Monthly Archives: July 2009

Curried Carrot Sauerkraut

food preservation, lacto fermentation, recipes

Here’s the recipe for my latest fermented vegetable experiment which I slightly adapted from Baden:

Curried Carrot Sauerkraut

  • 1/2 head green cabbage, finely chopped or shredded
  • 1/2 head purple cabbage, finely chopped or shredded
  • 6 – 7 carrots, shredded
  • 1 small onion, finely chopped
  • 1 – 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 1/2 – 2 T. curry
  • 2 t. salt (I use coarse Celtic)

Mix all of the vegetables together, and then mix in the curry.  Pack the mixture into glass jars. Add filtered water until the combined vegetable juices (if any) and water just cover the vegetables; add sea salt to the top.  Make sure that all of the vegetables are covered with liquid.  When there isn’t enough liquid, the vegetables on top will get moldy instead of fermenting.  Leave about an inch between the top of the liquid and the jar to allow room for the juices to expand.

Cover with a tight lid or a cheesecloth and rubber band/ canning jar ring – the second option allows the gasses that build up to be released so you don’t find liquid leaking out all over your counter the next morning.  Sally Fallon of Nourishing Traditions says that because lacto fermentation is an anaerobic process, once the fermentation has started the presence of oxygen will ruin the final product, but I’ve tried it both ways (with tightly fitting lids and with cheesecloth) and haven’t found that to be the case.  Leave it on your counter to ferment for a few days or as long as it takes until the vegetables are all soft.  If the cabbage kind of squeaks in your teeth when you eat it, it needs to ferment more.

There are a couple of things to be aware of in the summer.  The first is that because of the heat, the liquid will evaporate more quickly from the jar, so if you don’t use a tightly fitting lid you need to check it daily to be sure that the vegetables are still covered.  The other thing is that things ferment much more rapidly in the heat.  The faster something ferments, the stronger the flavor will be.  Cabbage needs to ferment longer than some vegetables;  I like to let it ferment for 4 – 5 days on the counter, and then transfer it to the fridge to continue the fermenting.  Since it continues fermenting in the fridge, but more slowly, it has a more mellow flavor.  If you ferment it at room temperature in hot weather, the flavor will be stronger.

You don’t have to use a mixture of green and purple cabbage, but I think it looks pretty so that’s why I did it.  It has a nice medium purplish color when it’s done.  This is meant to be eaten as a relish or condiment to your meals; I enjoy it in small amounts but find the flavor gets to be too much if I have a large serving.

Avivah

Non-edible ways to use coconut oil

nutrition

Coconut oil is an amazing food, and literally a book could be written (and has been!) on how it works and all the many ways it can benefit your health. Unfortunately it’s gotten an unfair and undeserved rap and people don’t know what an incredible food and health supplement it is.  I’m hesitant to write a post like this because there’s no way I can do justice to the benefits of coconut oil.  But I’ll try to sum up some of what I consider the major points – there’s a lot of research out there if you’re interested in learning more about coconut oil and understanding how it affects the body.

People automatically hear coconut oil and think ‘saturated fat- isn’t that bad for you?’  First of all, saturated fats aren’t bad for you.  I know, it’s hard to believe since that’s not what we hear in the mainstream media.  But the mainstream media is the last place to turn to for accurate information on anything, including nutrition.  Saturated fats actually play a very important role in maintaining your health – consider that for centuries peoples across the globe stayed healthy while eating large amounts of saturated fat, and it’s only since the early 1900s when artificial and processed fats were introduced into people’s diets that we started to see things like heart disease (to be more accurate, I think the very first documented heart attack was in the 1870s but it was still rare until the 1920s).  What’s a problem are fats that are oxidized (ie damaged), which all of the processed polyunsaturated vegetable oils are; it’s these oxidized fats that lead to many of the prevalent diseases of today.

Next, coconut oil is comprised of medium chain fatty acids.  That means that it is processed differently in the body than most fats.  Coconut oil is very easy to digest because medium chain fatty acids don’t require bile salts to be digested.  It contains high amounts of lauric acid, something found abundantly in mother’s milk but otherwise can only be found in large amounts in coconut oil and palm oil (butterfat has a small amount).  Lauric acid converts to monolaurin in your body, which strengthens your immune system and helps fight all kinds of illness.

Coconut oil aids immune function and is a protective antioxidant. It’s anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-viral:

  • Anti fungal – helps combat candida, athlete’s foot, diaper rash, cradle cap – ds16 used this recently for less than a week and no longer has athlete’s foot, something he’s tried to get rid of for at least two years.  Ds22 months once had diaper rash caused by thrush when he was 9 months old – I put coconut oil on his bottom and it killed the thrush, literally peeling the top layer away and leaving perfect skin underneath.  (When I changed his diaper I found what looked like a layer of dead skin, which was actually the dead fungus – it took only two applications.)  It’s also helpful in combatting cradle cap – rub it into the baby’s scalp.
  • Anti – bacterial -bacterial illnesses include throat infections, earaches,  strep
  • Anti viral – viruses cause a wide variety of illnesses, and antibiotics aren’t effective in combatting them.  These viruses include the flu, measles, and HIV.

When you’re feeling under the weather, up your intake of coconut oil.  In some parts of the world where coconut oil has been used for generations, it is literally drunk as a tonic when people begin to feel unwell.

Helps expel or kill worms, lice, and parasites – when I thought my toddler ds had worms (dd saw something when changing him but I didn’t see it myself), I put coconut oil on the anus, in addition to giving him raw carrots to eat and increasing his consumption of coconut oil.  We didn’t see any signs of anything after that.

Helps protect liver, supports thyroid function, improves brain function (even found to be helpful for Alzheimer’s patients ).  It is thermogenic – that means it boosts your metabolism and raises your body temperature.  The increased rate of metabolism means that it’s helpful for weight loss and will give you a natural energy boost. If you’re perpetually cold (a sign of thyroid and/or adrenal fatigue), consuming coconut oil will help warm you up.

Skin cleanser – my teens think this is the best anti-acne skin treatment – they use the oil cleansing method, with expeller pressed coconut oil as the oil of choice.

Skin moisturizer – anything you put on your skin goes into your body just as if you ate it, so what you put on your skin is much more important than most people realize.  Not only doesn’t this have chemicals, it has substantial soothing and healing powers. Protects skin from sun, can be used in placed of sunscreen.  Dd14 commented to me on how soft her face feels now after using it as a skin cleanser.

Hair conditioner – use as a deep oil treatment to nourish your hair; leave on overnight and then wash out in the morning.  I’m planning to try this with one of my shaitels sometime soon.

Toothpaste replacement – I sometimes dip my toothbrush in it and use it to brush with (I thought of doing this after noticing coconut oil was a main ingredient in tooth soap).

Base for creams, salves, and more – we made an herbal skin salve and used coconut oil for the base.

Oil pulling – this is the oil I used on the periodic occasions that I do oil pulling.

I’ve seen coconut oil recommended for so many different things that it’s hard to believe one food can be so widely beneficial, but the reason it’s so healthy is because of the factors I listed in the very beginning – being a medium chain fatty acid and rich in lauric acid.

Bruce Fife has written a book about coconut oil that I’d recommend if you’re interested in learning more – The Coconut Oil Miracle.  It’s very easy to read.  He also has a website, and there’s a lot of information online available, if you don’t mind it taking longer to put all the info together.  If you like more technically written books, then Mary Enig is the top lipids researcher in the world and knows her stuff inside out – I haven’t been able to get her book on fats – Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol.  Together with Sally Fallon she’s also written Eat Fat Lose Fat that includes information on coconut oil.  I personally prefer Mary’s writing, but any and all of these books are worth reading.

Avivah

Modest bathing suits

frugal strategies, homemaking,

>>Would you mind sharing what you did for bathing suits? I’ve been looking at various patterns.<<

A couple of years ago I bought patterns in the girls and ladies sizes from the following company – http://www.modestswimwearsolutions.com/.  I looked at several different patterns but liked this one best, because they looked nice and for the ease of sewing.  It’s basically a dress made of swimming suit material with leggings underneath.  I made three suits for the girls and one for myself (though I was 6 months pregnant at the time so I adapted it accordingly).   I also liked that the patterns were made with the option of several sleeve lengths and several legging lengths  – I made 3/4 length sleeves with leggings that just covered the knee but didn’t stick out under the dress.

I bought a the swimsuit material on ebay, and including the cost of the materials and patterns, it was under $20 per suit.  (And I still have enough material left to make a couple more suits, which will essentially be free.)

Though everyone said how easy this was to sew, there was one part of it that I found challenging – there’s a V where the top part of the dress and bottom part connect, and I had trouble getting it to lay smoothly.  I’m far from a professional seamstress but can handle basic stuff without too much trouble and kept wondering as I was making these how so many people who said they didn’t know how to sew could do this while I was struggling with it.  I took it apart several times and redid it, and then changed the design for later suits so I wouldn’t have the problem.  I still wonder if it was something obvious that I did wrong to cause that difficulty.

Our family likes to do outings and activities together, but as the kids get older, modesty between parents and siblings becomes an issue.  So if we found a private part of a beach or secluded lake, the girls would wear long t-shirts over their bathing suits, which I didn’t find a good solution. Wet t-shirts get heavy and I don’t think they’re safe to swim in.   Enter the solution – modest bathing suits.

We used these on our yearly camping trip right after I made them, and they were wonderful!  We went tubing at a private swimming hole in West Virginia, and went swimming at a thermal lake where there were others except for our family.  They were comfortable, modest, and very convenient, since we could wear them on a hike, jump into the water, and keep them on for the hike back.

For the younger boys, I bought wetsuit style bathing suits from cwdkids.com when they were half price (I just bought three more since I was missing the sizes I need for ds3 and ds22 months).  They are comfortable and now the little ones have been running around in them all day long – ds22 months in particular loves his – he brings it to me every time he needs to get dressed and keeps it on.  This is a big deal since he’s been going through a stage of pulling all his clothes off!

I need to make some more suits for the girls since I discovered this year that they’ve outgrown the ones I made.  Dd8 can fit into the suit I made for dd12 and I’ll just have to shorten it, but the older two girls need new ones altogether.  I took apart my maternity suit so I can use the material to make a new suit, I’m going to take apart dd14’s suit and I have extra material from the original batch that I bought, so I should have enough to make three new suits.  I’m thinking of changing the pattern and making a top with a skirt/legging one piece combo, because it will be more flattering than dresses and then I can avoid that problem that I had last time.

Avivah

The importance of parents

parenting

>>I am tired of hearing from every person that I meet that I am doing my children harm by keeping them home with me. I am tired of hearing that it is good for two and three year-olds to separate from their mommies, as if the crying will make them stronger and help them grow up. I find myself constantly telling people, often extended family, that a three year-old is not suppossed to be growing up, they should be a child and that childhood is the only time in their life in which it is ok to be a child, that for the majority of their life they will have to be an adult. i also remind people that my children will always be my children, but they will not always be actual children and I am already seeing just how fast the time is flying.<<

I’m tired of hearing/seeing parents who stay home with their kids, homeschool their kids, or practice other kinds of attachment parenting (hate that phrase but can’t think of another right now) being on the defense, while parents who pay others to take care of their kids for most of the day every day get a free pass.

The day after I posted about the necessity of kids having negative experiences to grow, someone called me to get information about homeschooling.  After talking for a while, she mentioned she had been working in a day care for the last two years and quit because she couldn’t take it anymore.  She is a very gentle and mild mannered person, and when I asked her why, she said almost apologetically that ‘I don’t want to judge’ but that she found it ‘almost abusive’.  Now, I deplore when people are close minded and judgemental of others, but also think that we’re all so afraid to hurt someone that we often don’t say things that need to be said.  I said to her, ‘maybe we have to stop worrying less about if we seem like we’re judging and be more concerned about advocating for the children and their needs.  Who’s looking out for them?’  In our desire to be kind and understanding to the parents, we’re harming the youngest, most vulnerable, helpless members of our society.

I say this as a mother who was working until my third child was born – I understand the realities of being a working mother.  But let’s not make our non-ideal reality a reason to advocate and idealize practices that are harmful to kids.  We have to be honest and say it’s not the best thing for kids to be raised by babysitters/daycare/etc, but for whatever reason we need to do it.  I didn’t grow up with a value for staying home with my kids, and no one spoke to me about the importance of a child needing a mother in the early years.  I learned this on my own, but I so much wish someone had shared this perspective with me early on, instead of keeping quiet because maybe I would be hurt.  Not saying something to me didn’t change the reality that what I was or wasn’t able to do for my kids was affecting them.

Back to my phone call- I asked the mother I was talking to what behaviors she was referring to as ‘almost abusive’.  She described examples of 2 year olds being left to cry for hours, children routinely being brought in sick instead of being taken care of at home, parents insisting that children not rest when they are tired so that they’ll nap later on at a convenient time for the parent – basically her point was that children have needs that are being ignored or denied by the staff as well as the parents for the sake of the adult wants.

>>I have always had to work because we needed the extra money to put food on the table. At one point when some of my kids were small I worked in a daycare center because I was able to bring my kids with me. My kids were the only ones who didn’t need a security blanket why because I was there and I was their security blanket. Over the years I have really treasured the unbeleivable gift and privelage of raising Jewish Neshamas. Yes it is exhausting and trying at times but it is so unbeleivably worth it. The kids that I had to leave at a babysitter all day because my dh was learning in Kollel have issues that my other kids don’t have. When you give a child what they need when they are little the cost will be so much less later on.<<

Just a couple of days ago I noticed a young child we know well clutching his security blanket after reading your comment – I didn’t pay attention to what it was until now.  Do you know that baby blankets are being sold now together with ‘lovies’ – little stuffed things to be purposefully given to the child to hold onto for security (we got a couple of these as baby gifts for the last two babies)?  That means that parents now think that a child needing a security blanket is normal and are being marketed to as such.  As in so many areas, we’re defining normal down to a new low.  None of my kids had a security blanket, and only my oldest child sucked his thumb at an older age (until he was 4 or 5), also a common security seeking behavior.  Do you think it’s a coincidence that he’s the one I left with a babysitter when 7 weeks old when I went back to work?  And sent to a school based playgroup of 30 children at the age of 2 (but at least he got lots of socialization Rolling Eyes)?  And in the three years before I quit my job to stay home with him, had a number of different caretakers?  Maybe his thumb was the one constant in his life, just like the security blanket for so many kids.

Parenting is doing about what’s best for our kids, not ourselves.  In our rush to say that our kids don’t need us – because if loving parents objectively provide much more than a paid substitute can, then maybe we need to reassess how we make our choices – we’re devaluing ourselves as parents.  Don’t we want to matter to our children? Parents do matter.  Why wouldn’t any parent want to know that there’s no one who can replace them, that they can give their child more than the most educated and trained professional, just by being there? Sure it’s a responsibility.  Sure it’s hard work. Sure we get tired and want a break sometimes.  But as Debbie said above, it’s worth it.  You see the payoff in the short term and the long term – the time invested in your children is never wasted.

Avivah

Getting free bricks for patio

frugal strategies, gardening, homeschooling

It’s not unusual for me to be tired at the end of the day, but for all of my kids to be so worn out they can hardly walk, is!  Since my six week old baby has been crying for over 5 hours, periodically stopping long enough to fall asleep for several minutes before waking up to cry again, I’m not feeling like sharing any meaningful thoughts 🙂 (he’s in the wrap while I write), so I’ll share what we’ve been doing today to wear us all out.

Today we lucked into a large number of free bricks from someone who took down a brick wall.  It’s amazing how many bricks it takes to make a patio the size we want (about 350 sf)- we hauled one load, got home and realized we needed more.  We took out the second bench seat of the van, so we’d have room to bring even more bricks home with us.  We now have over 1000 very large bricks (not the standard size) – there’s now a huge pile in my yard –  and ds16 has informed me after doing the math that we need another 700.  Do you have any idea how many bricks this is, and how much work it is?   You’d probably have to spend an hour loading bricks to appreciate how much energy is involved. 🙂

The downside of the free bricks is that many of them have mortar on them that will have to be chipped off, but it’s pretty soft.  So while it’s a big job because of the number of bricks, it’s not laborious like chipping off hard cement.  While making a patio isn’t complicated, there are a several aspects to the job and it’s been hard to decide where to start first (dh doesn’t think it’s hard to decide – he’s very clear that I shouldn’t do it at all!).

I need to take apart the platform deck since it’s covering the area where the patio will be. But because the chain link fencing that has yet to be put up is taking up all the extra space in the garage, I don’t have anywhere to keep the deck boards we remove.  (I have a neighbor directly across the alley who is hyper vigilant about piles of wood and calls the zoning/environmental office to report people which results in fines, or I’d leave it neatly stacked against the back part of the yard for a couple of weeks.)  Without digging, there’s nowhere to put the gravel, and eventually, the bricks.

You might now be thinking, didn’t I say that I brought home gravel yesterday and bricks today?  Yes, and I’d have liked to have prepared the ground before bringing anything home, but didn’t know how long it would take until I found the supplies I wanted for free and didn’t want to dig up my yard and leave an ugly hole for an openended period of time.  I’m doing everything opposite how I think it would be most efficient to do it, but that’s the reality of working within the time frame of when the free supplies you want to get actualize.

I’m amazed by what hard workers my kids are – loading and then unloading the bricks is a hugely exhausting job.  But they just keep going and going and going, without complaining even a tiny bit.  They’ve actually been enjoying all of this work, and told me a few times we should do this kind of thing every day!  But that was before they finally ran down tonight, and were all happy to drag themselves into bed.

I was also really tired, so dinner was watermelon served in the back yard.  The littles played in their wading pool in the new swim suits that arrived today, and then ran over to the pea plants and helped themselves to fresh organic snow peas and garden peas.  Some of the older kids have complained about this practice, saying that the littles are snacking away our harvest. But I’m happy to have it and it’s a pleasure to watch them happily picking them.

Tomorrow afternoon dh wants to take the van to the mechanic for a check up and oil change, so whatever bricks or gravel I want to get will have to be gotten in the early afternoon. I need to summon up some enough energy to get more bricks, since I won’t be able to match them with what’s being sold at Home Depot if I need more, and if I don’t get these, then the patio will be smaller than planned.  Hopefully tonight I’ll get to bed before midnight so I have the necessary enthusiasm when I wake up! 🙂

Avivah

How do my kids stay busy?

homeschooling, parenting,

>>What do your kids do when school isn’t in session, in the afternoon? And what do your youngest ones do? Especially curious, since I have a 3 year old and an 8 month old.<<

I’m assuming you’re asking what the kids do when not busy with academic work, right?  The truth is that this is the case most of the day, all year round, since academic work doesn’t take an especially long time!  (Except for the kids ages 10 and up – but they still all have the afternoon free.)  Because the kids have learned to entertain themselves, I don’t have to entertain them.  The two women at the camp where my dd12 was working last week told her her that Saturdays and Sundays were their worst days, because their kids were home and drove her crazy because they were so bored.  My dd told them, “It’s because they go to school that they’re bored – they’re used to being entertained all day.”  The mothers were both taken aback by her answer – “Really???” – they clearly had never thought about it.

It’s true, though – my kids aren’t unusually self sufficient.  Kids learn to entertain themselves by being given the free time to structure on their own.  When kids are in school all day, they learn to wait for the cues of the adult in charge to tell them what to do.  This is something that can take a while for kids to learn, but they can learn it from a very young age. 

Practically speaking, here’s what I notice them doing.  Those who are old enough read, play board games, play outside together (biking, playing ball, rollerblading), work on projects, and listen to audio books (this tends to be a winter activity), and go to the gym (swimming, game room, ball playing).  When dd14 goes to the pool, she often takes dd8 and ds3 – now that she’s at camp, they’re missing that!  They have independent projects that they take on – like ds10 with his cookie selling business, dd12 and dd14 are now planning a production as a community fundraiser, and ds16 (his birthday was yesterday :)) just got a job for Thursdays and Fridays.

The little ones hang around their older siblings and watch them and interact with them.  They have books read to them and games played with them.  The two littles (ds3 and ds22 months) play with each other a lot – they seem to make anything they do a game!  When the baby is old enough, he’ll join them and then they will be a threesome.  Though we have a huge amount of books and games, we don’t have a very large collection of toys – I haven’t found most of them worth the space they take up and have given a lot away.  Or if they get left out long enough or often enough, my decluttering gene goes into overdrive and they’re swept into the garbage.

When school friends or neighborhood kids are home, they play with them, but I limit that a lot since I don’t find so much peer to peer socialization positive in the younger years.  (I’m right now having an issue with my ds3 who wants to play with a 4 year old neighbor all the time – they would happily play together all day long, but I feel that peer play should be a side dish, not the main course.)

With the summer here I’m planning to do more outings and trips with the kids, but this past ‘school’ year I haven’t done that much.  Some years I do a lot more than others – it depends on the ages of the kids and where I’m at.  This year because I was pregnant and tired, I didn’t feel it was the best use of my limited energy to orchestrate family trips on a regular basis, and during the winter everyone seems to enjoy cozying up at home, anyway.  Then it was Purim, Pesach, the baby was born – and now it’s already the summer and time for outings!

Every day looks different, but here’s some of what they did today.  My ds7 discovered Monopoly a couple of weeks ago, and every day it seems like he’s getting someone to play with him.  After the morning with the dining room table covered with board games, they went out to play in the front yard.  Then the two littles took a nap while everyone else had a snack/lunch, and went back outside.  Dd8 and ds10 went bike riding together and picked wineberries growing wild (they learned last summer in their Junior Rangers program to identify them) and brought back a bunch.  Meanwhile ds16 played baseball with all the youngers – it’s so sweet to see him play with all of his siblings.  He’s teaching ds7 and ds3 to hit the ball.  After that ds16 played Monopoly in the back yard with ds7, while in the front yard ds10 played Candyland with ds3 and his four year old friend.  Dd8 was deeply engrossed with a book, while dd12 has been making plans on the phone all day, trying to figure out a way to get to upstate NY for camp visiting day to see dd14 this coming Sunday.  Then I took ds16, ds10, ds7, ds3, and dd12 with me to get some free gravel from someone who’s redoing their landscaping.  (I want to build a patio in the backyard with the kids to replace the platform deck we built when ds22 months was born, and am looking to do it on the cheap, like everything else! :))  They spent quite a while shovelling and hauling gravel to our van, and then they did the same thing in reverse when they unloaded it in our yard.  After that they had a late dinner in the back yard, and watched part of The Ten Commandments with dh. 

None of this is going to be of much help to you right now, though, since you’re at the stage of life where you do need to actively keep your kids occupied and supervised most of the day.  When your baby is a little older and the two of them can play with each other more, you’ll start to find things get easier.  When I was at the stage you were at, I read to them a lot, baked with them, had them help me with my chores like laundry, and daily walks to the playground or to a friend helped keep us all busy. 

Avivah

My postpartum homeschooling schedule

homeschooling,

Someone asked me to write about how I handled homeschooling with a newborn in the immediate postpartum period.  At this stage in our lives, homeschooling postpartum is pretty much the same as any other time. 

When the kids were younger, I’d designate time after birth as ‘vacation’.  That was more to reduce everyone’s expectations than for anything else.  Now I don’t take a break; my kids continued pretty much with their regular schedule right away.  The baby was born Thursday night, and our official homeschooling days are Mon – Thurs, between breakfast and lunch.  By Monday morning I was back to being downstairs where I could supervise them.  Before you start mistakenly crediting me with being supermom, I’ll explain how I structure our academic time.  (This is basically the gist of the talk I gave at the conference on teaching the multi-age family.)

>>In terms of how you teach- how do you do it? Do you have text books and the kids teach themselves if they’re old enough and come to you for help? Do you teach a lesson a day? Do you have a set aside time for schoolwork?  Do you make assignments for your kids to do? Reports? Essays? Tests?<<

I don’t see my role as a teacher of academics, but rather as a facilitator for the learning in our home, to guide each of our children according to their needs and abilities.  I believe that independent learning skills are very important, and for the last three years have consciously taught the kids how to learn independently, each at their own level.  I’ve thought about what I feel the basics I want them to have are, and have summed them up as reading and writing in English and Hebrew, and math.  Reading is obviously done independently, except for my dd8 and ds7, who both sometimes read Hebrew out loud to me from their readers.  Ds7 sometimes reads his English books to me, too.  That was more in the beginning of the year than now; as their skills get stronger, they naturally need me less and less.  For writing, until age ten they do copywork; I’ve explained what that is already.  The older three use different writing programs (ds likes Writing Strands, but the girls really dislike it), and sometimes ask to do independent writing instead. 

For math, I use Singapore for the elementary age kids, which uses what is called a concrete pictorial approach that is very user friendly.  It’s meant to be taught to a child, but I’ve found the kids are able to use it for the most part without my help.  Right now dd8 and ds10 are using this, and come to me once in a while for help when they don’t understand something.  For the older three, they are all now using Videotext Algebra.  It covers pre-algebra, algebra 1, and algebra 2, so it’s like a 2 – 3 year math program.  It’s a very solid program – I started off a couple of years ago with ds using Teaching Textbooks, but I initially liked but then felt it wasn’t vigorous enough and switched to this.  It’s a video based math program; the lesson is on screen, and they can rewind parts where they have questions and watch it again and again until it makes sense to them. They can also ask a sibling who is further along for help, all except for dd14, since she’s the furthest.  (Ds15 really would be the furthest along, but the detour in school last year caused him to lose time and I asked him to start at the beginning of algebra 1 again this year so that he could systematically learn algebra without gaps using this program instead of the other two he used.)  This is wonderful because it’s very empowering for them to know they can learn higher level math without their mother’s help; it builds their confidence in their own learning skills. 

Everyone does their work at the same time, though the older kids obviously take much longer because they have more work.  Ds7 doesn’t yet have much official work, just some writing and reading with me, so he finished fast.  While they are all working, I start the day by sitting with my ds3 and ds22 months and read something with them, or sometimes play something with them.  I find it much better to right away give them my time and attention than keep them waiting for it for hours. 

As soon as ds7 finishes, I read out loud to him (now we’re half way through Dr. Dolittle).  This is honestly a bit distracting to the older kids because they find it so interesting that they end up listening while I read, too, but they don’t mind.  (They do their ‘seat work’ in the dining room, but we have an open layout on our main floor, so the couch in the living room where we read is just a few steps from the dining room where they’re working.)  Usually I wait for dd8 to finish before I read with him, or tell her to take a break from her work and to finish up after our reading time.  I take advantage of when things are quiet with the youngers, and that’s the main factor that determines what point in the morning we do our reading together.  Then I read dd8’s read aloud with her.  When there’s a break in between, I sit either at the table with the kids, doing my planning or writing type work, or do what basic computer stuff, like quick emails or online bill paying.  I don’t like to do things like writing here at that time, researching, or anything that takes a solid amount of time and mental focus, because my time until lunch is for the kids, and if the kids were to ask me something in the middle of being very focused on my computer work, I might get annoyed or brush them off.  That wouldn’t be fair to them.  But if they need any help, they need to ask me before lunch; I’m not responsive to any requests for academic help after that time. 

I don’t use tests; that seems to me pointless since I can assess what they’re doing and what they know pretty easily by virtue of being there while they work every morning and talking with them about what they’re learning.  Their writing assignments sometimes include essays; I’ve never assigned a report.  A report would naturally be done if someone had valuable information to share with others; to have them prepare something for no purpose but me to mark it is to undermine what a report is about. 

Of course, there is a lot of learning that goes on outside of the above.  My ds15 and ds10 learn mishnayos together every morning.  Ds15 spends another three hours every afternoon learning at a local shul.  Dd12 and dd14 both have Torah topics that they independently have chosen to pursue and do that in the evenings after dinner.  Then there are the many, many things that are integrated into our daily lives, and these things are probably the most meaningful kind of learning that there is.

So now that you understand how I structure our academic time, you can also understand how I can continue our same routine right after birth. 🙂

Avivah

Time for canning again!

canning, food preservation

I haven’t done any canning for a while. I haven’t had the energy or desire, and I haven’t needed to.  But yesterday I went down to my basement to take something out of the freezer- the freezer that dh told me needs to be replaced because it’s not working properly – and found everything on the door half defrosted and everything in the main section encased in a thick layer of ice.

What to do?  First of all, I took out three frozen turkeys to make room for some of the items from the door that could be refrozen without a problem.  I also took out a 9 x 13 pan of shredded potatoes, and was able to chip out a couple of containers of cottage cheese and butter.  After moving some things from the door into that space, I was shocked that I couldn’t even tell I had taken anything out.  How in the world is it possible for there not to be noticeably more space after taking out three turkeys??

(This raised the question in my mind if it’s possible that maybe I buy a little too much food?  But I quickly banished that thought.)

Anyway, now I needed to find something to do with the turkeys.  One was already roasted so I put that in the fridge to defrost for Shabbos dinner.  The other two I decided I’d have to can.  I used the pressure canner as a pressure cooker, cooking them one at a time, and couldn’t believe how fast they were done. You know that cooking two solidly frozen turkeys would take hours, right?  I’d usually have to put one in the oven and the other in our electric turkey roaster, both of which would have added lots of heat to the house in the hours of cooking.  I just love the efficiency and versatility of my pressure canner – it’s been a much more valuable purchase than I expected. 

Well, since I was going to can them I didn’t need them to be fully cooked, so once the pressure was up to 15 pounds I cooked them for just 10 minutes, the same as for a defrosted whole chicken.  That was enough to cook the turkeys almost totally!  If I had left them in another 2 minutes, they’d have been done all the way throught – as it was, they were just a little pink in the very center.  When one was done, I put the other one in.  Within about 2 hours both turkeys were done.   They were finished cooking early enough in the day that I was able to debone and then can them  today, too, and they were finished before it was even late in the evening.  They’re now cooling on the counter, and all of them sealed except for one.  That one will go in the fridge.  All of that turkey amounted to 6 quarts (we ate some of it or it would have been 7 quarts) and I canned a quart of broth; the other broth was used to cook the rice for tonight’s dinner. 

Six quart sized jars on a shelf will take a lot less room than two turkeys in the freezer!  Now I’m going to have to put some effort into using the frozen veggies in the freezer before going out shopping for fresh vegetables.  And hopefully we’ll soon find a good used freezer at a good price.

Avivah

Manual food processor

frugal strategies, homemaking

A few weeks ago my fairly new (bought on Thanksgiving) food processor broke.  Often I think it must be because I use things more than average that they break, but lately I’ve thinking more and more often that it’s because things aren’t made to last.  It bothers me that things are made so cheaply nowadays, and that it’s expected that you’ll just throw the old thing away and buy a new one – they call it ‘planned obsolescence’.  My last food processor lasted for 9 years, and was just an average model; this latest one was supposedly a much better one with more bells and whistles, but never worked as well as the old one.  And to top off not working well by breaking when never mishandled is really annoying. 

I use a food processor alot since it makes chopping or grating all the veggies we use for a meal a breeze – if I had to do it all by hand, we’d just eat veggie sticks.  I considered getting a food processor that wouldn’t need electricity, remembering I had seen something in the Lehman’s catalog.  I pulled out the catalog and when I saw the price (something like $189) I decided being power free wasn’t that important to me!  But it got me to thinking and researching, trying to find something else. 

I found remarkably little available, but I did find this.  I did some research on it and found it for a cheaper price, and decided to get two – one for dairy (so I can make shakes with milk or kefir) and one for meat.  Since I never did get my Bosch mixer repaired after my ds broke it when making a mega sized batch of chocolate chip cookie dough for his cookie business, I’ve been managing without it.  Surprisingly to me, it hasn’t been much of a loss – it’s not a big deal to mix bread dough in a large bowl by hand, we don’t make many cakes, and basically, I really don’t need it.  But the one thing it did that I sometimes miss having the capacity for is beating egg whites.  This little hand powered mixer does that, which is why I got a second one for non-dairy dishes.

It is a simple device, but works remarkably well.  The only down side I’ve so far experienced is it doesn’t beat things for a shake as smoothly as a blender would, and it doesn’t have a shredding capacity (which I knew when I bought it) – just chops- but it is easy to use, easy to clean up, and even the younger kids can use it by themselves.  A couple of days ago ds15 used it to chop four heads of cabbage and 15 large carrots, and he said it was great.  Not as fast as an electric model, but that’s okay with me; it’s still a LOT faster than chopping by hand.

I would have liked to have gotten two different colors so the meat and dairy mixers could be easily distinguished, but it only comes in red.  Not a big deal, we just marked one with nail polish.  I’d also like if it had a suction on the bottom to hold it down on the counter better. 

Now if the cap and trade bill passes (I think it’s a disaster and am perturbed that our government leaders think it’s a good idea to do this at a time of national financial distress; the president himself said, “”Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”), lots of people are going to be looking for ways to cut power costs.  This is a simple little solution for one appliance and I’m glad to have it!

Avivah

Do kids need to be in bad situations to be prepared for life?

parenting

My dd12 is working this week as an assistant in a two year old camp run by an adult.  Her friend has the job for the summer but asked her if she could stand in for her when she’s away, so she agreed.  She likes working with kids – is great with her siblings and kids that she babysits for, and had a great time as an assistant at a camp for 6 year old girls a couple of years ago.  Dd told me yesterday she hopes the woman doesn’t want her to continue, because she’s not enjoying the job at all, but knowing my dd (who is not only really good with kids but conscientious and a hard worker), I told her that was unlikely to happen.  And anyways, I told her, it would be a terrible feeling to do a job so badly that someone felt the need to tell you that.  I was right, since today she came home and told me the woman offered her a regular job for every day next year, in addition to wanting her to continue for the rest of the summer.  Smart woman.  But dd has adamantly told me she’s not continuing.  And she already has another job offer (being a mother’s helper, basically) with someone else who will also teach her in shaitel construction/repair. 

So what is it she doesn’t like about it, if she enjoys working with kids?  She finds it boring and feels unproductive.  She told me she thinks it’s very sad, to see two year olds crying for their parents and the parents pushing them to go in, instead of responding to them.  Every day this week she has spent hours holding a child (different each day) who doesn’t want to be there and is crying for their parent.  I don’t know what it is about her, but kids get attached to her very quickly and then refuse to go to anyone else.  The first day, she spent all of her time holding a crying toddler, and when the older sister came to pick her up, the little girl didn’t want to leave my dd!

Some parents work and have no choice but to put their child in a camp or playgroup (this one is well run by a very responsible and caring woman).  But many mothers are at home and really believe that their child  needs to be in a group setting so that they can get that elusive ‘socialization’.  I don’t know why people believe that children magically learn good social skills from being around other same age children who have never learned the prerequisite skills, either.  We live in an age when children are seriously unparented and we keep justifying how wonderful that is by saying they’ll do better being around their peers all day.  Why don’t we just look at the evidence in front of us, and see what has happened to a generation with parents who have very much faded into the background of their lives, from the time they are infants and through adulthood?  Is our society a more loving and kind place?  Are people happier?  More emotionally stable? 

I met someone in the store a couple of days ago who told me that an educator she very much respects told her that young children need to be in school to have negative experiences, since that is part of life.  According to this argument, if they spend more time with loving and caring adults who actually guide them in learning new skills, they’ll be unprepared to effectively live in the adult world.  I always find it ironic when people can’t defend sending children to school for positive reasons, all of a sudden the negative aspects turn into virtues.  Saying something like this is a defense for school more than an intelligently determined position, which becomes quickly evident in even a short conversation. 

I have to seriously challenge the presumption that kids best learn how to deal with unpleasant situations by being left on their own to figure it out.  It’s like saying the best way to swim is by throwing a person into the deep end of the pool.  Most parents wouldn’t teach their child to swim like that but I find to be very common for parents to support their choice to send to school by making the above argument. 

My first question to a person saying this would be to ask, how does being in a bad situation benefit a child?  To which they say that kids have to learn to deal with unpleasant situations to be prepared for life.  My next question is, what does a child learn from being in that situation?  (They unquestionably are learning something, but is that the positive lesson you want them to learn?)  And how is the child going to learn when they don’t have any experience to deal with what they’re encountering?  Yes, they can figure something out, but the likelihood that their response will consistenly be the healthy one is unlikely. 

Wouldn’t children benefit from having a caring adult to help them navigate these challenging social situations?  Adults who have had life experience in dealing with lots of things, who can actively guide them and help them develop healthy responses to the challenges?  Remember, this argument about preparing kids for the harsh realities of life is made about very young kids through teenagers. 

How much social maturity can you expect of a two year old, or five year old?  Or even a fifteen year old (assuming he’s been in a peer dominated environment all his life)?  In my experience, not much.  And I think it’s cruel to purposely put children in a situation that they don’t have the skills to cope with and expect them to figure it out on their own.

Avivah