my good friday

Ingredients for my idea of a good friday:


8 jars of raspberry jam

1 raspberry crisp

1 posy from Roo (yes, he still brings me flowers)

Not shown:

1 bottle of Bombay Sapphire, to be consumed (not all at once!) with tonic & lime on the deck

1 slab of dark chocolate from Roo


Vicki and I have been chatting in the comments of the strawberry jam post about making jam. Vicki recommended a link to a strawberry jam recipe which advocates some interesting techniques to mitigate the problem of foam. Check that out if you're a jam maker. I'll be trying out those tips when the everbearing strawberries come around.

Meanwhile, the much easier raspberry jam was tackled. The kids and I picked almost 30lbs of raspberries and froze most of it but also snuck in two batches of jam.

Classic Raspberry Jam

4 cups raspberries
4 cups sugar

Prepare your jars (this will make 4 x 250 ml/1 cup jars)

Spread the sugar in an oven proof largish pan and place in a preheated 250°F oven for 15 minutes.

Put berries in a large pot (stainless steel or enamel). Bring to a boil over high heat while smashing up the berries with a spoon or potato masher. Boil hard for one minute. Add the warm sugar. Return to a boil until jam is cooked, about 5 minutes.

Place in jars and process jars in canner. I do 10 minutes because that's what the Bell book of preserving says but I've seen recipes also call for 5 minutes. You start the timer when the pot has returned to a full boil.


Berry Crisp

For the berry base, mix:

3-4 C berries
1/4 - 1/2 C sugar (depending on how sweet the berries are & how you like your crisp)
1/2 Tbsp - 1 Tbsp corn starch &/or flour (depending on how ripe & juicy your berries are; generally less for strawberries and blueberries, more for raspberries; if you're adding rhubarb in the mix, definitely be generous with the corn starch)
Stir and let sit for a while while you mix the topping.

For the topping, mix:
1 C flour
1 C brown sugar

Cut in with pastry cutter:
1/2 C butter

Then stir in:
1 C old fashioned oats

Butter a 8 x 8in. fairly deep pan.

Pour in the berry mix. Sprinkle the topping on top.

Bake at 350°F for about 45 min until fruit is bubbly and topping looks a bit golden.

Serve on deck with vanilla ice cream & grated chocolate (optional) and G&T's aka gin & tonic (well, I guess these are optional too).

Yup, that's my kids

A couple weeks ago we took advantage of some cooler weather to drive out to a farm for strawberries. These are the little flavourful strawberries that only come once a year (not the everbearding ones which come back in late July through August). Amelia is carefully washing and lying them out to dry in preparation for making jam and packing some in the freezer.

Hugo is sneaking in to steal some to eat.

The jam turned out wonderfully though we did have some moments of concern. I used a candy thermometer and the freezer test. I've made jam lots of time before and I knew what we were looking for. This jam did not want to thicken. We cooked it for over 30 min and just when I thought it would be almost done (I was only about 3 degrees C away from my target temp), it started to really get thin!

Eeek. I decided to yank it off the heat, jar it and can it there and then. I figured worse case scenario would be that we'd have runny jam. Well, we don't. We have glorious jam, just the right consistency for spreading.

Strawberry Jam

3 lb. fresh strawberries (about 9 cups), washed and hulled
4 cups sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp unsalted butter (optional - I don't)


In a large saucepot, bring strawberries up to a simmer over medium-low heat, mashing roughly with a potato masher or flat spoon. Add sugar and lemon juice, stir, and bring up to a simmer for 2 minutes. Add butter and bring to a vigorous boil, stirring often and cook for 10 to 20 minutes. Once jam is ready*, remove from heat and skim off foam. Fill sterilized jars, fasten lids securely and boil jars in a vat of water for 15 minutes. Remove jars with tongs and let cool upright. Check for secure seals on jars (lid should not spring when touched) and store in a cool place away from light for up to a year.

To test readiness:
-candy thermometer should reach 105ºC (221ºF)
or
-place plate in freezer. Drop a spoonful of hot jam on plate & return to freezer for 1 min. Drag index finger through the puddle. If the 'jam canyon' remains, it's ready. If the banks spill down, cook more.

Yum.

Horse Cookies

My great aunt never married, had a career as a journalist and a newspaper editor, liked sport, and did crossword puzzles. She had a large purse in which she carried a a small notebook with an elastic around it, as there were little slips of paper tucked in all over. She was constantly scribbling words and clues - I think she wrote crosswords as well as solving them.

She had a little dressing table at which she had tweezers (for that annoying hair on her chin), a black eyebrow pencil, a silver case of face powder, and small bottles of perfume.

She was not a domestic woman. At home, I'm certain she subsisted on tea, rye bread, cheese and eggs. I think she ate out a lot.

She also played bridge and took turns hosting. As the host's duties did include serving a bit 'something', she developed a signature recipe. This is the one thing she cooked.

I have a very old sheet of paper with a pencilled recipe written by my mom "Ciastka Konskie Kingi". It took me several tries to convert the recipe's "approximations" into an actual measured recipe. Amelia makes them now.

Kinga's Horse Cookies

1/2 cup butter or margarine
3 Tbsp cocoa
3 cups sugar
7 Tbsp milk
1/4 tsp almond flavour (optional)

Put all above ingredients into a pot with a thick bottom and melt over medium heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring constantly. Keep stirring over heat for another minute or so. Remove from heat and immediately add to the pot:

3 cups rolled oats (regular old fashioned)

Quickly stir until the oats turn brown. Drop by big spoonfuls onto parchment paper, wax paper, or aluminum foil which you have laid out on the counter. DO NOT LICK THE SPOON until the end of the batch, when you're sure it's cool.

Let the cookies cool and peel them gently off the paper/foil.

Pour cold water into the pot, let it sit for about 20 minutes and the pot will pretty much clean itself.

The only problem with these cookies is that it's difficult to steal them from the counter. When regular cookies are cooling on a rack, you can pinch a couple and until your child starts counting them as she makes them so she can adjust batch sizes, you can get away with it.

These leave tell tale marks on the paper. I have very little self restraint around these cookies. At first, I just pick off the little blobs that aren't attached to actual cookies; these are the stray drips, and they don't count, right? But then the sugar rush starts and soon I'm standing at a counter eating one cookie after another, until I start feeling a bit light headed. They're that good.

There was a book I read a few years ago, something about how to be a Swell Girl and one of the pieces of advice was to have a 'signature recipe' - one great thing you can make anytime. And I immediately thought of my great aunt and her cookies. These were her signature recipe. No visit with her was complete without these and when she took the train to visit us, she brought them with her. And I think she was Swell.

Flirting with bad grades

Just kidding. I don't give out grades. But if I did, I would have docked points for this. For his cooking lesson, Hugo picked this recipe:

Kisses Peanut Butter Blossoms

48 chocolate kisses
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1.5 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
extra sugar

Preheat oven to 375F

Unwrap kisses.
Beat shortening & peanut butter. Add sugars. When fluffy, add egg, milk & vanilla.
In separate bowl, stir flour with baking soda & salt.
Gradually add the flour to the peanut butter mix.
Shape into 1 inch balls.
Roll in sugar.
Place on ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 8-10 min and immediately press a chocolate kiss in the center of each cookie.
Allow to cool.

He followed the recipe carefully and they turned out just fine.

The problem?

I hate peanut butter.

Peanut butter with chocolate is an insult to chocolate.

I couldn't even try these. But Hugo, as well as Amelia and Roo who filled in for me as taste testers, assured me that they are delish - if, that is, you're one of those people who appreciates peanut butter and chocolate!

The unthanksgiving turkey

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving, Canadian or American, so I'm a bit vague on the whole thing. All I know is that US Thanksgiving is waaay too late in the year.

But I couldn't help but notice that US Thanksgiving was coming up because all the homeschooling boards, message lists, and blogs were full of plans, recipes, family arguments and general panic about the upcoming holiday.

And oddly enough, I had a turkey in my freezer. The Superstore does this to me quite regularly. I think they do it out of spite. I try very hard to time my biweekly shopping to hit the $30 off coupon but instead I hit the free turkey with stunning regularity. One year I had three of them in my freezer.

And the thing is? I don't really like turkey. I suspect the turkey marketing board has me on some list.

So here I was again with a turkey in the freezer, and in some roundabout way we ended up not only deciding to cook the sucker, but to invite people over for dinner.

Which is how I got totally confused about when US Thanksgiving was.

The logic (if I can loosely use the word) seems to have been as follows:

-US Thanksgiving is coming up
-they have turkey on US Thanksgiving
-I am having turkey on Sunday (last)
-ergo, US Thanksgiving is Sunday, Nov 23

'cause you know, the world revolves around me & my turkey!

I even went so far as to email-wish someone Happy Thanksgiving about a week too early. Which wouldn't have been so bad perhaps if we weren't communicating about every 2 days and so this I think came across as an "and now I don't want to talk to you for at least a week". Which is not what I meant at all. It's just that I thought Thanksgiving was only two days away.......

For posterity (actually it's just so I have all the recipes on hand for the next time a turkey lands in my freezer) here is the day's progression and the recipes:

Get up way too early.
Ask Roo to walk the dog.
Drink coffee.
Start dough for rolls.
Turn on oven.
Wash and scrub potatoes for potatoes romanoff and shove them in the oven to bake.
Have breakfast while arranging the recipes and preparing a detailed spreadsheet for the entire family's tasks that day.
Get dishes, cutlery, mixing bowls etc all arranged and organized.
Check one more time all ingredients on hand. Discover have no more coffee. Add shopping to Roo's list.
Make stuffing. Discover 10 year old boys can pretty much make this recipe on their own. Thank Hugo for all his help and dismiss him from the kitchen.
Ask Roo to grate the baked potatoes into a big bowl.
Get out the bread dough & shape buns. Put in warming drawer to rise.
Ask Amelia to assemble to potato casserole. Throw recipe card at her and tell her to just wing it and put it in the fridge when ready.
Check spreadsheet and squelch mild panic attack. Eat something to readjust blood sugar chemistry.
Begin working on the beans & bacon. Dismiss Amelia for the length of time it takes to make the sauce and then call her back to roll the beans in the bacon. Shove them in the fridge.
Put buns in oven.
Take turkey out and give him a bath in the kitchen sink.
Get Roo to dig out the neck because I can't pull it out.
Dismiss thoughts of Mr. Bean, losing jewellery up a turkey and wearing turkey on one's head.
Glare at Roo's attempts at frivolity when he makes the turkey dance around the sink. Send Roo away.
Take buns out of oven. Freak out that they're stuck to the pan. Give Amelia task of getting them out of the pan.
Tweeze some stray feathers. Meditate on the fact that I have not had time to pluck my own eyebrows and yet I'm tenderly plucking a turkey.
Get turkey all nicely arranged on roasting pan. Discover out of string. Find a stray piece of string at bottom of knife drawer & try to ascertain its fiber origin. Use it and hope it'll not melt in the oven. Truss the turkey. Put back in fridge. Calculate for the umpteenth time that it will only take approx. 2h to cook a 17.7 lb turkey in a convection oven.
Chop more onion and celery & put the neck and giblets in a pot with water and set to simmer.
Put turkey in oven.
Clean kitchen, load dishwasher, run dishwasher.
Check lists.
Wonder why, why, why Roo is vacuuming the deck.
Suggest he vacuum the roof next.
Ask kids to set the table.
Try to figure out the chairs. Not enough chairs. Ugly chairs. Uncomfortable chairs.
Consider sneaking out and driving away to here.
Instead, get dressed.
Baste turkey.
Put potato casserole in oven.
Ponder how best to reheat stuffing.
Arrange bean & bacon thingies on roasting pan.
Baste turkey.
Start making gravy. Discover that the simmering stock has not been simmering long enough to have any flavour. Ponder serving two cups of something that looks like vanilla pudding and tastes vaguely of turkey stock. Come up with a cunning plan, a plan so cunning you could stick a feather on it and call it a ....(Black Adder anyone?)
Baste turkey.
Begin grilling bean thingies.
Oven meat probe announces turkey is ready so pull the sucker out so he can rest.
Wonder when my time to rest will be?

Guest arrive.
Be merry.

Drink the Fat Bastard shiraz I got specially for the occasion. Gaawd, I love that hippo. And I like to say fat bastard too.

Eat the dinner.

Eat the dessert someone else brought and be thankful that was one thing I didn't need to think about at all.



BEST WAY UNBRINED TURKEY (CONVECTION)- courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle

INGREDIENTS:
1 turkey, 12 to 16 pounds

2 tablespoons melted butter

4 tablespoons kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons pepper

1/2 cup chicken stock

INSTRUCTIONS: Preheat A convection oven to 375°. If your oven has settings for Baking or Roasting, select Roasting.

Remove the turkey from the packaging; rinse and dry well. Brush 2 tablespoons melted butter over the skin; sprinkle 4 tablespoons kosher salt and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper over the skin and in the cavity. Tuck the wing tips under and tie the legs together. Place bird breast-up in a V-shaped roasting rack in a shallow roasting pan.

Roast for 45 minutes. Baste with 1/2 cup chicken stock.

Return turkey to oven and baste with pan drippings every 20 minutes until internal thigh temperature reaches 165°.

A 12- to 16-pound bird will cook in about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours.

Let turkey rest for 20 to 30 minutes before carving.


~~~~

Walnut & Cranberry Stuffing

10-12 cups very dry french bread cubes; nice to have 1/2 sourdough
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups each chopped onions & celery
6 Tbsp butter
1 green apple, peeled, cored & chopped
3/4 cup dried cranberries
1-2 cups chicken or turkey stock
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
1 tsp poultry seasoning
salt & ground pepper to taste

Roast walnuts in microwave about 1-2 mins.
Melt 3 Tbsp butter in large pan & saute the bread cubes.
In a large pot or dutch oven, melt the rest of the butter & saute the onion & celery until fragrant. Add the rest of the ingredients and about 1 cup of the stock. Stir. Cover and cook on low for about 1 hour. Check at 10 min intervals & add water/stock to keep it moist and not sticking to bottom of pot. Don't add too much or it will be mushy.
8-10 servings

~~~~

Potatoes Romanoff

8 med-large baking potatoes
500 ml sour cream
1 bunch green onion
1.5 cups grated old or medium cheddar cheese
1.5 tsp each salt & pepper
paprika

Bake potatoes. Peel & grate. Add sr. cream, onion, 1 cup cheese, salt & pepper. Put into buttered 9x13 pan. Top with remaining cheese & sprinkle with paprika. Cover & refrigerate several hours or overnight. Bake at 350F for about an hour.
10-12 servings

(note: the potatoes must be baked. I tried it once with cooked & it was ick. And don't skip the refrigerator part - it's better if it has time in the fridge before baking).

~~~~

Bean & Bacon thingies are from The Pioneer Woman.
Wonderful.
Even when you burn them like I did. Learn from this & watch them like a hawk towards the end.

~~~~

Cunning gravy

2 biggish Tbsp butter
2 biggish Tbsp flour

Make roux. Slowly add 2 cups of lame hot turkey "stock" aka water with some bits floating in it. Do not be alarmed at the pale concoction in your pot. Set aside on very low heat.

Prepare 1 packet of instant turkey gravy according to package directions. Mix the two gravies. Adjust seasoning.

Celebrate.

~~~~

Serve everything with the cranberry sauce which you thoughtfully made in October.

And don't forget the Fat Bastard.

Teach a child to cook

On one of the homeschooling boards, someone asked about cooking curricula and how people were approaching this subject.

I generally don't like boxed curricula for anything and cooking is no exception. But darn it, these kids are both going to know how to cook before they leave my house!

So here's what we do.

First of all, when they were young, I did let them help me as much as they wanted. Even if it was messy. Even if it took forever. Even if I was dying of starvation waiting for the meal to be finished because someone wanted to keep sifting the flour and wouldn't let me have the big pot because they weren't finished with it yet.

The next phase of the training is the 'recipe of the week'. The kids pick out a recipe from a cookbook, let me know by Monday night what they want to make, and we make it on Thursday. The extra days are for me to get any weird supplies or ingredients and to get organized. I try to do this throughout the year, though honestly there are many weeks where we miss the cooking lesson. It's not a huge priority, just a small one, which we tuck in where we can.

To inspire the kids, I bring home lots of cookbooks from the library and we also watch cooking DVD's. Julia Child is a perennial favourite.

While prepping, we go over any techniques involved in making the recipe. I try to let them do it on their own as much as possible, even from a very young age. When they were really little, sometimes, I prechopped a bunch of the ingredients. The kids didn't mind, even when they were in the "me do it myself" phase, because I pointed out how on the cooking shows, the chefs usually had all the ingredients prechopped and arranged in little bowls in front of them. This is how a real chef works, I explained. They have slaves (or parents) to do the menial chopping.

I do let them pick the recipes pretty freely. Amelia has gravitated more to baking and desserts than entrees but that's ok. She has got to the point now where she has a pretty decent repertoire of cakes and cookies, and makes a mean omelette and pancakes - so we've got breakfast, brunch and desserts all taken care of.

Of course sometimes they pick just weird things.

 

Like these After Dinner Mints.

2.5 C icing sugar
3 Tbsp softened butter
2 Tbsp cream
1/2 tsp peppermint flavouring
food coloring - if you want these psychadelic mints, you'll want to find the 'intense' food coloring

Mix all ingredients well. Dough should be fairly stiff but still pliable enough to roll. Add a bit more icing sugar or cream for desired consistency. Divide into chunks to tint. Knead the coloring in. If you leave one chunk untinted, you'll have white mints too. Roll into rope about 1/2 inch in diameter. Cut into pieces. Let stand on waxed or parchment paper at least overnight.

 

Galore Park and homeschooling

I think it was Becky who turned me on to Galore Park books and boy, am I grateful, because I really like these books. Galore Park publishes books which are widely used by British prep schools (which, I have to admit, gives my snobby heart a little thrill) and are geared for their 11+ and 13+ exams.

We started off with Our Island Story, in hardcover and abridged audiobook. I also have the French ***(text, CD & answer book), English and Maths (text & answer book. I didn't get the pupil book or teacher's resources & it just means that once in a while I need to either photocopy & white-out an assignment from the answer book or reproduce it myself. Most of the lessons are the type the pupil has to write out themselves.)

The Science just arrived yesterday. I purchased the textbook and a Teacher's Resources CD-ROM. The CD-ROM has:
- a worksheet for each section - either a list of true/false questions or a crossword puzzle;
-an 'investigation' for each section - this is not a hands on experiment but rather an analysis of someone else's hands on work. For example it will describe someone's observations about a particular phenomenon - rate of growth of tadpoles for instance - and the students are asked to graph the data presented, comment on the validity of the experiment and what conclusions can be drawn from it
-answers to the worksheets

I think it will suit our needs. This is a very science- rich (but scattered!) home and what I wanted was a concise syllabus of science at this stage - just to make sure we're not missing something and as a review. I think it will do excellently for that. It does not appear to have much messy hands on stuff (which is what Hugo wants) but we have other resources for that.

The Galore Park books we're using are all from the Level 1 set which is intended as prep for the 11+ exams, though the maths book says "The book is suitable for 11+ preparation and would also be suitable as a Year 7 course for those taking Common Entrance Papers 1 and 3 at 13+. " which makes me glad I'm not living in the UK because I can't figure out what the heck they're saying. Up to this point I haven't been too concerned about grades and levels so I'm a bit wonky on what it is that kids are 'supposed' to know - but this math book covers a lot and for a change, Amelia doesn't hate it (unlike Saxon and Singapore which she dislikes with a passion. The kind of passion that makes marks in walls when books fly) and so it's a winner with me.

I plan on using the Science book with both kids. Amelia's Maths will, I think, take us straight through June. She almost finished the English during the summer. I think we'll just review a bit and see if she wants to do a few more of the exercises which she skipped. For the French, Amelia will do the whole program but Hugo will just listen in on the audio. He struggles enough with writing in English that I'm not about to add French to his plate now.

Buying tip: depending on currency exchange & shipping charges, it may be cheaper to buy the books through Amazon. Indeed, I have purchased all our Galore Park books through Amazon.ca though they're tricky to find as they are not clearly catalogued. What you need to do is get the ISBN's for the textbooks/answer books/teacher's books/CD-ROM's etc. from the Galore Park site, and then search the Amazon site using the number.

They are all concise - no fluff here and so may not seem like a lot of value if you're used to boxed curricula which come with tons of stuff. But they're clear, to the point, and attractive without being frou-frou. The publisher says: "The guiding principle of all of our books is that they can be used by a pupil working alone and are thus ideal for both classroom and revision use." To which I'd add, 'and great for homeschooling!'


(edited to add)
*** bringing up a question from the comments about the French program and what's on the CD:
The CD does not have the entire lesson on it but for each lesson, there's a dialogue and that is on the CD. If you go HERE you will see some sample pages from the textbook. In the margins there is a diagram of a CD and that indicates this passage is on the CD.
I'd suggest combining this program with something like the Berlitz Rush Hour French which we have listened to a fair bit (& yes, it is as corny as the reviewers say but we like it). The Berlitz is a purely oral program and gets the student used to hearing and saying common phrases. I wanted to add Galore Park for Amelia because I think she's ready for the slightly more formal intro to grammar and spelling.

~~

Last week's homeschooling went well. The week was sandwiched by pancake breakfasts on Monday & Friday, and in between I eased us into math, English, Arabic and Canadian history. Work got done every day, there was no whining or fussing, only a constant search for pencils and erasers - they apparently are still on holidays and hiding out in nooks and crannies. This week I'll be folding in French, maybe the science and cooking too.

~~

BONUS

Easy peasy strawberry syrup for eager students' pancakes

Place frozen strawberries into a 1 cup pyrex measure. You want about 1 C of strawberries and approx. a 2 cm of clear space to the top of the measure.

Add 2 heaping teaspoonfulls of sugar.

Microwave 1 minute. Watch it as it sometimes wants to bubble over in which case turn off the microwave, wait a bit for it to cool and resume.

Give the cup a little swirl and microwave another 30-60 seconds. You want to see pink bubbling froth swelling on the top.

Let it cool a bit & pour on top of pancakes, spooning the fruit out.