~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
Every Thursday, here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
{pretty}
Over here it’s that kind of busy where suddenly the garden does start throwing veggies at you, you have to bake, fiddle camp is going on, you are leaving town, and it’s gloriously sunny and mild in that way that being inside feels like a violation of the rightness of the universe.
{happy}
It’s all I can do to keep things running with the kids here (they are great — the best mannered, most interested, and happiest kids in the world — twelve of them! all learning to fiddle and do some country dances), even though it has nothing to do with me. At the same time, I’m trying to dry herbs and tomatoes (I find those cherry tomatoes the best for drying — lots of meat on them without being too thick), put up some pickles and pear sauce, dig out from under cucumbers and beans, and also get things ready for my departure. (I hope to see you Peoria, Lafayette, and Carmel people! Do come say hi!)
{funny}
I decided I would try that “hack” that you keep seeing posted on Facebook and Pinterest. You know the one — “The REAL SMART way to cut tomatoes” “Must try this!” “Never go back to your old way!” “Why didn’t I think of this before?” “How stupid are you that you didn’t know this??”
These are the plates and knives (some — also a big serrated bread knife) I tried… it works, but not perfectly. But it is better than cutting the millions of cherry tomatoes out there individually!
{real}
When I try to do ten things at once, I burn something.
I burnt the pear sauce. As usual. So in the midst of the whirl of camp, making about 8 loaves of bread, cooking two dinners (one for a friend), and sterilizing jars, I had to transfer the pears to a bowl, scrape out the pot, put them back in, cook them some more, and then proceed. The good news is that they are quite deliciously caramelized like that — good as long as you keep the charred bits out!*
I know I told you we’d talk about curriculum this week, and here I’ve gone AWOL. I will try to post tomorrow about a simple method to teach writing. In the meantime, you can read my previous posts (they are in reverse order, of course) about the subject in general of teaching your children to write; that is, to express their thoughts coherently and competently, and even with a voice all their own.
This is the goal of the humanities side of education.
When you are choosing a curriculum, keep your goals well in mind. If there is a simple way to achieve your goal, you do not need to invest your time, energy, and money in something complicated — unless your goal happens to be to expend time, energy, and money to produce the effect of something going on!
This is the secret of success in homeschooling.
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*I know some of you will want to know: That’s a Foley Food Mill. (You can often find them in thrift shops and yard sales.) It works great for apple and pear sauce when you have so much fruit that you don’t want to be bothered cutting, coring, and peeling each one individually. (I guess I’m all about efficiency these days!) Yes, your sauce won’t be chunky. But my pears are fairly small. If I tried all that, I’d have nothing left! This way you just throw the fruit in the pot, cook it up (trying not to scorch it!) and the mill separates the bad from the good. You can also make tomato sauce with it. And children enjoy working it! Alas, I have none at the moment, so I worked it myself. Grandchildren, hurry up!
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Now I’m going to have to try that tomato trick! Because even when I do slice tomatoes by hand, they’re hardly ever even close to perfect!
We didn’t get ONE pear from our twelve trees this year. Not one. Last year we were swimming in them and enjoyed them all winter long through March! Our cold spring ruined any chance. Looks like the winter grocery bills will be a bit higher this year… Have fun at fiddle camp and looking forward to your advice on writing. That subject intimidates me a bit because there are just SO many complicated programs out there. I feel like it should be much more intuitive than that.
I got my Foley food mill at a garage sale for $1. The seller said it didn’t work. (It was assembled incorrectly.)
the fiddle camp sounds awesome- we are hoping to rent a larger place so we can be hospitable like that (yes- people can come over…but even to find parking for our tiny place is next to impossible…)
I inherited my Foley food mill from my mom, and then I found another one at a garage sale for $2 this summer! I put my kids on notice that they are both operating the food mills when we make applesauce this year.
I agree, the weather is just perfect. Gives a happy hum to all my days.
Lovely, Lovely pics! They give such a warm,homey feeling of a busy-ness that is so fulfilling! :) Our garden continues to throw tomatoes at us, too! Thank you for sharing your life with us!
My table is completely full of produce at the moment so I have a busy day ahead. Thanks for the beautiful inspiration.
Oh, that bread! I really want to learn to make good crusty loaves – we go through bread like crazy here – I am so tired of spending money for sweet-ish mushy bread… But somehow I am scared of even trying, as silly as it sounds: I need to muster all my culinary courage! After all, even if I do something wrong, it won’t be the end of the world.
A food mill! I’ve seen my mother make mashed potatoes , tomato sauce and pureed soups with it – and yes, it was mostly my job :-)
It looks like one needs a very sharp knife to pull that tomato trick off – I have terrible knives: they are the only ones I trust myself with ;-)
Lovely post as always. I love these last days of summer and you capture them so well!!
If you haven’t had luck finding a Foley Food Mill at garage sales, etc., how much would you be willing to pay for a new one? I think it would be worth my while but, of course, I don’t want to pay too much.
Love the idea of fiddle camp! That has got to be so much fun.
Also, glad I’m not the only one who burns the sauce :) I do that all the time.
Well, Tamara, it depends on how many pears you need to process!
What do you like to use your dried tomatoes for? Never thought of drying them, shows my ignorance! I have a bunch of yellow cherry tomatoes that we can’t possibly get to eating..and I even have my mother-in-laws dehydrator in my basement! Now I think I know what I should be doing.
Jamie, I use them in pesto (I posted about it here: http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.org/2012/10/pesto-with-dried-tomatoes/ )
and special sauces for pasta. They are so good in salads when you give them a little soak first. There are so many recipes for dried tomatoes!
Excellent! Thanks for the suggestions!
Dear Leila,
This is my first time to your blog and I’m very happy to have found your link. I so enjoyed my visit and browse through various posts, trying to get to know you a little bit. It’s been a real pleasure.
Here’s wishing you glimpses of heaven in unexpected places…
Brenda
Those pictures make me feel hungry! Fiddle camp sounds so fun. :)
I have a Foley food mill and use it for applesauce. But I peel the apples first, because cleaning out the cooked peels so that the sauce can get through the holes drives me mad. Am I doing something wrong?
Alicia, do you have the little spring-loaded thingy that screws the blade to the pot? With the little metal piece that scrapes the outside bottom?
If you are missing that piece, that might be your trouble. Or maybe it’s upside down?
The blade attached to the handle should scrape the bottom of the pot. The thingy that screws in the bottom should scrape the underside.
At intervals, you need to reverse direction when turning the handle. This pulls the contents up and churns them around so that the peels move out of the way and you can get more of the pulp down. Sometimes I use a rubber spatula to help things along.
After a bit, stop putting in more cooked apple, reverse several times, and then dump your remainders (cooked peels, cores, stems) into the compost bin. Then begin again.
Hmmm. . .no, there’s nothing to scrape the outside bottom. The blades inside do scrape the bottom, and I do reverse direction, but it leaves pieces of peel plastered to the bottom anyway, covering the holes, of course. And I feel like I waste a ton of sauce jumbled up with the peel that does move out of the way. Maybe I’m expecting too much. Or maybe I bought a less-effective model! It’s been a few years, and I was a definite newbie when I ordered it (and still am, apparently! :-) ). I’ll have to look into the options again.
I’m jealous of your pears and homemade pear sauce. Having moved in early summer, we don’t have a garden this year, but we are working on it for next year. :)