Eating our dragons

Lately the air has turned chill, and the last few days the wind has been blowing a bit wild.  There is a definite bite to it.

The cats picked up on the seasonal change immediately.  They've been running wildly through the garden and bushes, up and down the trees, and throughout the house in the middle of the night.  They've been climbing up the bookshelves, knocking things off, and chasing each other across our beds while we sleep.  When they woke me that first night, I wondered what had gotten into them.  But the next day it was obvious to everyone.

The wind has gotten inside them.

This same wind, the one that takes gentle cats and turns them into demons possessed, seems to have also gotten into my children.  Not one of them could sit still the last few days.  They were looking for reasons to argue with each other, with me, even with themselves.  I was bewildered by their change in behavior until I looked at the calendar and realized that it was the end of September already.

The wind, the sudden bite in the air, Michaelmas... it all adds up.


After much dragon-like ado this week, Friday we settled back down to our normal routines.  Then in the afternoon I told them a story, and we made dragon bread.  Everyone worked with such care and creativity on their breads, shaping their dragons just so.  I think these are the loveliest dragons yet-- so different from each other.

And that's how it should be.  We each have our own dragons, our own short-comings, our own temperaments.  And when they get the best of us, we have to slay them.  Only then can our true selves, our golden goodness shine through.

The first picture below shows all five dragons, while the second picture shows just the kids' dragons.  The last picture is after baking.

The main lesson work this week was perfect for Michaelmas.  I wish I could say I planned it that way, but it was all sheer coincidence.  Sunburst learned about the reformation and how Martin Luther stood up to the wicked pope Leo X.  Moonshine finished the tale of the Ramayana and Rama's fight against Ravana and his league of demon warriors-- very much like dragons themselves.  Kitty Bill's story was much more mild.  He heard the story of Mother Holle, a perfect example of two types of behavior.  I love that the second sister started out with good intentions-- I will work hard!  But even by the second day those intentions were overcome by her own laziness.  Who can't relate to that?!

Kitty Bill helped me make the golden rice, a regular tradition for Michaelmas-- rice cooked with turmeric. With Einstein's help in the kitchen, Moonshine treated us to a mesmerizing Indian-themed meal of Chana Masala and a variation of Korma that she called Hanuman's Delight.  One taste and we could all see that it was aptly named; it was so delicious!

Now that the weather has had a few days to work within our spirits, the cats seem to be quieting down.  I hope the children aren't too far behind.

Holiday cheer and a recipe!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

 

We've been busy little elves-- rolling beeswax candles, making Christmas cards, opening windows on our Advent calendar, and hanging up decorations.  Mary and Joseph have made their appearance along with our nightly reading materials that take us through Advent: The Light in the Lantern and Mary's Little Donkey.  I can't imagine advent without these books, they really lend so much heart to our home, and the children still light up with every telling.

Another long-standing tradition for us, our felt Advent stockings.  Each one holds a different holiday carol.  We sing our nightly song before we light the Advent candles and read our story.  Singing with my grandmother is one of my favorite memories from childhood, and it touches my heart to see what joyous little singers I have.  There is no sound more precious than the sound of little voices rising up in song!  And we are discovering that at five, Kitty Bill has quite a good memory for song lyrics!

And as always, the girl elves have been busy knitting away.  There are projects going in every corner of the house and lots of whispering going on.

Not all the projects have been started yet, nor the baking, but there is time yet, still plenty of time... or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

It's cold outside, blustery and snowy with lots of ice!  We're trying our best to stay warm and toasty, and when the winter winds blow, our thoughts turn towards food.  The kids have made an unusual request for Christmas dinner-- soup!

I made the mistake of playing around with our pumpkin soup recipe the other day.  Around here folks serve it with cream.  We've always made it with coconut milk.  This time I decided to forgo the milkiness altogether and add in my soup protein standby, ground nuts, and top it with a heavy hand of nutmeg.  Now, my kids are generally very enthusiastic eaters.  And they love pumpkin anything... but this soup?  They went crazy for it.

We finished off the leftovers for lunch today, and there was a general echo of sadness until one of them piped up with the idea of soup for Christmas Eve dinner.  When I acquiesced, they actually cheered.

Best Pumpkin Soup Ever

one medium winter squash (pumpkin, kuri, butternut, etc.) cubed
2 Tbs olive oil
1 large onion
2 cloves fresh garlic
2-3 cups vegetable broth (depends on size of your squash)
1/2 cup ground almonds
sea salt, to taste
ground nutmeg

Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil.  Toss in the squash, add enough broth so that it reaches the top of the squash, but doesn't cover it completely.  Bring to a boil and simmer until tender (or alternately cook in a pressure cooker for 7-10 minutes).  Puree this, stir in the ground almonds and add sea salt to taste.  Serve with a heavy sprinkling of nutmeg.

It's dairy-free, animal-free, gluten-free goodness... unless of course you serve it with fresh, homemade bread.  But I know you clever folks have got the homemade, gluten-free bread down pat already.

Wanting Michaelmas

I've been sitting here for a while now trying to decide what to say about Michaelmas, when I remembered this passage from a tiny book I recently picked up at a book sale.

"It is certainly not easy to say much about (Michaelmas), as this festival has generally never been celebrated, as thus there is no tradition to pass along. We must try to create it, and above all to want it, and then in time it can become that which it should truly be."
--Friedel Lenz, Celebrating the Festivals with Children, 1973 (English translation 1986)

So with that in mind, I'll say that we've tried a few different things over the years to capture the essence of Michaelmas. This year Michaelmas looked something like this:



MMmmm... dragon bread. A standing tradition for several years now. I tell the Michaelmas bread-making story from All Year Round while we prepare the dough. This year we used a recipe from May All Be Fed called "Ocean's Bombs of Love Bread." It was the best dragon bread we've devoured yet.




These are dyepots of goldenrod and marigold. This year I decided I would tell the lovely tale "The Michaelmas Story of the Star Children" by Corinne Batzell, from the outstanding book An Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten, and at the end, present the children with golden capes.

For my dying recipe I used a combination of some instructions given to me by the lovely and crafty A., and the beautiful book by Rita Buchanan, A Dyer's Garden. We dyed three silks in the goldenrod bath and one in the marigold. The marigold, which I had very little of-- maybe two dozen flower heads, turned out to be a fairly strong dye. The goldenrod? Not so much. We harvested plenty according to the instructions. I even tried overdying two of the silks in the leftover marigold bath, but they didn't absorb much more color. The girls were plenty pleased with our results, though. And they are anxious to try dying with other plants.



1. goldenrod dipped in marigold leftovers, 2. marigold, and 3. goldenrod.


To round out our day of goldenness, I surprised everyone with an extremely golden bed of rice under our thai curry seitan dish.



The bloopers reel for the day would have included Kitty Bill dumping an entire cup of flour into his face, Kitty Bill running off during the goldenrod harvesting, and me accidentally pinching Moonshine's helping fingers with the scissors during the goldenrod harvesting.

Our Michaelmas attempts are always far from perfect. They don't yet have that same reverence as Martinmas or Advent... but we do our best. We want Michaelmas, and for now, that will have to be enough.

Unschool Zoo

This week two things became vastly apparent:

1. Unschooling is a force to be reckoned with.
2. Animals are curious, amazing creatures.

Freedom and the cat
Our cat Holstein is an Unschooler. He's determined to teach himself things.

Our week began with Holstein, that crazy cat of ours, getting in trouble with yet another neighbor for preying on birds in her yard. It's not his fault entirely, it was that terrible hailstorm in Texas that whacked dozens of birds out of the trees as well as the siding off our house, and helped Holstein remember his true catlike nature and develop a taste for critters. Hailstorms are sometimes called an "Act of God," and with this in mind, perhaps there is a greater plan at work on the cat? I keep waiting for it, but in the meantime we decided to bring him inside the house after a brief deworming period locked up in the laundry room.

On Holstein's first night in captivity, he escaped, or rather he was sprung by a band of raccoons. They broke into the laundry room again, completely busting the lock off the cat door, and letting Holstein out in the process. He promptly returned the next morning, and we locked him up again, fixing the cat door and remembering to pull the storm door shut tight.

A main key to unleashing the amazing power of Unschooling is exposure to the possibilities. If you pay attention well enough, you'll begin to see possibilities everywhere.

The following morning I was prepared to let him inside the house, but he was nowhere to be found. The lock on the cat door was now open and yet the storm door was still shut tight. The food dish was full, so we had not had a raccoon visitation. Very curious. Later in the day, after Holstein had returned for a snack, I locked him up again.

There is an old saying that holds, "We are each teacher and student." In this case, Holstein had been learning lock-picking from the raccoons. As soon as I left the room he unlocked the cat door, squeezed himself out between the two doors and somehow, God only knows, managed to climb up the storm door, reach the handle, and fling himself towards freedom. Our cat can open doors! He wants to be free!
Insectivores and what they eatBetween our readings of The Far Side of the Loch and my niece's blog of life in France, Sunburst has been very interested in the idea of hedgehogs as pets. She looked them up in our Encyclopedia of Mammals and read for awhile. There are several different types of hedgehogs, they have wild skeletal systems that enable them to fold up, and they don't live anywhere close to us, either in North or South America. She desperately wants one for a pet, but unless we get a job overseas, she's out of luck. However, they are in the order Insectivora, and thus, are related to shrews.

We do have shrews here. So many shrews, in fact, that the same neighbor who was irked about our cat Holstein, said she would prefer it if he caught only the shrews and left the birds alone. Obviously the cat isn't willing to sign a treaty or anything, but it did peak a curiosity in shrews. We don't want our cat to harm any living creature, really, but what makes a shrew's life less worthy than a bird's to our neighbor? They both serve the greater good by eating insects, don't they? We read until we found a possible point of contention.

Refection.

Yes, unfortunately our book even had a picture. Apparently shrews do quite a bit of rectum-licking to absorb lost nutrients. Never in my wildest homeschooling dreams did I forsee a discussion about rectum-licking, anal tissues, and creamy anal secretions. Digestion and absorption, yes, but not in regards to the great world of nutrients contained in feces. Mmmmm-mmmm.
Pigs: to rot or not?
"What exactly is pepperoni?" We were snacking on leftover pizza slathered in artichoke hearts and pineapple, no pepperoni in sight, when Sunburst threw this question on the table. The simple reply of "spicy sausage" did nothing for her. From pepperoni she branched out to other pork products-- ham, bacon, hot dogs, pig ears at the pet store.

We talked about preservatives, since in this country all those things are kept from rotting by either drying, as for pig ears, or the application of chemicals, mainly sodium nitrate. My kids are fascinated by the idea that as a child I couldn't eat most meat products because of an allergy to sodium nitrate. I get wicked migraines from it, and it shouldn't be a surprise to my parents that I find it easier to avoid these migraines by being vegan.

This conversation took us into a lengthy discussion on fresh vs. cured, animal husbandry, history, shipping, commodities, and consumer choices. Is there such a thing as asking too many questions? Sometimes I wonder.

Playing with vomit
Yesterday Sunburst carried out her latest McGuffey Reader and asked if we could play "school." She taught herself to read using the beginner book of this series written in the 1870's, Primer Reader, and has, of her own volition, managed to work through the First Reader and almost to the end of the Second Reader. She can read anything at this point, but she's bound and determined to get through the entire set. There are seven in all.

Playing "school" with these Readers means that she wants to play school as it were in the 1880's. Go ahead, I told her, and she began her recitation of the particular lesson, remembering to read it slowly and enunciate. The story was about an owl that some children had taken from its roost during the day, when owls are nearly blind, and included a host of interesting owl observations ending with an owl's ability to eat an animal whole, digest the fleshy bits, and regurgitate a compact ball of fur and bones. I'll give these readers one thing, they never fail to peak a child's interest.

Our 1880's school concluded on that note, and Sunburst compelled me to tell her everything I knew about owl pellets and my experience with them. She was enthralled with the idea that she could dissect one, too. My public school education didn't broach this subject until Grade 9 when my interest in the natural habits of animals had been usurped by my interest in the natural habits of boys. It took me about two seconds to conclude that wiring a child for scientific inquiry is probably easier before the onset of puberty, and I headed to the computer to search out information on ordering owl pellets.

I found them HERE. On a different site we read all the interesting information on pellets, learned that other birds make them too, and could hardly contain our excitement when we discovered the virtual pellet dissection opportunity. We spent quite a bit of time checking out every clickable thing on the site, and from THIS page you can look inside the pellets of different birds and see what was for dinner, including a fact-filled question and answer segment to help you hone your scientific mind.

* * *

I'm learning to expect the unexpected when it comes to homeschooling and really just go with the flow of interest and see where it takes us. In this, Sunburst isn't any different from our door-opening cat. She wants to be free. Free to ask questions. Free to partake in new experiences, new adventures-- and free to learn. Free to have fun with learning.

Amen to that.

Night of Soup

One night last week dinner was a two-course soup-a-thon.

Sunburst made this:



Strawberry soup from a children's magazine, My Big Backyard. Made with organic strawberries, apple juice, and soy yogurt.


I countered with this:



Potato-kale-leek soup topped with nutritional yeast and flaxseed oil.

When we rule the world, it will be wet... with soup.

Multiculturalism through cooking

Tonight Einstein brought to the table the most exquisite salad I have ever tasted. It wasn't your typical salad, it was weird, and it seemed to have a bit of everything in it. The girls and I oohed and aahed over how pretty it was and how great it tasted. Moonshine, our pickiest eater, didn't have any complaints. Her mouth was too full to complain!

Immediately I thought of some dear little friends we know that have a bit of difficulty when it comes to trying new and/or mixed dishes. Their mom has had to get creative in the past, including finding an endearing bunny story to go along with The Yoga Cookbook's carrot soup recipe. Maybe her kids would like this salad, too. But what story would she tell them?

As I stirred it around in my bowl, it occurred to me that really it was a melting pot of many nations. She, I, or anybody could make this salad (or any other recipe, really) with our kids and tell a story as we go along. A story about some children from different nations all over the globe who somehow come together and create a meal with what they have brought from home-- sort of a Stone Soup without all that trickery involved.

How do these children come together anyway? Maybe they're on a boat ride traveling around the world picking up passengers as they go along. Maybe a child from each nation has been beckoned by the Fairy Queen. Or to borrow a theme from the Seven-Year-Old Wonder Book, maybe these children from different nations all just lost their first tooth and meet along the way to visit Prince Frey.

Anyway, they meet. They're hungry, and they decide to look in their satchels and share what they've got with each other to make a fine meal. Sakoto from Japan puts her rice into the big pot. Pedro from South America gets out his knife and slices up a ripe and juicy mango. Susan from America looks in her bag but all she has is a handful of rasins.... and one by one they take their turn looking for what they have and adding it in.

And at the end of it they have a grand meal fit for the Fairy Queen herself. Or maybe that's their task, to make a meal of love for the Fairy Queen to save her from a horrible spell? Whatever the case, it simply tastes good.

Einstein's International Salad1 can garbanzo beans
cooked rice ~ 1/2 cup
chopped mangoes ~ 1 - 1.5 cups
some toasted almonds (sliced) ~ 1/2 cup
some raisins ~ 1/3 cup
finely chopped onion ~ 1/4 cup
cilantro
mint
a touch of rice or white wine vinegar
salt and pepper