First Fifty

Tomorrow I plan to make new recipes #49-50 from the list of new recipes to try this school year - two desserts that I will bring to the Thanksgiving dinner we're having at one of our pastor's homes at 5pm tomorrow. I'm planning to make a German peach kuchen and a Polish gingerbread called piernik. The list at the moment contains 119 different recipes from around the world. I continue to add and sometimes subtract from the list. We are also learning about different holidays this year. This week we learned about Diwali, an Indian festival. Paul got home early from work on Thursday because he had a dentist appointment at 3:00 so I thought that was the perfect night for us to play a game together. We played Teen Pathi, which is a card game played during Diwali. I had planned to make barfi yesterday (an Indian dessert), but the Diwali book we got from the library had a recipe for peda, and that is what I made. The kids like it, but I don't think I'll make it again. For dinner yesterday the kids and I had sirniki which is a Russian/Ukrainian recipe for cheese pancakes. I bought farmer's cheese for the first time to make them. All four of us liked it! I made Paul something else for his dinner later that night. Nadia and Oliver were enjoying eating slices of farmer's cheese as I had some left over after I made the sirniki.  For tonight's dinner I made pommes aligot, which is a French recipe for cheesy mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, and Chicken Kiev, which is another Russian/ Ukrainian recipe. The pommes aligot and Chicken Kiev were time consuming to make, but they were well received. I didn't use a new recipe for the sweet potatoes, but Paul actually tried some, found he liked it, and asked for more! Usually he doesn't try anything I make with sweet potatoes. I made them at Oliver's request. Oliver and I dropped Nadia off at church at 8:00am for a Bible Bowl quizzing event. Paul was planning to pick her up at 3:30 on his way home from work, but she ended up going home with the coach's family. Their daughter (who is in 5th grade) is on Nadia's quizzing team. I'm going to bring Nadia a change of clothes tomorrow morning as they will bring her to church at 8:45. 

The kids and I stayed home all day on Thursday. Yesterday Oliver and I ran errands for close to three hours. Aside from taking Nadia to church this morning, the boys and I have been at home all day. Paul brought home Mulan on DVD from Redbox yesterday. We had planned to see it in the theatre in March, but due to COVID it was never released in the theatres. In early September it was released on Disney+ for an extra $30. I wasn't willing to pay $30. We can see it for free on Disney+ starting in December, but I was fine with paying $1 to see it a few weeks earlier. Tonight the four of us watched the new episode of Mandalorian. Most days Nadia watches something on the iPad while the boys watch something on the tv that doesn't interest me one iota. I enjoy it when we watch something together from time to time. 

We did two more art lessons this week. Nadia wasn't happy with how her rabbit turned out. Nadia used charcoal (as instructed) for the toad (above). Ian opted to use a pencil because he found using the charcoal when making the rabbit to be very messy. 

My friend Carol's husband passed away last night. The last time I saw them was when we stayed at their house for one night in May 2019. Margie got the good news that the cancer had not spread to her lymph nodes as well as the bad news that the surgeon didn't get all of the cancer on Monday. She's going to have another surgery next week to get the rest of the cancer and then will have 6 weeks of radiation treatments after she recovers from the surgeries.