Canada and Cuba

If you homeschool, you can love your pet while doing a surface tension experiment.

Five years ago our social studies curriculum focused on studying a wide variety of countries through reading folk tales and other books related to each country, watching videos about some of them, trying some new foods, etc. In general, Nadia dreaded trying new foods. The international food she enjoyed the most that school year was brigaderio, which was one of foods I made while we were studying Brazil. This year we are again studying various countries around the world, but this year our social studies curriculum will also focus on economics, current events, religions, and geography. We've been learning about Mormonism recently, and on Wednesday Nadia and Ian will begin reading Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? I read the kids 78 books about other countries during the lockdown thanks to the "bonus" books offered by Hoopla and the free Kindle Unlimited membership Amazon offered at that time. Once the library reopened we began reading books from the library, but I still supplement with some picture books through Hoopla. Although we kicked our school year off in earnest in August, last week was the first time we tried an international recipe this school year. Knowing that Nadia and Ian tend to be leery of trying new foods, I purposefully tried to pick recipes for the year that there was a decent chance at least some members of the family would like it. Our first recipe was Cuban cookie called Torticas de Moron. The particular recipe that I used also called for making Dulce de Leche. They like the cookies. I'm not saying they are one of their top three favorite kinds of cookie, but they like them. On Sunday I made two Canadian recipes - tourtiere (a French Canadian meat pie) and pouding chomeur. I will NOT be making tourtiere again. I plan to make other types of meat pies this year as that is a rather common type of food to be eaten around the world. Everyone agreed this one would have tasted better with cheese. Several us put ketchup on it to make it a little better. It wasn't awful, but considering how much time it took to make it, I'm not interested. I haven't made that many pie crusts in my life so that takes me longer than I assume it does those who have more experience. I tried to follow the recipe exactly, but I found ground pork to be rather expensive. It was supposed to include ground beef mixed with potato and ground pork. I just mixed potato and ground beef and the spices it called for. I do plan on making the "pudding" again. It reminded me of a cake with a layer that resembled what is in a pecan pie although there aren't any nuts in it. I am not usually a fan of cake, but this cake (or pudding as they call it) was very delicious.

Gym class last Friday. I took this one picture and then my camera battery died. Oops!

We will be celebrating various holidays this year that we don't usually celebrate. The first two will be this week - Mexican Independence Day on Wednesday and Rosh Hashanah on Friday. I'm planning to make chimichangas for the first time on Wednesday and challah, beef brisket, glazed carrots, honey cake, and crispy potato kugel on Friday. I really hope we like the brisket because OUCH that was very expensive! Speaking of expensive, I also recently bought the ingredients for croque monsieur. The recipe called for gruyere cheese. I was really taken aback by the cost of that particular cheese. I got gouda cheese instead so that we will still be trying a new type of cheese. I didn't think to factor in the cost of ingredients when I was selecting recipes this summer. I am hoping that some of the new recipes we try will make it into our rotation. It's an encouragement that one of the first three was a success!

Photo credit - Nadia (she's the reason my camera battery died without me realizing it, ha ha!)

The week of August 24 *could* have been our first five day week of school this year, but we spent one day at Six Flags America. A field trip to Hershey on September 2 meant we only had four days of "usual" schoolwork the week of August 31. The week of September 7 would have been our first full week of school if I hadn't decided to do an "unschooling" type of day on Labor Day. It appears that next week will be our only full week of school for August or September because we're going roller skating with a homeschool group tomorrow from 10:00-12:30. So like we did on Labor Day, I'm going to have the kids earn a Junior Ranger Badge, read, and watch an episode of World Watch News tomorrow morning before we head out to go rollerblading. The week of September 28 the kids will only have two days of school as we're going on a all day field trip on September 28 and then leaving for our family vacation on October 1. I certainly haven't heard any complaints from the peanut gallery over the fact that we haven't had five days of school in one week yet.