Quote from Forum Archives on August 24, 2003, 5:47 pm

Posted by: homenews <homenews@...>

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HOPE CHEST HOME SCHOOL NEWS

with Virginia Knowles

Tidbit #4: A Day in My Kitchen

August 24, 2003

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The Hope Chest Home School News is a free e-mail newsletter with encouragement and practical teaching tips. The editor is Virginia Knowles, wife of Thad, mother of nine children, and author of Common Sense Excellence: Faith-Filled Home Education for Preschool to 5th Grade, and The Real Life Home School Mom.

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A Day in My Kitchen

Last week while I was grocery shopping, I called my daughter Mary (16) to ask what ingredients we needed to prepare an authentic African meal to go along with our "Around the World" unit study. By divine coincidence, as I doubled back to the spice aisle to get some ginger, I met (for the first time) a Hope Chest reader, Lataine! She seemed fascinated by what really goes on in the Knowles house, where to an outsider, life seems like such an organized and educational adventure. So, Lataine, welcome to my recollections of what happened in my cozy kitchen on Wednesday, August 20. Let’s see how adventurous and (un)organized we can really be! Here’s the rundown.

Inspired by the arrival of a sample Taste of Home magazine, and the fact that I hadn’t had to cook for the previous two nights, I decided to have a "day in the kitchen" home ec class with two of my middle children, Joanna (10) and Lydia (8). They were rarin’ to go, but at least they let me take a shower first. Before we started, I neatly wrote a list of 6 goals for the day:

• Make an African dinner, with two kinds of chicken, banana-coconut bake, and peanut butter candy.
• Prepare sub sandwiches for a beach trip the next day.
• Make brownies to take to the home group Bible study that evening.
• Make dinner for tomorrow night, using ground beef I had browned earlier that morning.
• Reorganize the cabinets and refrigerator.
• CLEAN UP!

Here’s what ACTUALLY happened:

• I dropped and broke my favorite French White casserole dish, which I had used almost every day. After nostalgically moaning over the fact that it had been a wedding present, I realized I had broken the original one years ago, and this one was a replacement anyway. Cleaning up shards and splinters of glass definitely set back my schedule.
• With Julia’s help, Lydia typed in a menu for The Africafe’ (my nifty name for our "ethnic restaurant" that evening) on the computer. I told her not to print it yet, because there might be some changes. That was certainly prophetic... Later, when she actually went to print it out, the printer wouldn’t work, and she had to write it out by hand. This took two tries.
• Joanna cut up the onions, which made her eyes water fiercely. I discovered that she was painstakingly cutting each little piece. I had to show her how to slice the onion into several pieces in one direction, and then, holding it together, make slices in the other direction. Lydia diced the garlic, after I showed her how to pull off a clove and peel its natural papery covering. (Isn’t it amazing how God preserves even a lowly bulb of garlic?)
• I had planned to use leftover potatoes for one of the recipes, but found out at lunch time that they were almost gone. So we had to choose another recipe.
• It’s a good thing we had a little honey left over from the peanut butter candy, because it made a good substitution for the brown sugar in the Akwadu (banana-coconut bake). I THOUGHT we had some brown sugar in the cupboard, but it turned out to be Spike seasoning.
• Joanna wanted to make macaroni and cheese for lunch, but we discovered that we were out of butter, too. (Strike three! What IS this about running out of things I thought we had! So much for shopping efficiency... ) Joanna begged me to go to Sam’s and buy some, but I had already been to Sam’s the day before -- and the day before that! I had also been to Winn-Dixie the day before. Joanna made cornbread instead, which supplied continuous crumbs for our floor for the remainder of the day.
• My little boys were acting like a thundering herd of elephants, stampeding through the kitchen at regular intervals, despite me barking "OUT! OUT!" We finally sat them down to watch the Veggie Tales video The Ballad of Little Joe. Even I started dancing to The Belly Button Song!
• The only kitchen organizing I got done was putting my spice jars on a lazy Susan in the cupboard. That’s when I discovered that I had recently bought a tiny $3.29 jar of curry in vain -- we already had some!  (I did finally get around to organizing the kitchen on Saturday.  I hope everyone can find the stuff I moved around!)
• I had perched the cookbook on a book stand to keep it clean. Somehow, while I was putting Naomi (2) down for her nap, the book ended up flat on the counter, covered in peanut butter and honey. And it was a library book! (This cookbook is wonderful! It’s The Multicultural Cookbook for Students by Carole Lisa Albyn and Lois Sinaiko Webb j641.59)
• I also ended up with honey and other assorted sticky foodstuffs all over my clothes. It’s a good thing I remembered to change into a clean dress before my husband walked in!
• Speaking of my husband coming home, he hates to see dishes in the sink. We ran three dishwasher loads (mainly bulky stuff) before then -- but he still ended up scrubbing out the serving dishes! Sigh... Mary did a fourth dishwasher load after we left for the Bible study. Yes! Also, one child who had to help with dishes earlier in the day kept whining, "I hate dishes! I hate dishes!" Double sigh...
• The beach trip got cancelled due to a scheduling conflict, so I didn’t make the subs. I never did get around to making an extra dinner, either. Rachel (12) stepped in and made brownies for me when I was at the point of meltdown.
• All of this cooking adventure was interspersed with diaper changes, baby bottles, preschool mischief, potty messes, apple juice spills, several phone calls, and tutoring sessions with Julia (14), Rachel and Andrew (6). Rachel was trying to do an experiment for Physical Science which called for a 9 volt battery. We thought there was one in our science supply box, but it was a D battery, so I took one out of our smoke detector. The experiment involved hooking two pieces of insulated wire to the battery terminals, then submersing the other ends in a glass of water and baking soda to see them make the water bubble and turn blue. One wire end was supposed to turn blue, but it fell off. The other wire’s end turned black. Rachel was upset that the experiment didn’t turn out like the book said, but I told her just to write down in her lab book what actually happened and not worry about it. Of course, I was simultaneously trying to make sure that the Galinha Muambe (fried chicken marinated in lemon juice, garlic and onion) didn’t burn!
• There seemed to be way too much water in the Chicken Moambe, which is stewed. I asked Mary, who had just gotten home from work, whether I should pour it off or keep it in before adding the other ingredients. She wisely advised me to pour some off and keep some in. I guess I’ve taught her well, huh? I decided to use this extra broth to make a vegetable and rice curry dish with squash, carrots and turnip. Gotta use up all that curry powder! By the way, did you know that curry powder is not a single spice? It’s actually a blend of turmeric (which gives it that delicious yellow color), coriander, cumin, fenugreek, ginger, cinnamon, red pepper, cloves, allspice, mace and cardamom. Imagine that! I’m getting an education in my own kitchen!
• One of the kids, noting the similar recipe names, wondered if "moambe" and "muamba" both mean "chicken." One of her sisters retorted, "Of course not, because then Chicken Moambe would mean Chicken Chicken!" We conjectured that Moambe means stew, casserole or something like that. Does anybody out there know? Rachel wanted to know why I made TWO chicken recipes. "Because I’m crazy and like to make extra work for myself," was my tired reply.
• We finally got to sit down to our authentic African meal, which had cooled off by the time we sat down. Rachel informed me that she doesn’t like chicken, and would only eat the curry dish. Micah (4) didn’t want to eat his rice, but I told him to eat one more forkful. He had dropped his fork under his chair, so I said he could pick some up with his hands and eat it. He grinned and picked up one little grain of rice! Nobody complained about eating dessert, although a few of the little ones balked at the peanut butter balls until I told them it was candy. Sure enough, they liked it! After all, mother knows best! (HAH!)

 

So there’s the real scoop. Laugh if you want, but that’s what goes on in the Knowles house sometimes. Oh, and don’t think I do this every day, either.   I'm not THAT crazy!  Usually we have something easy and tame like spaghetti.  (However, there is a method to my madness.  This experience served as a practice run for a meal we are bringing over to my mother-in-law's house soon to share with her part-time caregiver, Dorothy, and her family.  They are from Lusaka, Zambia!)

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As long as we’re on the topic of kitchen efficiency, here are some tips from my book The Real Life Home School Mom. My other book, Common Sense Excellence, also has a section on cooking with children. For more information on ordering these books, please visit my resource page at www.hopechest.homestead.com/resourceorders.html

MARVELOUS MEAL TIMES

Keep your kitchen organized! Arrange storage for convenience. Put seldom-used items in less accessible spots or get rid of them. It is easier to wipe up spills and crumbs if your counters aren't cluttered.

Do nutrition research as it applies to your family's health needs and tastes. Your library probably has cookbooks for nearly any style of wholesome recipes. It's still true that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Choose meals that your husband enjoys. Don't just serve what you think the children will eat. Treat Dad like a king!

Plan meals before you go to the store. Make a list of your most commonly used recipes and their ingredients. Figure out what you need for this week's menus, and inventory what you have on hand (including leftovers). Take note of upcoming events on your calendar: nights you will eat out, have company, or need to eat quick to get to a meeting. Try a rotating menu schedule. Each week has a different set of recipes and a standard shopping list. After three or four weeks, the cycle starts again.

Check into cook-ahead plans. This might be once-a-month, once-a-week, or fixing a double batch of recipes. Pre-cook your meats. Roast a turkey or brown several pounds of ground beef to freeze in bags for several meals. At the very least, you can make your husband's lunch for tomorrow as you make lunches for today.

Type and photocopy a detailed master shopping checklist. Include products that your family normally buys, sorted by aisle location in the grocery store. Choose one full service supermarket and supplement with trips to a warehouse club, discount bread outlet, fruit stand, or health food store.

Delegate! Get the children to set and clear the table, wipe counters, sweep the floor, and do dishes. They need this experience just as much as you need the break.

Run the dishwasher every night before you go to bed. Unload dishes after breakfast, and fill the dishwasher throughout the day. Our large family actually runs two or three loads per day! Sipper cup lids can be hung from the top rack on a cord. Assign color-coded cups.

Teach your children to cook! Young ones can tear lettuce for salad, pour drinks, or mix muffin batter. Later, they will progress to actual cooking. When you are ill or rushed, what a relief to have children who know how to fry scrambled eggs, chop vegetables, mix meat loaf, or assemble burritos. Our unit study on "foods and nutrition" paid big dividends in my children's interest and ability in the kitchen. Sure, there is an occasional botched recipe or broken dish, but who am I to complain for all the help they give me?

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Well, I guess that’s enough babble from me for the week!

In His Sovereign Grace,

Virginia Knowles

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