Something to do.

Do you remember the "I don't have anything to do" mantra of childhood?  That's the subject of this post.

Through the years I've been blessed with several waves of pre-adolescent humans running in, through, and around the house, often in very loosely bound age groups.  Always, I am comforted by the inevitable troop of small folks at my heels pining they have nothing to do.  "Mr. Tad" usually discovers an acceptable pathway to an important quest and all is well again for a while.

Here, I present one helpful and simple solution called "Mr. Tad's Cards of Something To Do."

Hand written on colorful index cards:

Take a picture of poison ivy.

Which way are the clouds moving?

How many birds can you count in five minutes?

Take a picture of an insect.

Bring five different kinds of leaves.

How many balls are in the yard?

How long does it take to walk around the house.

Bring three shells.

How many cars drive by in ten minutes?

How many pieces of charcoal does it take to cover the grill?

Bring five different kinds of flowers.

Find three dead mosquitoes.

How high is the basketball goal in inches?

Bring seven pieces of dog poop.

How many trees are in our yard?

How many airplanes do you see in ten minutes?

How many mammals can you find in the back yard in ten minutes?

Find and draw five types of leaves.

How many hops does it take to go around the house?

How many cracks larger than your finger are in the driveway?

You get the picture and you can create your own cards too.

The way I play the game is like this.

Only one activity is written on a card.  Hold out five to seven cards and let someone pick out one (take turns.)  The children return to me with the product/result of that activity, describe what they have, and return the card to me.  That card goes in my pocket, and I hold out another set of cards to repeat the game.

I control the game by selecting or creating the cards with the specific children in mind.  For example, I make sure there is a mix of short and long attention span activities within the set of cards presented.  Also, I mix up easy and hard activities (3:2:1).  Both of these help with the duration and richness of the play time.

And, I always try to end the game when the children are relatively "spent" but still want more.

Some of the guiding thoughts behind the cards follow.

Include action verbs, like "bring", "count", and "draw."
Involve estimations, measurements, and observations.
Include physical, social, and cognitive challenges.
Reinforce school curriculum / "homework."
Emphasize process over the product and recognize the accomplishments.
Recognize "age" correctness - a fair estimate for a challenging problem is better than an exact "right" number.
Include gross motor, fine motor, and stamina activities.
Consider appropriate reading level for the group (challenge up.)
Blend age ranges.
Challenge handedness and foot preference.
Use different languages and secret codes.
Keep it safe!
Mix up easy and hard (3:2:1)
Don't set up to fail - challenge.
Stop when they want more.
Mix activities across long and short attention span requirements.
Keep cards Top Secret.
Create new cards while the children are working on an activity (save all of your cards!)

Useful Supplies:

Something with which to measure time.
Something with which to capture images.
Something with which to measure distances.
Something with which to draw and write.
Something with which to measure volume.
Something with which to keep new found treasures.
Plenty of blank index cards.

I've done well with cell phones through the years.  They have clocks/timers and cameras.

A few more thoughts:

Always use card stock and not paper to instill a sense of significance to the activity.
Create the game given the safe zone of your environment.
Use photography to obtain proof of things like the spiders found, rather than bringing the spiders themselves (the spiders need there own space and time.)
Build in some "down time / reflection time / meditation time" with passive, timed activities (like how many airplanes can you count in ten minutes.)
Safely breach normal boundaries by letting discoveries happen even though there is a mess to clean up.
Don't be afraid of getting everything wet when it rains - it's just fresh water.

Family Pie

I'm in between now. I'm old enough to remember ancestors past and young enough to see the family beyond my time. It's like I'm sitting in the middle of a big family dinner table too many decades long to see end to end. These days I feel like I am trying to find things that should be passed down from generation to generation and then I imagine that Katie says "please pass the pie."

Well, she really asked me what kind of birthday cake I wanted this year. But I was thinking about Granddaddy, Grandmother, Granddaddy Crocker, Mamaw, Aunt Opel and Uncle Click, Uncle George, Burrell and Burrell Russel, Len, Mr. and Mrs. Martin, Aunt Loise, Mamaw Bennett, Geraldine, Sterling, Howard and the comforting noises they all made at family gatherings - and we always had pie.

So, I'm stirring the pot a little here and am presenting a family dialog as is - it's our noise now and it's time to pass the pie.

My Email to Family on October 26, 2009.

Hi,

Do you have any family traditional recipes for chess, chocolate, chocolate chess, or pecan pies?

I'm thinking birthday pie this year!

Tad Crocker

The first reply:

Duh, let me think about it. I haven't cooked in so long I don't know where recipes are around here. I do remember one thing about making pecan pies: Be sure not to tear the pastry, because if it is torn, the good juicy Karo filling will go down under it.

If Beverly sends anything, forward it to me, too. Thanks.

Love,
Mom

Daddy plays on our Crocker name.

Well, I found a bunch of old Crocker family recipes. Betty Crocker that is.
Ha
Many variations.

http://www.bettycrocker.com/search/searchresults.aspx?terms=pecan+pie

love,
DAddy

Then Aunt Beverly replies.

Planning ahead, huh??

Yes, I have Mother's good pecan pie recipe that was from a friend in D'burg....it
may have come via Mary ann, I don't remember. It's not so sicky sweet.

LD has a great choc chess pie recipe.
I have Aunt Norma's chess pie recipe...

And of course you DO have Mother's apple pie recipe, right??

I'll send these sometime....

Beverly

Then she finds an answer for me that I actually used for my Birthday Pie. It wasn't from our family, but it's exactly what I was trying to make up from several of our recipes. Janie taught me to make great pie crust that night!

I searched the web.....maybe this is from somebody's family recipes

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/printerfriendly/Chocolate-Pecan-Chess-Pie-4504

Beverly

And Len Dow speaks up too with a recipe from Winnie.

Chocolate Chess pie

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 stick butter, melted
2 eggs
3 1/2 TBL cocoa
1 small can evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 unbaked pastry shell

Mix ingredients together, bomcining (Maybe I had a little too much wine!
I think that is MIXING! Or maybe blending :-) thoroughly (by hand). Pour into unbaked pie shell and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

:-)

love ya

ld

I plan to update this post as I find more family recipes for pie, cobbler, and such.

In the mean time, smile and listen carefully to your family's noises - like mine here. Those are the ingredients never to be listed in the recipes.

I sure hope you have leftovers!

French Onion Soup

Twenty years, or so, of marriage presents a spectrum of changes. It's like a soup that we tend to and stir every day – adding and taking – the soup is always changing; but is always our soup.

Last year I noticed four soup crocks high up in the cabinet. Why do we still have these if we never use them? If the kids had ever seen them, they would have had no idea what they were. So, it was time for me to learn to make French Onion Soup – Jenny's favorite!

My Betty Crocker Cookbook, of course, led my way. I used the key element of surprise one night and served French Onion soup. To my surprise, everyone liked it! Since then, I have enjoyed many requests for my French Onion soup. That let me play around with the details of the preparation. I've settled in on the following for tonight's dinner:

Four large or six medium Vidalia® onions are quartered and sliced to generally match the natural thickness of the rings. I heat up Grandmother Jones' crock pot to medium heat, add a stick of butter (unsalted and, in my world, butter means butter), and plop the onions in. Give the onions a good stir so all the surfaces fairly share the butter. In time, the onions will clear. This means the plant cell cytoplasm came to a boil and steam burst the cell walls. Starch stored within the cytoplasm dissolves and oozes throughout the sizzling slices. Be patient and keep stirring occasionally. This is high drama, folks - sip something and read on. We've left biology and have entered a chemical world. Starches are a convenient way for nature to preserve and store sugars. With a little heat and the proper enzyme, the starch molecules that are dissolved throughout the onion break apart back to simple sugars. Sweet! With a little more heat and some oxygen (don't try this if you are fresh out of air) the sugars begin to oxidize. That's the light brown coating you've noticed on the onions and the bottom of the pan. Keep stirring more frequently now. The onions are caramelizing and are gaining a toasty and sweet flavor. Before you burn everything, stir in a couple tablespoons of flour. Let this brown slightly. Pour in four 10.5 ounce cans of Campbell's® Beef Consummé. Stir the soup, bring it to a boil, then shut it back to a simmer.

Taste your soup and sip something (like a Merlot or Cabernet). Reflect for a moment and smile. I reflect on those households thousands and hundreds of years past living through long winters in Europe's northern latitudes. They had onions available. Maybe they had access to cows; beef stock and cheese. Maybe they had some stale bread that was turning blue...

Finely shred about 8 ounces of Swiss cheese. Rest.

I am lucky to have married into four McCoy© soup bowls. I put chunks of toasted, stale sour dough french bread in each. Raise the top oven rack to leave about two inches between the bowl tops and the top oven element. Turn the broiler on.

Ladle about 1.5 cups of soup into each of the four bowls. The bread will float. Sprinkle about 1/3 cup of cheese on top of the bread and place the bowls in the oven. I keep the door open. When the cheese is bubbly and beginning to toast, hold your breath a little longer. Before you see smoke, the soup is ready to serve. Place each hot bowl on a plate at the dining table. Serve with a little red wine or a tall glass of cold milk.


As we sit down to dinner tonight, Katie asks "Daddy, where did French Onion Soup come from?" I smile and say "I think farm families in areas like France, Belgium, and Germany probably learned to make it after the last ice age. Nikko speaks up, "Dad, it would have been long after that" and continues with an accounting of European cultural and economic history. He focused in on Manorialism.


We shared lots of questions and answers around our humble onion soup tonight. We thought about families having onion soup on dark, cold nights during the middle ages. We thought about our differences from them – and about our similarities.

Twenty centuries, or so, of human history presents a spectrum of changes. It's like a soup that we tend to and stir every day – adding and taking – the soup is always changing; but is always our soup.

Green tomatoes and pears

Sunday morning, September 20, 2009

Daddy, what's for breakfast?

Omelets are the norm, but I always try to introduce something new. So, stall with cinnamon rolls.

Next to the sink are small and firm green tomatoes Katie and Isabella picked two weeks ago. A bowl of pears Susan gave me last weekend is on the table. Precooked, cubed ham is in the fridge. A lime is slowly over aging in the fruit drawer... I have an idea.

Get the plates ready (starting at the end brings good luck). Cube one medium green tomato. It's firm and very tangy. Squeeze lime juice over the tomatoes and mix it all up with your hands. Lick your finger.

Core a medium pear. Slice it the same thickness as the cubed tomatoes. The slices will have a hole in the center. Add the pears to the bowl of tomatoes and squeeze the rest of the lime juice over the fruits. Mix them up with your hands. Lick your finger. Dust the fruits with Garam Masala spice mix (Indian section with the Rajah brand). Dust even more lightly with ground cinnamon (remember the stall appetizer?) Mix everything with your hands and lick your fingers.

Prep the eggs, onions, and cheeses for the omelets (Tad's standard omelet - another day). Cook some bacon.

Now, put a medium saucepan on medium high heat. Add extra light tasting olive oil (Bertolli is in my pantry). In goes the fruit and out comes the aroma! Stir the noisy mixture until the sugars in the fruits brown. Add all of the ham and continue to stir for a nice coating of spicy fruit and ham. Add a little water, shut the heat off, and cover the pan.

Make each person an omelet, one at a time, and plate on crushed pepper and sea salt. Spoon some ham onto the plate, top with a slice of pear, and finish with green tomato right on top of the pear.

Serve immediately with a couple of slices of bacon (the smoked flavor of the bacon balances out the dish.)

Yum!

Sunday Dinner July 26, 2009

After a good nap...

Effuse 1/4 cup fresh tarragon in hot, light olive oil and baste 3/4 pound gorgeous salmon steak in Nellie and Joe's Key West Lime Juice all while starting Quinoa on the stove top.

You'll need a hot grill in about 10 minutes, so be prepared.

What the heck is Quinoa? Looks like bird seed to me, but Wow! Look up Seeds of Change out of Santa Fe. Brown the quinoa blend (zesty cilantro tonight) in light olive oil. Stir in seasoning mix and before you burn it, pour in the 2 cups of water. Enjoy the rolling boil, then shut it back to a simmer for about 15 minutes covered.

That's when you pour the tarragon-olive oil over and all around the salmon steak, introduce all of the same to the fire, and don't get too excited about the flare up (lime juice and oils and olive oil mixed with air cascading on to a flame will get your attention.)

Sip something.

By now you'll check the bird seed and suspect a flaw in the absorption + evaporation rate and remove the lid from the sauce pan to encourage the latter. Go ahead and grab that medium tomato from today's garden and 1/16th it. Plop tomatoes on the seeds, then add 1/2 tsp crushed garlic on top. Leave it be.

Sip something on your way to turn the salmon. Turn the samon and drizzel the rest of the baste on it. Pet the cat - it's a tease move.

Rinse and stow used cooking tools into a dishwasher.

Sip something while you look at the cat.

Now its time to transfer the salmon to a serving plate. So do it. Cut 1 inch of the tail end off and flick it down to the cat. Grin and walk back in.

Give the seeds a quick stir. Plate the fish, bi-laterally side with steaming seeds, and garnish up the middle of the fish with scale-like layers of pickled ginger (from the sushi dept).

Forget the dining table. Go sit in the easy chair and watch Chelsea and Club America play it out!

Then, before going to bed, try out the Key Lime pie you made yesterday.