World of Julie

Experiment for this week: put the kids to bed about ten minutes earlier every night, so that by Sunday they’ll be going to bed at the “right” time. Have any of you tried this before? I hope it works!

March 9th, 2010 | Tags: bed, bedtime, daylight savings, time change | Category: Parenting |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (4)

A Book by Mordicai Gerstein

I grabbed this book off the New Book shelf in the library and didn’t really look at it — I worship at the altar of Mordicai Gerstein ever since The Man Who Walked Between the Towers and so as soon as I saw his name I added it to our pile. A few minutes later I noticed Henry nose-deep in A Book, and a few minutes after that, he closed the book, looked up, and said, enthusiastically, “This is a GREAT book!” What more do you need?

It’s a story that actually begins on the title page (”Once in A Book by Mordicai Gerstein, published by Roaring Brook Press, New York, there lived a family of characters”), and is about a family who lives in a book, and the little girl in the family doesn’t know what the story is. Turns out everyone else (including the dog, cat, and goldfish) know their stories, but she doesn’t know hers. So she sets out to find it, traipsing through mysteries, fairy tales, historical fiction, science fiction, and a pirate story to try to find it. This book breaks down the fourth wall pretty early — the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg tells the girl about readers, and the girl looks up and screams, “What’s that huge…blobby thing that something looks like a face?” (it’s you, of course), and finishes with the girl politely asking you to close the book because she’d like to go to sleep.

It’s all told through cartoon speech balloons, which can get a little tedious to read sometimes, but it’s a quick book, and I’ve found both boys really like it because it covers so many genres that they each can have their favorite page (Eli is particularly fond of the pirates, but that’s probably because it was his introduction to the word “poopdeck”).

March 8th, 2010 | Tags: a book, Children's Book of the Week, man who walked between the towers, mordicai gerstein | Category: Children's Book of the Week |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

photo courtesy of JA Coulter

Ok, so maybe this will make you all just fall asleep from extreme boredom, because you’ve all been roasting broccoli for years. If you have, why on earth didn’t you tell me about it? Broccoli is our go-to vegetable, the one we serve five days out of seven. I steam it, sauté it, and occasionally microwave it, but until a few weeks ago had never roasted it. Then suddenly it seemed like all these “eat in season” lists were saying “and of course roasted broccoli” so I figured I might as well try.

And now! I roast the broccoli 90% of the time. Any time there’s something else in the oven, broccoli gets roasted. I got the recipe from The Amateur Gourmet, but once you make it once, there’s no need to consult any recipe (although I do recommend reading through his recipe for the fact that he calls it “The Best Broccoli of Your Life” and also for his advice on not washing the broccoli).

Basically, it’s this: heat the oven to whatever temperature you need anyway — the Amateur Gourmet does it at 425, but I’ve just put it in at the temp that the other thing in the oven needs. I’ve roasted it anywhere from 375 to 450, depending on biscuits or corn bread or squash or galette or whatever, and it’s always worked just fine. Cut the broccoli into big stalks (cut up like twice as much as you normally do! otherwise you will be sad, wishing you had made more!). Spread it on a pan, drizzle with a few tablespoons of olive oil, and throw in some slivered garlic.  Roast it for 20-30 minutes (depending on temperature), until it looks a little brown. Take it out, and toss it with more olive oil, some lemon juice, and, if you’re feeling especially decadent, parmagiana cheese. Or not. If the kids are biting at your ankles because they want to have dinner now, then it’s still amazingly tasty straight out of the oven.

I swear it’s like candy it’s so good.

March 4th, 2010 | Tags: amateur gourmet, broccoli, cooking, dinner, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, parmagiana, roasted | Category: Food |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (19)

Henry and Eli in a pocket.

Inspired by an ancient kid craft book from my own childhood, Henry begged me for days to take photos so he could make them into photo drawings. I finally had a minute to take a bunch of photos and print them out, and it was totally worth it. While he didn’t make anything amazing, he spent hours working on cutting out the photos and inserting himself and his siblings into such wacky scenarios as crawling into an apple, pouring out of a jug of maple syrup, and riding around on blood cells.

Eli watched the whole thing like it was a performance art piece being put on for his own personal benefit, and they both thought the whole thing was hilarious. Let me repeat: this occupied them for hours. Totally worth the 15 minutes it took me to print out some photos. And it’s such a good rainy day activity, that Henry even drew them all as raindrops (inspired by the Magic School Bus, I’m sure).

Raindrops.

March 2nd, 2010 | Tags: actvities, art, drawing, Henry, photo | Category: activities |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

My A to Z Recipe Box by Hilary Karmilowicz, illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Ok, so this week’s book isn’t actually a book, but it’s still worth recommending. Henry got this recipe box for his second birthday, and he still loves it. It’s fairly self explanatory: a recipe box, with 26 recipes, one for every letter. Each recipe is illustrated by Maine’s own Melissa Sweet, and is straightforward as far as ingredients and directions.

For a long, long time, Henry mainly liked to lay the cards out in a grid on the floor and then put them back into the box in order. But as he’s gotten older, he has gotten more into the actual recipes. We’ve probably made half of them, and all have been good. I like that they are kid-friendly recipes but aren’t all cookies. The Nifty Asian Noodles have become a standard dinner for us, and we make the Whole Wheat Pretzels on a semi-regular basis as well.

This is a perfect birthday gift for anyone from age 4 on up (especially if you give it with some little wooden spoons or a whisk or something). I actually have a new one of these on my Gift Shelf in case there’s a birthday party and we forgot to get a gift. Kids seem really satisfied to put the cards in alphabetical order, and also very happy to choose a recipe to make. I haven’t yet let Henry loose in the kitchen all by himself, but I think it might happen soon, and these recipes will be perfect for that.

March 1st, 2010 | Tags: a to z recipe box, baking, Children's Book of the Week, cooking, hilary shelvin karmilowicz, melissa sweet, recipes | Category: Children's Book of the Week |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

photo courtesy of Just B Cuz

Ok, so this is very boring and domestic and housewifey of me, but I feel I should tell you all because it changed so much for me. I’ve started doing laundry every day. Previously (as in, like, three weeks ago), I’d do laundry when I could, and was always faced with three overflowing hampers on Saturday morning, when I should have been enjoying family time or planning a getaway (yeah, right) or something. I’d do laundry all day, and come Saturday night, Foldfest 2010 would start, usually because we couldn’t go to bed until we’d folded the mountain of laundry on our bed. Or, we’d shovel it all back into the laundry baskets, and I’d get around to folding it all the following Wednesday, right about the time the hampers were full again.

But now! Every day, I put a load of laundry into the washer, move a load into the dryer, and fold and put away one load. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes. This means that the hampers are always almost-empty instead of almost-full, the dishtowels and washcloths that get chucked onto the basement stairs get washed on a regular basis, and no one runs out of underwear. In fact, it works so well, that on the weekends I’ve been able to not do any laundry at all, because by Saturday morning the amount of dirty stuff is usually so piddly that it’s ok to let it go for another day or two.

Sometimes I might have time to do more than one load, but I don’t. I have plenty of other things I can do, and, because the laundry gets done every day, it’s never a clothing crisis. I know that this method does mean that one load of laundry sits wet in the washer overnight, which my Laundry book tells me not to do, but considering how long it sometimes sat with the previous “method,” one day is nothing.

If you are at all overwhelmed by the laundry chores in your house, I seriously recommend doing this. Fifteen minutes a day, tops. And you’ll never face the Wall of Laundry again.

February 25th, 2010 | Tags: laundry | Category: housekeeping |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (8)

While we do certainly make a lot of cookies here, and we try to go for variety, if we’re wanting some cookies now, we make these chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. They were originally from an “Everyday Food” magazine, I think. My mom gave me the recipe. I can’t find it online.

Here’s what I do know: they’re flourless, and butterless. They mix up so quickly that I’m often waiting for the oven to preheat fully when the cookies are ready to go in. And they make one batch of cookies — that is, two cookie-sheets-full, which is a nice small size, so you’re not overwhelmed with cookies, or with spending an hour at the stove swapping out cookie sheets (of course, sometimes I want to be overwhelmed with cookies, but that’s a different story). But these are, without a doubt, the cookies we make most often.

Here is my slightly-adapted recipe:

Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1. Preheat the oven to 350, with racks in the upper and lower thirds. In a large bowl, stir together 1 cup chunky peanut butter, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 large egg (lightly beaten), 1/2 tsp. baking soda, and 1/4 tsp. salt until well combined. Stir in 3/4 cup chocolate chips.

2. With moistened hands, roll dough, about 1 heaping tablespoon at a time, into balls. Place the balls 2 inches apart on two baking sheets.

3. Bake until cookies are golden and puffed, 12 to 14 minutes (rotating cookie sheets halfway through baking). Cool 5 minutes on sheets, and then transfer to racks to cool completely. Makes 24 cookies.

February 24th, 2010 | Tags: baking, chocolate chips, cookies, peanut butter | Category: baking |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (13)

By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman

I just realized I haven’t recommended this book here yet. I forgot that I hadn’t officially written it up, since I’ve recommended it to everyone I see walking down the street. This book is great. I am, frankly, shocked that I’d never heard of it before we read it (I read about it in Great Books for Boys), that it’s not more of a classic, and that it hasn’t been made into a movie.* Sure, it’s old-timey, but “Mary Poppins” is old timey too, and people like that movie. Plus, By the Great Horn Spoon! has it all: seafaring adventure, human interest, action, plot twists, and a butler punching a gold digger fifteen feet uphill (not as violent as it sounds, and maybe the funniest scene in the book).

The story is about Jack, an orphan who lives with his sisters and his aunt in Boston. He finds out that his aunt has lost all her money and will soon lose her house. Jack hatches a secret plan to escape to California and make the money in the gold rush, but his plan is discovered by Praiseworthy, the butler, who doesn’t miss anything. Praiseworthy and Jack sneak off to California together, stowing away on a ship that’s sailing around South America.

Almost every chapter presents some almost-impossible oh-how-will-they-escape-this-one situation, and Praiseworthy always comes to the rescue with clever poise (I love that he wears his butler garb the whole time). They make their way to California, and to the gold camps, and all ends quite happily. Of course a happy ending is great, but you will have had such a good time reading this book that you will be more bummed that the book is over than glad that it ends happily.

*Oh, look at that, apparently it is a movie, a Disney movie with Roddy MacDowell and Suzanne Pleshette of all things, called “The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin.”

February 22nd, 2010 | Tags: adventures of bullwhip griffin, butler, by the great horn spoon, gold rush, praiseworthy, sid fleischman | Category: Children's Book of the Week |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

And yet again the Let’s Explore blog provided us with a fantabulous activity: creating zoo maps. You print out some zoo maps, and have your children use them as inspiration to create their very own zoo. I printed out the zoo maps she recommended, explained the basic concept to the boys, and let them go. Eli spent the whole time with the Oregon Zoo map, drawing lines all along the pathways to show where he “and his friends” were going. Henry, though, got really into the whole thing, and spent days drawing his map (he has been kind of dashing off a lot of quickity-quick sketch art lately, so it was awfully nice to see him focusing so much on one piece). He decided his zoo sections would be shaped like the world map, and animals would live in the appropriate sections. I highly recommend this activity! We loved it!

February 18th, 2010 | Tags: activities, art, let's explore, map, maps, zoo | Category: activities |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (5)