of weeks ago. I don't think they've ever had somebody under seven lead the responsive reading before. But she would have done that even if she wasn't homeschooled. It's a famly thang.

Weird is standing behind mothers in line at teachers' night and hearing them talk about how they get up to commute at 5 or 6 in the morning, drop the little ones at daycare, get home at 5 or 6 at night, and still have to make dinner for everybody including the teenagers. [Oh--you want to know what I'm doing at teachers' night? If you've just climbed up here, our teenager takes most of her classes now at the public high school. Homeschooling-all-the-way isn't a doctrinal thing with us; figuring out what works best for our own kids takes priority over dogma.]

So here's my request: Stop writing those letters telling the powers-that-be to swing their blackjack a little harder at us. Stop writing the breathless articles that always have something in them somewhere about how deprived of real lives homeschooling moms are, or how we'll suddenly become incompetent once the kids get to algebra, or how we need to be sending our kids into the school system so that they'll absorb whatever version of socialization you think is best for my family. It's not like your deathless prose is going to give me the sudden revelation that I've totally messed up my kids' lives. (Although the collective blast of them might eventually make homeschooling more difficult or in some places illegal, depriving the world of some great independent thinkers and people who would have dropped through the cracks, educational and otherwise.)

Some of what's fantastic (unbelievable) to behold in homeschooling is truly fantastic (unbelievably great). Not everything about homeschooling is wonderful. Not every homeschooler is wonderful--kid or parent. What else would you expect?

But we're not all weird either. Some of us watch the Three Stooges. Some of us listen to KISS (as if that defines normal, but for some people it might). Some of us can even read, write, spell, and think through what the the world can offer to our kids--and what we can offer back.

And that's the trooth.

A post from our past: Valentine's Pizza

(Reposted from Feb. 2007)

Last Sunday night we made a special treat for dessert: Pizza Cake. We adapted our recipe a long time ago from an April Fool's idea in Family Fun Magazine. We don't use red frosting for the tomato sauce, though; I prefer to make a sauce out of jam or preserves.

This is how we do it: I bake half of a white cake mix in a foil pizza pan. (You can bake the rest of the batter in a cupcake pan at the same time and save it for another time, if you want just one. One pizza cake serves about six eager eaters.) Usually I like to make cakes from scratch, and you could use any plain cake recipe you like; but for this recipe it seems the toppings are the exciting part and a mix will do fine underneath. If it bakes slightly unevenly, that's okay.

I make a sauce from a good dollop of red jam (say half a cup), enough water to bring it up to a cup, and a tablespoonful of cornstarch, cooked together until thick and clear. You might want to double that if you like lots of sauce (I did). (Note: jam thins as it heats, so you might want to try a bit less water than the math would say; I think my water level came up to about a cup and a half rather than two cups.) Raspberry and strawberry jam both work fine. This time around I used about half a jar of E.D. Smith Triple Fruits Raspberry. You could probably just use straight preserves too, if they're thin; but I think that would be too sweet.

When the cake is baked and fairly cool, spread it with the fruit sauce. Sprinkle it with something to resemble grated cheese; some people might like coconut, but we prefer a square of grated white chocolate. You can sprinkle it on after the fresh fruit (see below), but we think it looks better sprinkled on first. And then decorate, randomly or in lovely patterns, with your choice of fruit toppings.

Since our grocery store featured blackberries this week (an unusual treat, even in the summer), we got a small box of them and put them on the cake along with sliced bananas and canned pineapple chunks. But you could also use kiwi fruit, strawberries, small orange sections, or whatever else is available. (Note if you're using bananas or anything else that might turn brown: serve as soon as possible after decorating. We made the cake in the afternoon and refrigerated it until dinner, and the banana slices were already starting to discolour just a bit.)

If you're feeling creative and have a pizza box, you can serve it from the box as Family Fun shows; but otherwise it's just fine from the foil pan. Actually I baked it in three foil pizza pans stacked together, for stability; and when I served it I had the foil pan sitting on top of a glass cake plate. I put our pizza cutter out for fun, but a cake lifter will do just as well.

Now Ponytails and Crayons both want pizza cake for their birthdays.

Happiness is, happiness isn't

Someone at church handed me a book to read called Happiness™ by Will Ferguson (Penguin Books, 2002) . I knew it was meant to be satirical; I didn't know just how much off-colour stuff I was going to have to muck through to get to the heart of it. Hip-waders would be advised.

However, I do like the premise of the book, and it did try to make some good points. It’s a novel about an (imaginary) self-help book called What I Learned On the Mountain that--astonishingly--works. And its impact (mostly negative) on the editor who discovered it and society in general. Some of the initial effects:

“People no longer felt estranged from their bodies. They felt connected. For the first time, possibly ever, Americans began to feel comfortable with who they were. Cosmetics went unsold; department stores stood half-deserted. Expensive perfumes were marked down and sat gathering dust. GQ magazine switched its emphasis from men’s fashion to articles on ‘fostering happiness.’ Dour Calvin Klein models stood on street corners holding up signs: ‘Will pout for food.’” (Happiness™)

Unfortunately, the spreading move of “happiness” not only begins to destroy the economy (the alcohol and tobacco market dries up alongside the cosmetics industry), but it (whatever it is) destroys people's minds and emotions as well. The editor, Edwin, comes to this conclusion:

“[It’s] a world without a soul. A world without laughter. Without real laughter. The kind that makes your heart ache and your eyes go blurry….we need our vices….because life is sad and short and over far too soon.”

One could argue that this version of happiness isn’t happiness at all, but some kind of selfish, mindless seeking after bliss. (bliss n : a state of extreme happiness [syn: blissfulness, cloud nine, seventh heaven, walking on air]) Edwin pleads for what he calls “joy” instead of “happiness.” However, you could also argue with Edwin’s definition of “joy” since it seems to be based only on celebrating the ugliness, pettiness and vices of humanity (accepting and enjoying what makes us human) rather than looking outwards from ourselves (e.g. to a supreme Being).

I hear echoes of Brave New World in this--the Noble Savage "claiming the right to be unhappy." However, Edwin isn't the Noble Savage by any means, or even Brave New World's questioning Bernard; he's a frustrated Gen-Xer who can't stand his wife, or his cat, or his boss, or his job, or the city he lives in. His only redeeming characteristic is that--somehow--he's one of the few people who read What I Learned On the Mountain and aren't taken in by it. This implies that he's worthy of telling the rest of us what supposedly makes life meaningful.

And I suppose he's right, in a general way. Too much seeking after "happiness" is just self-seeking and self-defeating; yes, there's something deeper out there. But I felt reluctant to accept much of his pontificating on how life was meant to be lived, considering the mouth it was coming from. I think you can get a just as good a read on happiness-as-human-experience in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, and without the profanity.

Right as I was finishing Happiness™, I thrift-shopped a copy of John Piper’s book Desiring God (Multnomah Publishers, 2003 edition; the link is to the e-text) . The motto of Piper's ministry: "We take happiness seriously."

Piper, who calls himself a "Christian hedonist" says this:

"I had never in my whole life heard any Christian, let alone a Christian of [C. S.] Lewis's stature, say that all of us not only seek (as Pascal said) but also ought to seek our own happiness. Our mistake lies not in the intensity of our desire for happiness, but in the weakness of it." (Desiring God)

As I posted yesterday, I've also been profoundly touched over the past month by the Mitford novels. Perhaps they're too good to be true. On the other hand, they illustrate two truths about happiness that seem to escape Will Ferguson's theories. One is perhaps a cliché, but it's true anyway: that you create your own happiness around you; if you want a friend, you have to be one. Mitford's mayor wins elections based on slogan "Mitford takes care of its own," and the books constantly repeat this theme of human love and concern. The best that Ferguson's Edwin comes up with is deciding to kill the author of the self-help book (to save the world from Happiness); his concern for others is limited to another editor (his sometime girlfriend) and, eventually, to that same author (probably the most interesting character in the book, and we don't get to meet him until the end). In other words, he doesn't do a whole lot to make his world a better place.

The other is, as I suggested before and as John Piper preaches, that happiness--or joy--or whatever you want to call it--may not be complete until we find it in a relationship with the One who created us. It's all very well for Edwin to celebrate our human weaknesses along with our good; but that doesn't seem to take into account the genuine pain caused by sin and suffering in the world, and our need for an answer that lies outside of humanity altogether. Belief in God doesn't have to be as mindless as Belief in Happiness.

And when I get done with Piper's book, I think I'll pass it on to my friend at church.

On the Mitford books

Now that Mama Squirrel is up to the last couple of books in the Mitford series (having skipped #2, which wasn't available, and A Common Life, which doesn't fit right into the sequence anyway), she has come to some conclusions about the books. Remember that Mama Squirrel usually avoids both preachy books AND "women's books" (from Grace Livingston Hill to Danielle Steele). [She also consistently mispunctuates "women's."]

Meaning no disrespect to Jan Karon, it's not necessarily the writing that draws me into these books. As a matter of fact, after you've read a few of them, you could almost write a parody full of some too-often-repeated phrases like "his good dog," "Consider it done," and "Well done!" Throw in a bit of nature description (not as bad as Hessie Mayhew's, of course), a Reader's Digest joke, and a couple of coincidences, and consider it done. It doesn't seem too complicated. You can read an excerpt from Out to Canaan here.

It's not the writing. It's the feeling that--book after book--I am being personally ministered to as I read them. Not preached at, although some people might feel that way. It's a sense that a lot of the people in these books, although they have their struggles too, have their spiritual acts together, and that you can learn an awful lot by hanging around them for awhile. Even if you disagree with some of the theology--and I actually like it that the main character is a priest in a liturgical church. It does away, right away, with some of the Bible Belt stereotypes (not everybody in the South is Baptist). I like it that, even in a small town, there are several churches, and that there's even some church-hopping among them; people aren't bound to one or another for life. I like it that Father Tim has lunch at the diner with the same two guys for twenty years, and that it's still only in the last book that he gets into any serious God-talk with one of them. That's called extreme patience.

I like the way these people pray with each other. I like the way some of the characters move towards faith, and the places God takes them. I like the way Father Tim draws on Scripture. I like the way he manages to talk to some of the difficult and unlovely people, and to genuinely love them even if his responses are of the "Imagine that" variety. I like his struggles to get into e-mail. I like the way he buys lipstick--he even remembers the favourite shade--for an old lady's Christmas present. I like it that he adores his wife with such passion. I like it that many of the people in the book--including Father Tim and his wife--aren't quite as young as they once were, and that they deal with some very relevant issues of aging.

I like the hard-won words of wisdom that come in one of his sermons:

"Some of us have been in trying circumstances these last months. Unsettling. Unremitting. Even, we sometimes think, unbearable. Dear God, we pray, stop this! Fix that! Bless us--and step on it!....

"I want to tell you that I started thanking Him last night--this morning at two o'clock, to be precise--for something that grieves me deeply. And I'm committed to continue thanking Him in this hard thing, no matter how desperate it might become, and I'm going to begin looking for the good in it."

I started with the Christmas book Shepherds Abiding, several books in. I didn't realize it followed so closely on the heels of In This Mountain, the book that contains the sermon I just referred to. Those two books together are my favourite of the series: In This Mountain because of its struggles and triumphant faith; and Shepherds Abiding because of its beauty. It's something like an unexpected sunny winter day (today) after days of unending storms; it's like snow on Christmas Eve, and a candle in the window. Like Good Friday and Easter, it's difficult to fully appreciate the second one without having experienced the first.

And in fact, I wouldn't have cared if the series had ended there. For me, that was enough. But there is still Light from Heaven to read.

Grammar grabber

Squirreling old enough to know better: "I didn't used to do that."

Mama Squirrel: "Could you find a more grammatical way to say that?"

Eager smaller Squirreling: "Yeah, that's not right, because you did used to do that."

Multiplication without vexation (CM and Math)

Multiplication is vexation,

Division is as bad,

The rule of three doth puzzle me,

And fractions drive me mad.

- Author unidentified

Last weekend a few of us (Coffeemamma, PirateMum, Birdie and I) got together and talked some CM--mostly math. How do we apply Charlotte Mason's ideas to our math teaching?--especially when "what Charlotte said" ranges from saying that she had no special insight into teaching mathematics, to making very pointed comments about the overemphasis on pure mathematics in the English public school system, to setting out bean exercises, and recommending domino games for flittery little girls.

I mentioned how the first chapter of Galileo and the Magic Numbers has such a wonderful description of Galileo being taught about triangle numbers by his new tutor, using a bag of white pebbles; and how (when we read the book, usually in about grade 3) I try to incorporate the Miquon Math lessons on triangle numbers into our Galileo readings. That's one connection I've found between "everyday math" and people who've done wonderful things with numbers and equations--and the fact that this part of the story is about a young boy makes it even more relevant. But I wish there were more opportunities like that...

Afterwards I had time to think about some of what we talked about, and it occurred to me that Charlotte Mason herself--and I could have this wrong, I'm just positing something here--may not have been that different from many of us in her attitude toward mathematics. That is, although we know she was very well versed in literature, history, and botany, she may have been limited either by education or simply by a slight lack of interest in things mathematical.

That is not to say that I don't think she had some excellent insights about math teaching: for instance stressing problem-solving skills rather than doing rows of repetitive sums; and having children work through things themselves (such as writing out their own times table chart) rather than giving them pre-made manipulatives and charts that take the teeth out of the learning experience. However, doesn't this still apply mostly to arithmetic rather than to the larger world/universe of mathematics?

We know that she enjoyed keeping up with the latest scientific and archaelogical discoveries (and encouraged her students in those areas), but is there any evidence that she had as much enthusiasm for mathematics (and, by extension, physics)? Was she interested in what Einstein was doing during her lifetime?

And if Charlotte Mason felt like this, must this then be typical of a CM education?

Some might say yes: you can't be everything, and one must admit that the classical loop into which CM fits seems to encourage literature and history majors (or perhaps entomologists and ornithologists) rather than future mathematicians and physicists. Perhaps parents whose own bent is in those directions will naturally find themselves drawn more to other styles of homeschooling. Don't forget, though, that CM's own high school students studied three branches of mathematics at once--the subject was not neglected, although it would be interesting to see whether it was handled with as much imagination and insight as the other courses were. It would be worthwhile to search through the online Parent's Review articles from that time (mostly written by CM's colleagues) and see what their collective approach was.

On the other hand...I would say no. The sense of wonder that Charlotte Mason encouraged can be brought into mathematics as well; and a CM education in general can benefit "non-typical" CM students whose first love is not history. I say that because I have such a student. The education that she received at home benefitted her by teaching her that the world is "so full of a number of things" and that she was capable of learning about whatever interested her. Unfortunately, that doesn't particularly include history; but it does include chemistry and aesthetics and computer systems and a number of other things.

If we want to teach mathematics or at least arithmetic CM-style, are we limited to either picture-book-math or Victorian arithmetic textbooks? No, I wouldn't want to put such limits on what CM math teaching is when there are so many good approaches out there (besides some of the public-school math mess). I would say that any approach claiming to be CM-friendly must balance the fun picture book side of things with a cumulative teaching of solid arithmetic skills, not too heavy on re-inventing every wheel but still allowing students to reason things out. I would definitely recommend what my own school days missed completely: books of math history and biographies of mathematicians; true accounts of significant developments; readable, interesting stories for younger children comparable to the wonderful books that are out there about Marie Curie, Thomas Edison and Galileo. And for the upper years, not just puzzles, which mostly just irritate the less mathematical of us; but any kind of "popular mathematics" writing that would give us a sense of what and why it's all about. The weekend newspaper book sections often review such books--the kind written for the general public. Good libraries will have a shelf of them too, or can get them for you. There really are books out there that are written to make what happened (and what's happening) in mathematics accessible and even interesting for the masses of us who graduated feeling rather clueless about higher math (and not caring much if we did).

Maybe I'm wrong about Charlotte Mason's interest (or disinterest) in what mathematicians were up to. I wouldn't have blamed her, either, if all she ever heard about in math class was theorems! But I think we can use her larger philosophy, and her methods, to open up an even bigger world for today's students. And perhaps we'll have a little less vexation for the next generation.

Sock monkey puppet

Sneaking in for a minute (from our blogging holiday) to post this. I followed a thread of crochet cotton from The Bonny Glen over to CrochetMe.com, and found a crochet pattern for anyone who ever loved a sock monkey.

Funny squirrelings

Mama Squirrel (reading from Exploring Creation With Astronomy): "That's Venus. Of course, you will know that it's not a star at all. It's a burning hot planet with lava and heat-trapping clouds made of sulfuric acid swirling madly around it."

Young Squirrel: "Sounds like Daddy's sinuses."

I'll have one of those real ones, please

You reap what you sow--sometimes beyond. I have great sympathy for big brother Tim, whose preschool sister Miss M. is horning in on his LOTR books.

A couple of weeks ago I culled some of our bookshelves and put the extras and giveaways in a box. I asked the Squirrelings to have a look through it and please make sure I wasn't giving away anything that they really wanted.

Crayons went through it and came up with a pile up to her knees of books she wanted. Not anything I'd read to her or that she'd read herself--these were books that, for some reason or other, she Just Wanted to Keep. The list included an extra copy of Kidnapped ("I've been dying to read that book!"), a 3-volume Ladybird set about great artists ("Mama, look, it has Van Gogh in it!"), Plays Children Love, Modern Plays, Pauline Johnson's poems, Maryanne Caswell's memoir Pioneer Girl, Hind's Feet on High Places, and a book of Hanukkah riddles. And about three others that I convinced her we did already have other copies of. And a book of fairy tales (do you know how many other books of fairy tales we have?).

Most of those books were nothing I'd pick for a six-year-old. Truth is, other than the fairy tales and maybe the artists, I doubt she'll even find them interesting for a long time yet. But I can see it happening already: the bug is there. This will be a girl who asks for her own box at library sales.

The busiest rodent around

Crayons was reading a poem out loud and said that it was by "Annie Mouse."

Hm?

Oh....boy, that Annie Mouse has written a lot of poems! (I'll let you figure that one out.)

That would be a Big Bang

A Treehouse slip of the tongue:

"Here, Grandpa, you can take these nuts home and open them with a firecracker."

More Frugal Thoughts

Continued from this post.

OK...some more thoughts on dealing with frugality burnout.

1. This is something that has worked for me: keep a notebook page or some other sort of journal of small blessings, especially of the financial/found stuff/little answered prayers kind. Then you can go back over it when you're feeling discouraged, and remember when you had that hunk of leftover whatever in the fridge and a recipe for using it up dropped in your lap; or the time you were out of milk and the neighbour sent you home with some because she bought the wrong kind (and she didn't even know you were out of milk); or the time you made a great frugal meal and EVERYBODY liked it. Or the times you have taken your taxes to the accountant and he tells you right out how amazed he is at how you guys manage so well (because he sees a whole lot more people who make a whole lot more money and are in a whole lot more mess). (Score bonus points if he asks YOU for frugal tips).

All of the above (except for the bonus points) are things that have happened to us.

And then you can keep a list of Big Blessings as well, just to keep things in perspective.

2. Hand in hand with #1: Think of things that you made from scraps or found frugally that are every bit as nice as something you could have bought if you'd had more cash to blow. It's related to what Amy Dacyczyn calls the "wow factor." Somebody mentioned having this crazy urge to go out and spend a whole lot of money on a very expensive restaurant meal, just because they've said "no" to it for so long. OK, it's a fun idea. Bring on the lobster thermidor. But when you think about it, is the "wow factor" you get from that meal (or something similar) enough times bigger and better that it justifies the cost?

I'm thinking here of Meredith's adorable play areas for her little girl (here, scroll down for photo, and here). Simple and classy. Would a $129.99 version look better or provide more play value? Doubtful.

I'm thinking of the Christmas presents we made for each other this year (and if you read here much, you know that not every Christmas is a handcrafty one for us). Things hit the mark here this year because they were well thought out--even the joke things like this little thrift shop version of Mr. Fixit. [photo] I know The Apprentice likes to read in bed, so I made her a neckroll pillow (made from yardsaled yarn and long-leftover stuffing). Ponytails knows Mr. Fixit likes a hot drink in the morning, so she made Daddy's Morning Drink Kit.

And I'm thinking of our somewhat-improvised Christmas dinner.

And you know what...I'm thinking of some of Mr. Fixit's working-full-time, well-paid female co-workers, who admit every year that they find Christmas more of a bother than anything else, because they're so stressed and rushed trying to get everything done, wrapped, cooked and sent. Would I trade places with them FOR THE BETTER INCOME? Not a one. Now get this straight before you misread that: I appreciate and thank every female person who has waitressed for us, cashiered for us, delivered our mail, and otherwise helped us this past holiday season, not to mention those who were "only" volunteering their time. (I don't go so far as to thank the telemarketers, though.) I am not dissing any mom with kids who has to work, loves to work, or who has seriously thought this through and knows that what she's doing is right even if she's not crazy about her job. Nobody needs to be dumped on because she has chosen to work outside the home, any more than we need to be dumped on because we have managed/chosen not to.

I am simply saying: at this point, if you offered me a good job with the result that we "didn't have to be frugal anymore," I'd probably turn it down. I'd rather be frugal, and occasionally pout over somebody else's shoe closet, than lose what we have gained by knowing our own limits and working within them.

And that's all. (Except for the photo, and I promise it's worth coming back for.)

I'll take that as a compliment...I think

"Watching the Stooges is funnier when you're watching too, Mom."

(Mr. Fixit bought us a stack of Three Stooges videos for a Christmas present.)

Sea songs with Crayons

"Put him in a walnut until he's sober, put him in a walnut until he's sober..."

Our morning

This snowless week, and a fairly dry although not very pretty Saturday without any dance lessons or pressing need for (regular) groceries (as in canned goods), led to a Squirrel family Saturday morning adventure. We don't often go right downtown, and almost never with all five of us together; Mama Squirrel sometimes goes down on the bus, alone or with one Squirreling in tow, and Mr. Fixit occasionally has something to do down there; but we rarely have a reason to go as a family.

So off we set, after a brief stop at the library, to check out the new-and-improved downtown farmer's market which someone had assured us was fairly deserted on Saturdays, not like That Other Market where all the tourists go. We couldn't even get parked nearby! Maybe our informant goes there at 7 in the morning or something. So we settled for Plan B. We parked the car on another downtown street, took everybody for some fair-trade coffee, juice, and baking at the "hemp café," and then headed for a German deli that Mr. Fixit couldn't believe was still downtown (he used to go there with his own squirrel mama). Mama Squirrel was very happy because her favourite thrift shop was a few doors away from that, and she, Ponytails and Crayons looked around in the thrift shop while The Apprentice and Mr. Fixit went and bought buns and Meat Loaf (that's a cold cut) and Swiss cheese and a couple of other things in the deli. Mama Squirrel picked up half a dozen books (including a copy of Miss Suzy--oh, the reminiscences), a Steve Green Christmas tape, and a sweatshirt for Crayons, paying the astronomical total of $3.35. (It's about the only thrift shop she knows of these days where everything isn't $5 and up per item. Or something like that.)

So we didn't get to the market, but we did have some fun. The Squirrelings got to ooh and ah over all the handmade stuff for sale in the café. The Apprentice got to see the inside of a hock shop (they went in there after the deli). (NB: not to pawn anything, just to look around!) Crayons bought a cute little cocker spaniel for 20 cents of her very own money. And there wasn't any ice to slip on. (Next week, of course, we'll probably be snowed under again.)

Favourite things at school this week

Crayons: I liked The Pond People. I liked how it's sort of short and nice.

Ponytails: I liked doing Benjamin West, and Calculadder, and School Zone. Benjamin West is a very good painter. Happy weekend! I liked Geography too. The wheel was invented in Iraq, and Abraham was in Iraq, and Jonah, and Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abenego. (Also known as Rack, Shack and Benny.)

Crayons' Language Worksheets

Sometimes I make up worksheets like this for Crayons so that she can work independently while I'm reading with Ponytails. This is what I wrote for this morning; it's based on Snowshoe Thompson, by Nancy Smiler Levinson. (I leave spaces between things so she can write answers.)

------------------------------------------------
Read pages 14 to 21.

Copy this on your lined paper:

“I am making skis to deliver the mail,” he said.

Here are the chopping words from page 18: Whack! Thwack! Can you think of any other good words that sound like chopping?

How about hammering?

How about a grilled cheese sandwich sizzling in a non-stick frying pan?

You make up one of your own….

Where is Norway? (Look on the kitchen map. Ask for help if you need it.) Is it close to the north or the south? What do you think the weather must be like there?

Do you know what snowshoes are? Ask for help looking for a picture of them. Draw a picture of somebody wearing snowshoes.

Our ancient history timeline reappears

Mostly for Canadians (sorry!): Last year when Ponytails was doing ancient history, I mentioned the British Museum ancient history book/timeline that we used, and some people wanted to know where to get one. The every-month's-different bookstore we got it from, Hampstead House Books in Toronto, is offering it in this month's catalogue, for anyone who'd like a copy. (You can order it online.) I don't get paid to say that--just wanted to let you know.

Books? Or school?

I read something today that my friend the DHM posted: a snip from an old book that talked about teachers--even way back when--being of kind of a different mindset from yer average "readin' family." It made me think of some notes I had written a couple of years ago for a talk on CM. I'm pasting some of what I wrote then as a kind of followup and general agreement that this disconnect between schools/teachers and learning from books was (and is) both peculiar and very sad.

(I had been talking first about Charlotte Mason's enthusiasm for getting children outside, and wanted to use that as an analogy for her thoughts on books...)

Charlotte Mason felt that children often weren't getting exposed to a lot of ideas, either, if they had limited access to books or if they were being taught just to recite information and do the most basic kind of reading; to her that was like being shut up in another kind of room. At one point she wrote that education was like opening a door, or many doors, and she might have had that image in mind when she wrote that. (Doors can lead out as well as in!) She said that the goal of education was establishing and continuing as many of those natural relationships (with things and thoughts) as possible; so the mark of an educated person was that he would find life itself to be endlessly interesting. There's a story that Charlotte Mason asked one of her new teaching students why she had come to the college, and the young lady said that she had come there to learn to teach. Charlotte Mason said sternly, "My dear, you have come here to learn to live." I always thought that was an awfully arrogant thing of her to say, but I think I'm finally starting to appreciate what it means.

Unfortunately this kind of thinking was pretty much eclipsed during the 20th century by demands for passing more exams and preparing more workers, as well as a lot of other 20th century influences. But in 1987, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay wrote a book called For the Children's Sake, which reintroduced parents to Charlotte Mason's methods and philosophy. At about the same time, Karen Andreola got her books reprinted, and CM methods started to gain some interest among North American homeschoolers. Most of us reading these books about ten years ago felt like we were largely on our own, wading through all this Victorian prose and trying to get a picture of an education that was a lot different from what we remembered from school. One of my favourite illustrations from For the Children's Sake is a question that we're to ask ourselves as homeschooling teachers, Sunday School teachers, school principals, or whatever our teaching role is: if Albert Einstein got to sit in on science class with our sixth graders, would he be interested in what they're doing or doze off? How about if St. Paul could sit in on a kindergarten Bible lesson? Or Shakespeare sat in on eighth grade English? Is it possible even to imagine the kind of lessons that could hold their interest?

One of the keys to that would be who's doing most of the talking in the class, and another would be where the information is coming from. Charlotte Mason believed that children were able to deal with real knowledge, the great and noble ideas found in living books, without the teacher having to filter out the information for them first, or predigest it for the children and then make a sort of little mental nourishment pill for them out of what was left. She thought that teachers usually did way too much talking, lecturing, and questioning, and children not enough thinking and talking; and that schools provided way too little reading material (she complained about too little being spent on good books, and too much being spent on fancy manipulatives, models and other things that seemed to do a lot of the children's thinking for them. Sound familiar?). The kind of talking she wanted the children to do wasn't only discussion of what they had read or the teacher had read to them; she also wanted them to narrate back what they heard--not word for word, but in as much detail as possible. Then after that they could discuss some of the big ideas and questions in what was read--including asking their own questions. And that was Charlotte Mason's idea of a worthwhile class, and one that maybe even Einstein or Shakespeare would have wanted to stay awake for.

If you love books...I mean, really really love books...

This is the kind of book review you will not want to miss. (Charles Foran's Globe and Mail Books review of CULTURAL AMNESIA: Notes in the Margin of My Time, by Clive James)

I finally gave in (Chocolate Truffle Pie)

Way back when (actually it was Christmas of 2000), Kraft sent around a recipe flier with a recipe for Chocolate Truffle Pie. 2022 Updated Link

I saved it but never got around to making it, mostly because it calls for ten squares of semi-sweet chocolate. In fact, I resented those ten squares of chocolate so much that I wrote an article for an e-newsletter pointing out that you could get about as much wow-factor out of a slow-cooker chocolate dessert that only required a few spoonfuls of cocoa. Much more economical and better for you.

But this Christmas I didn't bake much with chocolate. We didn't make chocolate crescents. We didn't even make Mr. Fixit's favourite chocolate fingers. That was mostly because both of those recipes call for ground hazelnuts, and I had already blown the baking budget on other things. (Mr. Fixit decided he liked the double gingers best this year anyway, and he's asked for another batch when I can get the preserved ginger for them.)

So we hadn't overloaded on chocolate, and I did have some whipping cream, and it was Epiphany...and I gave in and made it.

Ratings? It was very easy to make. Everybody seemed to like it...it was a lot like very fudgy brownies...because after all, it's almost all chocolate. I think Chocolate Tofu Pie has a richer chocolate taste in some ways (and a full recipe of that has about as much chocolate in it as this pie); and the Apprentice's Cocoa Ricotta Cream has that very sinfully-good chocolate-paste texture if what you're looking for is just pure, over-the-top chocolate. But overall it's a good recipe to know about...especially if you use real whipped cream on top and not that Whipped Stuff that the website recommends.