Cooking Challenge 2018

My younger daughter loves cooking so has set herself a challenge for the New Year.  It sounds exciting and quite varied.
Here is the list:

A vegan recipe

          A vegetarian recipe

      Something out of my comfort zone

      Something from an Indian cook

     A recipe from a chef whose recipes I have not used before.

      A recipe that has a nice picture

   Something that I think I will hate

    A starter

      Pastry canapes

   Sweet pastry  

       An Eastern European recipe

     An African recipe

     An American recipe

      A Scottish recipe

      A Welsh recipe

      A World War II recipe

      A beverage. 
     A summer recipe

      A recipe for the pets

   Boiled sweets

      A cake

      A roast

      A bake sale

      A full meal starter, main, dessert

      A birthday cake (big)

     Nigella Lawson recipe

      Mary Berry recipe

      Lorraine Pascal recipe

    Cornish Pasty

   German recipe
   Spanish recipe

   Use a cook book we have not used before

  Chocolate pizza

   Chocolate tart

  A new breakfast

   Salad

  Bread basket

  Biscuit structure

   A recommended bake

 A cheesecake

I'm looking forward to seeing, and tasting, these recipes!

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September Inspiration

I had every intention of blogging more in August but despite having a break from formal learning, this hasn't quite happened. We have had various trips out,

a photography workshop and many friends to play, plus a garden which has been wonderfully productive.

Grandma has enjoyed the general summer bustle and we have made major progress toward her being able to sit out of bed. It has been a long, long saga!

Planning for next year has happened and I hope to post about the resources we hope to use soon.

Earlier in the holiday, we popped into a temporary exhibition of Shirley Hughes' work. Shirley Hughes is famous for her books about Alfie and also Dogger. We particularly like her poetry anthology for younger children, Out and About. 

The Read Aloud Revival has had an interview with another favourite childhood author and illustrator, Helen Oxenham. Helen is the illustrator of Going on a Bear Hunt and it turns out that she is married to John Burningham of Mr Gumby fame.

Nothing to do with education but, at long last, I have found a yeasted banana bread recipe.

Yummy! I have tried increasing the number of bananas for extra flavour but this didn't make much difference to the taste and adversely affected the consistency. If any is left, this loaf is great toasted.

Some time ago, I reviewed Hazel Stapleton's book Looking back with ME. This was orginally privately published but has now been attractively republished by Day One Publications.  

Not infrequently, I am asked about starting home education and resources. Now, into our ninth year, we use a mixture to suit the children's needs and interests. I hope to post about the resources for this coming year very soon. However, there hasn't been a UK Christian curriculum divided by key stages and looking toward UK exams. Just recently, I found out about Valley Christian School Online which plans to fill this gap. I haven't used the resources as yet but am in the process of signing up to use some of the Key Stage 2 materials. It is looking very promising and if all goes well, I plan to update about this.

Farmhouse Schoolhouse is a US blog and Instagram feed and one of my favourites. There is a new post about resources on the blog. I like the disclaimer that the post is to give ideas rather than something to copy. The part about not buying cheap crayons resonated. We have found that, here in the UK, Straedtler pencils and Berol felt tip pens last far longer than cheaper alternatives. 

We are looking forward to the start of the new learning year and hope to be having a not back to school picnic with our home education group to celebrate! Do you have plans to mark this time of year?

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Feeding a Big Family

We currently have all eight family members living here. This is a delight in many ways and something to be enjoyed, particularly, as I doubt that this will continue for long as two of our children are now adults.

The other side of a large family are the food bills. I'm glad about zero inflation as my food bills are rising. There are websites around which talk about reducing food expenditure but my current plan is to try to stabilise the amount we spend whilst realising that active people will eat a fair amount.

So some thoughts on managing food expense.

• If you have children and a garden, it really is worth planting fruit trees. The trees will have several years when their yield will be minimal but eventually, they will start to give reasonable quantities. Our eating apple trees have come into their own this year. 

• Buy in bulk. Buy one, get one free offers can work well for larger families. Potatoes are much cheaper in 20kg sacks. These aren't usually available from supermarkets but 7.5kg sacks can be found which are, again, cheaper than buying in smaller quantities.

• Don't waste food. I have found it useful to monitor where waste occurs. For us, this tends to be overfilling plates for younger and older members of the family. It is better to give smaller portions and allow second helpings than to waste food.

• Herbs and salad grow easily and cheaply. Many of my herbs grow on the kitchen window or close to the back door.

• Berries and currants are expensive to buy but cheap to grow. Currant bushes take a few years to be established so worth planting while children are younger and before they have adult size appetites.

•  Left overs can be used for lunches/when someone needs to eat late/dislikes what is on offer. It is, generally, over optimistic to hope to make a main meal from left overs. Stories about chickens stretching over three main meals don't quite work in a family of eight. The bones do, however, make great stock for a substantial soup.

• Pulses make meat go further and provide extra protein. Tins of beans/chick peas frequently go on offer. Alternatively, dried pulses are cheap but need more preparation.

• It isn't easy to cook double meals when large saucepans or casseroles are full making one meal but it is worth, occasionally, spending the time to make an extra. Pastry cases and casserole bases (meat not added) freeze well and are useful to keep for busy days.

Please add further thoughts.

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Cookie presents

Last year, we made bath bombs on a semi-industrial scale.

This year, we wanted to make something different but again something that was relatively easy to make. We decided to make up jars filled with mixture which could easily be transformed into cookies.

We chose a favourite recipe, Delia Smith's Chocolate Chip Ginger Nuts, and soon realised that we needed to double up the recipe to fill the jars.

Method:

1 litre Kilner jar

Dry ingredients for favourite cookie recipe: we used a funnel to insert everything apart from the chopped chocolate.

Write out instructions for recipe. Note the instructions had to be altered to state that wet ingredients need to be added. In our case, golden syrup and butter. Younger Daughter wrote out the first set of instructions but we plan for her to type out another set that can just be printed off. I don't see the educational or other value of writing out the same instructions multiple times!

We have listed the ingredients in case of allergies and these need to be wrapped carefully as the jar is glass. Overall, though we are pleased with how these look.


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5 days of learning about England: the food

Welcome  back to this five day series about England.

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: History resources

Today, I'm writing about food. My only qualifications are that I'm English and I like food.

Like most national food, English food depends on what is available. So over to some famous foods!

Fish and chips
Almost every town has a chippie and most chippies don't just sell fish and chips but add pies and sausages as well. Fish and chips tend to be one of the cheapest meals bought out. Many people only buy chips which, of course, reduces the price!

The fish is usually caught in the North Sea. Cod is the most common but coley and haddock are almost always sold too. Traditionally,the fish is deep fried in batter.

Can fish and chips be made at home? Yes, of course although I have to admit that I've never made proper fish and chips. I'm a bit scared of deep fat frying having seen a saucepan catch fire as a child. Probably a deep fat fryer is the way to go but then it might encourage us to have fish and chips far too often. Anyway, this is a link to a fish and chip recipe.

Scones
These are easy to make at home. This recipe is similar to the one that I use. Traditionally eaten with clotted cream, they are also yummy with butter and jam. They don't keep well so eat soon.

There is debate about whether they are pronounced with a long or short o. This is partly a regional issue. My contribution to the debate is that the n is followed by a silent e so the o should be long!

Christmas pudding
At Christmas, we eat a heavy fruit boiled pudding for dessert. This is my version of Christmas pud.

Jacket potatoes
These aren't classical English fare but something that is eaten often here and less often elsewhere. Jacket potatoes are so easy and make a great base to a meal with salad, cheese and any left over meat or fish. To cook, clean one largish potato per person and pierce the skin three or four times with a fork. Place in the oven at 180C and cook for about an hour until soft. The cooking time obviously depends on the size of the potato! These are ideal for cooking when the oven is on for some other reason.

Simnel cake
This is a traditional Easter cake. It is a fruit cake cooked with marzipan in the middle and topped with a layer of uncooked marzipan. Traditionally, the top has eleven balls of marzipan on top of the flat layer. These are said to represent the number of the apostles after Judas had left.
This is the recipe that I use:
Ingredients:
8oz (225g) plain flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
6oz (180g) brown sugar
5oz (140g) margarine
3 eggs
2 tablespoonfuls milk
3/4 lb(340g) sultanas
3/4lb (340g)mixed dried fruit (can be substituted with other types of dried fruit to taste)
1lb (450g) marzipan
small amount apricot jam
Method
Prepare an 8" cake tin. Line the base.
Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the other ingredients up to and including the milk.
Mix well with a wooden spoon until well combined.
Add the fruit and mix.
Place half the mixture in the cake tin.
Divide the marzipan into thirds. Roll out one third to just less than the size of the cake tin. Place this marzipan on top of the first half of the mixture.

Place the remaining half of the mixture on top of the marzipan.
Cook at 150C (300F/gas mark 2) for two and half hours to three hours. Cover with foil after the first hour. When cooked a skewer placed in the upper part of the cake will come out clean.
Cool.
Roll the second third of marzipan to a circle the size of the cake.
When the cake is cold, turn upside down so the top is flat. Cover with a thin layer of apricot jam to help the marzipan to stick to the cake. Place the circle of marzipan on top of the cake. 
Use the remaining marzipan to make eleven balls to decorate the top of the cake.

Enjoy!

Everything else
In a multi-cultural society, many of us eat a mixture. Our menus will have traditional English, Italian, French and Indian food on a regular basis.

What is your favourite English food?


Some of my fellow Schoolhouse Crew members are also taking part in the 5 days blog hop, this week. Do visit these blogs
Ellen @ Grace Tells Another Story ~ Making Homeschooling Fun!
Marcy @ Ben and Me ~ Helping Children in Uganda
Wendy @ Simplicity Breeds Happiness -- International Meals
Melanie @ FinchNWren ~ Finchnwren's Fabulous Family Movies
Sarah  @ Delivering Grace ~  learning about England
Victoria @ Homemaking with Heart ~  Connecting with the Creator through Nature Study
Joanie @ Simple Living Mama ~ 5 Days of Charlotte Mason Preschool
Gwen @ Tolivers to Texas ~ A Happy, Peaceful Home
Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses ~ Homeschooling 4 FREE resources
or click on the banner for even more topics.



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After Christmas soups

Winter days call for soup. The remains of the Christmas chicken or turkey makes excellent stock. Making stock in the slow cooker is surprisingly easy.

We ended up preparing more parsnips than we ate on Christmas Day. This recipe from Delia Smith is a tasty way of using up excess parsnip. The first time that I made this, I didn't think that I would enjoy the combination of parsnip and apple but was pleasantly surprised.

Years ago, I borrowed a library book about cooking for older people on their own. One of the recipes was for Stilton and Brussel sprout soup. This has become a favourite, for those of us know love sprouts, although with our own tweaks and in larger quantities. This is my recipe but do realise that I don't weigh ingredients for soups precisely! If you like sprouts then this is for you!

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon of sunflower oil
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
Brussel sprouts about 300g of peeled and halved sprouts, alternatively use frozen spouts
1 litre chicken or turkey stock
pinch of nutmeg
sage to taste
pepper
Stilton or other blue cheese about 100g

Method
Peel and chop the onion. Soften the onion in the sunflower oil until just browned.
Add the crushed clove of garlic and the sprouts. Cook for 1 minute.
Add the stock and seasoning. Bring to boiling point and then simmer until the sprouts are just soft.
Puree.
Add the crumbled Stilton and serve.

This serves 4.

Organising your life: meals

Welcome back to this five day series organised by Caroline at the Joyful Keeper. This is all about organising life. I'm a learner at this and am looking forward to learning from the other ladies who are posting. Some of these posts will be ideas that have worked well for me and others are more about where I would like to be! I will try to be clear about what has definitely worked and what is just aspirational.

The topics are

• spiritual life
• laundry
• chores
• meals
• home-schooling

Today, we are thinking about organising meals.

Anyway, a few basics.

We eat three meals a day and in terms of planning, we try to have these are roughly the same time each day. 

We have family devotions after one meal. This has become more challenging as our household has grown. For years, we had family devotions at breakfast time but then we became a three generational family. 7.30 breakfast wasn't suitable for everyone. So, family devotions has moved usually to after the evening meal when it is more likely that we will all be at the meal. I'm not sure that this is a change that I like but breakfast has become more fragmented over the years and this is what seems to work for us.

We eat lunch and dinner together, well, everyone who is at home. This means that numbers do vary from five to ten or more when we have visitors.

Hospitality is a Biblical command but doesn't means that visitors can't share everyday food with us. Of course, we like to make special meals but often one of the  teenagers will want an extra friend to stay to a meal. This is a time to say "yes" even if it means ecking out the meal with extra beans and veg.

Planning
I find menu planning useful mainly because otherwise I have a habit of only buying enough food for half a week. So, there is a plan with days of the week and main meal items against each day. I rarely, cook in the order set on the list but it is useful to know that we do have enough food.

Some days do need specific meals. I always cook food for the Lord's Day on Saturday. This is almost always a casserole with baked potatoes which can go in the oven while we are at church.

Days with outings or home education group meetings end much better if there is food at home in the slow cooker. 

What is on the menu?
I don't think that our meals are especially exciting but since I like new ideas, it seems fair to share some of our basics. Please feel free to comment with more ideas.

• casserole
• curry-sometimes I make my own but the curries in jars are tasty with chick peas especially if they are cooked for longer in the slow cooker
• pasta and tomato sauce. A little bacon or fish can be added to the sauce.
• Roast meat
• baked potatoes, ham and salad. New potatoes can be substituted for the baked.
• chicken Caesar salad.
• home made pizza
• fish/ham plus potatoes and vegetables
• chille con carne
• spaghetti bolonaise
• jerk chicken

We've recently removed several items from the list, on health grounds, but they are cheap and cheerful! These are

• quiche
• homity pie
• sausages-well, some family members still get these sometimes.
• fish and chips-again, some people do have these sometimes or there would be a revolt!  I do use oven cooked fish and chips. The other family members have fish cooked in the oven and boiled potatoes.
• vegetable pie

Dessert

We are trying to have mainly fruit for dessert and this is certainly easy. We also eat 

• yogurt
• ice cream
• fruit crumbles
• fruit cobblers

Lunches

• home made soup-this is surprisingly quick, easy and cheap. Favourites are lentil, tomato, leek and potato and broccoli/sprout and stilton.
• pitta and humus
• boiled egg
• sardines on toast
• scrambled egg
• bread rolls and ham/cheese
• English muffins

The BBC Good Food website is useful for new ideas. The healthy section is particularly useful.

This blog hop has been arranged by Caroline of the Joyful Keeper.

Please join us. You can comment on any of the blogs or share posts on Caroline's linky at Joyful Keeper.

Blackberry jelly

Autumn is coming and every day there are more blackberries ripe.

  I've been picking them daily and storing them in the freezer. I used a few of these plus today's picking to make this jelly. This made a very small batch and it would have been better to at least double the quantities.

There are three ingredients:

1 1/2lb blackberries
1/2lb cooking apples
sugar-quantity later!

Method
Put the blackberries in a pan, with the cored and roughly chopped but not peeled apples.
Add just enough water to cover the blackberries and cook until the apples and blackberries are "collapsed".
Put the mixture into a jelly bag (ideally) although I just used a sieve. Muslin would do instead of a formal jelly bag. A sieve will keep out the pips but won't give such a smooth, clear texture. Next time, I will probably use muslin inside the sieve. I'm not quite sure why I didn't today.

Measure the volume of the clear liquid.
Place the liquid in a saucepan and add granulated sugar in a ratio of 1 lb sugar for 1 pint of juice. Sorry, but I'm not sure there is a simple metric ratio.
Stir over a gentle heat until the sugar is dissolved then bring to the boil. Boil for 8 minutes and then test for a set.

I put a small amount on a cold saucer. If the jelly has set, it's surface will ripple when pushed with a finger.
I didn't add pectin or lemon juice and worried that this wouldn't set. No fear, this jelly formed a very solid set after 10 minutes hence saying to boil for only 8 minutes before checking. It is probably the apples which help the set as they are full of pectin. Some commercially sold pectin is made from apples. If apples are not added, another setting agent may be needed.

Pot and seal.
Store in a cool place.

This made a 1lb pot and a ramekin dish of jelly. The batch cost 73p as the blackberries and cooking apples were free.

Friendship and encouragement

These have been a good couple of days.

My friend, Ellen, sent  me the starter for Herman the German friendship cake. This is a sour dough cake and amazingly, is currently happily bubbling in my kitchen. It has sparked some discussion about from where the yeast appears and spontaneous generation, or rather lack of spontaneous generation.
The idea is that the cake matures and is fed over 10 days. At day 9, the mixture is divided into 4. One portion is cooked and the others can be given to friends as a starter for another round of the cake.

Herman covered in his bowl

The bubbling mixture

If I manage not to kill Herman in the next 8 days, then I shall be looking around for volunteers to take some starter. This is a fascinating cake and might get me working on sourdough bread again.

Today, we went to a Christian home educators' sports day. There were almost 90 children. This was such an encouragement. Sometimes, it is possible to feel quite alone as a home educator. Objectively, there are loads of us, home educators, but sometimes, it seems that almost everyone else has children in school. What does it matter to me that other believers have different guidance,for their children? Nothing but still it was a real encouragement to talk to other Christian home educators and especially those who are further on in the home education journey.

The weather-well, fine for the races then the showers began. I can't say it bothered the children who were busy playing with friends, old and new.

10 ways to save in the kitchen

• Use the oven full. This is easiest with a fan oven but with can be done with any oven. Good choices for lower shelves in a non-fan oven are meringues, rice pudding, sliced tomatoes and cooking granola.
• Add pulses to meat dishes and use dried pulses, pre-soak, boil for 10 minutes then add to casseroles.
• Home made marmalades and jams are not cheaper than the cheapest shop bought but better. They are far less expensive than equivalent quality products.
• Make your own stock.
• Use left over vegetables in casseroles.
• Make your own bread. We calculated that our bread maker paid for itself within 100 loaves. We eat at least a loaf a day. Additionally, home made bread tastes so much better.
• Probably heresy, but value plain flour makes a fine white loaf, in the bread maker.
• Make home made soup. We had a flyer through, this week, advertising soup which cost 8 times the price of our home made lentil soup. Some vegetable soups may be even less.
• Grow herbs on the windowsill.
• Don't take recipes too seriously-substitute. My children say that I am always doing this but there is no reason why sultanas can't do for currants. Don't take this too far-like with like.

Over to you. How do you save in the kitchen?

Pear and ginger crumble

This is a easy dessert which can be prepared ahead and also freezes well.

Ingredients
Pears
Ground ginger
Muscavado sugar
Plain flour
Butter/margarine
Oats

Method
Peel and slice pears.

Add ground ginger and brown sugar to taste-most pears are naturally fairly sweet.

If the pears are hard, cover and heat at 150C/350F until soft. This is not necessary for soft pears or if you like a little bite to them.

Make the topping. I'm really bad at measuring and make this entirely by eye, however,I usually use about 1 oz butter/margarine per person.

Mix the fat with oats and flour until it has the consistency of gooey breadcrumbs. I think the secret of success is to be generous with the oats and mean with the flour. Use approximately twice the weight of oats/flour to that of fat. My preference is that at least half of the dry mixture is oats.

Add sugar to taste.

Add topping to fruit and cook at 180C/400F for 20minutes.

Enjoy!

Spending time with older children-this week

This is about three activities that Middle Son and I have done together this week.

Building Bonfires
We had to ban magnifying glasses and leaves last summer-the ground was getting dry and younger siblings were getting too interested.
When I was a child, we had frequent bonfires in the garden but in this day of recycling and composting, this doesn't seem to happen any more. Middle Son loves the idea of a bonfire so, this week, we have been building one. We had surprisingly little suitable wood but have made a start-now I need to do some more pruning to make the bonfire a reasonable size to light.

Cycling
This really is something that we should do more often. No pictures because I was on my bike but good to get out and exercise.

Recipe innovation
To balance the cycle ride, Middle Son made his own recipe for oven "fried" potatoes. He sliced but didn't peel, a potato per person, sprinkled with herbs

and cooked at 200C in a baking tray with a tablespoonful of oil. They were good!

There are more ideas for spending time with older children here.

This is linked to the Linky Party at Living Life Intentionally.

Apple recipe compendium part 2

I meant to put this up a while ago but after about three months of apple picking, processing and desperately pressing bags of apples on friends, I took a bit of a break from thinking about apples. Now it is apple time again.

This is the second part of my list of apple recipes. I decided to take out the cakes as my list wasn't particularly long and there are plenty to be found. A couple of friends have told me about the amazing Apple recipe round up at The Pink Whisk. Definitely worth a look-I'm looking forward to making apple lemon curd. This isn't a comprehensive list of the dessert recipes that we use-just a few favourites.

Desserts 
Apple pie with shortcrust pastry.
 Do remember to read How to make an apple pie and see the world with your children when you make this.

Apple pie with filo pastry
 I use ready made pastry. Put two pieces of filo pastry crosswise in bowl, drizzle over melted butter, add two more pieces of filo pastry and repeat butter, fill with peeled, chopped apple, add sugar and cinnamon to taste, cover with two more pieces of filo pastry. Take the pastry ends and roughly cover the apple. Drizzle with more melted butter. Cook at 200C/400F for 25 minutes.

Apple turnover
basically a parcel of puff pastry filled with peeled, chopped apple, sultanas, sugar and cinnamon. Glaze with milk or egg and cook at 200C/400F until the top is browned.

Apple cobbler

Christmas pudding

Baked apples
Ingredients
Apples-one per person
Dried fruit
Brown sugar
Mixed spice
Method
Core but do not peel apples.
Stuff the core space with dried fruit and a little sugar. Note that the dried fruit is sweet so only a small amount of sugar is needed.Sprinkle with mixed spice. Cook at 180C/350F for 25 minutes until the apple pulp is soft. Serve with custard.

Spending time with older children-exploring breadmaking

Middle Son doesn't always appreciate our breadmaker bread so we asked him to make his own.

He used the BBC white loaf recipe but added garlic to the butter and chopped spring onions to the flour. The top was sprinkled with mixed herbs.

The result was yummy-this is definitely a keeper. We need to add a couple of tweaks-cook for a little longer and perhaps add fewer herbs but I really hope that he carries on with his artisan bread making experiments.

Spending time with older children-menu planning

This activity is popular here and is ideal for children aged 8-13.

Middle son especially enjoys this. He gets to write the main meal menu for a week. Once the menu is planned, he can go to an online supermarket and fill up my basket. Once he has done this, I check over everything, discuss changes and pay.

We usually shop with an online supermarket and chose the same type of time delivery slot as usual.

The rules are

• has to be in budget
• has to be sufficient fruit and vegetables so that everyone can have 5-a-Day
• Has to involve usual staples-eggs, milk, butter, margarine etc

Usually the menu has to be rewritten to keep in budget. The children do this before they show me the finished result. 

I may have to point out that it is difficult to feed eight people on one pizza even if it comes from a special company or that buying three bananas for the week is on the inadequate side.

What transpires is a compromise. I allow less made from scratch, low in saturated fat food and Middle Son gets more of his delights.

 It is wise to write this several days before shopping day in order to make sure that in the excitement no one has forgotten to order washing up liquid or some other vital that is about to run out. 

The benefits of this are that

• Someone else plans the meals for a week
• Middle Son gets a realistic idea about shopping for a family and budgetary constraints
• I save time in planning and ordering and have a more discussion based role
• The children are extra keen to cook during their menu week.
• An opportunity to talk about what might make up a healthy diet even if one week's diet is different from usual.