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."