The kitchen sink has changed

The year I finished high school, I spent part of the summer working at a camp, and my mother sent me a boxful of Kitchen Sink Cookies from the Recipes for a Small Planet cookbook. They helped fight off both hunger and homesickness, and I've thought of them fondly many times since then. But I hardly ever made them; I no longer had the cookbook though I knew there was a similar recipe in More Food that Really Schmecks.

Anyway, we suddenly had all the right things around (including soy flour) to make a batch of them, but I thought I'd do a Google search first to see if I could find the Small Planet recipe anywhere online and see if it was the same as the Schmecks recipe. A search for "Kitchen Sink Cookies" turned up cookie recipes containing--marshmallows? chopped candy canes? "candy coated pieces" (whatever those are, I assume M&M's)? And not a bit of soy flour in sight (even in Martha Stewart's recipe). The kitchen sink has changed a lot in twenty years.

So we (Ponytails, Crayons and I) made the Schmecks recipe, which is pretty close to the way I remember Kitchen Sink Cookies: a barely-sweet, slightly spicy granola-type cookie with chocolate chips as an indulgence that even the bean-sprout cooks couldn't leave out. Notice there's no baking powder or baking soda in them; they're dense, kind of like cookie-size granola bars.

Here's the recipe, which author Edna Staebler credits to her niece Nancy.

Kitchen Sink Cookies

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup soy flour
1 1/3 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup milk powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. each ground nutmeg and cloves (we go a little easier on the cloves)
2/3 cup raisins, or to taste
2/3 cup chocolate chips
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup oil or melted butter
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup molasses (I suddenly realized we were out, and substituted corn syrup)

Options to be added: (just about anything): 1/4 cup sesame seeds, or 3/4 cup coconut, or 1/3 cup sunflower seeds, or 1/4 cup peanuts, etc.

Mix all the dry ingredients, including the options. Beat the eggs, add oil, honey and molasses, and beat together. Pour liquid into dry ingredients and stir till moistened. If mixture is too dry (ours was), add milk or water. Drop by spoonfuls onto unoiled cookie sheet (we made ours teaspoonful-size). Bake 10 to 12 minutes, but watch them--especially if they're small, they can get done quite fast. They don't spread.

Great Big Squash

Last weekend we went out to one of our favourite fruit-and-vegetable places that sells local produce (mostly grown right there). They still had great corn (we pressure-cooked it) and the most amazing butternut squash, some about as big as baseball bats, for $2 each. We bought one of the smaller "bats" and Mama Squirrel cooked up about half of it yesterday. Some of it got chopped into our dinner (a big casserole dish combining 1/2 cup pearl barley, 1 cup water, some chopped (raw) squash, four farmers' sausages, a sprinkle of salt and sage--baked until everything was done). Some of it got cut into chunks and cooked in another big casserole dish at the same time, then mashed. The mashed stuff then got made into a batch of pumpkin butter (which does work just about as well with butternut squash). Here's the recipe (it's originally from the Vegetarian Times cookbook). You can halve it if you want just a small batch.

Pumpkin Butter

4 cups pureed pumpkin (or squash)
1/2 to 1 cup honey (or we have also used part brown sugar--it's to your own taste)
1 tbsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ginger
2 to 3 tbsp. lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan and cook over low heat for 45-60 minutes, stirring often (and I find it takes longer than that, depending on how much you have and how hot you're cooking it). You'll know it's done when it's very thick, smooth, probably darker than you started with (pumpkin goes darker than squash), and it seems to pull away from the sides of the pot when you stir it. You can seal it in hot, sterilized canning jars, but we don't bother--we just keep it in the fridge. It's good on toast or muffins.

Preschool Theology

Last Friday we returned from a shopping trip and realized, on the way home, that part of the city had been hit by a power blackout (a hydro pole caught fire). When we got home, we were relieved to find that our power was still on, although we were very close to the area that was affected.

While we were putting the things away, I said to Crayons, just trying to express some thankfulness, "God must have been helping us! Our lights are still on and we can cook supper. Some peoples' lights are out and they can't work their stoves."

Crayons thought a minute and asked, "Isn't God helping the other people?"

Umm....didn't one of Edith Schaeffer's grandchildren ask almost the same question after a storm (in one of her books)? "God made the stars. God made the trees." "Did God make the trees blow down too?"

They start asking the big questions so early without even realizing they're doing it. Do we have answers for them? When 1 Peter 3:15 says "always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you (NKJV)," did he think he'd be including four-year-olds?

Crayons' Reading Lesson

Today I invented a new reading game for Crayons. On the computer, I made a page with twelve boxes (using a table) and in each box I typed a reading word, in big letters. About half of them were new words. I printed out two copies, and on one of the copies I cut the words out, in squares that were a little smaller than the boxes.

The first thing we did was some matching. I put the individual words on the floor beside the sheet with the boxes, and asked Crayons to match the words with the ones on the sheet. I asked her which words she knew for sure, and she took those off and read them. Then I went over the new words with her, showing her which ones rhymed with a word she knew, and which one was the same as an old word plus an "s" (mat, mats).

Then I took all the words in my hand, and asked Crayons to "pick a card, any card." Each word she picked, she read and then put in its matching box. At this point Crayons decided to make the game more fun by bringing in an old rag doll who's acted as "assistant reading coach" for all the squirrelings. Becky (the doll) is known both for her constant sneezing and for her fear of bees (both the flying kind and the alphabet kind, and she often can't keep the two straight). So that added a little suspense, since we knew that at any moment the word "bee" was going to come up, and that guaranteed a screech from Becky.

And that was the lesson. We'll use the same pieces again a couple of times (we don't do reading lessons every day). Then I'll probably take the individual words, print out a matching set (or cut up the master sheet) and paste them to half-index cards, to add to our card game (see below).

By the way, if you're curious, the old words were bee, mom, wee, dad, mat, and go. The new words were hat (she sort of knew that one), fat, meet, feet, mats, and tee (we did not define what kind of tee that is, the object here is to learn to sound words out and learn some sight words, rather than worrying about exceptions.)

Crayons' Card Game

I made a reading-practice card game this week for Crayons, from an idea I found in The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists. I cut about 15 index cards in half, and on each pair of cards I wrote (once on each half) one of the words she has been learning to read. BED, SEE, YES, HOT, and so on. To play the game, you deal out five cards to each person and have a draw pile in the middle. Then play like "Go Fish": Do you have a BED? No, go fish. (Crayons pronounces it "No, goldfish.") If they do have the card or if you draw a match out of the draw pile, you put your pair in front of you and take another turn. The one with the most pairs wins.

Not fancy, but it was fun. Crayons beat me twice.

Home squirreling at yard sales

First question: Why do some people think that homeschooling is such an elitist thing, only for people with lots of money? Second question: Why do some homeschoolers spend so much on curriculum? Mama Squirrel has been picking school stuff up at teachers' yard sales, other peoples' yard sales, and church sales over the past month, and for about $30 she has found enough stuff to keep a family with young children going for a whole year. Maybe we're lucky, maybe we're blessed, maybe Mama Squirrel has just been at this long enough to know what's worth getting. Probably all three. But anyone else could do the same thing. They wouldn't find the exact same items, but they could put just as good a bagful together for the cost of a couple of pizzas.

Oh, and one other comment: the stuff that gets used the least in the Treehouse is usually something produced specifically for the classroom (and not because it's written for large groups, but because it's usually pretty lame). Case in point: an unnamed music-and-math resource book we picked up today, which has such classic songs in it as this (sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice): "Let's make a people graph / Let's make a people graph / Of all our friends / In the classroom. / Boys stand over here. / Girls stand over there. / Then line up in two rows / So we can compare, / So we can compare." Ponytails says she'd rather sing Aiken Drum any day.

So all right, even Mama Squirrel picks a dud sometimes.

These are the worthwhile things we've found lately:

What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know (Hirsch) (this contains most of the folk tales included in our AO-HELP curriculum, plus poems, paintings to look at, a bit of geography, and math games)
Grade K Learn at Home (all-in-one book--but it's just a tool, not a toolbox, as one of the Amazon reviews says)
Family Pastimes Brainy Puzzle Pack (we've already tried one of the games in this, co-operative Tic Tac Toe)
Family Pastimes Harvest Time (co-operative game)
A Fuzzy Felt set from the 1970's (actually several different sets jammed into one box, missing its little felt board but that's not a problem)
Science for Fun Experiments (Gibson)–good for early grades
Three Bears (Galdone)–very worn condition, but it was already a favourite
Stuart Little (nice hardcover copy to replace our paperback)
Helga’s Dowry
Bob Books First pack (12 booklets)--Crayons is not sure yet if she likes these silly Mat-sat-on-a-rat books; the plots are a little bit lacking! But they're easy to resell.
Unifix cubes (a whole bagful)
Large snap-together math cubes (ditto)
Base 10 set of blocks and cubes
The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists (1984 edition, but in nice shape)
Set of laminated times table cards
Small cardboard alphabet cards
Some Scholastic books from the 1970's (riddle books and a book about Marco Polo)
Laminated world map

What are you reading at YOUR kitchen table?

A homeschooling blogger pointed me to this article by Mark Oppenheimer on homeschoolers and their books, from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. I like his point that homeschoolers (of all stripes) seem to have "a preference for long books, often parts of a series, consumed with a leisure that public-school curricula don't allow." Even as a homeschooling family, time often seems too short to read some of the good stuff we'd like to; we only got a couple of books into the Swallows and Amazons series and I've always wanted to go back and read more. The Apprentice and I are currently reading Oliver Twist when our schedule says "Apprentice's time with Mom" and our other work is done. Dickens is another one of those writers whose books take awhile...but that's good, isn't it? You feel like you've lived with his characters for awhile after spending a long, leisurely time working through Great Expectations or Hard Times.

And public-school curriculum doesn't allow for long books and series books? Hmmm...that would seem to deny the popularity of Harry Potter, but I know what he means. It's the advantage we sometimes do take for granted: time. Take it, even if you're public-schooling, even if you have only a few minutes a day to read together. In Edith Schaeffer's book What is a Family?, she tells about the years when her daughter and son-in-law found their only uninterrupted time together with their school-age children was at the end of lunch hour (because their dinnertime and evenings were often shared with other people in their ministry). So that was it...a few minutes to read from a book together at the end of a quick lunch...but that was what they did.

P.S.: We don't read at the kitchen table, though; well, sometimes with cups of tea and a book of poetry. But usually we're on the couch or on the parental squirrels' bed.

More Random Reasons to be Happy

1. Green beans growing up the side of the house are finally getting beans on them.

2. Ambleside Online Year 11 is more-or-less finished, after many hours of pre-birthing pains with the Ambleside planners and some equally wonderful book reviewers and researchers who helped us out.

3. Picking up a laminated world map (that we really needed), Diane Stanley's childrens' bio of Leonardo da Vinci, and a copy of Tomie de Paola's picture book Helga's Dowry at a teacher's yard sale yesterday.

One thing that would make Mama Squirrel's world a bit brighter would be if the CBC radio strike would end; she misses her favourite shows although the canned classical music is okay too.

Magnetic letters

The Squirrels have a pile of magnetic letters and numbers--the kind that aren't supposed to be safe for little ones because the tiny magnets in them might come out. Some of the letters are thirty-five years old and the magnets are still intact, but that's not the point. Because there are parts of about four different sets, it's hard to make one whole alphabet (we have about five capital E's but not one capital I). However, Mama Squirrel came up with some homeschool possibilities for them this week (besides just sticking them all over the fridge, which is what the squirrelings mostly did when they were toddlers).

1. Mama Squirrel and Crayons just sorted out the letters into two (more or less) capital-letter alphabets plus small piles of lower-case letters and numerals. We've done the same thing with rubber letters.

2. Preschool memory game: make a row of about four to six letters or numbers (or more if you want to make it harder). Hide your eyes and the other person hides one or two of the letters. What's missing? (Crayons played a funny trick on Mama Squirrel: she hid one of the letters behind her back and replaced it with another one the same. When Mama Squirrel said she hadn't taken anything away at all, Crayons showed her how duplicitous she had been.)

3. Preschool sorting game we haven't tried yet: take a handful of capital letters and a handful of lower-case letters (we only have a few of those anyway) and sort them into two piles, capitals and lower-case.

3. Grade Three alphabetizing game: Take a handful of letters and put them in alphabetical order, as fast as possible. It doesn't matter if there are doubles.

4. Grade Three fractions game: Take all the numerals you can find and put in them in a container. Draw a line on paper to be the dividing line in a fraction. Pull two of the numerals out and put one on top, one on the bottom. What's the fraction? What does it look like? We had some plastic fraction pieces, marbles and other things sitting around while we did this, so we tried to come up with different ways of showing. Ponytails made 3/2, so she took three of the plastic "half" pieces. Mama Squirrel made 7/9, and there are no ninths in the plastic pieces, so she took seven blue marbles and two white ones, and said that 7/9 of the marbles were blue.

5. The obvious: spell things with the letters. Spill a handful and see who can make the most words the fastest. (Of course the squirrelings may not learn any "i" words, but Mama Squirrel will come up with something else for those.)

Moral: even incomplete things can still be kind of fun and educational, right?

Rose Fixer

This morning Ponytails and I were reading "The Sick Rose" from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Oh Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
in the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy.
And his dark secret love,
does thy life destroy.

Crayons climbed up on the couch and waved her hands over my head. She explained, "I'm putting some water on you."

Crayons' Crafts

Crayons did not get her nickname for nothing. Lately no toilet paper tube, no box, no piece of paper has been safe from her creativity. Earlier this week she told me, "I want to make a paper plate caterpillar. I need paper plates and pipe cleaners." "Where did you get that idea from?" "I saw it on TV. So I have to make one, how about now?" (About five minutes before bedtime, this was. She finally agreed to wait until the next morning.) She did it almost all herself, with a little help punching holes to hold the paper plates together, and Mr. Caterpillar is now on the kitchen wall.

She also brought a book we have that has photographs of dollhouses and dolls, not understanding that this wasn't a craft book, and showed me a photograph of some rather weird-looking dolls. (Parental warning: preview before showing this picture to kids, one doll is a little exposed.) "Can we make this one?" Never one to say no...wait a minute...don't those faces look like white plastic picnic spoons? Which we just happened to have...aha. So, picnic spoon, pipe cleaner and straws for arms and legs, some fuzzy yarn for hair, and a Crayons-created marker face...which looks much happier than the original...and we have our dolly.

And then there are the toilet paper tubes I keep picking up that somehow have been turned into people...how can you throw those out?

I can't.

(Addendum: Ponytails made a doll later; hers is the one with the yellow hair, on the right.)

Earrings, by Ponytails

Last week I got my ears pierced. Today is a week after I got my ears pierced, so today is my earrings' anniversary. The Apprentice got hers done too. The lady who did my ears took the gun and she put the earring through the gun, and clicked the button, and shot it into my ear. And it hurt! I'm being honest. :-P Actually it stinged, not hurt. She gave me heart earrings instead of balls. The Apprentice got balls. Coffeemamma, Ponytails is telling B that it doesn't hurt VERY much to get your ears pierced, and the stinging doesn't last long. It's over fast.

We started school and we finished Five Children and It. It was fun. Now can we watch the video, please???

The deed is done

In recent Treehouse news, Ponytails and the Apprentice survived having their ears pierced and are looking forward to being able to take their studs out THE SAME WEEKEND AS PONYTAILS' BIRTHDAY. (Ponytails wants everyone to know that.)

And the answers are...

1. They waved their handkerchiefs until they turned the corner from New Dollar Street into Elm Street. Now they could no longer see the yellow house. Good-by, yellow house! Good-by!

The Moffats, by Eleanor Estes

2. That room was full to the brim of something beautiful, and Betsy knew what it was. Its name was Happiness.

Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

3. The other [thing] is that back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”: everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis

4. None throws away the apple for the core.
But if thou shalt cast all away as vain,
I know not but ‘twill make me dream again.

Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan (the poem that ends Book I)

5. The mouse hurried to his safe home.
He lit the fire,
he ate his supper,
and he finished reading his book.

Mouse Soup, by Arnold Lobel

6. And Montmorency, standing on his hind legs, before the window, peering out into the night, gave a short bark of decided concurrence with the toast.

Three Men in a Boat (not to mention the dog), by Jerome K. Jerome

7. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny,, or reward filial disobedience.

Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

8. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

The Gospel of John

9. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her. ALTERNATE ENDING I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview, for in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than XXX's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (he couldn't decide on an ending)

10. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.
He drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.

The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Tim's Statistics

For Canadians: you know that TV commercial where the one couple is driving across Canada in one direction, and the van of guys is going the other direction, and they're both stopping at every Tim Horton's they see and keeping a tally on the window?

Well, just in case you ever wondered exactly how many doughnut places that would be, the number of locations for each province (and the US states that have them) are online here. Please note which province holds the record for the most stores. We plead guilty, we like Timbits too.

Happy Endings

The Dominion Family blog had a name-that-quote game that I didn't see until it was over...so I'm making my own. No bar of soap to offer, just virtual shiny stars if you can name the books these endings come from. Since some of the Treehouse friends are out of town this week, we won't post solutions until they have a chance to play too. You can post your answers in Comments, but how about just saying which numbers you know, so you don't give it away to the others? The answers are HERE.

Have fun.

1. They waved their handkerchiefs until they turned the corner from New Dollar Street into Elm Street. Now they could no longer see the yellow house. Good-by, yellow house! Good-by!

2. That room was full to the brim of something beautiful, and Betsy knew what it was. Its name was Happiness.

3. The other [thing] is that back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”: everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.

4. None throws away the apple for the core.
But if thou shalt cast all away as vain,
I know not but ‘twill make me dream again.

5. The mouse hurried to his safe home.
He lit the fire,
he ate his supper,
and he finished reading his book.

6. And Montmorency, standing on his hind legs, before the window, peering out into the night, gave a short bark of decided concurrence with the toast.

7. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny,, or reward filial disobedience.

8. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

9. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her. ALTERNATE ENDING I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview, for in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than XXX's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.

10. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.
He drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.

(Isn't that last one the ultimate great ending? And no, it's not The Odyssey.)

Random reasons to be happy

1. Eddie Condon's jazz music

2. Crayons' doll Blueberry Eyes (her name makes me smile)

3. Getting extra Timbits in a box

4. Green beans growing up the wall of the house

5. Realizing that multiplying polynomials really isn't that big a deal

6. Having something print out right the first time.

Dinner with the Squirrels, Part 2

Climb up into our Treehouse and join us for another round of things we make when we don't want to spend all day cooking. Stay for dinner too, maybe Mr. Fixit will make cabbage rolls. They're very good with:

Herbed Beer Bread (no yeast, doesn't have to rise)

The Squirrels’ recipe is identical to this one (link updated 2020). It works fine with de-alcoholized beer; bring the can of beer to room temperature first. Mama Squirrel has baked it in both a loaf pan and in an 8 inch square pan; in the square pan, she can use the toaster oven and it doesn't heat up the house.


Mushroom Steak Bake

To do this, you need either a package of fairly thin steak pieces, or a small roast that you’ve sliced into steak-sized pieces. The Squirrels have tried it both ways, depending on what was on sale that week. Put the pieces of beef into a casserole and cover with a can of condensed mushroom soup and either a can of mushrooms (drained) or some fresh mushrooms (or both). Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour and a half (depending on the thickness and amount of meat). Thicken the sauce at the end if you really need to (with flour or cornstarch).


Beef and Salsa Burritos (National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Beef Board)

This is a good quick dinner if you've remembered to thaw the beef and the spinach. Somebody can grate cheese while you brown the meat, and you're all set.

1 to 1 1/4 pounds ground beef (the recipe says 1 1/4 pounds, but whoever buys exactly that much? We just use a pound-size package.)
1 ½ tbsp. chili powder (we use only 1 tbsp.)
½ tsp. ground cumin
½ tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper (op.)
1 pkg (10 oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained (or you can use fresh chopped)
1 to 1 1/4 cup prepared chunky salsa
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
8 medium flour tortillas, warmed (we use whole wheat)

In large nonstick skillet, brown ground beef, and drain if necessary. Add seasonings; stir in spinach and salsa; heat through. Remove from heat, stir in cheese. Wrap in tortillas and serve. (We usually cook a pot of rice to go along with these.)


Ground Chicken Skillet, or Evan’s Mom would Never Recognize This

We adapted this recipe from Jill Bond’s book Dinner’s In the Freezer. She called it Evan’s Mom’s Casserole, but our version’s no longer a casserole and we changed the seasoning from dill to curry (since Mr. Fixit does not like dill much. He wishes Mama Squirrel would also leave the dill out of the Beer Bread, but Mama Squirrel is willing to go only so far.)

1 lb. ground chicken
1 onion, chopped
1 can condensed tomato soup
1 can green beans (or use fresh ones)
1 can mushrooms (op.)
1 tsp. curry powder or to taste
Salt (op.)
Something to serve it over (rice or noodles)

Brown the chicken and onion in a skillet. Add the remaining ingredients and heat through. Serve over rice or noodles, passing hot sauce for anyone who thinks 1 teaspoon of curry powder doesn’t have much pow.


Chicken Cacciatore

Everybody has a recipe for this, but this is Mama Squirrel’s easy way. The Squirrels like the canned pasta sauces that come in different flavours; one variety is tomato-onion, which saves chopping onions when you’re in a hurry; and another one has a strong garlic flavour that’s very good with chicken. Either one will work with this recipe, and regular spaghetti sauce would be fine too.

So: put one pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in a small greased casserole; add about half a 680 ml can of pasta sauce (one of those tall ones, for the Americans). (The chicken will give off some liquid as well, so you probably don’t want to use the whole can unless you’re doubling the recipe.) Add anything you like to cook along with the chicken–chopped peppers, mushrooms, canned chickpeas, chopped zucchini (although mushrooms and zucchini could also be added later so they don’t get mushy). Cover and bake for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how thick the chicken is. When the chicken’s cooked through, you may want to thicken the sauce with either a small can of tomato paste or some cornstarch mixed with cold water. Serve on pasta (preferably whole wheat). You can cook this dinner in the crockpot too.


Frozen Tortoni Dessert (adapted from The Goldbecks’ Short-Order Cookbook, by Nikki & David Goldbeck)

If you can make popsicles, you can make this–it’s just a bit dressier.

You need: 1 2-cup container ricotta cheese (light is fine); 1/4 cup honey; 1 tsp. almond extract; 8 tsp. finely ground almonds (we don’t use this, see below)

Whip ricotta, honey and almond extract with an electric beater or in the food processor, till it’s smooth, light and fluffy. Line a muffin tin with 8 paper liners and fill with mixture. Sprinkle each with 1 tsp. ground almonds, or other toppings. Freeze. When solid, remove from tin and wrap in freezer bags or foil (if you’re going to do them ahead). Let stand for a few minutes at room temperature to soften slightly before serving.

The Squirrels don’t usually have ground almonds around (funny thing), so we have tried this with other toppings: a few chocolate chips, a ring of pineapple, a ring of pineapple with chocolate chips in the middle...at Christmas time, we made these and decorated them with white chocolate chips and red candied cherries. They’re quite small, so you might want to allow two per person unless they’re very small people. (And if you have small people and use chocolate chips, warn them to watch their teeth, unless they're little squirrels: frozen chips can get pretty hard.) Or freeze twice as much in four little dishes instead of eight muffin papers.


Summer Shortcake (from Food that Really Schmecks, by Edna Staebler)

Mr. Fixit does not have a sweet tooth and does not care for those little yellow spongy cakes that are sold to make strawberry shortcake with. But he does like this version, which is more like a pan of biscuits than a cake. Mama Squirrel has cut it in half from Edna’s original version, but you can double it back again and bake it in a 9 x 13 pan.

2 cups flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ cup sugar, plus a spoonful for sprinkling
½ tsp. salt
½ cup oil or shortening
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk

If you’re making your own sour milk, add 1 tbsp. vinegar to a cup of milk and let it sit for about five minutes while you mix the rest. Mis the dry ingredients and the oil or shortening until the mixture is crumbly. Add the sour milk and mix just enough to make sure the dry part is moistened. Spread the dough in a greased 8 or 9 inch pan. Sprinkle a spoonful of white sugar over the top, unless that idea really turns you off, and bake in a 400-degree oven for about 20 minutes, or a bit longer–prick the centre to be sure it’s done (especially in hot muggy weather). Serve warm and smothered with strawberries, blueberries or slice peaches, plus some vanilla yogurt or tofu topping or whatever other topping you like. I usually cut it in squares and then split a square on each serving plate, dollop some yogurt on, and cover with fruit.


Pineapple-Orange Rings

This one is really simple–even Crayons can help make it. In each dessert bowl, stack two canned pineapple rings. Stuff the hole in the middle with canned mandarin oranges (be generous but not messy). Chill well before serving. The Squirrels think this dessert looks like summer sunshine in the winter.

How you know this is 2005:

Ponytails came home from Vacation Bible School and said that the kids went outside and played blog tag.

Hot German Cauliflower Salad

This is what the Squirrels ate for dinner tonight (with frozen chicken strips and green beans). The two youngest Squirrelings were somewhat reluctant to try it, but they did each manage a piece of cauliflower. The rest of us thought it was quite good. It's the Betty Crocker recipe for Hot German Potato Salad, only Mama Squirrel used a head of cauliflower instead.

Here's the recipe, with our adaptations:

Hot German Cauliflower Salad

Cook (steam, boil) a chopped-up head of cauliflower until it's tender but not mushy. Fry several strips of bacon (we used half a pound) until crispy, adding diced onions (we used one small one) either before or after removing the bacon. (Mama Squirrel has never been able to get the bacon to go really crispy, so she compromised and cut it in pieces after cooking it.)

After you have removed the bacon and onions (we put them in a paper-napkin lined bowl), stir this mixture into a little of the fat that's left in the pan: 1 tbsp. flour, 1 tbsp. sugar, 1 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. celery seed, shake of pepper. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is bubbly; remove from heat; stir in 1/3 cup of water and 1/4 cup of vinegar (we used cider vinegar). Heat to boiling, stirring constantly; boil and stir one minute; remove from the heat. Pour over the cut-up cauliflower and crumbled or cut-up bacon and onion. Serve hot.

(Mama Squirrel got this done half an hour before we wanted to eat, so she put it in the crockpot on high until supper time.)

Green beans might be a nice addition to the salad too, if you weren't having another green vegetable.