reading + food = delicious learning!

The latest book study Claire & I are doing for school (through Five In A Row vol.1) is

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
by Marjorie Priceman



There's a lot of great lessons for these FIAR book studies, including lessons in language arts, math, geography, history, science, and art. Of course, our favorite part, though, is when the lesson includes something involving food!



Speedy Streusel Pie

(you can use a refrigerated pie crust from the store, but they're so easy & inexpensive to make at home, and baking is such a fun project for kids)

Crust:
1 1/3 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 c. shortening
3-4 Tbsp. cold water

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Add shortening, cut it in using a pastry blender or two forks, until you have pieces the size of dry oats. Add the water & mix until well blended.

You can roll it out the old fashioned way, or I just like to put the crust ball in the pie plate, spread it out and up the sides using my fingers, and use the back of a big spoon to smooth it out.




Streusel Topping:
1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. brown sugar
3 Tbsp. butter/margarine
1/2 c. chopped nuts (I don't use these, it's still good without the nuts)

Mix flour & sugar in a small bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or two forks. Set aside.


Filling:
5 baking apples (2 lb.)
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 Tbsp. cornstarch

Peel, core & slice the apples. I use one of these - a worthy investment, as I make more apple things since I got it & even use it for potatoes.

Toss the lemon juice and vanilla with the apples in a big bowl. Mix the sugar, cinnamon & cornstarch in a small bowl, then add to apples & toss to coat.




Add apples into the crust, spread them out evenly. I like to pull the edges of the pie crust inward (like a crostada), it keeps juices from spilling over the edge during baking.

Start this pie out in the microwave! Really! It cuts the baking time by 2/3, but the pie still turns out fabulously!



Put it in the microwave, for 8 minutes (if your microwave doesn't have a rotating glass plate that turns the food during cooking, then you need to turn the pie yourself after 4 minutes.)

While the microwave is running, preheat the oven to 400°.

When the 8 minutes in the microwave is up, immediately move the pie to the oven (use oven mitts!) for 18-22 minutes.





Served warm, this pie is a delight... but anytime is a good time for apple pie!

A Pair of Red Clogs

I used Five in a Row for supplemental teaching for kindergarten & 1st grade with Nicole, and I'm doing the same now for Claire. If you want to read more about it, you can go here.

We just used A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno for our latest FIAR study. It's the story of a Japanese girl who learns about honesty and taking care of what belongs to her.

I decided to recreate this scene from the book for a fun dinner on an evening when Claire & I were home for dinner by ourselves:



First let me say, I am not going to serve fish with the eyeballs and tail still intact.

Second, I basically did what I could with what I had, so this is in no way intended to be an authentic Japanese meal. We had fish fillets, rice, tartar sauce, green tea, and peaches - yes, mostly American, I know, but we both did use chopsticks and sit on pillows on the floor!

tasty thanksgiving treats

Making pies for tomorrow? If you have any leftover pie crust dough, here's a surprise for your kids that is flaky and sweet, so they aren't quite as sad that they have to wait for tomorrow for that pie. My mom used to make these for me & my sister, it's a Pennsylvania Dutch recipe.

Milk Flitch

Divide the leftover crust into oven-proof custard cups, flatten along the bottom & up the sides a bit with your fingers. Dump in each crust 1 Tbsp. brown sugar, 1 tsp. flour, 1/2 tsp. milk, and dot it with butter. Bake with the pie for 20 minutes or so, until bubbly and the crust is golden.

They're best when they're cooled just enough so that they don't burn your tongue! Yum!

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Every Thanksgiving for several years, I've made sure we check out Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende & Harry Devlin from the library. It's about a grandmother (who has a famous and very secret cranberry bread recipe) and her granddaughter, who each invite a special guest to Thanksgiving dinner. Grandmother's special guest is well-mannered and well-dressed, while granddaughter's guest, who is her long-time friend, smells like clams and is not very refined. Can you guess which one turns out to be the cad who steals Grandmother's recipe? It's a great story reminding us we shouldn't judge by what we see on the outside.



Oh joy, Grandmother's (quite easy) recipe is included in the book! We made some for tomorrow, and you can too (most of the ingredients are easily on hand this time of year)...

Grandmother's Famous Cranberry Bread

2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 c. butter
1 egg
1 tsp. grated orange peel (if desired)
3/4 c. orange juice
1 1/2 c. fresh or frozen cranberries (we used 1/2 c. dried Craisins instead, since that's what we had!)
1 1/2 c. light raisins (we leave these out, since we use Craisins)

In a large bowl, cut butter into the dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly. Add egg, peel & juice all at once, stir just until mixture is evenly moist. Fold in cranberries & raisins.

Spoon into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350° for 1 hour, or until tooth pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from pan to wire rack to cool.

owl be seeing ya

Thanks to the greenbelt along the east side of our new neighborhood, as well as a huge scrubby field behind our house, we have already encountered more nature in this house in 3 weeks than we did in the entire 9 years at our last house.

This morning, I was awakened by this sound (not the first time), and I could tell it was coming from our roof because it was so loud.



My mind immediately went to "do you think I could make it out there in time to get a picture?", forget that it is pitch-black outside and close to 32°! Maybe sometime I'll try, but that just wasn't going to happen this morning.

I recognized the call immediately from when the girls and I studied the Great Horned Owl last year for school as part of a unit involving the beautiful story book, Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. Check your library, it's a wonderful read! The girls really appreciated the book more after I found audio clips online so they could hear the actual owl calls.