Menu Planning

I'm trying to get more organized, and also save money, so I'm getting back into menu planning, as opposed to flying by the seat of my pants. Here are the plans for this week's dinners (items with an * are new recipes I'm trying):

Monday: Baked Potato Soup*, salad, garlic bread

Tuesday: Going out to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes for Noah's birthday

Wednesday: Chicken with Spanish Rice, broccoli

Thursday; Twice-Baked Potatoes, salad

Friday: Spaghetti, garlic bread, salad

Saturday: Ginger-and-Spice Chicken Thighs*, Roasted Garlic Potatoes*, salad

Sunday: Cheddar Chicken Chowder, cornbread

Lunches will be the usual variety: peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese, turkey sandwiches, canned soup, quesadillas, macaroni & cheese, leftover pasta with butter and parmesan, leftover soup, etc.

I'd love to find some new cookbooks with cheap, fast, and healthy recipes. Any suggestions?

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What I'm reading

I got this book through inter-library loan, and I'm glad I did! It would probably be a great book for Noah to study in high school. I should probably buy my own copy; I have found myself jotting notes and quotes on index cards as I read. Here are a couple of intriguing quotes:

"The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry." (Ralph Waldo Emerson in "The Poet")

And from Veith himself:

"And yet Christians, especially those schooled by the Reformation, would insist that in real life we are saved by a deus ex machina -- our lives are hopelessly tangled and filled with sin until God intervenes by His grace. Christ is a God let down from Heaven; the Holy Spirit does break into our lives."

Added to my "to-be-read" list as a result of this book:

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
A.N. Wilson, Gentlemen in England
Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities

And to re-read:

everything by Flannery O'Connor

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The Kind of OCD Steven wishes I had.

When I was considering the possibility that I might have OCD, about 7 years ago now, Steven basically laughed. "You can't have OCD! You're a lousy housekeeper!" was his comment, or words to that effect. I had to agree. But it turned out I did have OCD, although unfortunately for my family, not the kind of OCD that keeps everything supernaturally shipshape and organized. My psychiatrist thinks I've got ADD as well, and the combination means I worry about how everything should be, but can't seem to get it organized! :-)

Funny Blogs

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Stargazing fun

Google Image Result for http://www.kidscosmos.org/kid-stuff/graphics/jupiter-moons-1.jpg

Saturday evening, we went to a Stargazing for Everyone event at Lake Pleasant. We were running a little late, so we missed the ranger-led hike, but enjoyed fresh-grilled hamburgers and hot dogs while we watched a slide presentation about the night sky. Then we looked at various objects through high-powered telescopes. We saw Jupiter with her four largest moons, the Ring Nebula, the owl cluster, a binary star system, the Andromeda Galaxy, and more. It was lots of fun. We also found out that there will be an Orionid meteor shower tonight from after midnight to just before dawn. I'm not sure if I'll have the energy to get up and check it out, but if I do, I'll let you know!

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Hopefully Noah will remember more than this...

Funny Blogs

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I just think this is funny.

This is Noah's writing assignment on a type of fungus. He actually did do a plain, basic paragraph, but then he couldn't resist letting his creative side show.

Boy Sopranos

I admit it, I (not so secretly) dreamed that Noah would be a boy soprano in a boys' choir. He has a nice voice, and a good ear. Singing's just not really his cup of tea.  So I console myself by watching videos like this on Youtube.

Embedded Video

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Smoky Corn Chowder

I spend more time than I should hanging around on a message board for homeschoolers. I like it because the women (and a few men) are so diverse, and I get to hear opinions and experiences I might not hear from people I see regularly. And, sometimes, I get great recipes there!

Here's one I made a few weeks ago for a friend's family, to welcome their new baby. I made a double batch, and froze half. We had it tonight, with some cornbread (Trader Joe's). Mmmm. Very satisfying.

1 pkg. frozen sweet corn
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 Tbsp butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup each, chopped celery, carrot and red bell pepper (I omitted the celery, because I forgot to buy it)
1 TBsp thyme
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
3 large potatoes,peeled, cut into bite-size pieces (I actually left the peels on)
28 oz. chicken broth
1/2-3/4 cup half-and-half

Cook bacon until crisp. Remove bacon to paper towels to cook and then crumble. Melt butter in pot and and add onion, celery, carrot and pepper. Cook until tender, about 10 min. Stir in thyme, cumin, salt and pepper. Add potatoes, chicken broth, water, and corn. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer. Stir as needed. Use a blender to puree mixture for 2 minutes and then add half-and-half and remove from heat. Crumble bacon bits on top and serve with corn bread...

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So true!

Funny Blogs

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Snow in the mountains!

This dusting of snow on Agassiz Peak is the first hint of winter. Eventually, there will be enough snow for sledding and skiing! I can't wait! I am going to be much more careful when I go sledding this year; no hurtling over ramps. I'm too old for that.

Weekly Report (well, not exactly weekly, I guess)

Here's what we've been up to at The Shire Academy:

Music: Reading about and listening to Baroque composers Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach. (Noah's opinion on Bach's "Brandenburg Concertos": "That's pretty good music!")

Writing: Still working on key word outlines. Once he has the outline done, his writing is fine. It's just that doing the outline is like pulling teeth.

History: More sad tales. Slavery in the south, and the Cherokee Trail of Tears. We did watch a really good DVD from the History Channel about the Underground Railroad, which prompted a discussion about what we would have done if we had lived then. (I like to think I'd have been a station master on the underground railroad, but would I have let fear of arrest get the best of me?)

Math: Decided to try a free month's trial of the online math program, ALEKS.

Latin: Doing some review of the first three chapters.

Logic: I think the Mind Benders book has been very helpful. At first, Noah struggled with some of the deductive thinking required, but now he's doing great! He's almost done with the first book.

Science: He's still feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work required in his new junior high science class at co-op, but I think he'll be fine when he gets used to it. He's learning about the sun, the stars, the planets, etc. We're hoping to attend an outdoor stargazing event soon, hosted by a group who brings along their high-powered telescopes and expertise to share with the public. We haven't done anything like that in awhile, and we're looking forward to it.

Big news: Noah's computer class is going to be taking a field trip to the Apple Store!

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Book List

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

The Rules:
 

1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.
 

**1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
**2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
**3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
**5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

**6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
*13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
**14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
*15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
**16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
*19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
%20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
%21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
*22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
%24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
**25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
%26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
*27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
%30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
**31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
**32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
**34 Emma - Jane Austen
**35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis -
%37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (have it from the library, but haven't started it yet)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
*40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
*41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
%45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
**46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (pretty heavy propaganda)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
*50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert
%53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
**54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
**57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
*59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
%67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
*68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
*71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
*72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
**73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
*74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
%77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
*79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
*84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
*87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
%91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
%94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
%95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
*98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
**99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
**100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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Can't get this song out of my head!

Embedded Video

Noah is studying the sun in science this week. We can't get this song out of our heads. Enjoy.

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The Tucson Herpetological Society

Noah is having trouble getting his work done, since we are at the library sitting by the floor-to-ceiling windows, and there are numerous Sonoran Tiger Whiptails running around outside. They are pretty cool.

The Tucson Herpetological Society

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