Lesson Plans

This is our week. Keep in mind it's one kid short,
due to a school trip

Posted by Melissa Baumgart
It has been baseball and soccer.  More baseball and more soccer.  And end of the year school happenings (and finals, ugh) tossed in with healthy doses of hanging with friends.  I am not complaining at all, I am loving it.  Going to my kid's sporting events (assuming it is not a rainy day) is one of my favorite things to do.  It has not, however, been conducive to setting up a date for cooking lessons in our kitchen.

It looks like, for now, Thursday and Friday nights are free this week, so I am going to schedule two cooking classes with Jamie for those night.  I am going to get that up on the chalkboard wall schedule and hope that nothing more important comes along to erase them.

Lesson Plan 1:

• Go through a Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home cookbook.  Start with the section titled, "Becoming a Better Cook", where he briefly goes through some simple and illuminating tips on cooking.  And I applaud his simple equation of, "great product + great execution = great cooking."
• Prepare the Spring Vegetable Garbure from page 112.   Hopefully, Jamie will find this to be one of his go-to soups.  This should give ample practice in the art of vegetable chopping, which will int turn, help Jamie's salad preparation.
• Bake a loaf of bread.  Although, not on his list, I think if he learns a good soup, bread naturally follows.  

Lesson Plan 2:

• Indian Food!  YUM!
• I will teach Jamie how to make Chicken Tikki Masala, Palak Paneer and rice.  I want to add in a simple dahl, but don't want to overwhelm him.  This will offer Jamie a chance to see how many dishes can come together and be ready at one time.  
• There will also be a pre-lesson of searching for a good recipe online and shopping efficiently and effectively.  How to choose the best ingredients, even if they aren't the cheapest.  (Jamie is thrifty.)  Recall the Keller quote from above, great product is a very important piece of the cooking equation.  

 Wish me luck!  Not about the teaching part, but about nothing trumping the scheduled lessons!

Doing it from Scratch

My blackberry harvest today

posted by Melissa
The first day of Urban Homesteading has had many facets.

The Home
I spent most of the morning cleaning and tidying our home.  I figured, how are you going to homestead in a messy and dirty home.  As I cleaned, it dawned on me that I am in desperate need of some organization.  Don't you find that organizing is something that you have to revisit....again and again.  It's not like I get my kitchen cabinets all orderly and then they stay that way forever.  If you do experience this, please tell me what you do to accomplish that amazing feat.



The Kids
Levi had a hell of a day.  The outburst from Mt. Rainier was nothing compared to this.  Thanks to Lily watching Nanny 911 last night and me spending some time looking over her shoulder, I had some ammunition and balls to stand my ground.  I am proud to say I did it.  He screamed and yelled and threatened to stab me, but I stood my ground.  And now, reduced screen time is going to be a lot easier since he lost any computer touching privileges for the entire month.

Bad Teacher.

The other positive is that after the storm, follows the calm.  And today, that transformed into Levi teaching me, Amy and my Mom how to knit.  Sounded great to me, I could knit my new niece something pretty and not have to buy something.  That is all right up the Urban Homesteading alley.

The knitting lesson started with simply making balls of yarn.  Simply being the understatement of the decade.  My Mom just started unravelling her yarn with no rhyme or reason, and it become what the kids call, a big ball of spaghetti.  My Virgo tendencies kicked in and I grabbed the yarn, I could not stand by and watch this mess just happen, right there next to me!

Levi is quite the teacher, not.  He had no patience at all for Amy doing it left handed.  We got through casting off.  I'll let you know when I get my next lesson.

Amy, urban berry picking.

The Food
I made sauce from scratch.  Then I made lasagna. And we are having a little dinner party with Amy and her husband, Bob.  we do dinner together a lot, and I really like that.



We also went berry picking.  We got word of some blackberries near some bee hives that Bob has by Yesler Terrace.  Very Urban.  As we were walking up to the picking site, I announced that I saw a rat, a huge rat.

"Yeah, Bob said we should throw some rocks into the brush to scare away the rats before we enter."  Amy let us know, nonchalantly.

Blackberry hands.

After the initial rat fear ended, and after the jokes about how I thought the wilderness/wild animal month had ended as well, we trudged on through to the blackberries.  We scored big time.  We harvested so many blackberries.  Now to find out how many we need to make some jam.  The kids had a great time and I can't help but think about them going to school with their homemade bread peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  And hope that they share proudly about going out into the city and picking their own berries, and making their own jam.

More homesteading to come....
Melissa