For Mother’s Day, we eat whatever the children want to fix, since mom is off duty for the whole day. Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day finds us making barbecue chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, and red-white-and-blue desserts. A parfait from white chocolate pudding, with strawberries and blueberries, or a white cake with icing to match our flag.
As a fall festival, though we restrict our October 31st celebration to kind and good costumes, with a party at our church, we do make the traditional pumpkin pie and cookies. Sometimes we make pumpkin soup with real whipping cream.
For Thanksgiving, we learn how to choose and roast a turkey, make stuffing and stuff celery with cream cheese. Cranberry relish made fresh delights the grandparents. Sweet potato and pecan pies abound. Christmas brings cookies, gingerbread houses, chocolate candies, and fruitcake. Turkey, ham, potatoes and more.
Bread
Then there is the year of bread, a staple of the human diet for centuries. We learn about the basics of wheat, its history, and types. We discuss flours, their origins, the types and uses, self-rising versus plain, grinding the grain versus store-bought, and various nutritional aspects. We usually watch a video or two – focusing on bread-making and nutrition. A bread machine purchase opens a whole new world of bread-baking – with minimal effort and mess, we have bread in a couple of hours. We compare a bread machine to a microwave oven – they both take less time than conventional methods, but turn out a great edible product, nonetheless. Children from mid-elementary age can learn to make bread, with minimal help from an adult.
We browse through bread cookbooks, and recipes for all the various types of breads we like or want to try and list them in order of preference. Then we purchase the specific ingredients we don’t have on hand, and buy some butter and jams to help us enjoy the product of our learning.
Other ideas we have planned are learning to make sandwiches. A year of making different types of layers: meat, cheese, veggie, and sauces. Another year we’ll focus veggie dishes, a topic to make any mother proud.
While this might not be the most concise approach to learning how to cook, it is, for us, the most practical, because it gets done. One year of hands-on is better than all the dreams in the world. And, we’re having fun in the process. Can learning get any better than that?
Kym & her husband, Mark, have eight children and have homeschooled since the mid-80s. She writes the Learn and Do Unit Studies which you can see at: www.Learn-and-Do.com She sends out weekly e-Couragement for moms in her Weekly Wakeup with Kym Wright. For more information, and to sign up, visit: http://alwrightpublishing.com/weekly_wakeup.htm
Published in The Mother’s Heart magazine, a premium online publication for mothers with hearts in their homes. Visit www.The-Mothers-Heart.com for more information.
