But first a clarification

Tee Chiou pointed out, and rightly so, that when we said we had an unprocessed food week, it sounds like we ate raw food!  While we certainly do eat more raw vegetables and fruits now than we used to, our intention was not do go raw.  I should have been clearer by saying we were BUYING unprocessed foods, not eating them, because we were certainly doing lots of processing on our own!

So now that that’s clear … let’s get on with the food!  I’m going to list foods for breakfast and snacks because most people seem to find those a challenge to put on the table without resorting to some form of packaged food.

Breakfast

Typically we have one of the following for breakfast:

• homemade whole wheat bread – with butter, maple syrup, our own hazelnut chocolate spread (ala Nutella).  You can get a great bread machine recipe here or knead this one by hand.  I used a combination of both and whack up the dough in my Thermomix.  When I don’t think the kids will tolerate a second day of whole wheat bread, I dress slices of these up with pesto sauce and cheese and grill it and they go real fast!  If you’re keen on learning about the two-stage baking process, ie about soaking grains for 12 to 24 hours before baking, you will want to check out Sue Gregg’s website here: www.suegregg.com and specifically her whole wheat bread recipe here: http://www.suegregg.com/about/Two%20Stage%20Process.pdf.  Suffice it to say that we are recent converts to this process.    Thanks Missy for the introduction!
• yoghurt – we now buy this plain and organic and I cook up some berries (I resorted to just using strawberries the second time round just because the other berries were so much more expensive by weight) till they are half syrupy and half chunky and throw that in with some honey.  The kids love that they can have as much of the berries as they want, unlike in the store bought varieties where you run out of fruit real fast.
• whole wheat tortillas – we have had this one for breakfast, lunch and dinner!  Recipe here.  They are so easy to make and the results, straight off the pan, are so satisfying!  I bag up the leftovers in a ziplock and keep them in the fridge where the kids can get at them when they feel peckish during the afternoon.  We eat them with chicken/mayo, tuna/mayo or egg/mayo, or hummus with carrots, avocado, cucumbers.  I have to say I surprised myself because I am NOT, I repeat NOT a raw food fan, but I loved these wraps with hummus (homemade *ahem*) and raw veges … with chicken/mayo of course. 
• whole wheat pancakes – these were DELICIOUS right out of the pan, but didn’t taste as good after they were frozen and re-heated.  Good, but not great.  Recpipe here.  I tried another recipe from here, but using the Sue Gregg two-stage process, soaking the whole wheat flour the buttermilk for more than half a day and the results were fabulous!  Even though I did run out of eggs that day and ended up using bananas as a substitute, but still great!
• cereal and milk – this is our “go-to” breakfast, when I get out of bed too late to prepare anything for the kids.  We still have our stock of cereals and are getting through those.  I am a Post Honey Bunches of Oats fan and will need to find a way to make my own fast!  We have some single-grain cereals as well – puffed wheat, air-popped corn, etc.  Those would fit into an unprocessed shopping list.
• quick breads - these are yeast-free breads, which get their rise from baking powder and baking soda.  Think banana nut bread and you have the general idea.  Because no rising time is needed, these are doable for breakfast.  You’ll just have to be up and at it about an hour before everyone’s hungry because it takes about 40 mins to bake.  If you use sugar, you can speed things up by baking at a higher temperature, but if you’re using honey, these are usually done at 325 degrees F (160 degrees C) and for 40 mins.  Worth the effort because they are such a treat right out of the oven.  Whole wheat of course.
• bacon and eggs – now this one is always a hit here!    But I recently found out from a fellow real food seeker (hi Missy again!) that I consider buying “nitrate-free” bacon.  We are down to our last 10 slices from a previous stash and will be looking for those in the supermarket next!
• Chinese rice porridge – what I do with leftover rice and meat.    For extra “kick” I fry eggs with “chai poh” (preserved radish) and no one has refused this, not even Tim who doesn’t fancy rice porridge.

Snacks

Here’s another area many people said they struggled with.  It’s so easy to reach for that bag of chips or box of cookies or that granola bar or the goldfish cheese crackers or … You know what I mean right? 

Here’s how we have been surviving the afternoons:

• Fruit leather - this is a really fun thing to make and quite easy.  The recipe I have is from the Thermomix cookbook, but you can easily find one online.  Basically you cook up a batch of fruit, puree it, add some lemon juice, spread it out over a baking tray, put it into your oven at the lowest temperature and leave it overnight or 8 to 12 hours till it is no longer sticky.  Cut it up with a pair of scissors and VOILA!  Fruit leather!  We have done this twice, once with mixed berries & banana and the second time with mango & pears.  Both were a hit!  Adding bananas, apples or pears is a great way to make your fruit go further for less.
• Granola bars – I have never liked granola bars.  Like eating cardboard.  LOL!  But it seemed like everyone who was making snacks was making this so I gave it a shot and boy was I surprised!  It is SO GOOD!  And so easy to make and like the lady who wrote this recipe rightly said, it is next to impossible to mess up.
• Crackers and dip - we have been making whole wheat crackers from various recipes we’ve found online (still searching for that ULTIMATE cracker recipe)and eating them with hummus, chicken (leftovers) and mayo, egg & mayo, tuna & mayo, etc.  Notice the mayo?  We make our own mayonnaise now and it only lasts a week because there’s raw egg in it.  So some of it goes toward making Caesar salad dressing and the rest we use up in wraps and dips.
• Muffins – bake the breakfast quick breads in muffiin pans and you get tea time snacks!  Banana nut muffins, apple & oat bran, pumpkin & cranberries … next up … zuchinni!  Going to make this one in the next couple of days, but need to figure out how to use honey instead of ALL THAT SUGAR the recipe calls for!
• Fruit and Nuts – we have a good selection of this usually - apples, clementines, pears, bananas, grapes are staples.  Then if berries are on sale, we add that.  Just wishing melons weren’t so expensive here!  And a variety of nuts – cashews, hazelnuts, walnuts, peanuts, almonds, pine nuts.  I buy them raw or dry roasted, unsalted, and the kids have no clue there’s a difference.  LOL!  I made a yummy nut mix the other day.  It was supposed to be a topping for salads but the kids eat it as a snack.

1 tablespoon sesame oil
120 grams pine nuts
120 grams sunflower seeds
60 grams sesame seeds
30 grams (1 tablespooons) Tamari or soy sauce

Heat sesame oil in frying pan over moderate heat, add nuts and seeds, stir until lightly browned and fragrant.  Remove from heat, cool, add tamari or soy sauce.

The list will keep growing I’m sure.  We’ve only been at this for a month.  But I hope this helps those of you who asked about what we eat.

And if you have any suggestions for us, please leave them in the comments!

Happy Eating!

Groceries Round One.  I took forever with this grocery run because I was reading every label and trying to find things I have never bought before.

Definitions Revisited

In so doing, we refined our idea of what eating unprocessed foods means to us (I realised from all my reading on the web that it really means different things to different people).

• If we could make it, we didn’t buy it.  We minced our own meats (have you read all that bad press recently about pink slime in minces?), made our own pasta, milled our own wheat, made our own butter, baked our own bread and cookies and crackers, made hazelnut chocolate spread (think Nutella), blended protein shakes, whipped up mayonnaise, salad dressings, kneaded pastry dough, ground coffee beans and roasted and milled spices, and so on.

Our homemade hazelnut spread turned out to be too thick because I had difficulty trying to substitute the chocolate the recipe called for with cocoa + honey + maple syrup + milk.

• We avoided packages and cans.  Fresh tomatoes for our pasta sauce, fresh berries cooked and added to plain yoghurt, homemade chicken stock for various recipes which called for it and a vegetable stock concentrate to replace stock cubes.
• If we could use whole grain, we did.  We ground wheat kernels and rice for flour which we used to bake bread, rice crackers, make pasta, mac & cheese, etc.  We drew the line at cutting out white rice.  I mean we have to stay sane some how right?    But we did add brown rice to white.  And the pasta that we didn’t make ourselves, we bought whole grain.

Tim made this pasta sauce on his own with fresh tomatoes.  They were very tart though, so I followed a tip I found online and threw in a carrot to cook with the sauce.  It did sweeten it a little, but in the end I had to “help” it with a bit of honey.

• We used honey and maple syrup and DATES to sweeten our food and drinks.  No white sugar.  We used raw sugar to make a berry cordial but it was … er … strange.  The kids said it was like that water chestnut drink we used to have in Singapore.  So much for using expensive berries.  We used up a 1 kg bottle of honey in a week!  And I learnt that maple syrup is a better sweetener for coffee than honey.

Lessons Learnt

Here are some more lessons we learnt in eating unprocessed foods:

• THE THERMOMIX IS MY FRIEND!  Yes, I have waxed lyrical about this wonder machine time after time, but during the last few weeks, it has been my best buddy.  It ground, milled, minced, pureed, mixed, cooked, steamed, blended, etc numerous times each day.  I felt like I was constantly washing it out, drying it up and getting it ready for the next thing.  I read my Thermomix cookbooks like I was sitting for an exam!
• There is so much to learn.  Embarking on this challenge has taught us so much about food in general, about reading labels, about finding alternatives.  All in all it has taught us that we can do much if we set our minds to it.
• As with much in life, you need a strong enough why.  [An aside: There is an ebook from the founders of the now-sadly-closed Elijah Company homeschool supplies store titled "A Strong Enough Why".  If homeschooling is your thing, you might want to click here and read it.]  We learnt that if you are passionate about something, you will find ways to make it work.
• If you try new things, you will fail … once in a while.  Many nights in the last two weeks, dinner has been late because the gnocchi didn’t turn out properly and we had to move to Plan B for dinner, or the beef wouldn’t mince in the Thermomix because I bought the wrong cut and the tendon kept getting tangled in the blade (yikes!), or you make a berry cordial that ends up tasting like water chestnut (or have I mentioned that already?), etc.

Yoghurt!  Yums!  With cooked mixed berries and honey.  The kids, especially Daniel, was thrilled that the berries never ended, unlike the store bought berry yoghurt tubs.  He keeps asking for more berries.

• This processing business is time consuming!  I am in the kitchen for most of the day these days.  Coffee isn’t instant, soy bean milk for breakfast has to be cooked, fruit yoghurt has to be mixed from three different things, Caesar salad dressing from ten.  Bread has to be baked, and pancake mix no longer comes out of a box.  And because nothing lasts long when it is made fresh, you can’t make them in large quantities, so before you know it, you’re making it all over again!  Once breakfast is done, I take a break for school, then lunch needs to be whipped up, followed by snacks for tea, then dinner, then any prep for things which are on the meal plan for the next day!  It just never stops!
• And finally … the more whole grains, fruits and vegetables you eat, the more you poop!  There I said it! 

Actually, there are so many more lessons, but I will have to mull over them and maybe blog about them at a later date.

So What?

We have already had some tangible benefits from eating unprocessed food:

• We are spending less on groceries.  I thought this would be a no brainer when we first started out.  I mean if we aren’t buying all that packaged snacks and are making our own food practically from scratch, surely we would be spending less right? Well, it didn’t look like it would work out that way at first.  Fresh tomatoes are more expensive than canned ones.  A 4 kg bag of pasta from Costco is so ridiculously cheap that you’ll spend way more trying to make it yourself.  Lemons at 80 cents each, and which only yield about 40 ml of juice are way more costly than a juice from a bottle of “ReaLemon”.  And you will not believe how much each batch of mayonnaise costs to make from scratch with good quality ingredients.  I cringed when my last batch failed to emulsify and had to be tossed.  *ouch*  Also when you start reading all that stuff about what goes into your meats, you’re going to want to try to buy grain fed, or organic, and don’t forget the eggs from free range chickens.  But yes, at the end of the day, it seems to be working out to cost less to eat unprocessed food, though how much less we haven’t quite figured out, since we were using up a lot of things we already had in our pantry.  The tracking continues.

Homemade Chinese Egg Noodles.  We rolled and cut these out by hand!

• Grocery Shopping is SO MUCH EASIER!  And faster too! I was reading a healthy food cookbook (yes, my current preoccupation) the other day and the author used the phrase “shopping the perimeter”.  THAT’S IT I thought.  That’s exactly what shopping for an unprocessed food diet looks like.  The grocery stores here (and back home in Singapore too) have fruits and vegetables when you first enter, then you walk past nuts and dried fruits and on to breads and other baked goods to fish and meats, right over to dairy products and eggs, and then you’re done!  Just avoid the aisles in the main.  That’s how I draw up my shopping list now.  I have a section for “others” which requires me to go down the aisles to look for canned foods and rice, etc, but in the main, I am no longer tempted by all that wonderful looking packaging.

Alethea with her masterpieces and our first lunch.  They were a roaring success, which gave her an incredible boost!

• Our kids are cooking!  Alethea especially, has really stepped up to this.  Tonight she rolled out and cooked 20 chapattis to eat with our chicken curry, and two days ago, she made applesauce muffins on her own.  Timothy is ever eager to help, and even little Nathalie has supplied our family with cereal bars made with air-popped corn and cranberries.    But more importantly, they are taking an interest in all the stuff we put into our mouths.  And that’s a great benefit!

The little one cooks!  This was such a fabulous snack that it didn’t last more than 24 hours in the fridge.

• We have less garbage!  I still can’t figure out why, except maybe that we throw away less packaging?  But then again, that usually goes into the recyling bin, not garbage.  So why less garbage?  More than 2 weeks later, I still can’t figure it out!
• And … er … did I mention all that poop? 

And now, right at the end of this post … for those curious about the food we made and ate … Let’s see now … here’s a list (incomplete) of what we made in the last couple of weeks:

The observant will spot crab sticks in there.  Yes, not exactly unprocessed, but they were expiring!

Breakfast – bread, breadsticks, protein shakes, hazelnut chocolate spread (like Nutella), whole wheat pancakes, Chinese rice porridge with egg omelette, homemade butter.

Daniel looks on impatiently as I snap photos of our first breakfast – whole wheat breadstick with cheese and butter.

Lunch – herb chicken balls, pasta (yes, we made our own!), tomato pasta sauce, chicken noodle soup, chicken stock, Chinese noodles (yes, we made those too), sushi, whole wheat maccaroni and cheese (this pasta we didn’t make), chicken nuggets, Japanese chicken kara-age.

Snacks - whole wheat crackers chicken & homemade mayo dip, baked rice crackers, baked doughnuts (YUMS!), fruit leather (two batches because they sure went fast!), oat cookies, applesauce muffins.

Dinner – slow cooker baked chicken, vegetarian sausage rolls, gnocchi, steamed meatloaf (small disaster), butter chicken, nasi lemak with lemongrass chicken and sambal, tortillas, chapati.

Drinks – lemonade, hot chocolate (using our hazelnut chocolate spread!), almond milk (didn’t happen because I didn’t have a fine enough filter), coffee from freshly ground beans, berry cordial, soy bean milk.

Of all the foods I made, I am proudest of this - baked doughnuts with maple sugar.  They tasted marvellous straight out of the oven at tea time!

And the adventure continues!

We have relaxed some of our rules now.  We use white sugar sparingly (so far only for lemonade and a rerun of that berry cordial that went wrong), we eat canned tuna and salmon and tomatoes, and once a week we are systematically using up our HUGE stash of premixes which we brought from Singapore.

I inventorised our pantry at the end of our unprocessed food week and found to my horror that I had enough to cook 28 chickens in curry, and make 115 bowls of laksa/soto ayam/hokkien mee/mee rebus/mee siam, and cook 50 bowls of chicken rice, and make 200 sticks of satay.  Then there’s paste for red curry, green curry, otak, sayur lodeh, chili crab (enough for 8 kg of crabs), rojak, assam fish, cereal prawns, sambal prawns, spare ribs, bak kut teh … There’s just no way we can eat all that at the rate of one meal a week!

Nasi lemak in banana leaves (and Lands’ End catalogue pages because we didn’t have newspapers) and rojak made with a Prima premix.  We are diligently using our stash up now!

So now that you’ve read about our new found passion, anyone game to join us on this continuing adventure of eating unprocessed food? 

I did a double (triple??) take.  Canola OIL?  Brominated soya OIL?  What’s BROMINATED anyway?  Needless to say, after I read the list to the kids, I had to finish the rest of the lemonade myself.  No one would join me!

We all had to wonder … what’s in all that packaged food we eat!  We got talking, and talking, and talking and we’ve all talked ourselves into going one whole week without eating ANY processed food.  That week starts tomorrow!

DEFINITIONS, DEFINITIONS …

So what constitutes processed anyway?  We don’t have a good definition of it yet since we are at the start of this new food journey (those who have been around a while may remember our earlier food journey with going vegetarian for a week).

Obviously “processed food” is a concept on a continuum.  We aren’t farmers, so even the raw food we buy has been “processed” in some way.  But as we talk about it, here’s how we are starting to categorise things.  I’m sure it will become clearer as the week plays out:

Unprocessed – fresh fruits, vegetables, raw meats, milk, eggs, raw nuts,

Processed – store-bought cookies, biscuits, jams, boxed mac & cheese, bottled sauces, 3-in-one coffee *wail*

In-between (stuff we can possibly make but will probably buy) – pasta, noodles, flours, butter

And this last list is of processed things we still want to eat and can’t make ourselves - soya sauce, white rice, sugar …

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

So I’ve been spending HOURS studying cookbooks and surfing the web to get geared up for this next food adventure and guess what I found?  Yup, there is nothing new under the sun!  And also that we are really slow learners in this area.  Ha ha. 

Best blog I’ve found on cutting out processed food is www.100daysofrealfood.com.  Parents, two girls, who have been doing this and blogging about it since 2010.  If you have an hour (or ten), and are interested, you may want to head over to that blog and I’ll guarantee you an educational and convicting time indeed!  And if you want to join her and thousands of others, there is a 10 day pledge you can sign up for on her site.

WISH US LUCK!

So we start Monday!  Wish us luck!

No, my house doesn’t look like that.  I wish!

A super quick post to share something I am totally excited about!  FINALLY!  We have a map on the wall!  (I know … I have no life …)

We bought a laminated one a LONG time ago from Popular Bookshop in Singapore.  Loved it because it is an Asia-centric map so Singapore is right in the middle!  LOL!  But it was impossible to put on the wall because it kept curling and falling off.  We finally stuck it on with too much Velcro, but when we moved to a rented apartment, we couldn’t risk ruining the paint on the wall so didn’t put it up.

Anyway, when we got here, same problem.  Rented house.  Also the map was a bit too big to go up on any of the available walls.  Last week, we went to an craft supplies store here, Omer DeSerres, and found a map by Wall Pops which sticks on the wall without the use of adhesive!  It is made of vinyl and comes with a dry erase pen, and you can remove and reposition it quite effortlessly.  Trust me.    Been there, done that.

So if you’re looking for a wall map, look no further!  Check out www.wallpops.com NOW!  (Sound like an advertiser to you?)  The store has some other really fabulous wall decor products.  But I digress …

A few years ago, while trying to get a handle on our daily schedules which were all over the place, I found a great scheduling tool from the homeschool family behind www.titus2.com.  Titled Managers of Their Homes, the book was filled with tips and forms to help you get organised.  I didn’t end up using most of the stuff, but there were a few principles I picked up which proved invaluable.  One of them is about making your days as uniform as possible.

Like DUH! right?  LOL!  But I didn’t even know how to do that much!  I used to shun schedules because they “cramped my style”.  So we were going out and meeting people, and having people over, and going on random fieldtrips and it was all wearing me out.  Now this one thing has brought much order to our days.

DAILY SCHEDULE

So by and large our days look something like this in 2012 …

7.30 am – Kids wake up and have breakfast
8.00 am – Chinese
9.30 am – History readings (Mystery of History, Trial & Triumph)
10.00 am – Copywork
10.30 am – Math
11.30 am – Some slack for getting lunch ready, checking math answers, allowing time for schedule overruns, etc
12.00 noon - French homework or Writing Strands or Journaling (on Fridays)
12.30 pm – Lunch

AFTERNOONS VARY (see below)

5.00 pm – Dinner prep (one child helps each day)
6.00 pm – Dinner followed by packing up, folding laundry, etc
7.00 pm – Baths
8.00 pm – Bible reading with the family
8.30 pm – In bed (kids get various lengths of time to read in bed before lights out)

AFTERNOONS

In the afternoons we have a variety of activities including:

• French tuition
• Tennis lessons
• Music lessons (Alethea on piano, Timothy violin, Nathalie recorder) in the same music school
• Meeting with one other homeschool family for lunch, presentation skills, picture studies, composer studies

HOMESCHOOL GROUP

Once a week we meet with a homeschool co-op and during the 3 hours there we cover Art, Science and Theatre and the kids attend another French class.

A NOTE ABOUT SCHEDULING MULTIPLE CHILDREN

I used to schedule MYSELF when the children were younger.  That simply meant that if I was working with one child on Math, the others had to be doing something which they could do on their own, or which needed less involvement from me.  But now that the children are older, I can do the same subject concurrently.

For example, during copywork/dictation time, I read Nathalie’s copywork passage with her and get her started while the two older ones are studying their passages.  Then when they are ready, I read their passages out to them (yes, different passages at the same time, and no, they don’t get confused, but sometimes I do).  And now that we are doing Saxon Math, the two older ones are completely independent during that period so I work only with Nathalie (while entertaining Daniel).  Doing Singapore Math was different.

So that’s how we do it all! 

I know that the solution to writing more lies in canning that need for perfection (and for photos!) and learning to write shorter blog posts.  So in order to start the year right on the blogging front, I have decided to write a SHORT post about CURRICULUM.  I hope this satisfies those of you who have been patiently waiting for something … anything … about homeschooling.

Here goes:

MATH

We live in limbo where the school year is concerned because we still cannot get away from thinking calendar year (Singapore style), but want our children to be able to say what school year they are in when they talk to people here, or go to the right class in Sunday School, etc.  Fortunately for us, we do very little at “grade level” apart from math.  So to reduce the confusion, we started our children on their new math curriculum in September last year.

We made the switch to Saxon Math and they are now doing Saxon 6/7, Saxon 4/5, Saxon Grade 2.  We switched from Singapore Math (which we brought from home) to Saxon Math in order to prepare them for any Canadian standardised testing we may want them to sit for in the next year or so.

BIBLE

We read a chapter a day of the Bible as a family every evening and share our “favourite verses”.  I would like to re-start singing hymns and have ordered The Christian Life Hymnal from www.cbd.com.  We are also reading Trial & Triumph for Church history and will revive the Hide ‘Em In Your Heart CDs by Steve Green for the benefit of the younger ones.

HISTORY

We started using Mystery of History and the kids are really enjoying it.  We are not doing the activities at the end of each chapter (no time lah!), but we put our timeline figures into our timeline book (both from www.homeschoolinthewoods.com) after every three readings.  We have just completed week 12 of the first book and hope to finish books 1 and 2 of the series by the end of the year.

GEOGRAPHY

I will be using Galloping the Globe with the preschoolers in our weekly homeschool group meeting and will do the same lessons at home with our kids.  The programme is targetted at grades K to 4, but you can easily take it up a notch for older kids.  I would like to get some mapwork in as well, but I think that would be ambitious to say the least.

SCIENCE

The homeschool Co-Op we attend is using R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey (I cannot spell Odyssey without checking!) Chemistry from www.pandiapress.com.  I kinda influened the decision for selish reasons.  :)  Confession is good for the soul.  We started on the Life Science one on our own and got about halfway through before we got distracted.  We also bought Exploration Education from www.explorationeducation.com which I LOVE LOVE LOVE, but we have not been able to find the time to be diligent with this.

CHINESE

We have just started using a programme you can find online here: http://www.hwjyw.com/textbooks/.  Called the Overseas Language and Culture Education Online, it is a series of textbooks and workbooks which our resident Chinese teacher has taken a great liking to.    We are using the “zhong wen” series if you’re interested.

FRENCH

When in Rome … or Montreal … learn FRENCH!    We have a tutor who comes over for 5 hours of French every week.  On one day, she does individual hour-long sessions with each child, then on another day, she spends two hours with all three together, reading, singing, playing Monopoly, etc.  She is using locally bought workbooks for the kids.  We are also doing the L’Art de Lire programme from www.nallenart.com.  This programme is great for us because it is written in ENGLISH!  Ha ha.

ENGLISH

We are continuing to use the Charlotte Mason method for teaching English (for teaching everything, really), and are using Spelling Wisdom from www.simplycharlottemason.com for copywork/dictation.  The children also narrate from various books we read but I have become less diligent about requiring it of the two older ones over the years.  I am working more with Nathalie (just turned 7) who seems to have more difficulty with this.  Alethea is working independently from Writing Strands and I hope will be a regular contributor to the Singapore Homeschool Gazette e-zine at www.homeschoolgazette.blogspot.com.

MUSIC, ART, PRESENTATIONS SKILLS

Together with another homeschool family, we are doing Year 1 of Music and Moments with the Masters from www.cornerstonecurriculum.com, doing picture studies (I know I don’t need it but I am seriously eyeing the Picture Studies Portfolios from www.simplycharlottemason.com, and working through Beginning Public Speaking from the Institute of Cultural Communicators www.iccinc.org.

ART, THEATRE

Our homeschool co-op is using Artistic Pursuits from www.artisticpursuits.com, and we have a WONDERFUL theatre trained Mom in the group who is doing such fun stuff with the kids and preparing them to put up a play!  WOO HOO! 

THERE!  Blogging that wasn’t so difficult!    Here’s to a brand new year of teaching our own!  It will be our 8th year!

It has been 2.5 months since my last post.  (There seems to be a pattern forming.)  I have thought constantly of writing, but haven’t had the time.  Between managing kids and home in Tee Chiou’s absences (he has taken 15 plane trips in that time and gone to five countries), entertaining Tee Chiou’s colleagues over dinner (three times), as well as hosting family and friends who came to stay (three families, 11 people), two ski holidays (with abovementioned families) to Mont Tremblant, and all the various preparations we have made for winter and Christmas, and the children’s church and music school year-end performances, I have not been able to find time to write.  *whew*

A rare family photo.  On Mont Tremblant.

Then there has been the cooking.  Which is the subject of this blog post. 

My History in the Kitchen

Up till just past my 40th birthday, I hardly did anything in the kitchen.  My Mom is a drop-dead-fabulous cook, and cooked (still cooks) amazing multi-dish meals for the family.  I cooked the occasional Western-style meal, but that was about it.  When I got married at 30, I decided I needed to start cooking even though we lived only 100 metres from my parents.  I didn’t even know how to cook rice at that point. *faint*

But that was short-lived because I was “with child” shortly after we got married and couldn’t stand handling raw food.  So back to Mom’s we went till we had Alethea.  And a live-in maid.  For almost ten years we enjoyed the faithful and competent service of three different domestic helpers, all who enjoyed cooking, and cooked well.

Then at the end of March 2010, we went maid-free and I found myself in the kitchen.  A lot.  But even then my Mom was doing much of the buying of meats and fish for me, and slicing, marinating etc, so all I needed to do was throw things in the pan and swish around and VOILA!  Great food!  So spoiled right?

And when we moved to Montreal, Mom came along and stayed for 5 months, and continued cooking her fabulous food.  So I really have had only about half a year of real “end-t0-end” experience in the kitchen.  Planning, buying, food prep, cooking, and all that cleaning after!

And what fun it has been!  Can’t believe I waited till now!    I wanted to share here about three mini kitchen adventures.

Sandi Richard

A few months ago, plagued with worsening pain in his knee caused by torn meniscus, Tee Chiou was determined to lose weight in order to reduce the pressure on his knee.  I have never been a calorie counter.  (I thank God I have never had to!)  But now I had to learn how to cook healthy meals for dinner to support Tee Chiou’s efforts.

Interestingly enough, I had two books by Sandi Richard (www.cookingfortherushed.com) which were recommended by a Singaporean friend now living in Vancouver (hi Julia *wave*).  And though I had used a couple of recipes before, and I agreed with her philosophy, I hadn’t really used her books much because I still believed that dinner had to be a multi-dish affair.  But when I started searching for healthy recipes, I realised that all hers had calorie counts, and that each recipe was for the full meal, not just the main course.  So just for the sake of easy execution, I started using her cookbooks.

The first Sandi Richard cookbook I bought myself.  I now have FOUR!

Sandi Richard is a Canadian celebrity chef of sorts, with a passion for getting families back to the dining table through quick and easy food preparation.  She doesn’t rely on any kind of food advanced food prep, which I like, since I’m SO not organised enough.  AND … all her recipes are for full meals, carbo, protein and vegetables, so you don’t have to think about how to mix and match.  AND … with seven children of her own, her recipes are family tested and approved!

Her recipes were given one great review after another from the various members of my family, especially from the very grateful husband, who started to think that this diet thing was more that just bearable with actually tasty food!  And I became a very happy cook, because it wasn’t just easy AND quick prep.  It was easy planning, cooking, and easy cleaning up as well!  Some of her main courses are baked, which means I can pop the stuff in the oven, and go off to pick the kids from tennis class, then come home to a calm and yummy dinner!  And some of her slow cooker recipes (she has just a few), I put together for Sunday dinners so I can take a guilt-free nap on Sunday afternoons!  Doing away with all that scrambling at dinner time has just been the best thing.

Btw, she doesn’t just do “ang moh” (Western) food.  Just last night I used the udon with miso chicken recipe from her book and we exclaimed how interesting it was that such decidedly yummy Asian food could come from a non-Asian cookbook.

As an added bonus, she has pre-prepared shopping lists if you follow her week-by-week plans.  But since I was picking and choosing just the lowest calorie meals, I subscribed to her online Grocery List Generator and love how it has simplified my shopping.  I generate the list, cancel out whatever I already have or don’t want to use, print it off and head to the supermarket!

Our family has also benefitted from learning to eat outside our food comfort zones, and have found a host of yummy things we would not ordinarily have looked for in the supermarket.  It helps that being Canadian she uses ingredients which are easily found in any supermarket here.

Just Bento-ing

Once a week, our family goes to a homeschool group meeting which runs from 10 am to 1 pm.  Too late to head home for lunch, almost every family brings their own.  Now … even after being here for almost a year, I still cannot bring myself to have sandwiches for lunch.  And that’s what most people bring.  And they eat it with raw vegetables.  So not my thing.  So after a couple of uneventful lunches, which my kids were unable to finish (playing in the church yard rated higher than eating a sandwich), I decided there had to be a better way.

Bento-ing came to mind.  Packed lunches, Japanese style, and yes still cold, but potentially yummy.  I started searching the web for recipes.  And discovered www.justbento.com.  OH MAN!  Talk about inspiring!  I ran out (figuratively, since I simply ordered from www.bookdepository.co.uk) and bought the Just Bento Cookbook, because I don’t like reading recipes off the web.

And our bento-ing adventures began.  It helped, of course, that my very indulgent best friend sent us LOADS of fun bent0 tools and boxes and other paraphernalia from Singapore to get us off to an inspired start.

A bento lunch I made Tee Chiou – Onigiri (plain rice), home made chicken nuggets, and some quick decorative “flowers” and quails eggs

Now, I really don’t have time for the kyaraben or character bento (think cute) food preparation because I have to make six substantial lunch bentos and get the kids ready and out of the house by nine in the morning.  But I do indulge in the cutesy stuff once in a while if time permits and if my kids want to play with their lunch.  It certainly helps to get them eat more!  Which may or may not be what you’re after. 

A dry run of the mini burgers we are planning to make for our homeschool group Christmas party later this week.  Mini Japanese burgers, rice snouts, tomato/M&M noses, pretzel antlers, cheese and nori (seaweed) eyes.

Baking Bread

A few months ago, I was inspired (lots of thing are inspiring me these days, huh?) to start baking my own bread.  I really cannot say why I started, but having a Thermomix and seeing how easily one can make bread dough in it certainly helped me to make the decision.  Apart from a few lapses from lack of time, I have since baked all the bread my family eats.

I have two “go to” recipes for bread.  One is a sweet bun recipe like the ones you find in Asian bakeries.  Think Bread Talk.  You can fill it with just about anything from chocolate chips to tuna & mayo and it tastes great!  The other is a wholemeal bread recipe which is fabulously soft.  So unlike my experience with wholemeal bread.  The thing about these recipes is I always have the ingredients on hand to make them.  There was another recipe I liked a lot, but it required buttermilk, which is not something I always remember to buy.

Alethea getting in on the baking action!  This is a tray of tuna buns she did ALL BY HERSELF for a Sunday breakfast.  The dough was made the night before and put in the fridge.  Shaped, filled and baked in the morning.

If you are game to try it, the recipes can be found on www.allrecipes.com (links below).  For my fellow Thermomix users, here are my Thermomix versions so you don’t have to figure it out yourselves. 

Best Basic Sweet Bread

230g milk
65g white sugar
75g butter
10g yeast
500g all-purpose flour (I buy unbleached)
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
30g oil

Method:

1. Put milk, white sugar and butter into Thermomix for 3 to 4 mins at 37˚C on speed 1.  (You can stop when temperature reaches 37˚C.)
2. Mix in yeast for 10 to 15 secs on speed 2.  Leave for 10 mins for yeast to proof.  (Or is it “prove”?)
3. Put in flour, salt, eggs, oil, mix for 20 seconds, going from speed 0 to 6 to combine ingredients.
4. Set to close lid position, 3 mins, and hit that wheat button, whatever they call it.
5. Take out, put into lightly oiled bowl, cover with damp tea towel, let rise till doubled.  I can’t tell you how long.  It varies according to the temperature in my kitchen!  But I usually set the timer for 40 mins so I don’t forget to check on it.
6. Cut dough with scissors (apparently you should never tear pieces off, it damages the gluten and you lose some fluffy-ness) to the size you want.  I make my bread buns 45g each because that’s how much the littler kids eat.  If I make them any larger they won’t finish it.  I use the Thermomix to weigh the dough.  Of course.    Shape it the way you want.  You can fill it, or leave it plain.  Put on lightly oiled baking tray.  Cover with oiled plastic wrap.
7. Let rise till almost doubled (if you can figure out what that looks like), and bake in 190˚C oven for about 15 mins.
8. Brush with melted butter so bread stays soft.  If you are baking rolls with sweet fillings, remember not to use salted butter!  I’ve done that absent mindedly once too many times. 

Heart-shaped buns with bacon and cheese

Simple Whole Wheat Bread

470g water
55g honey
10g yeast
450g bread flour
30g butter
55g honey
10g salt
280g whole wheat flour

The recipe on the web makes 3 loaves, which is too much for the Thermomix to handle. So I scaled the recipe down to make two loaves, which fits just right.  I normally make half the dough into plain buns, and the other half I bake a regular loaf.

Method is similar to the one above.  All Thermomix recipes for bread follow more or less the same method, I guess.

1. Put water, honey into Thermomix.  3 to 4 mins, 37˚C, speed 1.
2. Add yeast, 15 seconds, speed 2.
3. Add bread flour, mix 10 to 15 seconds, going from speed 0 to 4.
4. Leave for 30 mins in Thermomix.  Your dough will become really HUGE and may pop out of the top of the Thermomix.  If it reaches this stage before the 30 mins are up, you don’t have to wait out the rest of the time.  Just continue with …
5. Whack dough down with whatever you can get your hands on.  I usually just spin the Thermomix at speed 1 till the dough deflates.
6. Add the rest of the ingredients (butter, honey, salt, whole wheat flour), mix 20 secs, going from speed 0 to 6.  Take out, put in lightly oiled bowl, cover with damp tea towel.
7. Let rise till doubled, shape, let rise till almost doubled, bake in 175˚C for about 15 to 18 mins for buns and 25 to 30 mins for whole loaves.

The End … Or Just The Beginning?

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my kitchen adventures as much as I have enjoyed sharing them with you!

I can’t believe it’s been two months since I blogged!  *faint*  A big thank you to all of you who emailed to ask if everything was okay with us.  Yes, everything has been okay.  More than okay.

We’ve been busy busy busy here!    Took two short holidays because Tee Chiou’s schedule is lighter in the summer.  One was to Gananoque, gateway to the Thousand Islands (yes, home of the salad dressing!), which was just under three hours away.  The other was to Toronto and the Niagara Falls, which was about 7 hours away.  We took the trip in two days.  Daniel isn’t great in the car unfortunately, so we can only do about three hours at a stretch and even then during his nap time.  We also spent a beautiful Saturday at a friend’s cottage up north in the Laurentians and were awed by God’s creation!  And we celebrated two birthdays in September (Tim’s on the 15th and Thea’s on the 19th).

And then we’ve been busy in the home.  It has taken us a ridiculously long time to get settled into a routine, and now I think we have finally gotten it.  I seem to be doing laundry all the time, what with clothes for six and bedsheets and too many floor mats and dish cloths, etc.  The kids help, which is great!  But I still have to mastermind it. And all that cooking too!

Books for Boys

So here I am back again.  Finally.  With a post about reading lists for boys.  It started with a question on the Singapore Homeschool Group forum.  A mom asked for recommendations for her 9 year old son, and I posted with a list off the top of my head.  No, actually it was off the top of Tim’s head.  Other moms responded also, with some books I had forgotten, then today I went up to our bookshelves to look up more so I could come up with a more comprehensive list.

Now, this is also a list for girls.  I should know because Alethea has read almost all of them. 

My suggestions of appropriate ages are very tentative, because interests and abilities vary so greatly in boys aged 6 to 9.  I read somewhere that whether early readers or late, children are almost on par when they are 10.  In the meantime, though, I strongly suggest that you continue reading to your child, whether or not they are reading competently on their own.  This way you will not miss out on some of these wonderful books.  If a child only becomes a competent reader at 9 or 10, they may not want to read Wind in the Willows or Winnie the Pooh.  And that would be such a pity.

But First …

Here are some general points about reading in the Ng household:

1.  We try to read only complete and unabridged books.  We figure if a child is not old enough to tackle the real thing, he’s not old enough for the book.  Why water it down
to something the author never intended? There are many books for each age and ability.  So we feel there is little reason to read an abridged book.

2.  We rely on reading lists from homeschool curriculum providers/advisors like www.sonlight.com (my kids find the readers for their age a little light, but have been doing well with the read-alouds for the same age), www.veritaspress.com, and our personal favourite www.amblesideonline.org. I do this because then I know that
someone else has been through that book and decided it was “okay”.  Or I go to the
bookshop, take down book titles (I just take a photo of it with my smart phone), come back and read reviews (1-star first) on Amazon.

3.  We try not to let my kids get stuck in any one genre. And they can’t say they don’t want to read a book after just reading the blurb at the back or looking at the cover.
They need to give them all a chance. So my son read Little House on the Prairie (wasn’t crazy about it), Caddie Woodlawn (loved it), The Little Princess, What Katy Did (listened to both on audio and enjoyed them thoroughly). So I try not to allow them to do too many books in a particular series unless they are read alternately with other books at the same time.  I find books in a series, especially a LONG series, becomes formulaic after a while.  It helps that I have an older daughter who is
always actively recommending books to her brother to read.

4.  We believe that you should continue reading aloud to your children.  I’m still reading to our oldest who is reading Shakespeare on her own. *shudder*  If you cannot find the time to read, invest in good audio CDs (choose the unabridged ones where possible) or borrow them from the library or buy from www.audible.com.  You can also get an excellent selection for free from www.librivox.org.  We really got into audio books when I was faced with having to read the Narnia series and balked at the prospect of almost 40 hours of reading aloud.  Now we have over 90 audio books in our collection and are currently listening to the How to Train Your Dragon series (we’re on book 4 or 5 and it is HYSTERICAL!) and it’s great entertainment for the whole family!  You mustn’t mind language like “you winkle-hearted seaweed brain limpet-eating pig” though.

5.  It is really easy to tell a good book from a not so good one.  If you find it engaging yourself, it’s good.  Each family has different standards, but if you look at a book and have your doubts (like I do when I see the likes of Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Robert Munsch, sorry to all the Munsch fans out there, Harry Potter from the 4th book onwards), then don’t let your child read it.

6.  We read “old” books because getting used to that kind of language prepares
them for reading the classics and Shakespeare etc when they are older.  If they cannot handle it, read it aloud to them.  It is important for our children
to be exposed to good literature.  I do allow them to borrow the lighter reads or books in a HUGE series (like Geronimo Stilton) from friends or the library, but I try not to have too many of them lying around for them to pick up too easily.

THE LIST

For 6 to 7 year olds

• Winnie the Pooh series (unabridged please) by A.A. Milne.  Not at all trivial.  We still listen to them today and hubby and I are still delighted by the stories.
• Peter Rabbit and other stories by Beatrix Potter (like A.A. Milne’s books, these are beautifully written)
• Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• James Herriot’s Treasury for Children
• Babe: The Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith
• Little Pear and Little Pear and His Friends by Eleanor Frances Lattimore
• The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and other books by Jill Tomlinson
• The Littles series by John Peterson
• Mr Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater

For 7 to 8 year olds

• Nicholas series by René Goscinny (we still re-read these because they are so funny!  Author is of Asterix fame)
• Paddington Bear by Michael Bond
• Anything by Bill Peet.  Bill Peet was a Disney animator and his books are wonderfully illustrated.  A fantastic bridge between picture books and chapter books.  Great for the reluctant reader.
• Frindle and other books by Andrew Clements
• Follow My Leader by James Garfield
• The Moffats, Ginger Pye and other books by Eleanor Estes
• The Saturdays and the other books in the series by Elizabeth Enright
• Charlotte’s Web and Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White (I did not like Stuart Little by the same author)
• Books by Thornton Burgess (fabulous books personifying animals written by a naturalist)
• Viking Adventure by Clyde Robert Bulla
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
• Moomin series by Tove Jansson
• Toothpaste Millionaire by Jean Merrill
• Lost on a Mountain in Maine by Donn Fendler
• Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting
• The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli
• Henry Huggins and other books by Beverly clearly
• Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry (don’t be deterred by the cover.  This book is FUNNEE!)
• Random House has a beginning chapter book series titled “Stepping Stones”.  The historical fiction titles are very good.  Look them up here.

For 8 to 9 year olds

• Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol
• The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
• Zorgamazoo (an entire book written in rhyme) by Robert Paul Weston and Victor Rivas
• Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska
• Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien (I couldn’t put this down myself!)
• Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene Dubois
• From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
• Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
• Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner

For 9 to 10 year olds

• How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell.  We don’t have the books but are listening to the audio versions of this now.  Not be confused with the movie tie-ins.  Read the real thing! 
• The Mysterious Benedict’s Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart.  An EXCELLENT series
• Silverwing and Airborn and other books by Kenneth Oppel (Tim’s current rave)
• Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat
• The Dangerous Book for boys (latest acquisition)
• 100 Cupboards series by N.D. Wilson
• Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld
• Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
• Rascal by Sterling North

Happy reading!

Our children LOVE poetry.  They read it, they memorise it, they recite it unbidden, they do copywork from it, and they love it.  We have been reading poetry to them since they were young.  Not just the nursery rhyme sort, though that too.  I myself have always enjoyed poetry, though I have to say that having to “study” it in literature robbed me of some of that joy.  So we don’t do any “teaching” from poetry.  I want our children to simply enjoy it.

Poet-tea essentials – A good book of poetry, and a fine cup of tea!

WHY POETRY?

There are many things about poetry which you don’t always get in prose.  Rhyme, rhythm, appreciation of the “melody” of the English language, and extensive vocabularly.  You see, with the limitations imposed in a poem – needing to complete a thought in a definite number of syllables, having to find something which rhymes with something else – the poet uses the language in a way the prose writer does not.  So poetry is a necessary complement to reading prose.

I remember years ago, when Alethea was but 6, I was reading to her and we came across the word “belfry”.  I paused to offer an explanation, but none was needed.  “I know Mom.  It’s a bell tower.”  How did she know?  She had read the phrase “bats in the belfry” in a poem and understood the meaning in context.  To this day neither of us can remember which poem though. 

Also for the young child, poems which rhyme are easy to commit to memory, and that helps in language acquisition and retention.  And memorising poetry is a joy and beneficial at any age.

When asked to pick something to perform at our homeschool group’s school year-end concert in June, all our children asked to recite poetry, and Alethea and Timothy did one together from Joyful Noise: Poetry for Two Voices (which btw is a really delightful collection).

Our poetry books.  I thought this was all, but after I took the photo, I discovered more!

HOW TO READ POETRY

I get asked this a lot.  I think it is because many of us have been “scarred” by our literature teachers who made reading poetry a bit of a chore.  The reality is much simpler. Pick up a book of poetry, find a poem (or just read them in sequence), and just read!

You don’t have to expound on it.  You don’t have to look up definitions (unless you really want to).  You don’t even have to pretend to LIKE all of them.  Or understand them all for that matter.  There are many times when I will look up after reading a poem, and find all the children staring blankly at me.  I’ll shrug, say I didn’t understand it either, then we’ll pick another poem to read.  Just move on.

You don’t have to read many poems.  We used to read a poem a day from a predetermined selection.  One selection for each child.  If the kids liked it, we would read it again.  And again if they asked.  It took us no more than 5 to 10 mins to get through the various readings for all three children.

WHAT POETRY TO READ

We have an extensive collection of poetry books.  But looking at the lot, here are the ones I would recommend if you are just starting out and want to make a few key investments:

Favorite Poems Old and New selected by Helen Farris – if you only own one poetry book, this has to be it!  No coloured pictures though.

A Child’s Book of Poems illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa – this is a fabulous value-for-money volume.  Under 10 US dollars and in hardcover, this is a collection of wonderful and famous classic poems.

A Family of Poems selected by Caroline Kennedy (yes THAT Kennedy) – another collection of classic poems, but this one is beautifully illustrated by Jon J. Muth.

If you feel you need some guidance with definitions of key words and some biographic background on the poets, you will certainly want to check out the Poetry for Young People collections by Sterling Publishing.  We have a few of their collections by poet – featuring 30 poems (I assume more famous) poems by each poet.  They have a 200+ page collection featuring a number of poets which seems like a good buy, but which I don’t (yet) own: A Treasury of Poetry for Young People selected by Frances Schoonmaker, et al.

For the very young, I highly recommend Eloise Wilkin’s Poems to Read to the Very Young.  It comes in board book format, which is perfect for the littles.  I’m reading this now with Daniel, and the three older ones have memorised quite a few of the poems from this selection in their day. 

Another way to read poetry is by poet.  This is the method favoured by Charlotte Mason practitioners, so that the child has a deeper appreciation for poems by particular poets.  If this appeals to you, good poets to start with are Robert Louis Stevenson (A Child’s Garden of Verses), Emily Dickenson, A.A. Milne (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame), etc.  If you go to www.amblesideonline.org, you will find recommendations of poets and poems for the various years of study.  All for free!  This way too you will not have to try to figure out yourself when it will be appropriate to introduce what.

OUR POET-TEA SESSIONS

Back to our Poet-Tea sessions.  Here’s what we do.  We wait till Daniel has gone for his nap … then we bring out our good Narumi china teacups which we reserve for just this tea session.  We put sugar cubes in a bowl and milk in a jug.  We make REAL tea.  Yes, with all that caffine!  We bring out chips and dip, or maple cookies, or something fancier than the usual afternoon snack.

One evening, after our tea session was over, I left the kids to come back into the house to prepare dinner.  But to my delight, the kids stayed outside and continued reading to each other!

We each bring a poetry book to the table (the kids pick their own.  I am reading through Favorite Poems Old and New for now) and we take turns reading poems to each other.  Some times we all fall silent while we read ahead in search of another poem to read.  And some times we all find a poem at the same time and we fight for a chance to read ours first.

But all in all, we have a great time reading, sharing, laughing.  Is it any wonder everyone looks forward to Poet-Tea?

Join us in a cuppa? 

But then we settled into a new and very good routine.  The kids help out so much more now.  No more Grandma to pick up the slack!  *heh heh heh*  Meal prep, laundry, packing up, putting away, cleaning floors and toilets … they do it all now.  Ah … I live the good life! 

Wednesday is Toilet-Cleaning Day.  Alethea takes care of the children’s bathroom and Timothy does the guest toilet.

We just took a little 5-day break to drive down to the 1000 Islands region.  We stayed at a lovely little town called Gananoque (pronounced “way” at the end).  We were originally heading for Toronto, but I couldn’t imagine doing the 6+ hour drive with Daniel in the car.  *shudder*  So we picked a place about 3 hours away and used that as a base to drive a little around that region.  We came back all “chao-tah” (sunburnt) and looking healthier for it!  Ah … summer!

On the grass outside Upper Canada Village about two hours from home.

So here’s a little about various things happening in our lives six months on …

FOOD

Typical Singaporean.  First thing on my mind.    I keep telling myself I have to menu plan for my own sanity, but I can’t seem to get down to doing it.  Sigh … Like today.  I took a nap *luxury* and only came down at 4.30 in the afternoon with no plans for dinner.  Fortunately I had taken out a piece of pork from the freezer yesterday, so I sliced that up, marinated it and had Tee Chiou throw it on the barbecue while I cooked rice, fried a chai poh (pickled raddish) omelette and stir fried a frozen oriental vegetable mix.

We took out our precious stash of Mom’s satay when a family of four (good friends from our church in Singapore), came to visit in June.

We are still eating largely Asian meals (because Tee Chiou prefers it) though with the kids at lunch I tend to do easier Western-style dishes like pasta, sandwiches, baked rice, soups, etc.  My Thermomix has been working very well for us in this way.  I am so very thankful we have it!

Baking bread is child’s play (almost) when you have a Thermomix.  Bread dough in 3 mins.  Clean hands, clean kitchen counters.  This is the first loaf I baked here.

We have cut down on eating out.  Do it maybe once or twice a month now.  We were doing it more often when my parents were here.  Even if we are going to be out for the day, I try to pack sandwiches to take for a picnic lunch.  You can always find a park bench to sit on in Montreal.    Eating out is not just expensive.  It is largely unsatisfying unless you are prepared to spend a lot in a good restaurant.  Also Daniel isn’t exactly fun to have at the dinner table in a fancy restaurant.

Picnicing on Mont Royal, from where Montreal gets it’s name.

WEATHER

We have gone from freezing winter to hot hot summer!  Some nights have been so warm we were wishing for Singapore-style airconditioning!  We have central airconditioning here, but the basement gets really cold (even though we close the vents there), the first floor is great, but the cold air doesn’t seem to get up to our bedrooms.  We hear it will be like this, some days humid too, for the rest of July.  It should get cooler in August, then, we’ve been warned, we will regret not celebrating the warm weather!  No wonder people here get crazy happy when it’s HOT outdoors!  I guess it will take us a while to appreciate it, after being in hot and humid Singapore for 40+ years!

Cartwheeling in the sprinkler playground.  That water is COLD!

The wonderful thing about summer has been seeing flowers bloom!  I did a spot of gardening myself and surprised Tee Chiou with a new flower plot outside our house where there once were brambly bushes.  It had cost me 34 dollars plus too many hours in the sun.  But it was worth it.

The flowers I planted.  On the day they were planted.  They look way better now because there are more flowers.  But it is 10 pm and I can’t get an updated photo. 

Our attempts with fruits and vegetables have been exciting but not long lasting.  I think I actually need to fertilise the plants, maybe?    We have strawberry, salad leaves and tomatos in pots (harvested much!) and I have planted cucumbers, eggplant (flowering but not fruiting yet), and basil (the birds keep shitting on the plant so I cannot bear to use the leaves to make pesto!) in the backyard.

Sadly, all the flowers, fruits and vegetables will die in winter.  We have some perennials (Mom planted them before she left) in a flower bed, but they are not as colourful as the others.  Another thing I learnt recently. 

HOMESCHOOLING

Homeschooling has been going well.  We have found our rythym again.  Sure took us a long time!  We are desperately trying to finish our math workbooks before end August so that the children will be in sync with the school year when it starts end August.  It is hard to believe but Alethea will be in Grade 6.  Where has the time gone?

Group photo at the end of the homeschool group closing ceremony in May.  Our kids recited poetry.  So typical.  LOL!

The kids are now having French lessons twice a week for two hours each time.  A lovely lady comes over to our place for that and rattles off in French.  We have also been listening to French audio books, reading simple French story books, singing children’s songs, and we are using two resources for learning French which I will post about separately.

New Old BOOKS!  We bought these from two used bookshops we found on our recent holiday to the 1000 Islands.  Couldn’t tear ourselves away from the shops!

Chinese lessons are still continuing with Daddy.  We are still homeschoolers under the MOE and still responsible for teaching Chinese.  But not having an environment to speak or otherwise use it, has made it increasingly difficult to keep the kids motivated to learn.  Some successes to report though … Alethea is now reading Chinese story books on her own!  Albeit slowly.  But she is able, and willing, and that’s all we ever wanted.

The kids of the families we hang out with.

We are still hanging out with two other homeschool families now that the homeschool group is in recess for the summer.  Alethea hasn’t quite found that ONE good friend yet, and we are praying for that to happen soon.  We still miss our friends and family back home DESPERATELY.  The one downside of being here.

LIFE IN GENERAL

… has been great!  Tee Chiou’s working hours are so much more reasonable here.  We have dinner earlier, and have a couple of hours to just chill, read, watch some TV (Tin Tin in French, anyone?) before bedtime, which is still between 10 to 11.  Everyone is horrified when they hear how late our kids sleep.  8 to 9 pm is the norm here.  But the other day, a homeschooler from Singapore who recently relocated to Toronto, called me at 9.15 pm.  I told her I couldn’t talk long because I was reading to the kids in preparation for bed.  And she said, “Huh?  So early?”  I had a good chuckle over it because it was the first time in 6 months I had heard anything like that!

This must be one of life’s greatest pleasures.  To see your children run to you when you call.

There are many wonderful things to do in Summer.  Picnics, the Jazz Festival, puppet shows, parades.  There are also the international fireworks displays but these start at 10 pm and so we have decided maybe we’ll catch them next year.  Montreal is buzzing with activity.  People eat outdoors at home and at cafes.  It is a far cry from how it looked, felt and sounded when we first arrived in the middle of winter.  Watching the seasons change has been one of the most glorious experiences for me.  I watch in wonder, and say with Job:

But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this?
In his hand is the life of every creature
and the breath of all mankind.

Job 12:7-10, NIV Bible