Summer Reading - Books with Recipes at the Back.

The younger girls (ages 8 and 10) have been busy reading and crafting their way through Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series, heading into to summer reading.  There are enough books, and crafts, in the series to keep them busy for quite a while yet.  But, I also have a couple of other series (this time with recipes at the back) for them to flip back and forth from, and a similar (recipes at the back) manga series for their older sisters, as well.

Coincidentally, each of the book sets I have in mind also provide opportunities for foreign language study.

For instance, Giada De Laurentiis (from the Food Network) sprinkles the pages of her Recipe for Adventure books with Italian words and phrases. There are recipes at the back of each book, but no glossary, so the girls will be reading these out loud to me (probably only a chapter a day), so I can help them along the way.

I've also downloaded the Gus on the Go - Italian app to our Kindle...

...as well as the free version of Learn Italian (non-affiliate link), to help them with pronunciation and word recognition.

As to the stories, we're only a couple of chapters into the first book, but they remind me a little of the Magic Tree House.

Take a geography loving 11 year old boy, from an Italian-American family, and his 12 year old, history loving, sister, and combine them with a globe-trotting great-aunt, who has the power to transport them to the places she has visited, through her recipes - and you have a recipe for summer learning, as well as an adventure (at least that's my hope).

So far, there are six books in the series (the links will take you to recipe cards on the author's site).

Book 1: Naples! with recipes for Tomato-Basil Pizza and Zeppole
Book 2: Paris! with recipes for Hot Chocolate and Crepes
Book 3: Hong Kong! with recipes for Shrimp Dumplings and Scallion Pancakes
Book 4: New Orleans with recipes for Bananas Foster and Gumbo
Book 5: Rio! with recipes for Brigadeiros and Pão De Queijo
Book 6: Hawaii! with recipes for Macadamia Banana Bread and Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

If we make it through all of those, hopefully trying out more than a few of the recipes along the way, the next books I have standing by are part of the Anna Wang series by Andrea Cheng.  The stories revolve around a young, about-to-be middle schooler, from a Chinese-American home, and contain short Chinese-English dictionaries and pronunciation guides, as well as recipes or crafts.

So far, there are four books in the series.

The Year of the Book with instructions for making a draw-string lunch bag (not a recipe but still fun)
The Year of the Baby with a recipe Steamed Red Bean Bao Zi
The Year of the Fortune Cookie with a recipe for Fortune Cookies
The Year of the Three Sisters (no recipe or project that I can see - but a Chinese pronunciation guide).



Meanwhile, my teens (ages 14 and 16) are planning on baking their way through Natumi Ando's Kitchen Princess.  The comic book style manga tells the story of a young girl, the orphan child of two pastry chefs.  She was rescued from drowning as a small child by a boy, who shared his flan, and some encouragement with her, and then left in a hurry, leaving her with only a silver spoon to remember him by.  Years later she when she discovers the spoon carries the emblem of a prestigious school, she studies hard in order to get into the school, in hope of finding her "prince".

The school is filled with elite and gifted students, each with a special talent.  It does not take long for our heroine to realize her talent is baking - much like her parents.  Finding her prince might take a little longer.

It's not exactly Shakespeare, but the recipes look promising, and there's a good deal of Japanese to be learned along the way, as well (with guides thrown in for English readers).

Kitchen Princess 1 with recipes for Flan, Taramasalata, Rainbow Colored Jello, Christmas Cookies, and Onion Gratin Soup.
Kitchen Princess 2 with recipes for Chocolate Macaroons, Strawberry Shortcake, Rice Cake, Yogurt Mousse, Peach Pie.
Kitchen Princess 3 with recipes for Polka Dot Pancake, Rolled Sandwich, Banana Cream Puff, Carrot Cake, and Mont Blanc.
Kitchen Princess 4 with recipes for Omurice, Apple Cake, Cocoa Scone, and Fruit Agar.
Kitchen Princess 5 with recipes for Strawberry Tart, Castella, Crepes, and Souffle Ice Cream.
Kitchen Princess 6 with recipes for Bruschetta, Flan Cake, Curry Roll, Yogurt Bread, and Baked Sweet Potato Mash.
Kitchen Princess 7 with recipes for  Fruit Cocktail, Madeleines, Neapolitan Spaghetti, Mille-Feulle, and Cheesecake.
Kitchen Princess 8 with recipes for Fruit Jam, Tea Sandwiches, High Tea, and Baci.
Kitchen Princess 9 with recipes for Cinnamon Rolls, Banana Bread, Chicken Doria, and Vegetable Potage
Kitchen Princess 10 with recipes for Salt Caramel, Paella, Cocktail, and Creme Brulee.

The girls have been too busy with end of the year youth-group activities, this week, to try any of the recipes from the first book, but I'm looking forward to comparing the Kitchen Princess sugar cookie recipe to our own, and in the meantime, I picked up some store bought flan for the girls to try.

It received mix reviews, but the girls loved getting a little taste of the story, all the same, and we spent a very productive few minutes looking up and reading the history of flan.

Needless to say, with all these great tastes and recipes to be tried, we're going to be needing a good exercise program to go along with our summer reading.

Picture Books for Strawberry Season

We read Barbara M. Joosse's Jam Day, the story of a young boy and his mother, returning to her family home for an annual day of strawberry picking, and jam making with extended family, to go along with our latest harvest of strawberries.  Strawberry season arrives late in Montana, giving us fresh, sweet, strawberries through most of July.



We enjoyed Jam Day.  It's simple, and slightly old fashioned, but a nice look at family traditions, and how even a small family of two, can become a large, happy, boisterous group when joined together with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

I was a little disappointed there wasn't a recipe for strawberry jam at the back of the book, or for "Granpap's world famous biscuits", made by the boy and his grandfather to serve with their jam in the story.  If any story needs a go-along recipe, this is one.

Joan D'Amico offers a semi-child friendly recipe for strawberry freezer jam, with a simple explanation of pectin, and how it helps to transform fruit, and sugar into "delicious jams and jellies" in The Science Chef.

We opted for an even easier microwave recipe (click here for the recipe) again this year, skipping the pectin, and the stove top, and thanks to a lack of planning on my part...

...even the lemon juice, this year.  According to everything I've read about the amount of pectin in strawberries, and their need for either added pectin, or lemon juice to help release their own pectin (the structural heteropolysaccharide contained in the primary cell walls of terrestrial plants used as a gelling agent in jam - per Wikipedia) this should not have worked...

...but the jam turned out fine even without the lemon juice, proving once again, when it comes to science - even kitchen science - research should always be followed, and verified by experimentation.

Since we didn't have any of "Granpap's world famous biscuits" to serve with our jam, I whipped up a batch of strawberry muffins (using the Best ever Muffin recipe from Allrecipes.com with a teaspoon of vanilla and a cup of sliced strawberries added in).

Then it was off to the library to pick up a few picture books, this time with recipes, before strawberry season passes us by.  Now we're looking forward to some good reading, as well as a strawberry cake...

...and a couple of batches of strawberry shortcake.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

Coconut Macaroons - Marking Passover over with Children

The older children made a couple of batches of vanilla and chocolate coconut macaroons from Lisa Rauchwerger's excellent, interactive family cookbook, Chocolate Chip Challah and Other Twists on the Jewish Table, as a quick nod to Passover.

Quick, because Passover began right at the height of the Easter celebration, this year, and the older children, because my younger children don't care for coconut.  Not that they couldn't have handled the recipe (click here to see a similar recipe from AllRecipes.com).

It only has three ingredients - four, for the chocolate version.

And, like all the recipes in the cookbook, it is written in a very easy to understand style, suitable for younger children working with adults.  The pages around the recipes, which follow the Jewish calendar through the year, are filled with historical factoids, Hebrew blessings, and personal family anecdotes from the author, making it a fun, and informative primer on the traditions, and customs of the Jewish holidays, as well as a family friendly cookbook.

I'm tempted to purchase a copy, just for the recipes alone.  But, I do like the history and facts, too. It's handy after reading a Biblical account of an event, to be able to say, "This is still being celebrated today, with recipes like this one."  As the children worked on the macaroons for instance, we discussed the lack of a leavening ingredient, and how that relates to Passover.

The recipe in the book calls for three cups of coconut (already slightly more than the AllRecipes.com version), but we found we needed to make it three "firmly packed" cups of coconut, even so, or the sweetened condensed milk didn't stay mixed with the coconut during baking, giving us results like this...

...rather than this (with the extra coconut).

Both batches were quite tasty though, and served as a simple backdrop for a discussion of Passover and another tie back into Easter.

Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 1 Corinthians 5:7

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Irish Soda Bread

It turned out two of the books we checked out for Saint Patrick's Day, Ann Heinrichs' Saint Patrick's Day, that I mentioned already...


...and Happy St. Patrick's Day by Abbie Mercer, a very similar, simple, non-fiction, from past-to-present look at the holiday for children...


...both contain recipes for Irish soda bread. Heinrich's recipe is a sweet version, with raisins added, while Mercer's book includes the simple, straightforward, 4 ingredient (flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk), traditional version, meant to be eaten as an everyday bread.

We opted for Mercer's recipe, and followed her instructions for mixing the dough by hand...


...at least C (age 5) did. D (age 9) declared it too messy, A (age 11) claimed flour dries the hands, and E (age 7) thought the buttermilk smelled bad and didn't want to touch it. The older two children were out at the time, or I'm sure they would have had some excuse to keep their hands out of the dough, as well.


C, however, had a great time, mixing and kneading the dough, and helping to shape it into a ball on the cookie sheet, for me to slash open with a couple of "X" shaped cuts.

We enjoyed the bread (which really tastes more like a biscuit), with hearty bowls of Irish stew - or vegetable beef soup, anyway, about as close as we're going to get to Irish stew anytime soon, while watching Nature's "Ireland" episode on pbs.org, about the wildlife and natural wonders of the country.


I thought it would all make for a very nice, geography themed, lunch. But, for the sake of "keeping it real", I should mention, that neither the bread, nor the video received rave reviews from the children. Though, we did enjoy learning about a few new-to-us animals like stoats and gannets, that will be worth further study. And, the children agreed that soda bread, while not their favorite food, isn't too bad with the addition of a little jam or honey. So much for our Irish roots.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with Watcha Making Wednesday at the Ramblings and Adventures of a S.A.H.M.

and

The Geography and Hisory link-up hosted by All Things Beautiful, every Thursday.

Hamantashen

I'm not officially ending my spring blogger break just yet, but I wanted to pop back real quick to share a fantastic recipe for hamantashen - the three cornered cookies given and enjoyed as part of the Jewish celebration of Purim.

We made ours as part of the Kay Arthur Bible study of the book of Esther, the children are working through right now. But, I realized, from reading the small print at the bottom of the page, that the recipe included in the book is from the kids' Purim pages of Chabad.org (the site we usually visit when we want a child friendly explanation of any of the Jewish holidays).


Anyway, you can find the recipe, here, at Chabad.org, and I highly recommend it. It's a simple enough recipe for children to take on, and it makes for delicious, cake-like cookies, that hold their shape when baking. We didn't have lemons, so we substituted orange rind and juice for the lemon in the recipe, but other than that, we followed it faithfully, and were very pleased with the results.

They're supposed to be shared, but not being Jewish, and not knowing anyone else celebrating the holiday, we gobbled them down ourselves (we did cut the recipe in half, though), while reading Barbara Diamond Goldin's beautifully written Purim tale, Cakes and Miracles. Her book also contains a recipe for hamantashen (which actually calls for orange juice, instead of lemon), as well as a very good lesson on the history, traditions, and spirit of the holiday, all told within a touching story of a blind boy who finds his own way to share what he can see, even without sight, on the special day.

Next year, I think we'll make some hamantashen earlier in the day, and share some with the neighbors - just to surprise them.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Kay Arthur, Inductive Bible Studies for Children - The Book of Esther

The older children finished up reading the book of Esther, last week, in their Bible reading. With Purim, the Jewish celebration initiated at the end of that book, coming up in another two weeks, or so, it seemed like a good time to pause and take a closer look at the story.

Kay Arthur, author of the Precepts Bible studies for women, along with Janna Arndt, has published a series of five week, inductive Bible studies for children, including one on the book of Esther (you can view the introduction, and first chapter, here).

Apart from fill in the blank worksheets, crosswords, word finds, and other puzzles, maps, time lines, and even a recipe for Hamantashen (the three cornered, jam filled cookies made, and shared as a part of Purim), the book contains a reprinting of Esther in the New American Standard translation, for children to highlight, underline, and circle their way through, as they discover the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of the text.

Each day's study is tied together with a fictional story following two children, Max and Molly, along with their dog, Sam, on a visit to Washington D.C. with their Uncle Max. So today, for instance, on our third day of the study, we not only focused in on the roll of Queen Vashti in Esther chapter 1, but also learned about the Constitution of the United States and the three branches of government.

The study is aimed at children ages 8-12, and that seems about right. I am working through it with five of my children, ages 7-14, and am finding the fictional storyline to be too babyish for the 14 year old, and the amount of writing required to be a bit heavy for the 7 year old, though she is working very hard to keep up with the older children. Of course, the scriptural lessons from the book are applicable to any age, 14 year olds included.

I'm not sure yet whether we will end up finding the fictional storyline helpful, or distracting, but so far the children seem to be enjoying the process of digging deeper into the biblical text, and we are all learning a good deal more about Esther, and ourselves, as servants of God.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Happy Pancake Day! Updated

According to the fun loving folks at A Magical Childhood, Shrove Tuesday (as pancake day is more officially known), has its roots in a tradition of families using up ingredients, such as eggs and sugar, restricted during Lent.

We don't observe Lent, but just by coincidence, I spent last weekend placing pancake themed books on hold at the library, thinking maybe we'd spend some time next weekend trying out the recipes included in them (there are a LOT of picture books with pancake recipes at the back). The first few of the books have already arrived in, so we had Tomie DePaola's Pancakes for Breakfast already to go for this morning.

The book is typical DePaola, so a big hit in our house, and we thought the recipe (which you can view here, with a sadly, negative review) was fantastic - so much for reviews.


The pancakes turned out light, and fluffy, if not quite as fluffy as the blueberry pancakes from Wende and Harry Devlin's Old Black Witch, but delicious all the same, and when coupled with a few additional pancake themed picture books, made for a great kick off to the day.




All of the books above, except for the last two, promise perfect pancake recipes.

If you've already had breakfast, don't despair, there's plenty more to do on Pancake Day than just eating pancakes. Activity Village, Holiday Station, and Stuff4Teaching all have several craft, and game suggestions, as well as links to printables, for last minute fun.

Update:

Now that a few more of the books above have arrived in at the library, I thought I should give a quick update to this post.

As it turns out, while the original Nate the Great story by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, does contain a recipe for Nate's Pancakes (you can also find it, here) Nate the Great and the Lost List does not contain the recipe, but only the ingredient list, with a few fishy additions. Thanks to Kendra for letting us know in the comments, that the first story contains the recipe.

Piggy's Pancake Parlor by David McPhail, and Curious George Makes Pancakes by Margret & H.A. Rey do not contain recipes, either. Rather, George adds blueberry faces to already mixed batter on the griddle (something we tried without success), and Piggy divulges secret ingredients, that make his pancakes a success - nutmeg and love.

My father, who died long before my children were born, was a big fan of nutmeg in pancakes too, so we tried some in a batch of the buttermilk pancakes, we made from the recipe at the back of Tamson Weston's Hey, Pancakes!

Weston's recipe (which you can view, here) was a big hit with the children. It made for very fluffy, tasty pancakes. And, everyone liked the addition of Piggy's secret ingredient except for me. I think I finally figured out why I never liked pancakes as a child.

We found one more children's book, with a pancake recipe, this time a blueberry pancake recipe, included too, Judith Bauer Stamper's All Aboard Math Reader, Breakfast at Danny's Diner, a Book About Multiplication.


The recipe only makes six pancakes. As you might imagine, it is necessary for the characters in the story to multiply the ingredients for more pancakes. After looking the recipe over, we decided to stick with a single batch.

With no baking powder, baking soda, or sugar in the recipe I was pretty sure it wouldn't end up being the children's favorite, and it wasn't. That honor goes to Weston's recipe from Hey, Pancakes!, though my favorite is still Tomie DePaola's recipe from Pancakes for Breakfast, above.

Of course, if you don't like pancakes, we found not just one, but eleven recipes for waffles, including - Grandma's Waffles, Perfect Pumpkin Pecan Waffles, Crazy for Chocolate Waffles, Pa Pa Jack's Oatmeal Waffles, Bountiful Banana Nut Waffles, Lucille Victoria's Lemony-Blueberry Waffles, Peach Melba Waffles with Ice Cream and Raspberry Sauce, PB and J Waffle Sandwiches, Cheesy Mexican Cornbread Waffles, Betty's Berry Berry Berry Waffles, and Merry Christmas Waffles in Holly J. Williams Waffles at Grandma's.


If only I hadn't picked this week to start counting calories again!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Presidential Cupcakes - Books With Recipes

It's little late for this year, especially with the libraries closed for the day, but we found a terrific Cherry-Nut Cupcake recipe, to go along with the legend of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree...


...at the back of one of our President's Day easy chapter books.


I recommend the book, which focuses on Washington, and the recipe, for next year, for families with girls, at least. Boys might object to reading an American Girls story, and making pink cupcakes. My boys however, did not mind eating them - they are very yummy.

If you're still looking for ideas for you children for this year, I recommend clicking over to BrainPop.com to view today's free feature video clip on Abraham Lincoln.

It's great to be a homeschooler.