Random stuff going on

I've had about a dozen half-formulated blog posts swirling through my mind lately. So, here is a random thoughts type of post, with not a whole lot about any one thing.

First, we started using the Grapevine Bible Study I blogged about a couple weeks ago. We love it. The kids (and MOM!) are enjoying stick figuring through the Bible. I do believe this is something we will continue, long after this review is done.

Another Review Crew opportunity is to receive a Sue Gregg cookbook to try out. They wanted us to do a couple things before saying "yes" to this opportunity. Mostly, that involved seriously reading the website, picking a recipe to make with one of the kids, and then rating it as a family. Dale & I had to agree to trying this out for the Crew, and email them back.

So, we've made four recipes now from the website, and none have been duds. On Thursday, Thomas helped me make Yogurt Pie and William helped me make Parmesan Chicken Nuggets. Last night, Connor helped me make Country Creole Peas & Corn. And this morning, I made Scones myself.

It was great to be talking about the food and coming to a consensus about whether or not it is a recipe we want to repeat. They suggested we have each family member rate the recipe from 1 to 10. Trina keeps insisting on ranking the things she likes as a 3, so we can't exactly do an average! After everyone gives their number, we discussed it, using words like "dry" or "stringy" instead of yuck or yummy. (Dry was the chicken, we all really liked it, but we are going to do the regular recipe next time, not the low-fat one; stringy was the coconut in the pie... I was the only one who liked that optional ingredient, so family consensus is that we opt not to include it next time). Finally, everyone is to say how often they think we should eat this in the future.

Basically, the Sue Gregg philosophy seems to line up incredibly well with what we were trying to do as far as food anyway. AND, Connor is working on his Cooking Merit Badge and needs to do some menu planning anyway. And, William has been wanting to seriously learn to cook for quite some time. I think this is exactly what we needed.

Today was one of those 'how do you homeschool when Mom is sick?' kinds of days. Richard was throwing up this morning. Midday, I started feeling miserable. I slept. Kids did not get much done while I was crashed out. We desperately need schooldays this month.

Over the weekend, I cut out the fabric to make an apron for Trina. I've never used an ePattern before, so that was quite the experience. I have to figure out when I can work on getting it sewn up. Looks pretty straightforward though. The Sense & Sensibility link on the upper right shows you the pattern.

Our gardening efforts are yielding fruit. Of the peppers and tomatoes kind. We have all of two pepper plants (banana and jalepeno), and two different tomatoes. The banana pepper has about a half dozen peppers at the moment, with a couple dozen buds in various stages of flowering. The jalepeno has a couple dozen flowers. And one of the tomatoes is starting to flower. It's going to be expensive produce, I think, but we had to start somewhere. The plan is for Connor to get a 4x8 bed put out in the next couple weeks, and then to grow some lettuce and such as a fall crop. He needs to get some flowers happening too, if he wants his gardening merit badge this summer. I think that will be happening NEXT summer at this point.