What's for supper? Kitchener Special

By request, here is the recipe for a sausage-noodle dish which appeared in Whole Foods for the Whole Family (a La Leche League cookbook) and which was contributed by Linda Mellway. (Note on Whole Foods for The Whole Family: the copyright date is 1981...does that seem like 25 years ago? Sigh.) If you wonder about the name of the dish, Kitchener (Ontario) is a city in an area settled largely by Germans...Oktoberfest territory.
The recipe calls for "pork sausage", which can mean a lot of things. We make it with smoked sausage, which you can buy at a butcher's and which doesn't give off much grease...it's not the same as kielbasa, although that would probably work too. If you can't get smoked sausage, you could try it with whatever good sausage you have...not those greasy little breakfast things, though.

Kitchener Special

1 lb. pork sausage (we used two smoked sausages)
1/2 cup (1 small) chopped onion
1/2 cup sliced celery (I was more generous with this)
1/2 tsp. salt
dash pepper
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. celery seeds (optional but good)
2 to 3 handfuls raw noodles (we like the extra broad frilly kind in this; finer ones would change the dish somewhat but would still be all right; and you could use macaroni or linguini, or maybe broken lasagna noodles, if you didn't have egg noodles)
4 cups tomatoes, quartered (in the winter you can use canned diced tomatoes, and the amount depends on how much you like tomatoes)
1/2 cup of water, or more depending on the tomatoes--enough to cook the noodles
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese, plus a bit extra for serving if you like

Cut sausage into 1-inch lengths. Brown in a large pot or skillet (large enough to hold the vegetables and the noodles as they expand). Add onion, celery and seasonings...cook a few minutes. Mix well and add remaining ingredients. (You can start grating the cheese now and add it partway through if you want.) Simmer for half an hour, OR turn it all into a casserole and bake for half an hour at 350 degrees, or until the noodles are done but not mushy. (I like to do it on top of the stove so that I can check it and stir it a few times. You have to keep an eye on the noodles and add a bit more liquid if needed.) Pass hot sauce for anyone who likes a bit more zip.

Remembering Scratcher, June 2004--January 2006

Overheard

1. A nameless Squirreling singing this: "Lift me up and let me stand on heav'n's potato land..."

(If you don't recognize the reference, Cyberhymnal can help out.)

2. Squirrelings squabbling about which track to listen to next on the Beethoven's Wig CD. (Check out the link, you can listen to samples on Amazon.) One of them wants the Surprise Symphony again because she likes the big BANG. The other wants the Can-Can song. Again. (Mommy, is our friend who went to France dancing the can-can now?) And they're all singing the Kings and Queens of England song, even Crayons, who enjoys correcting the last line. (It's two Georges, not three!)

3. Ponytails: "Apprentice, what is a cannibal?"
Crayons: "A cannibal, you know a cannibal. Like Tchaikovsky's Cannibal."

(Look at Track 11 of Beethoven's Wig for the explanation of this.)

Train your virtual camera on the Treehouse

Our friend Marsha at the Abarbablog (see the links to left) posted one of these so I'm doing a Squirrel family version.

Time: 3 p.m.

View from the window:
Snow.
Snow on the swingset, on the fences, all over the back yard.

Listen In
CBC radio playing in the kitchen
It's too quiet upstairs. I'd better make sure nobody's cutting their hair off. [Postscript: I found The Apprentice reading The Bells on Finland Street to Ponytails. Crayons was also not doing anything particularly scary.]

Supper Plans
Spaghetti and meat sauce; reheated garlic breadsticks (from the Hillbilly Housewife site--those have become a favourite around here); lettuce and mushroom salad; brownies. [Postscript after dinner: Oops, forgot about the breadsticks. I knew there was something else I was going to do.]

Other sounds
The ding of the garlic-shaped timer to say that the brownies are supposed to be done. But they're not. (I love my timer. I found it at a yard sale after the buzzer on our stove quit working, and it still makes me smile.)

In the Living Room

Agh! It's tidy!
(Some CM mammas are coming over tonight to talk shop.) [Postscript for non-homeschoolers: CM means Charlotte Mason, a British educator and author who lived about a hundred years ago and whose philosophy is the mainstay of our Treehouse homeschooling.]

Beauty in the Common Things

DHM's recipe for crockpot cereal (we used shortgrain brown rice and pearl barley).

Bach on the CBC.

A set of magnetic words (Magnetic Poetry), that we bought so long ago that the only extra word we added was The Apprentice's name. (I guess we should add a couple more now.) [Postscript: Magnetic Poetry is fun and their site has some good stuff; if you click on Kids you can even play online with some of their word sets, but they also sell some things that most readers of this blog will not appreciate. Forewarned is forearmed.]

Crayons asking for more Little Tim books, please.

We finished The Dawn Treader, by Ponytails

We finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader last week. It's a good book. We're probably going to start The Silver Chair. We are also reading The Saturdays series (what I like to call them). Mommy and I have read The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, Then There Were Five, and we're reading Spiderweb for Two. They're good books. They're about four kids named Mona, Rush, Miranda (they call her Randy) and Oliver. And their housekeeper, Evangeline Cuthbert-Stanley. They call her Cuffy and Cuff.

We had Turkish Delight tonight. We got it at the meat store. It smelled like hand soap and it kind of tasted like hand soap. It looks like big jube-jubes with sugar on them. Crayons said she wasn't going to eat hers, so The Apprentice and I broke hers in half and ate it together. I kind of wanted some more! (Okay, I'm not Edmund.)

Has anybody seen the Chronicles of Narnia movie? I'd like to see that movie. I'd like to see Lucy and Susan. I got my friend some Narnia things for her birthday: two puzzles, one of Lucy and Mr. Tumnus, and another of them waiting when they were going to go live with the Professor. And an activity book with magnets on top. I like the one of Lucy, she looks really nice.

~Ponytails:-)

Outgrowing

I'm packing a box of books to take to a homeschool support group meeting this weekend. I've done that lots of times before--given away extras from library sales, children's books we were done with or just didn't need. But this box is different. This week I took a look at my small shelf of how-to-homeschool books and realized that I was done with some of them.

Not ones I didn't like--these were ones that I did like. Did read. Did use. (Well, not the ones that I used so hard that nobody else would want to read past my scribbles and notes.) And when I looked at them, I realized that I'm done with them.

I have to be careful with that, because I don't mean that there's nothing else I could ever learn from those particular people. I'd love to hear some of them speak at a conference or maybe read something else by them. But somewhere along the way, I absorbed or processed what they were saying in these books; learned from it, and then branched out from it. I don't mean, either, that I'm now such an expert homeschooler that I have no more to learn. Maybe there will be some new how-to or why-to books that come along. But these particular books deserve a second or third life helping somebody else get going.

There is the book I bought at a conference when I was very pregnant with my second child, which was also the only conference I've ever been to with Mr. Fixit; we drove all the way to Mississauga (near Toronto) to hear Diana Waring speak, and buy grade one books for The Apprentice. I saw a particular book on creating curriculum and wanted it SO badly...and we bought it. And I used it. Actually that one I'm keeping...one of those notes-in-the-margins casualties.

There's also the fat everything-you-need-to-know book that I bought, new baby in tow, later that same year when I found (with amazement) that a local bookstore carried a few homeschooling titles. It's been updated since then and now comes with a CD-Rom; but maybe somebody else can still use it. It's scribble-free.

And there's a John Holt book, and How Do You Know They Know What They Know (I guess now I know), and Homeschooling for Dummies. (I got that one as part of a boxful at a rummage sale.) I already gave away my 1995 Cathy Duffy curriculum guide.

Going through them is a lot like packing away outgrown baby clothes, or giving away a tricycle because the baby is now riding a two-wheeler. Like the baby clothes, I never really thought I'd get to the point of not needing them. But the kids are getting older...and we've been homeschooling for almost a decade now. There is a point where you can stop looking at your student driver's manual, right?

Still it does bring on just a little sigh of something passing.

The Silver Chair in the Classroom

"It's all a lie," the beautiful lady said as she strummed her mandolin for Rilian, the children and Puddleglum. "There never were any important books." "There never were any important books," repeated the children, breathing in the magic perfume from the fire. "Your teachers told you lies," she murmured. "Your teachers told you lies." "A book may be important to me, but there's no reason it's important to you. Go and read your graphic novels," she hummed. At that moment Puddleglum stuck his webbed foot into the fire and all the others woke up suddenly. "Shakespeare! Dickens! Dead white guys!" they screamed in defiance, as the lady turned into an evil snake and hissed at them. The battle was an ugly one."
--with apologies to C.S. Lewis (The Silver Chair)

If you don't think this sort of battle goes on in our schools (I'm including Canadian schools in that "our"), please read this post at Tim Fredrick's ELA Teaching Blog. I found this through the 4th Literature Carnival.

To me it only emphasizes the huge gap between the education I want to provide for my children, and that "offered" (and only offered--and gingerly--one wouldn't want to impose one's standards) to the students in today's high school classes.

Do you eat kasha?

The host of this week's Carnival of the Recipes, the Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room, recently posted about how far she feels their family has fallen in attempts to "eat healthy." Her mention of things like raw goat's milk and babies eating sweet potatoes made me laugh, because when The Apprentice was small we were doing much the same thing. The Apprentice didn't have candy or even more than the occasional Arrowroot cookie until she was old enough to know the difference, and her food-grinder baby dinners were often mashed with tofu or sprinkled with kelp. (That is actually a good iodine supplement. I wasn't a complete idiot.) And we did eat kasha...frequently enough that I do remember toddler Apprentice at least knowing what it was called when she met it in her bowl. (Kasha, at least in the way I mean it, is just a name for toasted buckwheat groats, cooked soft like rice.)

And like the DHM, our eating habits have changed enough that, when I bought a bag of kasha yesterday and decided to resurrect an old favourite recipe for it, not only did nobody remember what it was or even eating it, but we had an awfully big bowlful of it left. I will optimistically put that down to a tummy bug that's been stalling everyone's appetites here, and to the fact that kasha, like any long-forgotten friend, takes some getting used to again. It doesn't taste like rice. It doesn't taste like oats. It just tastes like itself...sort of toasted-nutty, a little bit stronger-flavoured than other grains (and it's not technically a grain, it's a relative of rhubarb). You can do all sorts of things with it and there are lots of traditional recipes for using it (like blintzes and kasha varnishkes), and non-traditional ones as well (there are some ideas here). You can also just cook it till it's soft, like rice or oatmeal.

So I'm not sorry I attempted to at least re-introduce kasha; although the encounter may not have been the most delightful, it was nice (at least for me) to renew an old acquaintance, and maybe I can find something appetizing to do with the leftovers.

Here's the recipe I made; it made a lot (for us). You could try cutting it in half. It came from the January 1992 Vegetarian Times; I'm sorry that I don't know who wrote the article.

Kasha-Vegetable Pilaf

1 1/2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped (we skipped this; see below, it's a garnish)
1 1/2 cups dry kasha
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 1/2 cups boiling water
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen peas (I skipped these and used one can of corn niblets instead)

If you're doing the onion garnish: in a small skillet, heat oil and saute onion until it turns medium brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Place kasha in an ungreased skilled over medium-low heat, and toast for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring often, until the kasha becomes slightly darker. Add the beaten egg and stir quickly to coat the grains. Immediately add boiling water but do not stir. Add vegetables on top. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, until water is absorbed, kasha is puffy, and sweet potato is tender, about 20 to 25 minutes. Sprinkle sauteed onions on top, if you want them. (It's suggested that you can also add the raw onions to the kasha along with the other vegetables instead of sauteeing them.)

Blog game: fours of things

I was tagged for this by Tim's Mom--here goes.

Four jobs you've had in your life:

1. transcriptionist for a closed-captioning service
2. assistant to director of high school liaison services at a university (can you say that three times fast?)
3. nursing-home kitchen worker
4. camp crafts director

Four movies you would watch over and over:

1. Anything with some real acting but not too many machine guns.
2. Anything with gowns by Edith Head. (That covers a lot!)
3. Anything without Jim Carrey in it.
4. An Ache in Every Stake

Four places you have lived:

1. Southern Ontario
2. Toronto
3. Southern Ontario

Four TV shows you love to watch :
We don't have cable right now but if we got these shows I would watch them:
1. The Rockford Files
2. Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett
3. Clean Sweep
4. The Munsters, Phil Silvers, Hogan's Heroes...
5. Playing Shakespeare

Four places you have been on vacation:

1. Georgian Bay
2. Port Severn
3. Quebec City
4. Eustis, Florida

Four websites you visit daily:

1. Stump the Bookseller
2. www.homeschoolbuzz.com
3, 4, 5, 6...several of the blogs on our links

Four of your favorite foods:

1. Pasta with olives and sundried tomatoes (I'm the only one here that will eat it)
2. Chinese food (maybe some hong sue tofu and a bowl of noodles)
3. Cinnamon rolls
4. Peanut butter

Four places you would rather be right now:

1. Narnia
2. At a Vermeer exhibit
3. Watching a summer sunset on Georgian Bay (do a Google image search for "Georgian Bay sunset" and you'll see why)

Four bloggers you are tagging:

I don't know who's been tagged...but I'll tag Coffeemamma, Tootle, Firefly and Jennifer if they want to play.

Why we homeschool

We homeschool for a wide variety of reasons...academic, religious, lifestyle...and have been doing it since 1996. So, for us, the question becomes-- what reason would we have for needing or wanting our children to attend school? (For any of you who aren't regular visitors here, we have three daughters who have always been homeschooled. This is mostly about our oldest, who's known as The Apprentice.)

I can pinpoint one of the lines I read, early on, that propelled us towards homeschooling. I had borrowed Nancy Wallace's account of her own family's unschooling journey, Better Than School, from the library, and I came to the part where she described their son's classroom experiences in first grade. It wasn't a good year; her son was exhausted and unhappy, and when asked what the problem was, he complained that he no longer had enough time to read! (The link is to a 1984 Mother Earth News story about homeschooling; if you scroll down far enough, you'll see some excerpts from the book.)

I related to that. I remembered being yanked down by my jumper straps when I tried to climb up to an above-my-grade-level library shelf in the first grade. (Did anyone else go to a school where the books were actually arranged by grades?) I remembered having to use second-grade readers two years in a row (it involved a move from a school that encouraged "enrichment" to another one that didn't). I remembered doing many, many spelling lessons that taught me absolutely nothing (I was already a good speller. I was lousy at handwriting, but spelling lessons didn't improve that). I remembered getting to staple the teacher's papers as a reward for getting my work done early. (What a motivation.)

I also remembered the darker side of school--the pressures, the bullies, the unhappiness when you can't seem to find a place to fit in. I was a geek from the get-go. Many of us have been there and it's not a memory we'd want to spend much time musing on.

And right at that time (when we were thinking about homeschooling), our flavour-of-the-month provincial ministry of education announced a brilliant idea. They would provide optional junior kindergarten not only for the four-year-olds (that was already in place) but also for the three-year-olds. Moms who wanted free babysitting cheered. Everyone else seemed doubtful, including Mr. Fixit's cousin who was teaching JK and had had to buy a supply of changes-of-underwear for her classroom already. And we had a child turning three. Oh but wait--a change of government came in right then and axed not only that idea, but also four-year-old JK. For a little while. Then JK came back (but not for the three-year-olds).

Oh, and then there was the common curriculum that our province brought in (like the "standards" some other countries talk about). And there was a teachers' strike. And there was provincial testing for grade 3 and 6 classes. And the whole idea of self-esteem (that is, spending time on how special we are instead of on math) and values clarification (whatever its present-day name is) and groupthink and not hurting a child's feelings by saying that his work is careless or his spelling is wrong.

In short, we had no intention of allowing The Apprentice to become a guinea pig for some government's idea of what her education should be. Or shouldn't be. Or might be for six months until the latest greatest idea came up. (The newest thing in our school system is that children don't have a lunch hour anymore. They have two "nutrition breaks" during the day instead. This was sold to the parents as something that would encourage better nutrition and more time to play outdoors, but it was actually prompted by demands for longer breaks for the teachers.)

And I wanted her to have time in her life to read.

The Apprentice has never become what you'd call a bookworm. She prefers to make things (like bead jewelery or knitted Barbie skirts), or help Mr. Fixit build CB radios and install computers. But when she does read...she knows what's worth reading, what's middlin', and what's garbage. Would she be better off in a classroom, now that she's getting close to the usual high school age? Maybe...if we can get enough of the important stuff covered first. Does she want to go? She's not sure herself. It would be sort of fun...but right now, she says she likes being at home.

[Update, May 2007: This was first posted in January 2006, when we were tossing around the possibilities for The Apprentice's future education. In September 2006, she enrolled part time at the local high school, and she has spent two interesting semesters there taking all the hands-on things that she enjoys--plus science and French--and I get to brag that she's on the honour roll too. She's planning on continuing there, still part time, next school year. Beyond that, she's looking at apprenticeship possibilities in a couple of the trades that interest her.]

Sugar-free treats

Sugar-free recipes don't always interest Mama Squirrel too much; that is, the ones that require either some kind of artificial sweetener or things like a whole can of fruit juice concentrate. The results (in her opinion) don't usually live up to the effort required, and that much fruit juice is still a sugar, yes?

But here's a recipe for Banana-Prune Bread that we have tried and found pretty good. It came out of a sugar-free cookbook years ago, and I don't know which one. If you do, please let me know so I can give proper credit. This is posted especially for our friends at the Common Room who are giving sugar a rest this month.

Banana-Prune Bread

Makes 1 loaf or 12 slices.

2 medium ripe bananas
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup unsweetened prune juice with pulp [my note: I only know one kind of prune juice, the regular old supermarket kind, and that seems to work fine]
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup chopped pitted prunes
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamom
1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F; spray a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray, set aside.

In large bowl mash bananas; stir in wet ingredients. Mix dry ingredients separately, mix with banana mixture until just blended.

Spoon into prepared pan; bake 50-60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on rack 10 minutes; remove from pan and cool completely.


Mary Carroll's recipe for Dried Fruit Bars, posted back in November, is also more-or-less sugar free, depending on what kind of granola you use for the base. A simpler dried-fruit recipe is the one that some people call "sugar plums"; you run approximately equal amounts of three or four kinds of dried fruit through the food processor (some people add nuts to this), roll into small balls, and roll the balls in some kind of coating--coconut, ground oatmeal, etc. Our favourite combination is dates, figs, apricots and raisins, but other fruits will work fine.

A Reason for Reading

"Books are wonderful ways to learn the possibilities of being human. We can define character traits with words, but they take shape only when you see what they look like in a person. How can we understand honor or valor or courage unless we have sometimes seen these traits in someone's life? Good literature may so move the reader that is seems impossible to verbalize about it. The experience is what counts....

"This is why an evil character in a story may reveal the real nature of evil more clearly than a sermon on sin. Reading stories is also a vicarious way to see how goodness and humility and honesty and beauty play out in life. Literature does instruct us, even thought it may not be our main reason for reading. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in Jesus Rediscovered that books like Resurrection or The Brothers Karamazov gave him an overpowering sense of how uniquely marvelous a Christian way of looking at life is, and a passionate desire to share it. Good books have a way of instructing the heart."

--Gladys Hunt, Honey for a Woman's Heart

NEW YEARS TIME, by Ponytails

For New Years we had a Narnia party. And I made an Aslan mask and tail out of brown and yellow paper. For dinner Mommy made baked apples with raisins in the top, and sausages (with real meat) and potatoes. For dessert she made peach-banana sherbet, and we made cookies--warriors, and lions (Aslan). And Daddy provided some shows for us to do. I was Aslan in one of them. I was the White Witch in one of them, and The Apprentice was Mrs. Beaver. Mrs. Beaver was a locksmith, and the White Witch couldn't get into her house. She tried everything, then she called up Mrs. Beaver. I turned Mrs. Beaver to stone--that wasn't in the story. I turned her back again and she gnawed the door open. I said, "Is there anything I can do to pay you back?" Mrs. Beaver said, "Turn some of my friends back from being stone." I turned Daddy and Crayons and Mommy back. When I turned Mommy back, she started saying, "Pick up your clothes, young witch!" And then I turned her BACK into stone.

The Apprentice was in charge of Beadie Buddies. I made a mouse. So did Daddy. And we went on a treasure hunt for pink cordial, a fur coat and a flute.

And we did a devotion. That was Bible time, and talking about things we did this year, and what stood out in our life in 2005. I remembered going to Kelsey's restaurant with our grandma and grandpa. It's a long way away, about three hours.
HAPPY NEW YEAR.HAPPY NEW YEAR.HAPPY NEW YEAR.HAPPY NEW YEAR. HAPPY NEW YEAR. HAPPY NEW YEAR.-Ponytails From Dewey's tree house

Of snow and sausages

Every year the Treehouse hosts a very small New Year's Eve party, just for our own family of Squirrels. We usually have a theme of some kind: Star Trek, the Red Green show, fairy tales. This year's theme was almost a given: Narnia.

This is definitely the year to be searching the 'Net for Narnia feast ideas: every other youth group is putting on a Narnia event, every other fancy restaurant has some kind of four-course Narnian menu online. Ideas range from a medieval feast gone wild to a Mr. Tumnus tea with toast and sardines. Most of them feature Turkish Delight. I haven't seen one yet with barbecued bear meat wrapped around apples, but maybe that's a problem of supply. Tim's Mom has a description and photos of their family's annual Narnian dinner--the toddlers in their cloaks are adorable.

But anyway, we had decided to do a small-scale feast for tomorrow night, and I found a website with some food quotes from all the different books. The one that appealed to us most was from The Silver Chair:

"She had a vague impression of Dwarfs crowding round the fire with frying-pans rather bigger than themselves, and the hissing, and delicious smell of sausages, and more, and more sausages. And not the wretched sausages half full of bread and soya bean either, but real meaty, spicy ones, fat and piping hot and burst and just the tiniest bit burnt. And great mugs of frothy chocolate, and roast potatoes and roast chestnuts, and baked apples with raisins stuck in where the cores had been, and then ices just to freshen you up after all the hot things."

Except for the chestnuts, those are just about all of our favourite cold-weather things, and if you add in some Really Good Grapes (from Prince Caspian) and a few cookies (we just happen to have a lion-shaped cutter), it sounds like a perfect New Year's party meal.

Jackdas obviously liked the quote, too, and included it in an absolutely delightful (and mouth-watering) blog post; it's archived here, so you'll have to scroll down to his October 14th post.

As for Turkish Delight...we haven't quite decided. Tim's Mom included a recipe in her post, and we do have a Middle Eastern store nearby that would probably have some, but after all, that was the BAD food in the book! (Not to mention what I've heard that the university students used to put in it in C.S. Lewis's day...Turkish Delight seems to have been the Hash Brownies of its time.) I think baked apples and cookies (and ices just to freshen you up) would be just as good.

So we'll be making some glittery jewellery, having a Narnia scavenger hunt, and eating sausages, maybe just the tiniest bit burnt. What are you doing New Year's Eve?

Narnia Books, by Ponytails

Mama Squirrel and I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in November (I think). We started Prince Caspian and then The Apprentice wanted to listen, so we started reading it together. But we didn't read the whole thing in a book. For Christmas we got a present from Mom and Dad, for all three of us girls. It's 19 CDs of all the Narnia books, that you can listen to. So we finished Prince Caspian on a CD.

The old lady at the end turned out to be Prince Caspian's nurse. And Peter won the battle against Miraz, the king. Peter is a good fighter. They brought in Reepicheep the Mouse, and he was almost dead, and in the place of his tail there was a stump with a bandage on it. Lucy put some of the cordial on him, and he was all good again except for his tail. Aslan said, "You can have your tail back." And it grew back in about five minutes.

The next book that we're going to read is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I'd like to start it off with the book and end it off with the CD.
--Ponytails

Thrift Shops: They've changed.

My parents liked treasure-hunting at flea markets when I was young. My dad was always on the lookout for "royalty stuff" (cups and tins and things with pictures of the Queen's family on them), and we went along to poke through the tables of books and old toys. But thrift shops were pretty much unknown to us. The only one in town was run by the hospital auxiliary (volunteer ladies), and it was on a side street with other little offbeat stores. It was kind of dark and full of polyester shirts that all had the same weird smell. I used to go in there sometimes when I was in high school, looking for vintage clothes (hidden under the polyester). 

Later I moved to the larger city where we still live. From the late '80's through the mid '90's, I regularly checked out several thrift shops, most of them right on the main street. There was a Salvation Army store where nothing was priced at all. When you brought your stuff up to the counter, the lady sized you up and decided what she felt like charging you, and that was it. If you looked down-and-out enough, she might give it to you for free. There were two different Goodwill stores, both with their own personalities. The one we liked best was right near the downtown bus station. The Apprentice liked to pick out junk jewelery and hairdo stuff there when she was little, and they also had a great piled-up bin of toys that was fun to dig through. And good book bargains. There was the $2 copy of Timetables of History I found, and the bag of very old Cuisenaire rods for a quarter (nobody knew what they were), and the rubber boots I found for The Apprentice when she needed them the most, and the troll-fabric shirt, "size preschooler". There were the little handfuls of Duplo that I used to find, loose, in the bottom of the big toy bin, that helped to build up our collection. 

But a few years ago, all the thrift stores run by organizations (like the Goodwill) moved out of the downtown, out into less-accessible places like strip malls. There are only a couple of independent stores left in the core, where the people who need them the most can readily get to them. And when you do drive out to the new stores, you have to be prepared for their change of face. The new shops are cleaner. Things are bagged and labeled, arranged tastefully on shelves. (And always priced.) In reaction to their becoming dumping grounds for dinosaur computers and putrid couches, most of the shops are now very picky about what they will and won't accept. Mainstream shoppers...those who never liked "used stuff"...won't be afraid they'll catch anything nasty there. There are fewer surprises now (good or bad). Fewer treasures. Less junk...no more of those ugly necklaces for a quarter that my preschooler loved. No atrocious crafts made thirty years ago for somebody's Christmas bazaar. No books with ripped or unreadable covers (the kind that I could take a couple of hours looking through if I didn't have somebody small tugging at me). The CDs are more likely to play (or at least more likely to have a CD inside the case), but they cost $2.50 now instead of 50 cents. 

I don't blame the thrift shops. It can't be easy just trying to pay the rent, keep things going and not turn into a free dumpster. But I miss the old shops, the old ladies, the old stuff that was always missing a piece here and there...but if you were lucky you'd find another one that was missing a different piece, and tell everybody who'd listen what luck you'd had.

Do big broods bring bliss?

A Washington Post story by Hank Stuever, here, says that while people like to watch feel-good movies about great big families, celebrities (who are still kind of like people, I guess) tend to stick to having only a couple of kids. (If the logical minds out there don't see a real connection between those two statements, I'm with you.)

Anyway, this is the quote from the article I found amusing and I thought some of our friends might, too:

The bias -- not only in Hollywood, but in almost all corners of middle- to upper-class America -- exults the perfect symmetry of a two-child life. A family with more than four children occasionally draws sneering judgment from the cultural elite; it looks messy, home-schooly, possibly even like the kind of family that deliberately doesn't watch television.

Ooh, how subversive.

(How many kids do the cultural elite have, anyway? Or is that the same as being a celebrity?)

Favourite things at Christmas

Stash White Christmas Tea

It's a Wonderful Red Green Christmas (only for Red Green fans, though)

Kids dressed like animals in a church Christmas play

Canadian Living's Chocolate Fingers recipe

Getting all the Christmas Eve grocery shopping done by 10 a.m., in an almost-empty store, before all the cashiers are too tired to wish you Merry Christmas


Alprose Swiss bittersweet chocolate bars

Little Squirrelings with their bangs all trimmed for Christmas

Our family Christmas present: a freezer!

Ponytails' gift to Crayons: a package of White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese. ("I knew she'd like it!")


Ponytails' new book

Crayons' new game: Pirate Snakes and Ladders [2007 update: I've corrected the link, but it may change again. In any case, it's from Orchard Toys and is still a favourite game two years later, with the board now mended with tape.]

A big white candle lit on Christmas morning while we sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing.



And too much more to say.

Merry Christmas.

Overheard in the Treehouse

"Christmas isn't just about giving. It's about getting and about God's Son Emmanuel."

Well, she knew what she meant!

Decorations in the Treehouse

We're a little late joining in with this, but at least we made it before Christmas!

Here are some of our favourite ornaments and the reasons they're special to us.


These ornaments showing the wise men were made in Bethlehem and sent out as a Christmas gift to viewers of the 100 Huntley Street Christian television program, quite a few years ago now. We don't have many wooden ornaments, and you don't see too many "wise men" decorations, so I really like this one.


These carolling mice are a little too big to go on the tree, so we have them on the mantelpiece. The Apprentice and I made two pairs of them a couple of years ago.


We had a big family ornament-making session around the kitchen table, also a couple of years ago--Squirrelings cutting, Mr. Fixit hot-gluing, Mama Squirrel sewing tiny fabric yo-yos. We made several of these angels to give away and kept a couple for the girls' own collection of tree decorations.


We have all our angel ornaments in the front hall this year. The blue angel on the far left was part of Mr. Fixit's childhood. The red sequined one was a gift from The Apprentice the Christmas she was five, and it's one of my favourite Christmas things ever.

On the far right is an angel (the large one) that I'm also very fond of, made mostly of paper. When The Apprentice was three (and our only Squirreling), she and I spent quite a bit of the fall working on projects for a church craft sale; mostly small stuffed elves. (She was a lot of help keeping all the small parts organized!) Just before the sale, my grandmother became seriously ill and was taken to the hospital. My mother had intended to help at the sale as well, but wanted to stay with my grandmother, so I went alone. I sold several of the elves, and then wandered around to look at the other crafts. One table had these paper angels, and I took my "elf profits" and bought one.

My grandmother recovered, almost miraculously, and was home for Christmas. That was ten years ago, and the angel still brings back all the memories of that holiday season.

Christmas by Ponytails

Only three more sleeps till Christmas. And I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy new year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Treehouse Recipe Index for 2005

Over the year I included quite a few recipes in the Treehouse posts. Just so they don't all get lost in the archives, here's a list with links to the original posts. I'm not including the ones that were given only as a link.

(Some of these came from Canadian Living Magazine, some are from our cookbooks, and some are just things we've figured out.)

Butterscotch Dumplings (June)
Fruit Crisp (June)
Honey-Mustard Chicken (June)
Macaroni and Cheese, the Real Kind (June)
Sweet Potatoes or Squash (June)
Sausage and Sauerkraut (June)
Vegan Gingerbread (June)

Hot German Cauliflower Salad (July)
Mushroom Steak Bake (July)
Beef and Salsa Burritos (July)
Ground Chicken Skillet, or Evan’s Mom would Never Recognize This (July)
Chicken Cacciatore (July)
Frozen Tortoni Dessert (July)
Summer Shortcake (July)
Pineapple-Orange Rings (July)

Kitchen Sink Cookies (September)
Pumpkin Butter (September)

Cranberry Sauce (October)
Bread Stuffing (October)
Old-Fashioned Gingersnaps (October)
Yogurt-Bran Muffins (October)

Artichoke Hearts Saute (November)
Dried Fruit Bars (November)
Beany's Beans (November)

Double Ginger Drop Cookies (December)
No-Bake Apricot Nuggets (December)
Quick Fruit and Nut Fudge (December)

A favourite carol, and an online story

From heaven above to earth I come
to bear good news to every home;
glad tidings of great joy I bring,
whereof I now will say and sing.

To you this night is born a child
of Mary, chosen mother mild;
this little Child, of lowly birth,
shall be the joy of all the earth.

Were earth a thousand times as fair,
beset with gold and jewels rare,
she yet were far too poor to be
a narrow cradle, Lord, to thee.

Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
make thee a bed, soft undefiled,
within my heart, that it may be
a quiet chamber kept for thee.

'Glory to God in highest heaven
who unto man his Son hath given,'
while angels sing with pious mirth
a glad new year to all the earth.

Welcome to earth, thou noble Guest,
through whom e'en wicked men are blessed!
Thou com'st to share our misery;
what can we render, Lord, to thee?


Words: Martin Luther, 1531
translated by Catherine Winkworth
Music: Von Himmel hoch
From the Oremus Hymnal site, here (midi available)

P.S. This hymn is used in the book and video Red Boots for Christmas, by Lutheran Hour ministries. They have an online version of the storybook, here; it's also available (online) in Spanish and (I think) Chinese.

Christmas Chapters

What are your favourite non-Christmas books, adult or childrens', that have good Christmas chapters or scenes in them?

Here are a few that I thought of, beyond the really obvious ones like the first chapter of Little Women, or the Little House books (addition: or The Wind in the Willows):

Almost anything by Jean Little: she practically made it a trademark to end her novels on Christmas (or in one case, on St. Nicholas Day). From Anna is one of our favourites and, I think, one of her best Christmas chapters. (There's an excerpt from the beginning of the book at that link.)

The Middle Moffat, where Rufus gets a letter from Santa saying, "Sorry, all the ponies are at the war."

The Five Little Peppers

The Fairy Doll, by Rumer Godden. This book could be called a Christmas book anyway, but it's not all set at Christmas time.

Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild

The Ark, by Margot Benary-Isbert. This book actually has two good Christmases in it, and I'm not sure which one I like better.

Anne of Green Gables, but also Anne of Windy Poplars, where Anne reluctantly takes her grumpy co-worker home with her for the holidays.

Last but not least: Father Christmas's appearance in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Others?

The fourth candle is lit

We are now in the last week of Advent. (As if you all didn't know.)

There are last-minute secrets. Last-minute cookies. Last-minute one-more-thing-I-forgot stops at the store. The four-year-old thinks the days are going by too slowly. The eight-year-old thinks they're going by too quickly.

And really, what's the hurry? If we don't have a) enough salad, b) enough stocking stuffers, c) enough cookies baked (and not already eaten), d) enough cards sent, e) enough decorations up, f) everything, EVERYTHING cleaned, g) you choose, all done and wrapped and delivered by the 25th (not to mention winding up everything we wanted to do in school during the fall term), what does it matter? Jesus isn't going anywhere.

When we were expecting the Apprentice, either our calculations were a bit off or she just decided to make her appearance a bit early--we've never been sure. Anyway, we found ourselves making a 1 a.m. call to the midwife two weeks before baby was expected. I can only compare my feelings that night to a first driving lesson on the freeway when your entire behind-the-wheel experience has been in a video arcade. The second or third time around, you remember what you did before, but the first time...you wonder if you could possibly be the only person in the world to get an F in giving birth. And I remember saying to the midwife, in the middle of all this, "I'm not ready." What did I mean, she asked--emotionally? "No," I said, "I still haven't finished cleaning out the baby's room."

Like the baby would care?

But I was still worried, because I hadn't completed every last thing. (As if I could have anyway.) And the baby was born, and the room eventually did get cleaned out and made ready for her (when she finally started sleeping in there). She wasn't going anywhere, and the cleaning could wait. It was time to celebrate the new life that had been added to our family, and to admire her tiny toes, and to call all the relatives, and to learn all the messy details of diapers and nursing and fitting a baby into tiny nighties and sleepers, and to bring out a first Father's Day present for Mr. Fixit a week later.

And newborns don't stay newborns, so very quickly we were getting into teeth and outgrown sleepers and solid foods and sitting and crawling and tricycles and reading and algebra...giving birth is not one event, it's a whole lifetime.

The same with Christmas. Ready or not.

Homemade worksheets

I forgot to add this to the post about busywork: sometimes we make up our own worksheets. Crayons' favourite kind is one that I make on the computer, but it could just as easily be done with a pen or a marker--it just looks more "official" when it's printed out. I open up a file, set the page to landscape (turn it sideways), and make a table four blocks across and two down. (In other words, I divide the page into eight blocks.) At the top of each block, I type something for her to read and draw. Today's eight blocks were:

a big Christmas tree
a nice cup of tea
3 men with hats
a cat in a hat
2 candy canes
a little red star
lots of winter snow
a new little baby.

Crayons decided she did not like "3 men with hats" so we crossed out "men" and printed in "ladies." She worked on that while I helped Ponytails with her table work...then Ponytails did a copy of the same page too, just for fun.

We've also done these as a French reading activity. They can be really simple like "two red circles" and "a big black square", but I usually throw in a couple of silly ones for fun.

These sheets have a side benefit as a reading activity...we usually end up sticking them to the kitchen wall to show off the drawings, which gives Crayons extra opportunities to see and practice the words in the boxes. She likes looking at her artwork and I often hear her reading them again to herself. Painless practice!

Homeschooling does continue

We're almost finished our Ambleside term...I know what AO Years we're doing (Year 8 for The Apprentice, Year 3 for Ponytails), but where we are in the year's schedule is another question. We're just doing whatever comes next. (And Crayons' JK curriculum is made up as we go along.)

The Apprentice and Ponytails have both been reading about King James I, but in different books, and about other things that happened during the first quarter of the 1600s, like Champlain's founding of Quebec and the sailing of the Mayflower, and the Thirty Years' War (which did last thirty years, that's not one of those trick questions).

Ponytails and I just finished Marguerite De Angeli's Henner's Lydia (a short book) as well as Elizabeth Enright's Then There Were Five, which Ponytails goes around all day quoting from. And we've jumped into Prince Caspian, which is (arguably) the second book you should read in the Narnia series. I'm reading Galileo and the Magic Numbers to her as well--it's one of our favourite science biographies. (We didn't download the e-book that I linked to--our copy is an old one.)

The Apprentice is still working on Spenser's Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves, Bruchko, and Whatever Happened to Justice? We finished Oliver Twist and are reading A Christmas Carol together when we get extra time.

And there's a little math (I'll post a fun site later on today), and a little spelling, and a little Elements of Style (for The Apprentice), and a few things like that that still go on until the end of this week--and then WE ARE TAKING A HOLIDAY.

Beautiful Music

As a pre-Christmas gift for the Squirrelings, I picked up a package of Christmas tunes to go with our Music Maker harp. (Scroll down on that link to see the Christmas #1 package.) Ponytails was the first one to try it out today, so the Treehouse has been filled with her beautiful strumming of O Christmas Tree and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.

Ponytails says, "It sounds pretty."

She's right!

More treats

I put a few logs of this into the freezer today and baked a VERY SMALL test pan for nibbling. The Apprentice says they taste better than last year's, I'm not sure why. Maybe I chopped the ginger finer or something.

Anyway, I agree they're very good. They have a stronger ginger kick than regular ginger cookies, so young children might not be as fond of them; but then you never know, you may have some hot-tongued young 'uns at your house.

Double Ginger Drop Cookies

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger (you can buy this in small slices at the bulk store and chop it with a knife or in a food processor)
1/4 cup fancy molasses
1 tsp. vanilla
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. ground ginger
½ tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. each baking soda and salt

Icing (optional):

1 cup icing sugar
½ tsp. ground ginger
1 tbsp. milk (approx.)

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or grease them; set aside. (That's if you're going to bake them right away instead of doing them slice-and-bake.)

In large bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg, chopped ginger, molasses and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients together. Add to butter mixture and stir until smooth. Add a spoonful of water if it won't hold together, but not too much.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart, onto prepared pans. Bake in top and bottom thirds of 350 deg F oven, rotating and switching pans halfway through (if you remember), until golden, about 12 minutes. Transfer to rack; let cool.

Icing: In small bowl, whisk icing sugar with ginger. Add milk and whisk until smooth, adding a little more milk if too thick to drizzle. Drizzle over each cookie. Let stand until icing is firm, about 30 minutes. (I think these are fine without the icing, if not very fancy, and I don't know if I'll bother with it this year; maybe if I have time.)

Making them “slice and bake”: Roll dough into short, thick logs; flatten sides to form a triangle (or keep them round if you want, it makes no difference). Freeze until firm enough to slice, 30 minutes. (I put each log into a sandwich bag.) Cut into 1/4 inch thick slices. Bake as directed.

(Recipe from Canadian Living, January 2004)

How we celebrate

If you read The Apprentice's "sevens" post below, you'll notice that she included two of Charles Dickens' books in her list of favourite books. Last night I read her Stave One of A Christmas Carol...how many times at Christmas do we READ A Christmas Carol instead of watching it? There are all kinds of interesting little things in it that are different, of course, from the movie versions.

"And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!'

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.

'Let me hear another sound from you,' said Scrooge, 'and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker, sir,' he added, turning to his nephew. 'I wonder you don't go into Parliament.'"

Tuesday nights are also an online chat time for our online homeschool community, and I was reminded this week that there are many different perspectives on Christmas, even within the North American Christian community. Some of us make a deliberate choice to "celebrate the Christian year," following the seasons of Advent, Christmas and so on with influences such as Martha Zimmerman's book of the same title. Others make just as deliberate (and often more difficult) a choice not to celebrate one particular day at all, or at least not to celebrate Christmas Day as Jesus' birthday. A few have chosen another time of year to celebrate, such as the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles in the fall (or in January if you're Ukrainian). And some are kind of in the middle, trying to figure out what fits with their convictions, what reflects their relationship with Jesus and what can or should be left aside. Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, or nothing of that sort at all? Jesse Trees, Christmas Trees, no trees? Lots of presents, three presents (to reflect the three gifts given to Jesus), no presents? Hot chocolate, wine, or carrot juice? Handel, Celtic, Christian-bookstore-pop, Bing Crosby, or even (gasp) Elvis in the CD player?

The one thing we seem to have in common, as Christians seeking to glorify God and raise godly children, is what we don't want: the great-big-shiny-aluminum-Christmas-tree holiday. We don't want the overstuffed, overspent focus on what's under the tree--and then the famous "black hole" of letdown afterwards. We also don't want the equally empty politically-correct holiday that's been wiped clean of any Christian reference. I don't think many of us are making a point of teaching our children songs like "You better watch out, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town." (Although we may give in to nostalgia and watch some of those so-familiar singing snowmen and grinch stories that many of us grew up with. Don't the Heat Miser's little backup guys still rock?)

And none of this is exactly new. Christians have disagreed for centuries over how to celebrate Christmas, or whether to celebrate it at all; how much pre-Christian tradition or mythology should be included, whether trees are in fact those gold and silver idols mentioned by the prophet, or whether the ancient symbols can be or should be "Christianized." (Does or doesn't the candy cane have religious significance?)

This article by Stephen D. Greydanus gets into an interesting discussion of whether A Christmas Carol promotes a Christian or secular view of Christmas. Some have accused Dickens of actually being a major contributor towards the "happy-holidays" kind of celebration. Greydanus discusses C.S. Lewis's point that the story contains very little mention of Christ; but he also presents G.K. Chesterton's argument that, in fact, Dickens' work is "not a work of Christian imagination, but it is a work profoundly affected by Christian imagination, and the significance of the story's Christian roots becomes more marked the further contemporary culture drifts from those roots. Not only is it essentially a morality tale, and a conversion story at that, but it takes seriously the idea of consequences in the next life for our actions in this life." (That's from the article, not directly from Chesterton.)

Dickens' Christmas spirits may be, as Lewis observed, "of his own invention," yet they are still agents of grace; Chesterton considers them suggestive of "that truly exalted order of angels who are correctly called High Spirits" ("Dickens and Christmas").

I certainly don't have the last word for anyone on how or even whether to celebrate Christmas. We choose to prepare our hearts during Advent, to celebrate in every way we can think of during Christmas (that's twelve days long, by the way (grin)), and to finish off with the Three Kings on Epiphany (and yes, I do know there were probably many more than three, and they weren't necessarily kings). It's something we're still working on--choosing what music, what decorations, what traditions mean the most to us and communicate what we believe the season is about. I'm grateful for the insight of those who have shared very different perspectives on this, and I am rejoicing that our goal, in the end, is the same: to glorify Christ every day.

Seven Sevens, by Ponytails

Things to Do Before I Turn 10

1. Learn how to spin a baton on my finger. That would be really fun.

2. Learn how to turn a cartwheel.

3. Read Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze (with Mama Squirrel)

4. Learn to do a double or triple pirouette.

5. See the Narnia movie.

6. Meet someone famous. But the problem is, they're probably dead. (Ponytails' list includes Mary Cassatt, Judy Garland, Elton John and Lynda Carter.)

7. See the painting "Girl in a Blue Armchair" by Mary Cassatt. (Mama Squirrel's note: That's in the National Gallery in Washington D.C.)

Seven of My Favourite Movies That I Like

1. Daddy Daycare

2. The Muppets Wizard of Oz

3. The five minutes of Anger Management that Daddy let me watch when the man sings "I'm so pretty"

4. The Elton John episode of The Muppet Show

5. The Lynda Carter episode of The Muppet Show

6. The wizard of oz (the other one)

7. Arthur's Perfect Christmas

Things You Can Say on a CB Radio

1. Breaker 11, Come in Enterprise.

2. What's your 10-20? (It means where are you?)

3. How am I hitting you?

4. Want to go to another channel? There's a lot of skip on this one. (Skip is other people talking.)

5. Can you give me a five count? (I want to see how many bars you're coming in on. That means how strong you're coming in.)

6. I didn't copy that. (I didn't hear that.)

7. Over and out.

Two no-bake candy recipes

This is what we did with our batch of sweetened condensed milk substitute (we used the Hillbilly Housewife's recipe, here, which makes the equivalent of two cans). The Apprentice made the Apricot Nuggets recipe, which came from Canadian Living Magazine but was based on an Australian recipe (I think they call it Apricot Slice). It sounds like cookies, but it's more like butterscotch candy.

No-Bake Apricot Nuggets

3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 3/4 cups vanilla wafer crumbs (about 90 cookies, but we bought crumbs at the bulk store which was much cheaper than a box of cookies)
3/4 cup chopped dried apricots (we chopped them fairly small in the food processor)
3/4 dried cranberries (we bought these at the bulk store as well)
3/4 cup shredded coconut (divided)

Line a 9 by 13 inch metal cake pan with parchment paper; set aside.

In saucepan, stir together sugar, butter and milk over medium-low heat, stirring to prevent scorching, until butter is melted. Remove from heat; stir in lemon juice.

In bowl, combine wafer crumbs, apricots, cranberries, and ½ cup of the coconut; add butter mixture, stirring until combined. Press into prepared pan.

Sprinkle with remaining coconut; press gently. Cover and refrigerate until firm, about 4 hours. Cut into squares. Keep in the refrigerator, or you can freeze them for up to 1 month. Makes 40 squares.

(Canadian Living, December 2003)


Quick Fruit and Nut Fudge

1 lb. semisweet chocolate, chopped (from the bulk store, of course)
1 300-ml can sweetened condensed milk (or homemade equivalent)
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup dried cranberries or raisins or the rest of the apricots that you chopped for the Apricot Nuggets
1 cup chopped toasted pecans (optional)

In bowl over saucepan of hot (not boiling) water, melt chocolate with milk, stirring frequently until smooth. Stir in vanilla. Stir in fruit and nuts, if using.

Pour into foil-lined 8-inch square cake pan; smooth top. Chill for about 3 hours or until firm.

Turn out onto cutting board; peel off foil. Cut into squares. (Make-ahead: layer between waxed paper in airtight container and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.) Makes 64 pieces.

(Canadian Living, December 1999)

Christmas Music at the Treehouse

Last week I thought I’d bring a little pre-Christmas spirit into the Treehouse by tuning the radio into a local station that starts playing Christmas music somewhere (I think) around Remembrance Day (and of course cuts it right off again after Boxing Day). I got paid right back for my foolishness, because the first song that came on was “Christmas Shoes.” If you’ve never heard that one, it’s on the top of most of the “worst Christmas songs” lists along with “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” It was enough to send me running back to CBC Radio, which (thankfully) builds up slowly to Christmas, and provides us with unlimited wonderful concerts and CDs and soloists and choirs and jazz and even funny stuff sometimes. And very limited doses of things like Mel Torme. (And no Christmas Shoes.)

If you want some luminous, knowledgeable, mouth-watering descriptions of Christmas CDs, check out these posts at The Beehive and The Common Room, or even Tim’s Mom’s somewhat bashful contribution here. Like Tim’s Mom, I’m a little stuck on the familiar and sentimental and not as discerning over which orchestra sounds the best. And the CDs I like aren’t necessarily the ones we own (that’s why the radio gets played a lot this month). We do have Loreena McKennitt’s “To Drive the Cold Winter Away” (recommended at The Beehive); Liona Boyd’s “A Guitar for Christmas”; and “An Oscar Peterson Christmas”, all of which would get good musical marks from those who know about those things.

From a time (pre-Treehouse) when I shopped more often at a Christian bookstore, I have tapes (not CD’s, of course) of First Call’s a cappella “An Evening in December: Volume Two” (Volume One got chewed up by an evil tape player years ago), and Sparrow’s 1985 “25 Songs of Christmas: Volume Two." (Volume One, I think, got loaned out instead of eaten.) And Evie: Christmas Memories, just for fun. (Didn’t every churchgoing kid during the ‘70's have to march in at least once to “Come on, Ring Those Bells?”)

Crayons likes "Anne Murray's Christmas," because she's fallen in love with "Do You Hear What I Hear." (That means that Mama Squirrel has to warble her way through it at bedtime as well.)

We also have several dollar-store-variety collections of carols, some of which are better than others. One of my favourites is the instrumental “German Christmas: Candlelight Hours”; no artists’ names are given, but it’s a quiet, peaceful tape that makes me think of snow falling. [2006 update: That link is broken, but this one takes you to an MP3 download site, with previews. Check out Leise Rieselt der Schnee (and yes, there are some awful typos in the German there).]

And you know what? Much as I’d like to own more really good Christmas music...I think we’re doing all right with what we have, filled in with the beautiful CBC extras. I did pick up a tape of Kathleen Battle’s “A Christmas Celebration” at a thrift shop this month, and that was nice. I’d like to get her CD with the guitar accompaniment that’s mentioned in the Beehive post. (Mr. Fixit, are you reading this?) But the most beautiful music I can think of is our family singing together; not because we’re very good, but because we are singing together.

Answers to the Cold and Snowy Book Quotations

1 The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper
2 Snowshoe Thompson, by Nancy Smiler Levinson
3 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
4 Brave Irene, by William Steig
5 Paddington Marches On, by Michael Bond
6 Heidi, by Johanna Spyri
7 The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis (must be lots of snow in Narnia)
8 A Toad for Tuesday, by Russell E. Erickson
9 The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
10 Snowbound with Betsy, by Carolyn Haywood
11 The Littles to the Rescue, by John Peterson

Advent continues

I noticed that some of my best blogger friends have already started playing Christmas music and have their decorations up. We are always a little slow to get going on that...maybe it's that we don't have the impetus of American Thanksgiving to trigger the start of the holidays, maybe we're just a little lazy or want to hold off on getting all the Squirrelings (and Mama Squirrel and Mr. Fixit) hyper with anticipation too soon. (One of those habits you get into when the children are small: short build-ups to things.)

Anyway, for whatever reason I have not baked one batch of Christmas anything yet, and we haven't opened any of the decoration boxes. Maybe tomorrow.

But these are some things we've done so far:

1. Gotten the Advent wreath out and done family time almost every night this week. We're following a booklet called "Prayers and Promises: Activities for Advent." So far we've read about God's promises to Adam and Eve and Noah; over the weekend we'll be reading about Abraham and Sarah.

2. We had a pizza party last weekend with Grandpa Squirrel to celebrate the beginning of Advent and the younger Squirrelings' dance recital. Mama Squirrel made an unusually indulgent chocolate cake with chocolate-marshallow icing for dessert, and we used as many blue dishes and napkins as we could find. (Blue's the colour of hope and a symbol of Advent.)

3. We have a homemade Advent calendar on the kitchen wall, made from a piece of red poster board. Each day has an index card with a decoration on it (cut from a several-years-old Victorian wall calendar) and a number, and each day one of the Squirrelings turns the right card around. On the back is just a word that corresponds to that night's reading, like "Garden" or "Ark" or "Rainbow." And whoever turns the card around gets to draw a picture to decorate the card, and shows it to everyone that evening. Then it goes back in its spot on the poster board, drawing side out.

4. Our box of Christmas books has been opened and the best ones are in a basket beside the fireplace. (It's electric and we don't mind; it's easy to use and nobody has to clean out the ashes.) Crayons has already hornswoggled two of us into reading her the entire book of Oliver and Amanda's Christmas. Ponytails is reading Snowbound with Betsy to herself. (Addition: Crayons asked me to read This is the Star to her tonight, a new book for her; and she was very pleased that she could read the first page all by herself, "This is the star in the sky.")

5. Mama Squirrel mixed up some imitation sweetened condensed milk today, in anticipation of good things to come. Recipes will follow when I get the time!

Hoping that all your Advent seasons begin as sweetly.

The Seven Things Game

The Common Room's Deputy Headmistress tagged me to list seven things I can't do, seven movies, seven things I say too much and so on. I have been having trouble with this! Some things that should go on the lists are too personal to post on a blog, but leaving them off completely is awkward too.

So here are my lists, incomplete but the best I can do.

Things to do before I die

1. Find a way of remembering the difference between further and farther.

2. Visit all those galleries in Europe.

3. Read all the books for every single year of Ambleside Online.

Things I cannot do

1. Drive

2. Work a yo-yo

3. Wear pointy-toed high heels

Things that attract me to my husband

1. He doesn't watch sports on TV

2. He's a very decisive shopper (he's even good at picking kids' shoes)

3. He still has hair

4. He has chips-and-pop-and-card parties with the kids when I go to meetings

5. He can install just about anything

6. He insists on comparing us to almost every couple we watch on TV or in a movie (my favourite is when he said the two of us were very much like Herman and Lily Munster)

Seven Things I Say Most Often

I had no idea what to put for this so I very gingerly asked two of the Squirrelings to write down what they thought (under threat of coal in their stockings if they wrote anything really embarrassing). Here's The Apprentice's List:

1. "Television is not a right, it is a privilege and it can be taken away." (My note: did I ever really say that??)

2. "Look what the DHM put on her blog!"

3. "Let's sing ANOTHER Advent song."

4. "Those Bratz dolls are hideous."

5. "That was NOT a good prayer." (My explanation: I am not attempting to criticize anyone else's theology, but I do say it if someone rattles off grace a little too fast.)

6. "Apprentice, get off of your tush and do some work."

7. "When I was a kid, there were quality toys in the stores." (I'm not sure about the truth of that one...toys of the seventies were only slightly less junky than the ones sold now. We had our share of things that took ten batteries or broke after two days.)

Here's Ponytails' list, written all by herself with The Apprentice as spellchecker.

1. "I love you, Ponytails. Kiss, hug."

2. "I like you, Ponytails."

3. "Let's eat."

4. "New stuff in the shops are junk."

5. "Charlotte Mason is great."

6. "Do some school work, Apprentice."

7. "I love you, Apprentice. Kiss, hug."

Seven books (or series) I love

I'm still working on this one. Somewhere on the list would be Great Expectations, Pilgrim's Progress, Mrs. Tittlemouse, Saint Maybe, Hercule Poirot mysteries, and What is a Family?. But there are a lot of others that I could put in just as easily.

Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would watch over and over if I had the time)

Again this is really hard, because Mr. Fixit and I watch a lot of movies on T.V. Mr. Fixit will tape something in the middle of the night and then we'll watch part of it late in the evening (sometimes it takes us several nights to get through one movie). Some of them are great, some are okay, some are such stinkers that we quit watching after a few minutes.

I would vote for anything with Alec Guinness (like The Lavender Hill Mob or Our Man in Havana), any good police or courtroom movie (I liked A Few Good Men and My Cousin Vinny, except for the language), anything I've seen so far with Emma Thompson in it (with a nod there to the DHM), and Veggie Tales' Jonah. And most of the mushy Christmas movies that Mr. Fixit WON'T watch with me. And most of the mushy musicals, ditto.

Seven people I want to join in, too

First, The Apprentice, because I know she really wants to play! After that, it's a free-for-all. If you want to put your brain on the rack writing one of these, you're welcome to play.

Remembering grandparents

I've read a couple of good tributes to grandmothers recently, and wanted to pass them on. (Maybe there should be a Carnival of Grandparents?) Marsha's grandmother passed away recently, and Marsha's memories of her are shared on the Abarbablog. And Firefly recalls teatimes with her grandmother here. (We've tried Firefly's grandmother's scones and can assure you they're quite delicious.)

A Snowy-Day Dinner in the Treehouse

Tonight we had a sort-of Italian dinner: Cheese Ravioli with chickpeas and spaghetti sauce; Stir-fried Artichoke Hearts with Bacon; Garlic Breadsticks; Carrot Sticks; Sliced Kiwi Fruit; and Dried Fruit Bars.

The ravioli was the frozen kind; I cooked it first, drained it, and then combined it with the chickpeas and about half a can of spaghetti sauce, all in the same pot, and let it warm through. It does tend to stick to the bottom of the pot when you're heating it, so you have to warm it very gently.

We were going to have a salad, but the lettuce got eaten up earlier in the week along with most of our other green vegetables. I wasn’t sure what we were going to have along with the ravioli until I noticed a forlorn can of artichoke hearts that I’d bought for the Common Room’s pasta-chickpea-artichoke heart-spinach salad...we don’t eat pasta salad much in the winter, so the can had gotten pushed to the back. Betty Crocker turned out to have exactly the right recipe (since we also had just a few strips of bacon left in the fridge):

Artichoke Hearts Saute

2 slices bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 14-oz. can artichoke hearts, drained and cut into halves
1 tsp. lemon juice

Cook bacon in 10-inch skillet, stirring occasionally, until limp, about 1 ½ minutes. (I cooked it until it looked just about done, and then drained off the fat.) Stir in artichoke hearts; cook and stir until hot, about 3 minutes. Stir in lemon juice. (It will be noted that not all the Squirrels wanted to try this, but Crayons at least made a brave attempt to be open-minded.)

The Garlic Breadsticks were a half-batch of Miss Maggie’s recipe, here. Last time I made them, I divided up the dry ingredients and made only a half-batch in an 8-inch square pan; so this batch went together pretty quickly.

Dried Fruit Bars was a recipe of Mary Carroll’s that I clipped from Vegetarian Times a long time ago. Crayons, who loves to cook, helped me put it together. (She did not think it tasted delicious, but the Apprentice happily ate Crayons' share.) Notice that it’s vegan, which means it’s also good for people with dairy/egg and even wheat allergies, if your granola’s wheat-free.

Dried Fruit Bars

2 cups low-sugar granola
1/4 cup apple juice (we used orange juice)
oil or spray for greasing pan
4 cups mixed chopped dried apricots, pitted dates and prunes (we had no prunes but used raisins)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup pear or other light fruit juice (we used orange again because that’s what we had)
1/4 cup arrowroot powder or cornstarch

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In blender or food processor, grind granola to a coarse powder, then transfer to a large bowl. Mix with juice. Lightly oil or spray a 9 by 12-inch baking pan (we used a 9 by 13 pan) and press the mixture into the bottom of it.

In the blender or food processor, puree the remaining ingredients. (Actually, what we did was chop the dried fruit to make sure that we had about four cups of it – I measured it by dumping it into a four-cup plastic container – and then it went back in the food processor with the other ingredients to get pureed.)

Spread the mixture over the prepared granola crust. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool, then cut into squares (Mary Carroll says 12 bars, but we cut it in smaller squares). Store in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator. You may have a rim of dry crumbly stuff around the outside if your fruit didn’t quite cover the crust, but you can cut the nice part into squares and serve them on a plate, and nobody will know, right?

Advent is coming

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent.

Our family always celebrates Advent for the whole four weeks before Christmas...so much so that, when the Apprentice was a toddler, a well-meaning grownup asked her sometime in December if she wasn't happy that Christmas was here, and she corrected him: "It's not Cwistmas yet, it's still Advent."

We have our own set of traditions, some of which are shared by many Christians, such as lighting Advent candles on a wreath. We're not too particular about the colours of the candles...some years we've used all red candles, some years we've used three purple and one pink...one year Mama Squirrel got it backwards so we had three pink and a purple.

We also try to use some blue decorations (like table mats), early in the month, instead of Christmas red and green. When we used to go to a Lutheran church, the girls always looked forward to the seasonal changes in the church; when Advent came, there were blue hangings on the pulpit and the pastor wore a blue stole. I've never been quite sure then why we don't use blue candles on the wreath; I suppose we could! But other than the candles, we try to think blue for awhile. Gradually we bring out some of the more Christmasy decorations. (The nativity scene comes out fairly early...we've inherited two sets in addition to a small one we already had, so we decide whether this will be the year of great-grandma's dime-store set from the 1940's, or the other grandma's REALLY BIG set that takes up the whole top of our buffet. I think it's the REALLY BIG set's turn this year.)

And we have songs that lead up to Christmas. We don't jump right in with Silent Night on the first night of Advent. We sing some of the old Advent hymns like Hark the Glad Sound (we sing it to the Richmond tune) and O Come O Come Emmanuel. And we sing some songs from a book called Gold, Incense and Myrrh: Contemporary Christmas Carols, by Sister Miriam Therese Winter of the Medical Mission Sisters. The copyright date on the book is 1972, so I don't know if it's still available anywhere. [Update: I found out that the author has a webpage here and you can buy CDs of her music.]

I hope the Mission Sisters wouldn't mind if I posted the words to one of their songs. We've sung these around the Advent wreath for several years and I think our Squirrelings consider them as much a part of the holidays as the more familiar carols and hymns. I'm sorry that I can't provide the tune as well...just imagine something played on a guitar rather than a hymn meant for a pipe organ.

WONDERFUL

Now the emptiness of ages proclaims the promised birth.
Hope to help unhappy hearts.
Love to light the earth.
And He shall be called Wonderful!
He shall be called Peace.
For to us a Son has been given,
to us the Lord is born.
He will govern with justice and joy, consoling those who mourn,
And He shall be called Comforter,
He shall be called Peace.

Streams will wash away the desert as He goes passing by
Those in need will turn to Him
He will hear their cry.
And He shall be called Wonderful!
He shall be called Peace.
He will lead His flock like a shepherd and call us each by name.
He will walk in the favor of God,
and we shall do the same.
And He shall be called Comforter,
He shall be called Peace.

(Copyright 1971 by Medical Mission Sisters from the collection "19 Scripture Songs." All Rights Reserved.)

A Four-Bedroom Treehouse: Part 2

Part 1 is here.

I promised to post about some of the old treehouses I used to know, the ones that were never short of bedrooms although they didn't have some of the other frills that usually go along with big houses today.

The first was a board-and-batten house that my grandparents bought in about 1950 and lived in for forty years. When I first read Understood Betsy as a child, I imagined Aunt Abigail's kitchen as looking something like my grandmother's, including the big old dog sleeping under the table. From what I've been told, my grandfather panelled the walls of the kitchen, in rec-room style knotty pine, and built all the cupboards to match. Because the cellar was just a fruit cellar, Grandma had a washer and dryer at one end of the kitchen, and when they were both going at once they made the floor shake, while she worked around the house either whistling or singing hymns, always the same ones. The stove was a gas one, the kind you had to flick a spark at to light a burner. (Unique in my experience, up to to then.)

One side of the room had a door going out to a side part of the house that was my grandpa's woodworking shop...if you can imagine part of a city house that was about as unfinished inside as you can get. In some ways, this wasn't a city house at all, but a farmhouse that had somehow sprouted on a busy street corner. When you came in through the back door, you came in through more unfinished space...but who needed it fancy? It was a good place to leave your snowy boots.

The house smelled of dogs and pipe smoke, and bacon and cake and other things to eat that weren't good for you. There was a piano missing the white stuff on half of its keys, which we could bang on all we wanted (that's probably how the keys lost their white stuff)...there was a big square parking area instead of a driveway, which seemed entirely natural--didn't all grandparents need a parking lot for all the relatives' cars? I've heard stories about how my two uncles, as teenagers, used to sling a jalopy up to the nearest tree with a rope so they could work on its undersides.

There were funny slopy walls in the bedrooms...four bedrooms in the main part of the house, and another room built over the kitchen that you climbed up to from the mudroom. Ownership of the bedrooms got shifted around over the years, especially as the makeup of families shifted around and children and grandchildren ended up living back at Grandma's for a short or long period of time. My sister and I stayed there too, overnight or on days we were sick, or during spring break. I remember once doing something at Grandma's similar to the DHM's children (see her posts about The Equuschick Can Still See). I ran way too fast down the stairs into the front hall and put my hand right through the glass of the front door. I'm sure I wasn't the first person to bleed all over Grandma's house...and she bandaged me up and didn't scold too much. (I guess it was lucky she was a nurse.)

I always thought of that house as a relaxed place. Not fancy, kind of cluttered, not clean down to the last corner (how could it be with so many people coming in and out?); but in tune with the busy, giving, practical people who lived there. The dining room table magically expanded to fit everybody who showed up for Christmas dinner, and the bedrooms somehow stretched to fit as many cousins as required. So different from some of the houses we've looked at lately...one of them had a tiny dining area built on a kind of balcony...definitely meant for four and no more, and what would you do then if your grandchildren came for supper? Have them sit on the railing? And what would be so wrong with just building an upstairs with an extra bedroom?

My grandparents' house didn't have any garage at all...actually, most of the places I lived in growing up didn't have garages either. It didn't have air conditioning. It didn't have a rec room. But it did have room.

A Four-Bedroom Treehouse: Part 1

"We're running out of room. Two of you will have to sleep hung on hangers on a hook on the wall."--Fozzie's Mama, Muppet Family Christmas

Why are four-bedroom houses so hard to find?

The Squirrels have been looking to relocate for quite awhile now. We've looked at everything from every-inch-finished condo townhouses (too family-unfriendly, they wouldn't even let you have a barbecue) to older houses that would have taken a heap of fixing up. And we haven't yet found anything that a) we like, b) we can afford, and c) that has four bedrooms.

For a long time we tried to be flexible on the four bedrooms. We've heard all the stories from older people who raised a passel of kids in tiny little wartime houses and all the rest of it. And after all, we only have three squirrelings, which is just a modest-sized family compared to many of the homesquirrelers we know. So theoretically we could just keep everybody doubled up, right? Three bedrooms should be plenty. And most new four-bedroom houses are the kind that also come with Jacuzzis and glassed-in formal dining rooms--not what we're looking for.

But we do have three Squirrelings of very different ages and different personalities, and a little bit of privacy goes a long way when you're home together a lot of the time. So we're still looking, and hoping for something with an extra bedroom (and that does not include a damp little scooped-out place in the basement, or a converted broom closet), and enough living space for a busy family. And the looking has been an education in the way people are "supposed" to live now.

This is what we've noticed:

New houses, or ones that have been recently renovated, don't assume that anybody's going to spend much time in the kitchen--although they may have tried to fancy things up a bit with European-style appliances.

Most "dinette spaces" fit four people comfortably.

New townhouses can have as many as four bathrooms to clean but not enough corners to set up a sewing machine or a workbench.

The "master suite" in a brand new house will have tons of space, and usually an ensuite bath. The kids' rooms are smaller. But if you think about it, it's usually the kids who have way more stuff to put in their rooms. I'm not the one with the Barbie house or the Rubbermaid container of craft stuff or the pile of board games; I just have my clothes and a few books to worry about. You'd think they could even things out a bit; the kids are the ones who'd really be wowed by some creative built-in storage space.

Most decks are badly built.

Anything described as "cozy" just means small.

Open-concept main floors don't give you anywhere to put bookcases or hang up maps.

And finally, you can tell if someone's taken care of a house by whether or not their bathroom doors have rusty hinges after only a couple of years. Rusty hinges equal too many steamy showers and nobody wiping things down afterwards. Bad sign.

In Part 2, Mama Squirrel will talk about some treehouses she's known in times past--all of which had at least four bedrooms but no Jacuzzi.

The Organized Kitchen: toaster ovens, leftovers, menu planning

Mama Squirrel likes any kitchen ideas that make life easier and give her more time to do important things. (Like play checkers with Crayons.) Here are a couple of squirrel kitchen tips.

1. We are a microwave-less family, not so much by principle as just by the fact that we've never owned one and have never felt we really needed one. What we've always had, though, besides the big oven, is a toaster oven. Originally we had one from Mama Squirrel's previous life (before squirrelings), but when that eventually went kaput we acquired a more modern programmable one. It actually looks (and beeps) like a microwave.

The advantages to having more than one source of oven heat are that you can bake two things at different temperatures if you need to (like baked beans at 350 degrees and a pan of biscuits at 450), and that you don't have to heat up the big oven if you're cooking a small amount of something. We have a lidded casserole that just fits into the toaster oven space, and we've also baked many things in it in an 8-inch square pan. About the only things we haven't baked in it are cookies (our pans are too big), muffins (although I do bake muffin batter in it, in an 8-inch pan), and any recipe big enough to need one of our plus-size casseroles.

And it also makes toast.

2. Menu Planning: Mama Squirrel's current binge of planned-ahead meals is in its third week, and she's discovered something that makes this planning easier. The Squirrels always shop on Saturdays (and it's not usually possible to make another trip during the week). This means that certain foods are more plentiful, say, from Saturday to Wednesday. By Wednesday, the bananas are gone, the cold cuts are eaten up, and so on. So: our week's menu starts on Wednesday, rather than on the more obvious Saturday. I can plan the meals from Wednesday to Friday based on what's still left in the fridge and the cupboard, and make sure that anything we need for the after-shopping days on goes on the grocery list. If I want to make banana muffins, I write them in for sometime after Saturday, and make sure I buy bananas.

Of course this does mess up the lovely menu forms that you can print out online (nobody's menu form starts on Wednesday), but still it's working.

3. Favourite kitchen tools: a four-cup glass measuring cup (you can mix all kinds of things right in it), sharp scissors (for cutting open those irritating, harder-than-ever-to-open cereal box liners), clothes pins (for pinning all the opened bags back together again), lots of measuring spoons (check thrift shops), a rubber spatula, and a decent can opener. Mama Squirrel has had better luck with the first few than with that last one. Cheap can openers rust and bend, and even the expensive one we once bought doesn't cut the way it used to. Inventors of kitchen improvements: there is a niche there that needs to be filled.

Oh, and a permanent marker. You need one handy if you're going to be putting leftovers in margarine tubs or other non-see-through containers. There's nothing like opening a container of yogurt and getting diced tomatoes instead..

A Thought from Charlotte

Once we see that we are dealing spirit with spirit with the friend at whose side we are sitting, with the people who attend to our needs, we shall be able to realise how incessant is the commerce between the divine Spirit and our human spirit. It will be to us as when one stops one's talk and one's thoughts in the springtime, to find the world full of bird-music unheard the instant before.

--Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children