Is Tripe Yummy?

This year we have been using an animal science curricula from schoolhouseteachers.com.

With this curricula each week is a new topic. This week topic is: cows/beef.

One of the activities for this topic was to go to the grocery store and find various beef products  and determine what part of the cow they came from.

I, knowing this, decided to take Web-Princess to an local ethnic store. A store that I knew would sell more "exotic" cuts of meat then what she's use to seeing at our typical store.  I expected to see beef tongue, beef heart, beef liver along with the regular cuts we are use to like steaks, hamburger, roast, etc.  

What I did not expect was to see an item called beef tripe.  I did not know what beef tripe was so I took out my phone and googled it right there.  Tripe = the editable lining of the stomach.  I had no idea that the lining was editable.  Web-princess, who won't touch fish, was begging for me to buy some so she can try it!  It wasn't that pricey, but honestly I'm clueless on how to cook it.

Thankfully some of my facebook friends were able to direct me to an recipe that I could try. I pretty much followed this recipe -- I just omitted the mint added noodles and a little bit more water. Over all the dish when done looked good, smelled good, and over all taste was fine. We just couldn't get over the texture issue of the tripe.  It was just very spongy and chewy.  -- the best way I can describe it is chewing on a kitchen sponge -- it was purely a texture issue.

Well at texture issue for Web-princess and I.  We could have eaten the rest of the food in the dish and just avoid the tripe, but my husband wouldn't even touch it. He flat out refused to try it. Superstar, my son, tried -- but he won't eat spaghetti and this was to much like that so he refused to eat too. -- that's why step 4 picture is Italian beef with fries. We decided to order food!

Step 1 is the tripe in a pot of water. This is what my daughter saw in the store and said, "Mom, lets try it!"

Step 2 is the browning of onions and bacon.

Step 3 is the finished dish.

Step 4 is the food we ordered seeing the dish turned out to a failure.

Have you tried tripe? or anything else that would be exotic to you?  Tell me about it!

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Baking Bread

Baking Bread....Yum, Yum 

Yesterday, on my Facebook page I mentioned how my daughter wanted to make bread, because she loves bread, but after looking over the recipe decided not to do it and ask that I help her.  I agreed I would help her this morning.

Lisa from Chickens, Bunnies and Homeschool saw my Facebook post and was kind enough to share here bread recipe with us.

We this morning followed her recipe and were happy with the results. Thanks Lisa for helping us out!

Check Lisa's recipe out! One Hour Bread Rolls 

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Cooking 101: Chicken

Many homeschoolers, like myself, consider cooking, cleaning, housekeeping apart of schooling, but more importantly life skills.  I don't care if it's boy or girl my kids will know basic housekeeping and cooking skills.

Today I had my daughter, 13, sharpen up on her cooking skills by prepping the chicken for tonight's dinner. It went something like this after I gave her some basic instructions and left her to be.

Daughter: Do we still have some surgical gloves?
Me: Why do you need surgical gloves?
Daughter: I'm not sticking my bare hands up a chicken butt! Gross!

I then told her where to find the gloves and went about my business and let her be. After a little while I get....  "Mom, should I massage the chicken before putting seasoning on it?"

I already laughing over the whole glove thing just sighed and told her if she wanted to that's fine. Are your kids doing any cooking yet? Do they not want to touch raw meat? How is teaching them life skills going?


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Digging, Reading, Baking, History.....

Thankfully Superstar is not sick and even though today is Martin Luther King Day we did school work today. This morning started off rough. Superstar had a bit of an attiude about math. He picked it as is first subject but started to cry over it because it was division. He really loaths division and if he had his way not do any.

I did allow him to pick a different subject to start with so after some science, history, and reading he decided to tackle those division problems. Thankfully the rest of the day for him went well, school was done for him by noon, and he got to enjoy the rest of his afternoon doing other activities.

Seeing I've split the kids up Superstar in the morning and Web-princess in the afternoon, Superstar is free to do other activities in the afternoon. He spent his time digging for dinosaurs bones (a kit he got for Christmas) and making corn bread to go with tonight's dinner.

He did these activities while Web-princess did some reading with the McGuffey reader and online tutor. I've only used the online tutor videos for two days now. I'm not sure if that's the direction I want to go to completely, but so far Web-princess does enjoy it.  We've had the readers for a while now and have been using them. The tutor was something a friend of mine told me about. I've had the link for a while now and just started to use it. Web-princess also read some of her history text book while Superstar was busy being a baker!

Oh and if you use currclick and have any times in your wishlist go check them out. I got an email from currclick today saying that some of my items on my wishlist were on sale. One item on my wish list was $25 dollars but it was mark down to $2. So you know I got that today. I'll have to look it over more closely now that I have it, but I'm thinking I can use it for some American History in the near future.

Green Eggs & Ham

Little Man, my nephew, is going to be here for a few more days then he goes back to my mom's for her 2 months with him. Note For Newer Readers: My sister is serving in Iraq so her son, whose 3, has been living with us for some of the time and living with my mom for some of the time. It's on a 2 months rotation. She's been gone since Christmas 2010 and we hope she'll be home by this coming Christmas.

Seeing he's going back soon one of the many things the kids wanted us to do before he went back was to have green eggs and ham for dinner. So that's what I made tonight! To make the eggs green I added food coloring and spinach. Don't they look YUMMY?

Our Green Egg and Ham dinner!

It's okay if you say NO they don't look yummy, because honestly I didn't even want to eat them at first! However, I sucked it up and ate. Really they didn't taste bad it was just getting pass the visual.  Little Man had a hard time getting pass the visual too. He begged me to make them and now that I had he didn't want to eat!  So what did we do? Well we played the story for him. I found a clip on Youtube and played it!

Boy did that make a difference! Playing this clip 4 times in a row sure changed my little nephews tune about eating the green eggs and ham! Now that dinner is over he's chanting the story. I would not eat them here or there, not in car, not anywhere....

Not only did Little Man ate his meal but he covered his eyes just like the guy in the movie!! LOL

Thankful for New Stove!!

I got a new stove tonight (thanks to my step father).  A few weeks ago we were down at their house and made mention how I needed a new stove. Mine was falling apart. My step dad said that I should have spoken up and let him know these things because he has the gift of find those kind of things for UNBELIEVABLE prices!  How unbelievable? How does a Jackson or less sound? I don't know where or how he comes across these things but he can and does! We are incredibly thankful!!!

This is my OLD STOVE!!!

The arrows are trying to show how the top was pulling way from the side. The piece circle laying on top is the side. As they were pulling the stove out of the house it totally fell off! I had a feeling it would totally fall apart, but I was hoping and praying that it would hold out until we could get a new one. We were planning on getting one from the store until my step-Dad told me about his unbelievable way of finding incredible deals!

This is my NEW stove!!

Soon, I'll be able to have my Mom and step-Dad up for my salmon and white bean soup!!!! This will be my way of saying thanks for finding such and awesome stove!!!!  Tomorrow, I will have some friendship bread to bake in the oven!!!! Very awesome.... I'm sincerely thankful, not only for the stove but for the time they put in bringing it and installing it.

Not only did they gift us with a stove today, but they gift us with a front door screen!  It's so cool to be able to sit here and have the door open and not worry about bugs coming in :) Thanks :)

How To Build A Solar Oven

Sometimes it's interesting what you can find via google! I came across how to build a solar oven a few weeks ago. I would give a link, but I couldn't find the original source I seen and after several hours of looking, we just decided to wing it from what I could remember. We knew we basically needed a box inside a box, the void between the boxes filled with shredded paper, and lots of aluminum foil!. The "original" designed I seen a few weeks ago had a funnel coming out of it. Seeing I couldn't remember exactly how to do that part, we just lined some poster paper with foil.

Supplies:

• 2 large boxes (one must fit inside another)
• aluminium foil
• shredded paper
• 2 large pieces of poster paper
• turkey size oven bag
• oven themometer
• black pot to "cook" food in
• several pieces of black construction paper
• non toxic tape and non toxic glue

So the basic design is a box inside the box. The interior box is completely lined with aluminum foil. We used glue and tape to help secure the aluminum foil to the box. After it was completely lined with aluminum foil we placed black construction paper over the aluminum foil on the bottom of the interior box.  The void in between the interior box and the outer box was filled with shredded paper.  Be sure to place a inch or so of shredded paper in the bottom of the outer box, before placing the interior box inside it.

We then lined poster paper with aluminium foil. Again just like with the box we secured the foil to the poster paper with the aid of glue and tape.

The pieces together look something like this:

You'll notice that when we lined the interior box we made it go over the shredded paper and taped it to the outer box. You should also note the box under it that is helping to angle the box to face the sun. You want to angle in such a way that there is NO shadow inside the box where your pot will sit.

After the oven is made you just put a small oven safe pot (black or dark color is best) inside a oven bag. The bagged pot goes into the "oven". We also placed a oven thermometer inside the oven bag on the lid of the roaster pan we used. This was so we could see how hot it really got. We decided to test it first, before we tried to cook anything.

Within 10-15 minutes the oven thermometer was reading 200 degrees! Not quite hot enough to do a roast , but hot enough to heat up some hot dogs.

So I removed the pan with pot holders and placed some hot dogs inside.

I didn't remove the pan completely from the oven bag. Just the lid and thermometer. We slipped the hot dogs in, place the lid and thermometer back on, and twisted tied the oven bag closed.

The kids at first decided to sit and watch the oven.

However that only lasted about 5 minutes. They realized that it was really like watching a pot boil. It was no fun! So they asked me to let them know when it was done. Once we go the oven up to 200 again we left them for about 30 minutes. I know a microwave is so much faster, but this was fun! The hot dogs came out heated. They could have been left a little longer to be a little bit more hotter, but either way the kids enjoyed their solar cooked hot dogs for dinner.

NOTES: We may not have needed all the foil on the box, but in the original I seen the funnel didn't go all the way into the box. We just did that way because we used the poster paper. The poster paper on it's own wasn't strong enough to stay up. So we had to stick it into the box to help give it strength. The kids would also like to thank Oma and Grandpa for giving us the boxes we needed to to this project.

So this was our solar oven. Solar oven 1.0! LOL! We are are trying to figure out how to get it hotter! So there might be solar oven 2.0 in the future! One thing we got the oven out there at 4 in the afternoon. So we also wonder if it will be hotter if it was noon time! We also wonder what tweaks we can do to get it hotter.

How To Make Elephant Bread?

How to Make Elephant Bread is a children book that Superstar read today. As result of this book we ate "snow on the roof" for dessert tonight.

It was a very good dessert I might add, perhaps a little cold for the weather we are having. "Snow on the roof" is one of those things that would be better served on a hot summer day! How to Make Elephant Bread, in my opinion, is a cross between a child's storybook and cookbook. Although none of the recipes required cooking! As a matter fact they all are something that my kids being 7 and 8 can do on their own. As matter of fact they are the ones that made tonight's dessert. (All by themselves I might add)

As for what is needed, if you have gram crackers, jam (or jelly), peanuts, peanut butter, raisins, applesauce, carrots, lunch meat, cheese, OJ, pineapple juice, tomato juice, carrots, celery, vanilla ice cream, and lettuce, then you can make ALMOST everything in the book.

Tonight's dessert we needed vanilla ice cream, gram crackers, and jam. It was yummy!! Tomorrow for snack we are going to make the one that requires applesauce, peanuts, and raisins. (I just forget what the book called it right now) Again, that will be something that Superstar and Web-princess can make on their own.

If you haven't heard of How to make Elephant Bread then please run to your local public library and check it out!! I'm sure if your kids are like mine, they will be happy that you did!!! Not all but most of the recipes are just made with "healthy food": veggies and fruits, which might tie in with the Subway Kits.

Macaroni noodles

Okay so what’s wrong with Macaroni noodles? My DH won’t eat them! He’ll eat ANY noodle there is BUT macaroni! You would think that after cooking for him for the last 10 years I would understand, but I don’t!! I mean after all are they all made with the same ingredients the just are shaped different. Right?? Please tell me that’s right! LOL

We’ve been married for almost 9 years (it will be 9 years later this month). We DID NOT live together prior to marriage. I just was over at his house every day and would cook us dinner, eat, visit and would leave for the night. I couldn’t stand the knowledge that for dinner he had a box of stove top stuffing! Yep, before I was in the picture dinner consist of a whole box of stuffing. Nothing else, but stuffing! Ironically if I don’t cook dinner to this day, he will revert to his “bachelor” days and will serve the kids a box of stuffing for dinner! Or any other side things like that and just that!

So I try hard to cook even when I feeling under the weather, cause I can’t stand the knowledge that my kids at stuffing for dinner and only stuffing! LOL I can’t handle that! The kids are healthy as pictures of them can clearly show, so one meal of stuffing shouldn’t be an issue. I just feel bad!

Luckily I haven’t been under the weather lately, but seeing Easter just passed all of these memories are flooding my mind. Even though our Anniversary isn’t until the end of the month Easter always bring back those memories pre-marriage, etc. This is because we got married the Saturday after Easter. (Easter was “late” that year LOL)