Medieval Feast

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October 17, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 3 Comments

We didn’t do so well on unit celebrations for our Tapestry of Grace studies last year.

It was all new to us and honestly, I just didn’t plan them.

We planned a medieval feast as our first history unit celebration this year.

It coincided with Elizabeth’s 12th birthday. She said it was the best birthday ever. Points for mama!

We had a great unit about the middle ages, learning about knights and castles. Tori got to try archery. We read lots of books.

Thank you, Costco, for the awesome knight and princess costumes!

Alex tried on his costume and immediately wanted it off. Yeah, I can’t imagine eating in shining armor either.

Mercy, no dressing these two alike anymore! I can barely tell them apart!

I had this costume from a party years ago and now Liz can wear it. My, she’s getting tall!

Here’s a copy of our Medieval Feast Menu I made. You can download a copy too!

Here’s the best picture I could get of the table.

We set it with our fancy stuff! We don’t have any pewter plates and I wasn’t using bread trenchers!

The flowers were for Liz’s birthday.

We kinda dug into the “subtlety” after lunch. It was her birthday cake!

We checked this book out from the library. It had lovely examples of medieval menus and recipes galore! We especially loved the copies of actual recipes in Old English and art depicting cooks during the period.

We had cream of vegetable soup.

Tori and Katie loved this and asked for thirds and fourths!

Cedar plank grilled salmon filets.

We put brown sugar on top and they were delicious!

Roasted herb chicken.

We used Jamie Oliver’s recipe. It is delectable!

Creamed spinach.

This is Aaron’s mom’s recipe. Liz and I love it, the others, not so much. But it has BACON!

Recipe: chop bacon and fry it up with some chopped onion. After that’s cooked, add chopped garlic and fresh spinach and turn off the heat. Fold it in until wilted. Splash lemon juice and sprinkle a tiny bit of nutmeg. Drizzle a couple T cream or half and half and stir. Serve immediately.

Alex wanted to be like Mama and Daddy and have his grape juice in a big glass!

We’re excited to start our Renaissance history studies! Already working on what we can do for our unit study in 9 weeks. This one will be hard to beat!

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Salt Dough Maps

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August 11, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Fun Dyed Salt Dough Maps for Geography

We made lovely maps of landforms for geography study.

We used the book Geography from A to Z for reference. The toothpicks were for labels.

Always fun to let them get them their hands dirty mixing the flour, salt, and water! Sticky!

Fun sensory play.

I separated the dough into three sections and dyed them yellow for desert, blue for water, and green for land.

Alex liked using play dough tools.

Kate was very particular placing her land and water dough.

Tori loved the hands on activity!

Liz liked rolling out her dough.

We placed toothpicks in parts of the wet dough maps.

After the maps dried, we glued handwritten flags to the toothpicks, labeling the land formations.

It will dry and harden overnight. You can add painted details!

How do you make geography fun?

Also see this salt dough map of the Nile River Delta. Check out no-bake cookie dough maps and chocolate chip cookie maps.

Salt Dough

Ingredients

1 cup AP flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup warm water
food coloring optional

Instructions

Mix ingredients together with a wooden spoon or plastic spatula or by hand.
Divide into thirds. Add yellow to 1/3 (desert), blue to 1/3 (water), and green to 1/3 (grass) to make land maps.
It will harden so keep in a zip bag in fridge until ready to use.

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Christmas Cookies

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December 25, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

We made several kinds of Christmas cookies this week.

Here is an amazing Peanut Butter cookie.

It was on the package of my new Nordic Ware baking pans!

I had a little elf helping…

Who knew he’d like cream cheese icing?

Look at that proud face with his first big boy mocha!

He was so pleased to help in the kitchen.

Some of our favorites:

The girls really loved these “snowball cookies” or Danish wedding cookies.

Snowball Cookies

Course Dessert

Cuisine Holiday

Ingredients

1 c unsalted butter softened
1/2 c confectioner’s sugar
1 t vanilla
2 1/4 c AP flour
1 c chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts) chopped
confectioner’s sugar for rolling baked cookies in

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and slowly add flour and mix until just combined. Fold in chopped pecans, beating at low speed, scraping bowl as necessary, until well mixed.
Roll dough into little balls. Place on prepared cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Chilling the dough for 30 minutes in the fridge helps the cookies stay round but we are never that patient!
Bake cookies for 14 – 15 minutes until bottoms are just slightly brown.
Remove from oven and cool on cooling rack until you can handle them comfortably with your hands.
While cookies are still warm, roll them in icing sugar. Place cookies on cooling rack, once they have cooled completely, roll them in icing sugar again. Store cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days or freeze for up to one month.

Happy Holidays!

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Homemade Play Dough

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December 16, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

We’ve been having lots of fun with Christmas activities this week…

Tori’s gingerbread play dough reindeer…

Santa paper plate packing popcorn craft. I used googly eyes, a pink pom pom for the nose, and a shaped pipe cleaner for the mouth

Tori and Katie pretend to eat their gingerbread babies…

They pasted their eaten gingerbread babies in their booklets.

We made homemade play dough!

I made gingerbread play dough (with spices smells great!) and snow play dough (plain with sparkly glitter).

We broke out the cookie cutters and played with play dough for quite a long time this morning.

Preschool girls loved playing with the yummy smelling playdough.

Katie did not like to be interrupted for a picture.

Toddler Alex thought all this was just awesome.

Even the Big Girl Elizabeth had to play with the play dough!

She showed off her “cookies.”

Super easy play dough recipe:

Play Dough

Ingredients

2 cups AP flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 T vegetable oil
1 T cream of tartar

Instructions

Mix ingredients gently, folding all the flour in, over low/medium heat in a nonstick pan until formed into a ball.
Knead carefully (it’s hot!) until desired elasticity.

Add stuff:

Spices. Sprinkle in some cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger for gingerbread play dough – or apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice – or whatever you love.

Essential Oil. We love using Citrus, Peppermint, or Lavender.

Glitter or Food Coloring. Sparkle and color just add to the fun!

My kids like to play with the play dough while it’s still warm.

How to Use:

We use all sorts of fun tools like real cookie cutters (love these alphabet and numbers cookie cutters!), rolling pins, dough tools that extrude, squish, and cut it.

We have two Activity Centers that provide stencils and working surfaces to keep my floor clean.

Store in an airtight container or zipper bag. We keep ours in the fridge to stay fresh longer.

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Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

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October 31, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

Pumpkin streusel muffins are a great fall breakfast or treat!

Recipe adapted from Williams Sonoma The Cookbook for Kids.

Kid and neighbor approved!

We also had yummy Broccoli Soup.

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

Course Breakfast

Cuisine Holiday

Ingredients

Streusel Topping

3 T brown sugar
2 T AP flour
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 c chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)
1 T butter

Dry ingredients:

1 1/2 c AP flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t kosher or sea salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves
1/2 t nutmeg

Wet ingredients

1 c pumpkin puree
1 c sugar
1/2 c oil I use EVOO
2 large eggs room temperature
1/2 t vanilla

Instructions

Mix streusel topping together in small bowl and set aside.
Preheat oven. Prepare muffin tin, cups, liners, etc. Mix dry ingredients in one bowl. Mix wet ingredients in another bowl. Combine.
Scoop into muffin tin, cups, liners, etc. and sprinkle on streusel topping. Bake at 350* for 20-25 minutes. Rest for 5 minutes, if you can stand it!

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