Summer School

     I alluded to this post a while back and am finally putting it up!  A couple of weeks ago our family went to see the King Tut exhibit in Seattle.  It's the last stop on the tour before the artifacts go back to Egypt.  I really wanted the boys to learn a little about Egypt and pyramids and mummies and all that since most of what they knew before came from Phineas and Ferb.   I wanted them to understand some of what they might see before we went in hopes of them remembering it for a while before that part of their brains get sucked up by Angry Bird scores.  

     I checked out books from the library, found some general themes and read pieces of them at a time to the boys.  We did studies on beards, pyramids, religious beliefs, animal mummies, hieroglyphics... Anything I thought the boys might find interesting.  Turns out that no matter how much you learn ahead of time, looking at a hundred old statues in the dark just isn't that interesting to a 4 year old...

A statue of King Tut.

(This one is blurry because my youngest was ramming me like a rhinoceros...)

Here he is studying a projection of texture on a wall.  Yep.  That's my boy!

The death mask of someone who's name I didn't write down.  I wasn't familiar with it.  And I was getting rammed by a 4 year old rhinoceros.

King Tut's canopic jar.  This one held his stomach.

My eldest was slightly more interested in the exhibit and clearly learned how all good pharaohs are laid to rest.

The boy's favorite piece of antiquity?  The toilet seat.  I didn't get a good picture, but you can see what one looked like here.  Proof that Everyone Everywhere for All Time has Always Pooped.

Here are the books I checked out from the library for our study.  I had originally checked out more, but I didn't use all the books because the boys were a little freaked out by the ones with graphic pictures of mummies (some are babies with their eyes missing and such...).

For Our Study:
Tut's Deadly Tomb by Natalie Lunis (My eldest like this one since it looked so spooky, but was a little disappointed that it debunked all the rumors...)
Tutankhamun by Demi (A very good early introduction to King Tut's life and family history)
The Everything Kid's Mummies, Pharohs, and Pyramids: Puzzle and Activity Book: Discover the Mysterious Secrets of Ancient Egypt by Beth L. Blair (A fantastic little book with mazes and word puzzles, each page also contains a mini history lesson.  I used this book for worksheets for the boys.)
Mummies and Pyramids by Sam Taplin. (This one and the next one are the two I used the most, quick little lessons without too many graphic pictures that were short enough for my boy's attention spans.)
How People Lived in Ancient Egypt by Jane Bingham

Other Resources:

The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians by Joann Jovinelly
Ancient Egypt: a First Look at People of the Nile by Bruce Stachan
Cat Mummies by Kelly Trumble

Also, I bought these little aids from Amazon:

Lift the Lid on Mummies. A mummy kit that contains a body, organs, canopic jars, wrapping... all the stuff you need to make your own mummy.  The boy's favorite by far.

Safari Limited Ancient Egypt Toob.  They lost all the pieces to this almost immediately, but there were several times my youngest saw things in the exhibit and said, "Hey!  We have the toy of that!"

Stories from Ancient Egypt. We read a few stories each night before bed.  The stories are quick and engaging and apparently stories that were actually part of the oral tradition in ancient Egypt.

Supplemental just for fun:
Skippy John Jones In Mummy Trouble by Judy Schachner
10 Little Mummies by Philip Yates

I broke it down like this:
Day 1: Overview
Day 2: Beards!
Day 3: Animal mummies
Day 4: Mummy Model
Day 5: Gods
Day 6: Burial and Afterlife
Day 7: Pyramids
Day 8: Food
Day 9: King Tut
Day 10: Hieroglyphics
Day 11: Review
Day 12: Exhibit!

Each little "day" took about 15-20 minutes depending on how long they spent on the worksheets and/or in the bathroom... Some of the early ones were pretty short just to grab their attention and get them into the swing of "school" again.

See there how Day 8 was Food day?  The books I checked out from the library didn't say much about what the average citizen ate.  It seems it was mostly beer, wild game and fish, and barley.  The wealthy had infinitely more options, of course.  I learned at my local farmer's market that Kamut is an ancient Egyptian form of wheat as I was forking over some serious bread for a bag full.  My other resource was a cook book (one of my favorites) called The Good Book Cook Book.  It's got recipes from the Bible or inspired by certain verses as well as a menu section in the back.  One of the menus it has is an Egyptian Banquet.  Visions of sourdough danced in my head.  It didn't work out...  It formed bacteria but not yeast.  Yum.  Also, the kamut breads (pictured) I had planned as a back up flopped.  Well, they didn't "flop" so much as become rock hard and inedible.  I'm sure this is entirely my fault and not the recipe.  I found the recipe at Our Daily Salt, perhaps you will have better luck than I did...

 

The menu in The Good Book Cookbook is as follows:
Three Bean Soup
Cornish Game Hens with Nuts
Duck in Grape Juice
Fried Fish in Radish Sauce
Whole Baked Garlic
Fig and Grape Salad
Cucumbers Stuffed with Barley and Raisins
Sabbath Bread or Challah
Sourdough Fig Roll
Watermelon

What we had:
Three Bean Soup (Ran out of time)
Fig and Grape Salad (Figs are not in season here yet)
Cornish Game Hens
Cucumbers Stuffed with Barley and Raisins (revised)
Sourdough Fig Roll (Had to throw out the dough)
Kamut Egyptian Flat Bread (Turned into hockey pucks)
Dates

Yeah...It got... scaled back a bit...

Cornish Game Hens

2 Cornish Game Hens, thawed

4 medium Scallions

Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 400°.  Rinse and pat hens dry.  Peel and quarter scallions and place two scallions in each cavity.  Place birds into a heavy cast iron enameled pot.  Season with salt and pepper.  Bake for about an hour until internal temp reaches 165°.

Cucumbers Stuffed with Barley and Raisins

The original recipe calls for this to all be boiled in a large pot for 35 minutes, but it was hot and I was tired and cooked cucumbers sounded gross to me so I served it as a cold dish instead!

6 cucumbers

1 onion, chopped

2 Tbs olive oil

1 C cooked barley

1 C raisins, soaked for 1 hour in water and drained

1 Tbs vinegar

2 Tbs fresh mint or 2 tsp dried

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Salt and Pepper to taste

7 Tbs Garlic Mint Relish (optional)

Halve the cucumbers lengthwise and remove seeds, forming pockets.  Peel cucumbers only if they are waxed.  Set aside.  Saute onion in oil until golden.  Add barley, soaked raisins, vinegar, mint, cinnamon, and salt and pepper to taste.  Stuff cucumber pockets with barley raisin mixture and refrigerate until chilled.

Garlic Mint Relish

3 cloves garlic

4 Tbs fresh mint or 4 tsp dried

1 tsp salt

2 Tbs vinegar

Crush garlic, mint, and salt with a mortar and pestle or in a small bowl with the back of a fork.  Add vinegar.  Sprinkle over stuffed vegetables before serving.

Notes:

I used white vinegar in the relish.  It was really strong.  I think next time I may try red wine, cider, or maybe even balsamic instead.  Whoof!

Review:

The boys loved the game hens.  They did not love the cucumbers.  My youngest took out all the filling and ate the cucumber and my eldest actually wanted it to be hot.  Oh well.  And of course I couldn't keep them out of the dates.  I only had stuffed cucumbers for dinner since nothing else on the menu worked out.  So there you go.  We would have starved as ancient Egyptians...  But for the record, my husband loved all of it!

The Prettiest Thing at the Farmer's Market Today

Sunday, September 16, 2012

~Garden Treasures~

A Year is Round...

     It's not Fall yet, but my garden is officially in "Fall" mode.  The temp hasn't gone much past 60 in the last few days.  My eldest has been complaining of the cold.  Poor kid really seems to be affected by the seasons here.  But more than the cold, my garden is now shaded all day.  All Day.  I was hoping the very edge would get a few more rays, since that's where my tomatoes are, but it just isn't going to happen.  So I'll be eating some green tomato food, I guess.  Whatever that ends up being.  I'm thinking fried and/or chutney...

The Bad:

• The birds ate all the slug bait out of my garden (twice) and with it all my carrot seed (twice).  I read in a couple of places that August was still not too late to replant with seed for an Autumn harvest.  So I did.  But I'm thinking there won't be enough sun to produce anything of consequence.
• I got a grand total of three large tomatoes to ripen, one of which was hollowed out by a slug and another was recently eaten by a deer.  

 This is where my deer eaten tomato used to live... =(

•  He also ate half of two green tomatoes...

Didn't learn from the first one, apparently...

• and then he danced in my carrot seedlings...

All those round divot marks are deer tracks!

• The 6 beets that grew out of the million or so I planted (birds again) are the size of golf balls.  
• The basil got devoured by slugs the instant I planted it and the parsley went to seed (shouldn't until the second year, shame on me for buying old plants).  
•  The garlic disappeared, I have no idea what happened to it.
•  I'm pretty sure some of my beans interbred.  I was supposed to have two beans with purple pods.  Out of four different kinds of beans, three had purple pods... Hmmm... This is only a "bad" thing because I plant heirlooms and now I don't know what this means for next year's beans... Probably nothing...  Except, you know, mutant beans. o.O
•  Neither of my pea plants made more than 6 peas.

The Good:

• I got a handful or two of cherry tomatoes this year which beats the zero I got last year.

• The chard went crazy this year.  I had one plant last year survive, but I got an entire row this year.
• The kale did beautifully this year, too.
• I got purslane to grow, finally!  (OK, I bought starts from the farmer's market, but hopefully it'll seed itself for next year.)
• I think one salsify plant survived.  If it is salsify and not grass, it should grow and spread on its own.
• The beans did pretty well considering they were under supported and got shaded out early by the tomatoes because I overestimated how fast the beans would grow and underestimated how fast the tomatoes would grow.

(These are supposed to be purple...)

• I had a volunteer tomato pop up and has even produced a few tomatoes.  They will never ever, ever ripen, but I admire its grit.  
• Ditto the volunteer vined thing that will never produce fruit big enough to tell whether it is a cucumber or a pumpkin or a squash.  I'm just happy it happened.
• I have a darling, beautiful, sweet little volunteer sunflower that bloomed this week.  I am in love with it. 

Conclusion:
Hope springs eternal

Additional Conclusion:

If a deer eats this, I'm buying a pellet gun.

My Soupy Senses are Tingling...

     We had our first "feels like Fall" day here in the Pacific Northwest this weekend and my thoughts turned toward the warm and comforting soups ahead but before Summer slips away entirely, I wanted to set the next Souperhero loose upon the masses!

     This one is another fruit soup.  There was a bit of controversy about Wonder Woman and whether watermelon soup was really "soup" or not.   Watermelon soup is a real thing.  Google it if you don't believe me.  Go ahead.  I'll wait...

     See?  Tol'ja.  And strawberry soup is a thing, too.  But as far as I can tell, this, my friends, is the world's first Spider-Man Strawberry Soup!

Spider-Man Strawberry Soup
Yields: 2-4 Servings
2-4 pints Strawberries
1 pint Blueberries
1/4-1/2 C Vanilla Yogurt

Blend strawberries in blender and fill bowls.  Clean blender and blend blueberries until skin is completely disintegrated (or as close as you can get it), set aside.

You don't need to be bitten by a radioactive spider to make the web on Spidey's face.  This is all you need:

Well, Spider-Man thought it was cool anyway...

I found the best way to draw the face was first to draw a small circle either dead center or slightly below center.  Then the eyes in yogurt.  Then outline the eyes with blueberries and draw the straight lines.  Finally, connect with curved lines and do any touch ups to the eyes as needed.  If you want to be quicker about it, you could try the old "drag a toothpick through a spiral" trick used in cookie making, but I haven't done it.  I don't see why it wouldn't work though and then you could put the eyes on after...?

Notes:

• Never knew this before making Spidey, but pulverized blueberries congeal!  They get pretty hard (almost as thick as Jell-o!), so you need to work rather quickly.  I liked them once the gelling process had just begun.  Once they set up they were hard to squeeze out of the bottle.  Within an hour or so the liquid separated completely and become a little gross.
• I used homemade yogurt sweetened with agave and added vanilla so it was pretty thin.  You may need to thin store-bought with a little milk so it fills in without lumps.

Review:
     I probably don't really need to review this, do I?  They loved it. =)  Whether your kids eat this with a spoon or a straw, you'll have happy little spider-fans!

The Prettiest Thing at the Farmer's Market Today

Sunday, September 9, 2012

~Maharlika Farm~

First Day of School...

Today is the first day of schooling for my kids, though we have been working our way back into it with a Summer study on King Tut which I had planned to post about today.

Yesterday was my super awesome farmer's market that I love.  My favorite farmer who runs Garden Treasures informed me that not only did he have a quarter of my tomato order, he also had pickling cukes.  Last week, I bought 20 lbs of cucumbers from another stall, half went bad before I could get to them and the rest of them are currently trying to ferment in my first 3 week pickle fermentation project.  So far, I don't know what's going on.  They seem to be soaking up the brine, but I can't say what it's supposed to look like...  So anyway, long story short, I went home with 20 lbs of tomatoes to can and 10 pounds of cucumbers to make "just in case the fermentation doesn't work pickles" on top of the 4 pounds of blackberries I've got sitting in the fridge for making jam.  And even longer story short it all fell to today.  So instead of telling you all about our fabulous King Tut/Ancient Egypt homeschool lesson (including a recipe for Egyptian cucumbers and Cornish game hens) I am going to give you my sob story and show you a cute picture of my kids and some pictures of my cucumbers.  Maybe you can tell me how it's going?

It's not slimy or smelly, but it's also not scummy like the book says it's supposed to be and it's also not bubbly like it's supposed to be.  And I've had to chuck out two pickles that started to get moldy.  Anybody out there ever make fermented pickles?

I promise to try to get the Egypt post up this week!  But it won't happen today.  Did I mention I'm also trying to make kefir?  I need more counter space.

The Prettiest Thing at the Farmer's Market Today

September 02, 2012

~Garden Treasures~