Soup, Salad, Sorbet

We started what I hope will be a new tradition this week. Soup, salad and sorbet night. Each child gets to choose one of the three and we rotate who chooses what. We got off to an uneven start. Poor Clem has been out of commission for a week. Fever, pain, no appetite, and the insult added to the injury: long bouts of hiccups.

So Ev chose all three this week. I tried to give Greta choice of sorbet, but she enthusiastically agreed to the raspberry sorbet Ev had chosen.

I love how kids surprise you when you let them choose. On the menu: Onion panade (similar to French Onion Soup) and smoked trout and avocado salad. They've surprised me before by choosing quail eggs and alligator.

What food choices have your kids surprised you with?

Onion Panade and Avocado and Smoked Trout Salad from Chez Panisse Vegetables (my favorite cookbook). Look up the vegetable you have in alphabetical order and find a myriad of ways to cook it, some simple and elegant, some complex.

Raspberry Sherbet from Chez Panisse Desserts

Smorgasbord

The other morning I set out an oatmeal bar. I had new chewy quick cooking steel cut oats and I thought I'd entice the kids across the bridge to this somewhat new food.

There was a little pitcher of cream, a jar of cinnamon, and bowls of nuts and brown sugar. And bananas and strawberries.

Greta was thrilled. I love how she holds the pitcher by the bottom and pours out the side.


Greta put brown sugar and cream and cinnamon on her oatmeal. She said "steel chopped oats" were her favorite. She watched as my mom and I put nuts and bananas and strawberries on our oatmeal. After a while she decided to try the strawberries.

This morning she wanted the same thing. In a rush, I put out the cream in the carton instead of a pitcher. But it would not do. And I accidentally peeled my banana from the bottom. I laughed at myself but Greta couldn't understand what was funny. I realized how ingrained even simple acts are. Why should there be just one way to peel a banana?

Today she forgot all about the brown sugar and had bananas, strawberries, cream and cinnamon.

This is what homeschooling feels like when things are going well. You lay out the smorgasbord for kids and they choose what appeals to them. Sometimes they go for what they know they like. Sometimes they try something new. Sometimes they grab it at an angle you never would have expected and unpeal it in a new way that shows you you've been stuck in your thinking. And they love it because it is their own discovery and invention.

Treasure Hunt

The stars aligned and told us it was time to collect mushrooms and make spore prints. On our backyard hunt we found more treasures than we anticipated. Two banana slugs, deer vertebrae, and Ev's find: a sodden $20 bill.

Later a slender salamander turned up beneath a rock in the side yard. He was playing dead but when I gently turned him into my other hand to look at his belly he quick turned over. He did it so fast that we couldn't see him turn. I'd flip him from hand to hand but he was always right side up and unmoving as a stick. We laughed and laughed and Evelyn called him a double sided salamander.

Greta cut the stems off the mushrooms and set them on a piece of paper. We left them over the weekend. Only two made good prints. A third made a cream print on white paper, visible only in the right light. I'm glad I took pictures as Greta, in an attempt to make notecards, chopped them all into tiny bits with her scissors. We meant to bury the bits in the yard to plant more mushrooms, but the bits have vanished. Greta said she dreamed that mushrooms were growing on the walls of our house.

I hope that particular dream does not come true.

Driving Miss Greta

Lately Greta has been trying to sort out her options for the future. Can she grow up to be a fairy? A queen?

It reminded me of a favorite family story.

My brother, when he was about Greta's age, announced to my sister and me (we were Ev and Clem's ages), that when he grew up he was going to be a fire truck.

In the photo at right you can see us. My brother on our grandma's lap. I'm peeking out from behind my sister's leg.

Of course, as big sisters our job (as we saw it) was to know more than he did, and let him know it often.

"You can't be a fire truck," we started to explain. We had outgrown fantasy and were rock sure that people could not grow up to be vehicles.

He cut us off, playing his trump card, "I can, too! Mom says I can be anything I want to be."

So Greta and I were driving and talking about her options. She and I spend a lot of time in the car. Driving her to classes. Driving to pick up Ev and Clem.

This time she is asking about princesses and fairies and angels. Are they real? What are her chances of being one? She was really disappointed to hear that the U.S. doesn't have a queen.

I said, "But you could be president!"

"But I want to be a mother!"

"You could be a mother and president," I say. "Just like I'm a mother and a writer."

"And a taxi!" she says.

I cracked up. How did she figure that out? Or did she overhear me complaining about all the driving?

My brother did not grow up to be a fire truck. But my sister and I were wrong. Because hey, I grew up to be a taxi.

Child of the Forest

A lot of rain has yielded a lot of mushrooms in the woods.

We found this Amanita on a recent hike.

This morning Greta warned us that she was a poisonous mushroom and not to touch her.

She reminded me of a couple favorite books.