My Homeschool Curriculum Plans for 2024-2025

 

This year we have a 6th grader, a 4th grader, and a 1st grader. (Plus one graduate, one child with special needs, and one toddler.) 

We are currently four months into our school year. With the insane heat levels here in Arizona, I have made it our practice to start our school year the first week in May, when the nasty heat really starts, and we take our times off during the nicer parts of the year (a longer break at Christmas, a six-week "summer" break in March-April, and one week off per seven weeks throughout the year). It works well for us. 

My current goals are to eliminate all non-essentials, and to simplify wherever possible - whether with school work, our schedule, housework, meals, etc. Having experienced full-blown homeschool burnout at least twice, going in for round #3 is not on my things-to-do list. With that in mind, here's what we're doing this year:

Family Time

* Our morning time includes the following:

• Bible reading
• Weekly Catechism + one Bible verse for memorizing
• A weekly poem and coloring sheet to go along with it
• Great sources for poems include Poems Every Child Should Know by Joseph Pearce, and The Harp and Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist. We also use poems found in our English curriculum (The Good and the Beautiful), books of poems, and poems that we find in our read-aloud books.
• History
• We listen to a chapter of Story of the World and discuss it, and I provide loads of library books on the topics covered. 
• We listen to a saint story - currently we are using Journeys With the Saints.
• We also listen to one episode of The Saints podcast from The Merry Beggars - this is something new this year that has been a wonderful blessing - the children love this show. Our current saint is Maximilian Kolbe, the martyr-saint of Auschwitz.
• Singing time, which usually includes one of each of the following:
• Hymn
• Christmas song - there are too many Christmas songs to complete during Christmas only! 
• Folk song
• And sometimes a round - we're working on "Dona Nobis Pacem" right now. A great source for family singing is the Appendix in "Around the Year With the Trapp Family" by Maria Trapp.
• History video time
• I choose YouTube videos (preferably of live performances) of one hymn or sacred piece, one classical piece, and one folk song. We watch them once a day until we get tired of them, which is usually about two weeks. I then add the songs to a playlist, and at the end of the year we have a lovely music compilation. I use these playlists as ambient music during free parts of our day so that we can continue to learn and enjoy the songs.
• To see an example of a year's compilation, here is last year's: 2023-2024 Music Playlist
• Read-aloud time of a novel 
• Recent read-alouds include: Snow Treasure, The Five Little Peppers, Anne of Green Gables, The Island of Adventure, and The Children of Noisy Village. 
• We also have read-alouds in the morning with my husband reading (favorites have included the Boxcar Children series, the Grandma's Attic series, and the Trixie Belden series), and in the afternoon with me reading. 

Individual Work

6th Grade

Language Arts - The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts (Grade 6) + The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting (Grade 6)
Math - Christian Light Math (Grade 5) - Why Grade 5? See comment below under Curriculum Notes: Math
Science - Seton Science (Grade 6), which includes Earth Science and Space Science
History - Story of the World, Year 1: Ancient History

4th Grade

Language Arts - The Good and the Beautiful (Grade 4) + The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting (Grade 6)
Math - Christian Light Math (Grade 4)
Science - Seton Science (Grade 4) 
History - Story of the World, Year 1: Ancient History

1st Grade

Language Arts - The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts (Grade 1), plus supplemental learning-to-read work with Rocket Phonics + The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting (Grade 1)
Math - Christian Light Math (Grade 1, second half)*
History - Story of the World, Year 1: Ancient History

* Christian Light does not have a Kindergarten math level, so we split their Grade 1 math into two years - half for Kindergarten, and half for first grade. This gives us the ability to have a more relaxed pace (half a lesson per day) in Kindergarten, and also slows the pace a bit, as Christian Light's 1st grade math is a rather long course. 

***

Notes on Curriculum Choices

Note: I have long had a policy of not writing any negatives about curriculum that I review. However, I have come to realize that a curriculum review cannot be honest and balanced unless I list what I liked and what I didn't like. Thus, with these reviews, I will cautiously note things about a curriculum that I did not care for. However, I hope to do so in a spirit of charity.

Language Arts

Christian Light Language Arts, Christian Light Reading

For many years, we used and loved Christian Light's Language Arts program (which covers grammar, spelling, and a bit of composition) and Christian Light's Reading program (which covers literature and literary analysis).

For the sake of brevity, I will refer to the two of these two programs together as Christian Light's Language Arts program. Usually parents will want to include both of these programs together for their children, as they cover different facets of English/Language Arts. 

These programs are incredibly well-written and edited, and if you want a solid Language Arts curriculum, you can't do better. Here are some of things that we love about Christian Light Language Arts:

• It is thoroughly Christian and teaches a Christian worldview, Christian ethics, and positive and healthy family values.
• The artwork is gentle, beautiful, and incredibly well-done.
• The monochromatic color scheme (i.e. just one color) feels calming and enables a student to focus, rather than being distracted by a bunch of bright flashy colors.
• Christian Light goes deeply into grammar, enabling a deep understanding of the English language (and allowing me to correct the myriad of deficiencies of my own public school education).
• The lessons are not super-long - they are totally doable without discouraging a child with the length of time it takes to complete a lesson.
• Because Christian Light is a well-established curriculum that has been extensively reviewed and has published several editions, the end-result is flawless in its composition (unlike many newer or self-published curricula). 

However, last year we made the decision to stop using Christian Light Language Arts. This was primarily a philosophical-theological motivation. Christian Light is a Mennonite company, meaning that it promotes an Anabaptist theology, ethic, and view of history. The material promotes the Anabaptist view of history, which is that the Anabaptists were correct against all of the other forms of Christianity during the Reformation and after (i.e. Catholics and Reformers), who are shown to be wrong, misguided, and sometimes evil. Our family simply does not support this view. 

Secondly, Anabaptists are passionate pacifists and non-participationists. They believe that it is morally wrong to serve in the military, fight in a war (even in a righteous cause or in a war of self-defense), defend oneself, prosecute a crime or help to bring criminals to justice, vote, or hold public office. Our family disagrees passionately with each and every one of these distinctives. And when we used this curriculum (both Language Arts and Reading curriculum) with our eldest, I had to constantly stop and say, "Okay, this story is teaching pacifism or Anabaptist worldview in such-and-such a way. Look at the way this story is crafted to promote this worldview.") In a way, this had a very happy ending, because our eldest is now a passionate anti-pacifist who can spot pacifist propaganda a mile away. But I did not feel like going through this over and over again with each of our children.

On a practical level, Christian Light Language Arts tends to be overly heavy on grammar - and I say this as a joyful grammar nerd who would happily spend the rest of her life diagramming sentences - and overly light on writing. If you select Christian Light, you may want to add a writing curriculum alongside it, at least in the K-8 years. (You could go either way.)

On a minor note, I also found that Christian Light's Reading program (separate from their Language Arts program, and which covers K-8th grade), which is in general an excellent program (besides the pacifist issue), tended toward moralistic tales (i.e. "Little Johnny learns not to hit his sister") rather than truly excellent classic literature. I appreciate moral tales, and we all need them - goodness knows, my children do - but I do not believe that this should come at the expense of reading really amazing classic literature.

In short, if you want a Language Arts curriculum (or Reading curriculum), you cannot do better than Christian Light. If you are already an Anabaptist or a Christian with pacifist leanings, the material will pose no worldview problems for you. If, however, you are a non-pacifist Christian, you will have a lot of 'splainin' to do. You will have to judge if you want to choose that path.

The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts

I have known about The Good and the Beautiful curriculum for many years, and have wanted to try it out. When we decided that we needed a new Language Arts curriculum, The Good and the Beautiful (GAB) was a natural choice.

The Good and the Beautiful is written by an LDS mom and her team. However, it is not an LDS curriculum. GAB curriculum is written to be accessible by anyone claiming the title of Christian - all (or at least a majority) spiritual and ethical values are going to be cross-denominational. There are no doctrinal distinctives - no saints or Eucharist for Catholics, no Joseph Smith for Mormons, no Calvinist doctrine for Reformers. It basically follows a "read your Bible, follow Jesus, obey Christian ethical principles" mantra. If anything, it follows what would be considered a non-denom Baptist ethos ("give your heart to Jesus and read your Bible a lot!"). But whatever type of Christian you consider yourself, you will most likely not have a problem with GAB curriculum (unless you are seriously hardcore about your curriculum promoting your particular doctrinal distinctives, in which case GAB may not be for you).

Last year, we used GAB Language Arts for grades K, 3, and 5. Here are the things that we loved:

• The Good and the Beautiful promotes a Christian worldview and Christian ethics. It is also very pointed about promoting literature that is "good and beautiful," and not consuming books or media that will poison or corrupt our souls or morals. Bravo, Good and Beautiful staff.
• GAB Language Arts contains all of the Language Arts subjects (grammar, spelling, composition, reading skills, literature), so you will not need to add spelling or writing curriculum (a prospect that, with other curricula, has always horrified me - you mean there's another thing that we have to do???). The only English subject that is not covered is penmanship, which you can easily add by adding a GAB handwriting book into the mix (available by graded levels from their website).
• GAB Language Arts also covers a number of other subjects, including geography, art, art history, and art appreciation. What, you mean they're saving me time in not having to teach those other subjects too? Yes, please!
• The classic artwork included in GAB Language Arts is insanely beautiful, and at the same time highly educational. I love-love-love the art component of GAB curriculum.
• The illustrations done by GAB staff are also beautiful and fun (their illustrations can sometimes veer into cartoonish, but usually they are quite good). 
• The kindergarten curriculum comes with fun "school-time" art/grammar projects that require zero prep work and usually not more than a glue stick and a pair of scissors. This has really helped cut down on my "my child is missing so much by not being in school" guilt. 
• The literature selections are, on the whole, excellent (see below for a comment on that). Books that we have loved so far are "Chico of the Andes," "Lost at Sea," "The Belgian Twins," and "Marjorie."
• A BIG plus is that the Good and the Beautiful uses a 120-day year, which is much less than the 160-180-day years that many curricula use. As a homeschooler for many years, I can say with confidence that education is not just about sitting and doing lessons. While doing lessons is important, days of field trips, travel, ministry, and support-group outings are just as important - possibly more important - and it is wonderful to be able to have a shorter, more workable school year that doesn't penalize families for having outside-the-home school days, or create the "I'd like to go on such-and-such a field trip, but that would put us another day behind with lessons" quandary, or the misery of "We're so behind, and we'll never-ever-ever be able to catch up." (I've been in both positions.)

Now, for a few downsides:

• Because Christian Light is such an amazing teacher of grammar, and I have learned from them for something like fifteen years, I often prefer Christian Light's methods of teaching grammar, which are often clearer and easier to learn. I find myself often saying "the directions say such-and-such, but I am changing that to such-and-such."
• The art projects have written directions, and I think that they would do better with video directions - which, I realize, would take considerably more time and money to produce. Good and Beautiful staff, an idea for the future?
• GAB Language Arts curriculum utilizes both classic literature selections and staff-written readers. We infinitely prefer the classic literature selections (with the exception of "Timothy of the Tenth Floor," which my 9yo and I both enjoyed). We would prefer that GAB staff utilize classic literature (like those books mentioned above) instead of in-house material. 
• To do the lessons completely, you will need an iPad or some type of touch screen that can handle an app. At first, I was quite frustrated about this, as I am an anti-screen Luddite who really prefers no extras with her curricula. However, I was pleasantly surprised - the GAB app is really excellent, and I have enjoyed using it. As our iPad is currently broken, we are having to forego the app for a few months, and the curriculum is doable (though incomplete) without the app.
• However, the use of a portable screen comes with the usual problems. "Hmm, I sent Child A to listen to the Letter Sounds app, and I haven't seen him since. Oh, that's because he watched the Letter Sounds app and then transitioned into watching an hour of Dude Perfect while I was distracted. Argh." So if you're going to use the app, make sure that you have screen safety software installed, and that screens are used in a public area where you won't forget about them like I do. 

All but the cardinal painting are Good and Beautiful Language Arts art assignments,
completed by our nine- and twelve-year-olds. 

Phonics (Learning-to-Read Curriculum)

For many years, we have taught our children to read using Rocket Phonics. (I tried Christian Light's Learning to Read program once, and did not care for it - it was excellent, but extremely time-consuming.) This past year, we used The Good and the Beautiful's phonics program contained in its kindergarten Language Arts. It is quite good. However, about halfway through the year, I decided to go back to Rocket Phonics, because I just love it so very much. (Despite its unpleasant artwork.) Thus, we are using Rocket Phonics alongside The Good and the Beautiful's Language Arts, and it has been a happy melding.

Math

Christian Light Math

For the first two years of our homeschool journey, we used a math-curriculum-which-shall-not-be-named - and which I still remember with the utmost loathing. I say no more.

After those two miserable years, I switched to Christian Light math, and have been happy ever since. Christian Light has an amazing math program that is truly top-notch. I have no reservations in saying that it is the best math curriculum that I have ever seen, and I recommend it with my whole heart.

Additionally, Christian Light math has none of the worldview issues (i.e. Anabaptist theology & pacifism) that caused us to abandon their Language Arts and Reading curriculum. 

Here are some things that we love about Christian Light math:

• Monochromatic color scheme (which, as mentioned above, is calming and encourages focus)
• Lessons written simply and clearly
• Lessons are incremental - one tiny new fact is introduced with each lesson, but often it is something really easy and simple, that makes forward progress easy rather than lessons in which one has to make huge jumps.
• Each lesson book has a theme, such as "Life in Ireland," "Life in Romania," "Running a Sewing Shop," "Running a landscape business." Each lesson and word problem is centered around the book's theme, and there is often a lot of great information learned besides math!
• The curriculum (in its written sections and word problems) has an intense focus on healthy Christian family life and good Christian ethics. 
• Because this is a non-screen subject, it keeps kids off the computer. Huzzah!

The few downsides:

• The lessons are often - in my opinion - too long, and this is a problem that gets worse with each grade level. I would prefer shorter lessons. Christian Light staff, if you're listening - shorter lessons, please!
• Children often need a lot of help with lessons, and there is also the correcting of the lessons, which, as this is not a computer program, has to be done either by the parent (more work!) or by the student (in which case the parent has to check up on the student, which means, again, more work). In short, there can be a lot of work involved.
• Christian Light has a 170-day school year. In my mind, this is entirely too long. (I know that they do this because Christian Light curricula is used by many Christian schools, who have to have enough lessons to follow state standards.) By cutting out the one obviously non-essential lesson at the back of each book, you can cut it down to 160 days. By cutting out quizzes (2 per book), you can lower it to 140 days. This is still too long, to my mind, but is a bit more doable. (You could cut it to 130 days by cutting out the end-of-book tests, but those tests are useful assessments, so I hesitate to do that.)

Teaching Textbooks Math

After many years of using Christian Light math, we had a two-year hiatus. One year of using a really crummy math curriculum (it's a long story - I'll tell it sometime), and one year of Teaching Textbooks. I switched to Teaching Textbooks because I was stressed and overwhelmed with the non-stop responsibilities of homeschooling, and needed the computer to take over some of the responsibilities. Teaching Textbooks is an excellent program, and is probably the most popular homeschool math curriculum at present. It is available for third grade through Algebra 2.

Here are a few things that we loved about Teaching Textbooks:

• Teaching Textbooks teaches the lessons, sets the problems, and does all of the grading and record-keeping. SCORE.
• TT does a great job of teaching. It's a great curriculum, and I have no hesitation in recommending it.

Now, a few downsides:

• Because the kids are on the computer, there is a greater possibility for dishonesty (hello, online calculator). I am embarrassed to say that I have had a bit of this in our family. If you use TT, you still need to keep an eye on your kids.
• Ditto with the issue of being on the computer enabling "wandering" - i.e. Child A is supposed to be doing math, but is really watching YouTube videos. (And a note, YouTube is not a safe place for children to wander.) If you use TT, it is wise to turn off your internet (TT always has the ability to work offline for a couple of lessons before needing internet enabled), or to block sites like YouTube or whatever other sites are a temptation for your child.
• Because I never remember to do any of the above, a pen-and-paper curriculum is probably better for us. 
• Because the computer is doing the teaching, a homeschool mom does not learn alongside her child. If your math skills are weak, you may not be able to help your child when he/she needs help - which does still happen.
• TT is a secular curriculum, meaning that there are no positive family values or Christian ethics taught with the lessons. 
• The one serious criticism that I have heard leveled against Teaching Textbooks is that it is not as rigorous as other curricula, and possibly not rigorous enough to produce students who are able to handle college math. I do not know for sure if this is true, but there may be some truth to the accusation. (See my additional comment below.) However, I do not consider this a serious problem, as most people do not need hardcore upper math skills - what they need are the basics, well-learned. For myself, I went through college maths, but have never used anything beyond elementary algebra and/or geometry skills in real life. This does not mean that higher level math is useless, because it teaches two essential skills: (1) abstract reasoning, and (2) self-discipline. But I think that Teaching Textbooks is a fine curriculum for any student, with the exception perhaps of students who may be heading into math-heavy careers.

Now, one final comment. This past year, I decided to transition our family from Teaching Textbooks math back to Christian Light math, mostly due to wanting to be more involved with our children's learning, and also wishing to have less screen time (and less internet wandering) for our children. With our 8yo, transitioning from 3rd grade Teaching Textbooks to 4th grade Christian Light math was a hard transition, but a doable one.

However, for our 12yo, transitioning from finishing 5th grade Teaching Textbooks math to starting 6th grade Christian Light math was like hitting a brick wall. We didn't make it past the first problem in the first book of the year before realizing that our student had not learned the skills that would make 6th grade Christian Light math possible. At this point, we are looking at having to back him up an entire year to 5th grade Christian Light math to make the transition, and he will still be behind. (*Note: This is what we ended up doing.)

Perhaps Christian Light math is unusually rigorous. I don't know. (Readers, fill me in?) But it's definitely going to be a rough transition.

All in all, I can recommend both Christian Light math and Teaching Textbooks math (though with a preference for Christian Light). My current plan is to keep our elementary students with Christian Light math through 6th or 8th grade, and then let them go to Teaching Textbooks for upper level math.

I'll post in coming years about how we navigate the mathematics conundrum. 

Science

Seton Homeschool Science

We have used a lot of really bad science curricula - a boring-to-tears workbook curriculum, a hyper-pious Baptist curriculum, and an I-can't-believe-how-bad-this-is online curriculum. 

For the first time in our fifteen year homeschool journey, I have found an excellent science curriculum that I love - Seton Homeschool science.

Here's what I love about Seton science:

• The books are well-written, well laid-out, and excellently illustrated. 
• The Christian faith is excellently incorporated, while avoiding the sappy corniness that a lot of Baptist curricula fall into. 
• The sections are a reasonable length and don't take that long to complete (perhaps 20 minutes a day).
• Our two students, one of whom is a natural academic and one who finds school quite difficult, have both been able to handle doing the lessons independently with occasional help from me.

I don't know of any downsides to this curriculum - it is that excellent. The only complicating factor is that because it is a Catholic curriculum, any Christians who are anti-Catholic may find the material too Catholic for their tastes.

History

A Casual Approach to History with Story of the World 

We are doing history casually this year. I read the Bible as part of our morning time (and the Bible is an excellent history text), and we listen to one section of Story of the World. (We are doing Ancients this year - Year 1 - and we are using an audiobook version. This has lifted a bit of the reading burden from me, and allows me to clean the kitchen while we listen.)

Secondarily, I order all of the library books that I can find to go along with what we're listening to - and I have found that if one does this, children are basically self-educating maniacs. They spend most of their time coming up to me and saying, "Hey, Mom! Did you know that the Ancient Egyptians...." etc. It's really wonderful.

We are not using any of the extras with Story of the World this year - the coloring sheets, the comprehension questions, or the extra projects. I did all of those with our eldest the first round through the Story of the World four-book cycle, but it was - to be quite frank - a pain in the neck. And since we have enough of those types of things elsewhere in our curricula, I do not feel any need to add them in at this time. Basic instruction + non-stop reading books does a fine job. 

(Please be cautious with library books - there are a lot of modern children's books out there that have inappropriate or downright evil material in them. Pre-read always.)

We also include saint biography stories in our homeschool history - see the intro to this article for references and links. 

Extracurriculars

Our family activities outside of lessons include the following:

• Sunday church and Sunday school
• Mid-week church
• Our church's kids' group
• Altar server training group (for our boys)
• Clogging (for all above the age of 9) 
• Ballet (for our daughter)
• Baseball (seasonal, for one of sons)
• Piano lessons (for two of our children)
• Children's choir (for three of our children - this one is tentative)
• Historical reenactment work, as well as attendance at community dances, with a local group
• Field trips, park days, seasonal events, and Mom's Nights Out with our church homeschooling group and two local homeschooling groups.  

I find that extracurriculars always have hidden costs:

Firstly, extracurriculars always have jobs for mum and dad to do at home. (I do extracurriculars in order to outsource, but the extracurriculars always throw more work back at me. Blast.) Sunday school and our church's children's group have homework and memory work. Ballet has practice exercises to do at home. Piano lessons have practice sessions to supervise. (And oh, am I being rewarded in spades for my own childhood unwillingness to practice!) Dance groups have costumes to launder and prepare, and all groups have paperwork and correspondence to take care of. 

Secondly, all extracurriculars come with extra stress - getting the family ready, in the car, out and back, etc. Disrupted schedules. Rushing. Stress. Less time at home. Irritable husbands. More messes. Less free time. 

Thus, if any extracurricular is going to find a place in our home, it really has to be worth the cost. 

We've made the over-extracurriculars mistake many times, and have had to pare back. It seems to be a cyclical thing. 

This year, for the sake of sheer amusement, I decided to keep a partial list of the homeschool extracurriculars that I wish we could do but can't (and the guilt of which keeps me awake at night - I am no stranger to homeschool guilt). Here they are:

• Serious ballet for our daughter
• Orchestra
• Musical instrument lessons (other instruments)
• All-day co-op
• Another weekly co-op
• Yet another co-op
• Archery
• Theatre
• Sewing classes
• Speech and Debate
• Science co-op
• Martial arts
• Fencing
• Serious children's choir
• American Heritage Girls
• Trail Life USA 
• Our church's girls' and boys' group 

And many, many more!

But again, there are limits - and the limits are often lower than we think, if we want to maintain our homes, our marriages, and our sanity. I have had to learn this time and time again. 

I should add that in our family, my husband is the night-time running-kids-to-activities man. If it was all up to me, I would not be able to maintain as many extracurriculars as we do. In fact, I have had life-long issues with energy and stamina, besides being an introvert, and have had to accept that I have less energy and social stamina than most women. So our extracurricular list is much lower than many women I know (I know a lot of amazing women). 

My Personal Life This Year

My non-school personal projects this year include the following:

• Working on the spiritual virtue of contentment. This one has always been very difficult for me, but I think I am making progress - though lots more is needed.
• I am working on a graded read-in-order Literature & History booklist. I am just shy of finishing the list through the eighth grade, and when I do, I'll publish the preliminary version here - hopefully by Christmas (at the rate of 5-10 minutes per day, on a good day, which is almost never, the project is moving at a snail's pace). 
• I continue always my love of voracious reading and in publishing brief book reviews to this blog. 

As always, my main focus is this - working well at the duties of state that God has given me in the here and now - that is, at being a Christian, wife, mother, homeschooler, and homemaker. And that is no little task. 

Concluding Thoughts

I'm not sure how long we've been homeschooling - well over ten years, and probably close to fifteen (I'll have to count it up sometime). Regardless of the exact numbers, it's been a long time. During that time, I've learned important lessons - primarily, that mothering and homeschooling are hard. If you're a homeschooler, be kind to yourself. Give yourself grace. And take care of yourself. The rates of homeschool burn-out and homeschool jumping ship are astronomically high. (I've been down both roads a number of times.) Don't feel badly if it happens to you, too. But to the best of your ability, take care of yourself. It's better to be behind than burned-out.

Readers, pray for me this homeschool year - and I'll be praying for you!

I am, as always, happy to answer questions!

A Journey of Weight Loss (or the Lack Thereof)

 
I have a storied history with weight. I started out as a normal-weight baby and then toddler, transitioned to a very overweight child, and then lost it all and became a thinner-than-normal teen. 

Thus, I started adult life at a healthy weight. But it all went downhill from there.

Five pounds in college.
Five pounds in culinary school.
Five pounds with each baby.
Another five pounds this past year.

And, all in all, I found myself at a place in which I was way above the highest weight at which I felt at all comfortable. And after many, many years of "I'm not happy with my weight, but I'm too busy-tired-stressed to deal with it," I was finally ready to turn my attention to losing weight.

One year in, I'm happy to report that I've lost a total of....

Zero pounds

When I say "zero pounds," that's not actually true. Actually, I have lost a massive amount of weight - traveling up and down the scale within the same 7-8 pound range. But it has all come back. Yo-yo dieting in miniature, you might say. 

BUT

I have learned quite a bit. Firstly, about weight loss. I have learned that, for example:

(1) I do not lose weight easily. ("Mmm-hmm" says every woman in America.) Weight loss is a fight to the death. I should have realized this from my years of doing diets to test their efficacy in fighting morning sickness - even when doing extreme diets (Paleo, low-carb, keto), I really didn't lose much if any weight. The only time I lost a considerable amount of weight (20 pounds, if I remember correctly) was when I went dairy-free - and that weight, unfortunately, stayed gone for only about six months before it crept right back.

(2) However, I can gain weight extremely easily! ("Mmm-hmm," says every woman in America, again.) I can work like the dickens to lose weight over the course of a week, and gain it all back over the weekend. 

(And both of these problems seem to be getting worse as I age.)

I've also learned some of my own faults that are contributing to my difficulty in losing weight. Here are a few of them:

(1) When it comes to food, I have an innately disordered appetite. Overeating is automatic for me - moderation is intensely difficult. And I know that this is inborn for me because my parents have told me that as soon as I was old enough to order my own food in a restaurant, I went straight to the adult menu - I never ordered from the child-sized menu, even as a young child. 

A great book that outlines the differences between people who find moderation easy and natural, and people for whom overeating is automatic and instinctual, is Bright Lines Eating by Susan Peirce Thompson. This book helped to relieve a bit of the guilt of being someone to whom moderation does not and probably will never come easily, and also helped me to see the innate differences between people like my husband's family, who find it easy to say "Oh, I took three bites of this luscious chocolate cake, and I just can't eat another bite, I guess I'd better throw the rest in the trash" (really!) and someone like me, who eats a piece of chocolate cake and now has to fight a roaring desire to devour the entire cake. I now know that gluttony is a battle that I'll always have to fight, and it's helpful to know that this fight is inborn and not just a sign of my moral failings. We all have sins to which we are prone, and this is one of mine.

(2) Secondly, I realized that I've fallen into bad habits since I've been on my own (so, twenty years). The philosophy of "I'm an adult, therefore I can, therefore I will," does not translate into good end-results when applied to desserts, snacks, and treats. I'm having to re-learn a better philosophy, "I'm an adult, therefore I can, therefore I will decide if it's wise or not and will act accordingly." 

(3) I realized when reading Trim Healthy Mama that I have another really bad habit, and that is constant nibbling. This habit can really fly under the radar, and it certainly did with me. Nibbling when preparing food, when serving food, when clearing away and putting away - it can really add up. I've really been working on this problem, and it's a tough one to tackle.

(4) On a side note, my exercise life is non-existent. I love to do ballet, but have neither the time nor the money; I love to walk, but never do because I always end up with a flock of children around me who prevent any serious exercise. I don't worry too much about this, because I am a mama who is constantly active within the home - I'm not stuck in a screen-based job, and I am quite active. However, I am also quite out of shape from a strength or stamina perspective - any strenuous exertion reminds me quite quickly how out of training I am. Again, it's not a big issue to me right now because I do not have the time to remedy it. But it is something to keep on the radar.

One method that I have found works for weight loss is fasting. I've found this quite liberating, and I'm working on incorporating fasting into my life. (Read more with Fast Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz.)

The downsides of fasting have been as been that (1) it is quite easy to overeat following a fasting period and thus regain all of the weight lost, and (2) I find fasting nearly impossible on days when I am super-stressed (which is quite often).

I also find it quite amusing that the only way that I've found to actually lose weight successfully is to completely stop eating.

As a 20-year aficionado of food and health sciences, I am also aware that there is a myriad of reasons why we moderns are having such trouble with our weight. There are massive economic and environmental causative factors that are creating the perfect storm in terms of weight problems and chronic illness. I think that I could easily list a hundred reasons behind all of this. Plastics, screens, antibiotics overuse, various birth practices, chemical food additives, fast food, social programming (like the "you should snack all the time" movement from the 1980s), etc. The cards are stacked against us in so many ways.

Still, I want to give it my best shot. And hopefully the disciplines that I am beginning to learn now will have a positive impact. 

I'll check back in and let you know.

And please, if you have any amazing weight loss tips, let me know!

Adopting a Crazy Suicidal Feline (Books Lately, First Quarter 2024)

Last year, we noticed a stray cat stranded on our neighbor's roof. Not a big deal. "If it gets hungry enough, it will come down." Right?

Not this cat. 

Said cat stayed up there, mewing pitifully, for... days. We finally managed to lure her to the edge and capture her. Then we brought her down, fed her a good meal, and expected her to go on her way. 

Next day, said cat was back on the roof, mewing pitifully. 

After this went on for a week or two, we finally captured her for good, adopted her, and kept her inside until we were fairly sure she could be trusted. She has since become a beloved pet.

Except for one problem - she still manages to get herself stranded on roofs. We're not sure why, but every few weeks the cat goes missing - and inevitably will be found stranded on a neighbor's roof. And, whaddaya know, most people don't want us running over their rooftops trying to capture our renegade feline.

Enter the cat ramp.

I can proudly claim copyright for this idea, though it took us quite some time to get it made. And during the first feline escapade for which we used the cat ramp, the cat ignored the ramp, even when we lined it with cat treats and put a bowl of tuna at the end.

Behold, the CAT RAMP.

But then, just as we were about to give the cat up for lost - at this point she had stayed on a neighbor's roof for six days - she came down.

And there was great rejoicing.

***

Insane felines aside, let's have some books! 

I am in the middle of a busy season of life, and I am also trying to work on another book-based project (making a read-in-order booklist for grades 3-12, which I will make available here if I can ever finish it). I am also quite behind in publishing this quarterly reading list. Thus, I am trying to simplify this post - no book cover pictures, briefer descriptions, and not a lot of extras. I beg the reader's forgiveness, and will hope to include more next time.

Children: Picture Books

Gertie: The Darling Duck of World War II (Shari Swanson, 2023, children's picture book history) - The story of a duck that built her nest on top of a bridge piling, and the city who adopted and rescued her and her ducklings. This book would be a great companion book to McCloskey's "Make Way for Ducklings," and would also be a wonderful addition to an elementary-age World War II unit study. Highly recommended.

Children & Teens: Chapter Books

Pushcart War (Jean Merrill, 1964, children’s fiction-fantasy) - It took me a long time to get into this book (which was recommended by a librarian). However, I pushed onward, inspired by our love of this author (especially her sweet and funny "Please Don't Eat My Cabin"). Eventually I caught the swing of things and enjoyed the book. Of course, at this point, I am so far removed from the book that I can barely remember what it was about, so just a brief summary - a town wins the war to save their pushcarts from encroaching trucks. I enjoyed it! Thoughts on this book, anyone?

The Adventures of TinTin (TinTin series, Georges Remi, ~ 1930, fiction-fantasy comic series) - I had heard of these my whole life, but only recently found one at a thrift store. Our children LOVE them! They are written in the form of an adventure comic, and I am looking to find more of the series. Highly recommended. 

Teens & Adults:

The Case Against Sugar (Gary Taubes, 2017, nutrition & food history) – I have enjoyed two of Taubes' books in the past, and knew I was in for a treat - which I was. This book is a treasure. Taubes gives an exhaustive and fascinating account of the entire history of refined sugar - from the first time it was recorded in historical literature up to the present day. Included are the development of different foods (candies! soda! etc.), the changes in cultures and cuisines that happened as sugar moved in, the involvement of sugar in the cigarette industry, and everywhere else that sugar has affected our lives (hint: it's a LOT). Primarily, Taubes tracks the rise in sugar consumption concomitant with the obesity epidemic, and asks the question, "Can we conclude that sugar is the primary mover behind the obesity epidemic?" While Taubes obviously feels that the answer is yes, and I agree, he also goes back and - like a good scientist - gives all of the reasons why he might be wrong. (Bravo!) This book is fascinating and informative, and would actually be a great addition to a world history course. Highly recommended.

The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own and The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life (Joshua Becker, 2016 and 2018 (respectively), lifestyle) – Basics of minimalism by one of the most active proponents of the movement. I appreciate this man and his work very much, but I didn't come away from the books with much - most likely because I feel like I've already read just about every minimalist book on the market. And I'm right now in a place where I'm pretty disillusioned with minimalism - it is a philosophy that I have followed for a solid 20-25 years, but the stuff pours in faster than I can get deal with it. And each piece of clutter comes with a child attached who is desperately sure that HE WILL DIE if I so much as get rid of an old candy wrapper. So, yeah. Despite the fact that I am a minimalist and will remain one for life, I have found that minimalism is a philosophy that over-promises and under-delivers. Call me a minimalist failure. (With apologies to Mr. Becker. Please go read his books, just to be nice to him after my rant.)

Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome, 1889, comic fiction) – I discovered this book several years back, and it is a gem. Some fun history: The book was originally slated to be a travel guide to the Thames River. However, the author's editor noticed that the author's material was turning out to be wildly funny, and so he told the author to scrap the travel guide and just write a funny story of three men's trip up the Thames. This will explain why - while most of the book is terribly funny - there are still some long, dry (and sometimes super-sentimental) historical bits stuck in seemingly at random. Despite that one defect, this book is one of my favorite comic works, and I highly recommend it. 

What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women & The Food That Tells Their Stories (Laura Shapiro, 2017, food history) – This book covers biographical sketches of six different women, focusing on the story told by records of what they ate. The author is obviously leftist/feminist, which of course colored her writing (as politics and worldview do with us all) - additionally, some of the women she chose to showcase were decidedly unpleasant characters (such as Hitler's mistress and the woman who was the moving force behind Cosmo magazine). Additionally, there were quite a few "Ack, I wish I hadn't read that" moments. I admired the author's thoroughness of research, but I was thankful when I was done with the book.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Greg McKeown, 2014, life management) – In reading this, I realized that I'd read it years before, and for good reason - it's a life management classic. The book is beautifully neat and trim in how practically and succinctly it presents the material, and it is first class. While I occasionally ran across points that I disagreed with, this is an excellent book - I think I would like to re-read it at least every five to ten years. Highly recommended.

***

And now, three books from The Good and the Beautiful, all geared toward high school students:

Treasure for Debby (Amy Wentworth Stone, 1936, realistic fiction) – I will quote from the website: "Debby dreams of attending art school, but, though she and her sister live in a grand mansion filled with exquisite artwork and valuable heirlooms, the household finances are sadly lacking. When a handsome visitor tells Debby of a potential art scholarship, she begins a quest to secure the additional money she needs, and Debby and her aunts must decide if they should sell their prized possessions. Treasure for Debby is the delightful story of a young woman who learns powerful lessons about relationships, trust, and love; and along the way, she discovers some of life’s true treasures." A fun book, and one that I enjoyed very much.

Thistle & Rose: A Story for Girls (Amy Walton, publishing date unknown, realistic fiction) – From the website: "After a lifetime of loneliness in London, 14-year-old Anna is finally leaving the city to live with her aunt and uncle in the countryside town of Waverly. However, when she arrives, she finds that things are not what they seem. Her efforts to please everyone lead her to a desperate choice between what is right and what is easy." Also a fun book.

King Otto’s Crown (Richard Roth, trans. Mary Ireland, 1917, history) - A historical account of tenth century Germany. Interesting and informative, and would be a great addition to a Medieval studies course. 

***

Lost Connections (Johann Hari, 2018, psychology-sociology-health) – In Lost Connections, Johann Hari describes his battle with depression and his journey through the world of antidepressants. Along the way, he discovers something big - namely that the narrative of the 90s, "Your depression has nothing to do with your circumstances - you just have a deficiency in your brain and you need these antidepressants to remedy that deficiency" - is actually, on the whole, wrong. Curious? Then read this fascinating book. The author is a leftist and an atheist, which colors his work (I have found myself praying for him often), but aside from some conclusions to which he is led by his worldview, this work is both thorough and highly valuable, especially for a country such as our own that is deep in a mental health crisis (spearheaded by things like depression) that is only worsening each year. Recommended.

An Autobiography (Agatha Christie, 1977, autobiography) – If you are a Christie fan - and even if you aren't yet one! - this book is a keeper. I discovered it in a seaside used book store (in Pismo Beach, to be specific) during my childhood, and it has been an annual re-read since. Not only is the material fascinating - Christie was born during the time of servants, carriages, and pre-WWI garden parties, lived through both world wars and ended up in the hippie seventies - but it's also well-written, engaging, and highly educational (it would make a great pick for a modern history course). Highly recommended.

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (P. G. Wodehouse, 1974 - comedy) - And finally, my Wodehouse of the month! Aunts Aren't Gentlemen is actually my favorite Wodehouse so far, and it is a real treasure. If you haven't enjoyed one of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels yet, this would be a great place to start. (Any place is a great place to start!)

Kitchen Notes (and Various Etceteras)

By the end of Easter, we somehow had ended up with masses of candle wax on our carpet. And so off to the internet went I - and thankfully found that it's not an insurmountable problem after all. A tip from the stables: a warm iron over paper towels. It took a long time, but it worked!

Above is our Easter garden, with crosses veiled in black for Good Friday (the candles surrounding the tomb have already burned down in this picture). This year we started our garden in time for the seeds to sprout, but alas, before Easter, they had already died. I'm thinking that chia seeds are just not the best choice for an Easter garden - though I'm not sure what else to try, being that I don't want to buy ten pounds of grass seed just to have a pinch to plant every Easter. 

Ideas, anyone?

***

My original "kitchen note" post for this quarter actually morphed into its own article - Reducing Sugar in Recipes - It's Possible! (Here's How It Works for Me). 

Do you reduce sugar in recipes? I'd love to hear about it!

***

A note to any fellow desert-dwellers - downed Palo Verde branches make a wonderful crown of thorns for a Holy Week craft. We made three, tying them with twine - and one of them, having done its duty as a crown, is now adorning our bathroom wall as a wreath. 

This was a big improvement on the crown of thorns crafts I saw on the internet, some of which - like the brown playdough + toothpicks version - made me jump out of my seat in alarm, crying "what on earth IS that thing?" 

***

Two posts I plan to share soon: my ongoing weight loss journey (hint: I haven't gotten very far), and our homeschool curriculum choices for 2024-2025. I promise to get those up in good time - at least sometime before 2047, which is when I'll have time to sit down and write them. 

***

Another of my latest kitchen projects - finding cookies that don't spread during baking.

I don't bake a lot of cookies, but when I do, I usually spend a good bit of time banging my head against the wall over cookies that have (1) spread, (2) melded into each other, and (3) turned into nightmarish chipping-with-a-chisel sessions of trying to get them off of the pans.

Thus, I started searching for "cookies that don't spread." 

My first triumph was, voila! These little darlings: Easy Soft & Chewy Chocolate Cookies That Don't Spread. Not only were they quite literally the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had, but they didn't spread. Oh, the glory!

Now, note that I did chill the dough overnight before baking, due to running out of time - something that helps, but doesn't prevent, spreading with normal cookies. When some of my cookie balls got too warm, they did start to spread. So probably make sure that your balls are cool enough to be firm - and if not, stick them in the fridge for a bit to firm before baking.

(Note: I made this recipe a second time at a later date, and the cookies spread dreadfully. Not sure what I did wrong - apparently the curse follows me despite my best efforts.)

***

And finally, a few recipes:

It's been so many years since I'd made a milkshake, and I wasn't sure - is it really as simple as just ice cream and milk? Yes, it is! Behold, the milkshake. Enjoy!

(Normally we make banana shakes - frozen cubed bananas, milk, peanut butter, and vanilla. This recipe is awesome, uses up bananas, and can easily be made dairy-free. But a good old-fashioned milkshake is fun too.)

For some reason, I decided to look up raisin bread - and voila, a new classic: Easy Raisin Bread. This is so good, and is reminiscent of Boston Brown Bread (but without the coffee can!). It is easy, fast, delicious, not too sweet, and makes a great extra to take along when delivering a meal. 

Another new family favorite - Roasted Red Pepper Pasta. It is easy, fast, beautiful, and utterly delicious. An added bonus: my mushroom-haters didn't notice the mushrooms! 

Last month I cooked for a vegan family, and couldn't get to the store for vegetable broth. Thus, a new culinary adventure: Homemade Vegetable Broth! It was actually amazingly delicious - I would totally have used it for my own recipes as well. Note: I used dried herbs instead of fresh, because I never have fresh around, and it was fine.

A few months back I was frantically searching the internet for a quick bread that would be suitable to take to a diabetic (such recipes are hard to find if you don't want to use sugar replacements, which I didn't have on hand). I tried this one - Sugarless Vegan and Apple Loaf. It was a bit peculiar, but I actually liked it - especially with lots of butter. 

This Mexican Chicken Casserole was fast, easy, and popular with the family.

This Vegetarian Enchilada Casserole also came together super-fast - I sautéed the vegetables in the morning, and threw the dish together in ten minutes in the afternoon. Perfect for when we had to be out the door for a music camp concert!

Did you know that the feast day of St. John the Baptist (June 24th) is also called Monsoon Day in the Southwest? (Read this book: Hip, Hip, Hooray, It's Monsoon Day! This book is an annual tradition here!) Our family tradition is to make Pineapple Upside Down Cake for Monsoon Day. (Pineapples = tropical, tropical = monsoons. Get it?) This year we'll also be making Winster Wake Cakes on the Sunday following St. John's feast day (which is apparently when the feast day is celebrated), and I'm looking forward to that. We're also watching traditional Morris dancing, which is also traditional for that feast day.

***

And there you have it, friends! Books and food - all you need. Have a wonderful summer, write and tell me how you're doing, I'll hope to check in again soon! 

Reducing Sugar in Recipes - It's Possible! (Here's How It Works for Me)

 

Many years ago - long-time readers will remember this - I did a massive amount of low-carb dieting. (Not to lose weight, which was a good thing, as I didn't, but to see if it would help morning sickness, which it did.) 

My long-term conclusion, based on my experiences, is that despite its use in curbing severe morning sickness, severe carb restriction was - for me, at least - nearly impossible to maintain over the long-term. I'm no longer in favor of "keto for life" approaches. 

(I am totally fine with dietary approaches that include low-carb cycling, such as Trim Healthy Mama or forms of intermittent fasting. I also believe that keto can have a very important role in healing disease states. I just am not a fan of the "everyone should be keto, all the time, for life" philosophy. Additionally, after one gets over gloating over the delectable seething-with-butter-and-bacon dinner recipes, keto is a fairly miserable experience, especially in the long run. I know the this-is-so-wonderful romance stage of beginner keto, but after it's over, oh boy is it over. When I finished up with my several years of keto, I ended up obsessively eating sweet potatoes at every meal for close to a year - yes, breakfast-lunch-dinner - and I've been in love with pasta ever since. No more keto for me, if I can avoid it.) 

However! One of the huge benefits of a time of low-carb living was that my sense of sweetness was completely re-set, and I finally understood why many foreigners find American desserts unpleasantly oversweet. It's because we Americans make crazy-oversweet desserts!

Since then, I've been on a quest (1) to find less-sweet desserts (being that I, too, like dessert!), and (2) to lower sugar levels in my existing recipes.

(I also find that super-sweet desserts now make me sick - quite literally. Not sure why - probably should find out - but there's nothing fun about being sick for hours - or all night - because I've chosen to eat dessert. Lowering sugar is a better way.)

Finding low-sugar recipes on the internet is both difficult and complicated, because different people mean different things when they say "low sugar." Many people consider anything without white sugar to be "sugar-free" or "low sugar." It may have three cups of honey in it, but it's sugar-free because it has no white sugar! (Definitely not what I'm looking for.) 

Also, many people develop "low sugar" recipes simply by removing the sugar and replacing it with a sugar replacement, usually a 1:1 sugar-alcohol mix. I prefer not to use these sugar replacements, for two reasons (1) they are slightly less expensive than antique silver, by weight, and (2) the slightest overindulgence in such things can induce violent illness (just ask me - I've been down that road). My husband tends to be super-sensitive to those products, as well, and can feel ill after eating just the smallest bit of xylitol or erythritol. Overall, they're just not worth it for us.

(Plain liquid or powdered stevia works great for us as a sweetener, and we use it daily in our coffee, but it is no good in baking, as it lacks all of the additional chemical and structural characteristics of sugar that are necessary in baking. Additionally, at high concentrations, stevia has an unpleasant bitterness - our family still talks about the ice cream that I made with several teaspoons of liquid stevia in it. It's one of my only creations that even I've refused to eat.)

And now, back to cooking - not with non-white sugars, or fake sugars, but simply with less sugar.

*****

Here are my findings:

(1) With most American recipes, most of which have far more sugar than they need for structure and texture, you can reduce sugar by one-quarter to one-third without negatively affecting the outcome. With some recipes that have really gone nuts on the sugar, you can reduce sugar by half - or even more. 

(2) Sugar reduction is easiest in puddings, custards, cheesecakes, ice creams, and sauces.

(3) Sugar reduction is usually fine (using the one-quarter to one-third reduction rule) in muffins, quickbreads, cakes, etc. If I reduce sugar by enough that I'm nervous about the structure of the finished product (because reducing sugar can reduce the moisture of the finished product), I  compensate by adding extra moisture in the form of sour cream, coconut milk, banana puree, extra fats (butter, oil), or whatever happens to be standing by and looks good. For example, I recently reduced the sugar in a zucchini bread recipe by 75% - and to make up for the lost moisture, added banana puree into the mix. It was a delightful success, and I include the recipe at the end of this post. 

(4) Sugar reduction is much riskier in cookies and candies, so I usually don't try it with those - or with any recipe that depends strongly on sugar for structure, color, etc.

(5) I cannot overstate the role of experimentation in this process. When I try a recipe, I give a guess as to how much sugar I can subtract - and if it's a success (and it nearly always is), I make a note of it, and then try to take it lower the next time. Experimentation is easy - and lots of fun. 

*****

Two recipes from my childhood have lately been great successes with sugar reduction:

Jewish Apple Cake (from Cooking Light) - This was an Easter morning favorite from my childhood - but 1 1/2 cups of sugar (plus another 1/4 cup for the topping) seemed a bit much. I reduced the in-the-cake sugar to 3/4 cup, and increased the cream cheese from 6 oz. to 8 oz. to account for any lost moisture (which saves having leftover cream cheese, too!). The result was amazing - and honestly, it was still a bit too sweet. Next year I will take the sugar even lower and add perhaps a bit more butter.

Lemon-Swirled Cheesecake (Cooking Light) - Growing up, this was our Easter dessert. (I learned to cook with Cooking Light - thanks, guys!) I hadn't made it in years, but wanted to try it again this year - but again, the sugar! Yikes! (1 3/4 cups in the cheesecake, 2 T. in the crust, and however much is in the 8 oz. of lemon curd - probably something like 2 1/2 cups total in one cheesecake!) Thus, with this one, I got brutal. I left the lemon curd alone - mainly because I already had lemon curd in the freezer that I wanted to use up - but reduced the sugar in the crust from 2 T. to 1 T., and the sugar in the cheesecake batter from 1 3/4 cups to 3/4 cup. Yes, you read rightly - an over 50% reduction. Things got crazy in the kitchen all day. Then I watched to see how guests reacted - yes, I made this for guests, not smart - and... (drumroll, please!)... it was a complete hit. Delightfully and lightly sweetened, without being sickeningly sweet. 

I realize that both of the above recipes were "healthy living" recipes from the nineties, when fat was considered oh-so-evil, but sugar was pretty much given a free pass. These recipes really reflect that philosophy - which has mainly passed by, I think. 

*****

Around here, sugar reduction in recipes has on the whole been wildly successful. (And again, my family is my testing ground - especially my husband, who is extremely suspicious of anything labeled "healthy" - which, admittedly, is somewhat my fault, considering the number of atrocious recipes that I've tried to foist on the family over the years in the name of health. Tomato-free "spaghetti sauce" and coconut-flour pizza crust come to mind. Oh, the horrors.)

One more link:

Blueberry Ricotta Cheese Cake - I reduced the sugar by 50%, from 2/3 cup to 1/3 cup. It was wonderful!

And one recipe that I plan to try soon (and will come back to post notes when I do!):

My Secret, Less-Sweet Fluffy Vanilla Frosting (also called ermine frosting)

I can't wait to try this.

*****

And the promised lower-sugar zucchini bread recipe, altered from Zucchini Bread IV on allrecipes.com. I reduced the sugar by 75%, compensated for moisture loss by adding banana puree, increased the zucchini, and also added more baking powder (because 1/8 tsp. per loaf seemed rather pointless). It was a huge hit with our family.

Best Not-Too-Sweet Zucchini Bread

Yield: 2 (8x4-inch) loaves

3 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup oil

1 cup banana puree

2-4 cups grated zucchini

2 teaspoons vanilla 

3 cups all-purpose flour

½ cup chopped walnuts (opt.)

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease two loaf pans.

Beat eggs in a large bowl until light and frothy. Add sugar and oil and banana puree; mix until well combined. Stir in zucchini and vanilla. Combine flour, nuts, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and baking powder; stir into egg mixture until incorporated. Divide batter into the prepared pans.

Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center of each loaf comes out clean, 60 to 70 minutes.

*****

Enjoy, everyone!

(And please, do let me know your own tips for creating lower-sugar recipes!)

The Insanity of Kitchen Islands, and Other Winter Reflections (Books Lately, Winter 2023)

Well, folks, 2023 is finally over.

It was a year of extremes. Extreme joy - goals achieved, new life, and miraculous answers to prayer. And extreme sorrow - loss, suffering, death, illness, and stress of all kinds. 

In summary, 2023 really was a year to remember. 

So far, 2024 has been a year of... illness. So far we've had three colds, influenza, and a particularly violent stomach bug. Oh, I hope that we can move past this soon! 

We have also had another pregnancy and loss - not the catastrophic nightmare of last time, but only the briefest whisper of a presence before a tiny soul took flight. 

2024 has already been quite the year.

***

My goal for the beginning of this year is setting better systems in place.

A systems - meaning any personal or household routine - can be good or bad. For example, "get up, panic at how behind I am, yell at kids, rush out the door late" would be a not-so-good system. An improved alternative might be "get up, make a to-do list, switch the laundry, put away the dishes." Etc. 

I have some good systems, but I also have some not-so-good systems. Most of my bad systems have to do with poor household management - specifically, management of how my children manage their time and belongings. So much of the time what happens seems to run along these lines:

(1) The children make horrendous messes and leave them for Mom to clean up.

(2) Mom end up overwhelmed and discouraged.

Ditto with time management.

And this is obviously a bad thing. Thus, my goal this year is to work on implementing better systems. Here are some things that I have implemented, or am in-process on implementing:

(1) Teaching children to make their beds and brush their teeth immediately upon rising, so that it's not a mom-has-to-nag item for later.

(2) Writing out complete chore lists, so that I'm not randomly assigning chores all of the time.

(3) Implementing a zero-tolerance rule for clothing left on the floor. (This is a major problem in our home, and endless reminders and do-overs have done nothing to improve things.)

(4) Having children age 10 and older take over their own laundry duty. I have always done all of the laundry up until this point, but I have realized that our older children do not know how to do laundry. I need to improve on this - pronto.

(5) Using a reward system for staying on task during lessons. Each child starts the morning with five "m&m credits," and I cancel one credit each time a child is dawdling or goofing off. Remaining credits are paid at the end of lesson times. 

Note: This system worked for an impressive two days before I forgot about it. I really need to get it re-started. I find that reward systems fall by the wayside very quickly around here. I'm not sure if that's the system, or me. Does anyone have any insight on that issue?

(6) Working to standardize breakfast - i.e. assigning a particular breakfast to each day of the week. Right now I know (blessedly) that Monday is reliably "oatmeal," but after that it rather descends into a free-for-all, and the system needs improving. I have tried the "everyone makes his own breakfast" method, but that has not worked for us - the end result is inevitably a kitchen mess that would make any mum weep with despair. 

** If anyone knows of great school-day breakfasts, please let me know! Really. I need ideas.

(7) Improving our bedtime routines. Right now it usually tends toward "wild kids, stressed parents," and we need improvement.

All that to say, family life is very interesting, and it's never dull. There is always something to work on. 

What are you working on in your family life right now?

***

As usual, I am super-late with finishing Christmas activities. I realized that most of that was due to our behind-hand school year (more on that later), which caused me to push all the way to the end with schoolwork, rather than taking Thanksgiving through Epiphany as a Christmas vacation. 

Also, though, I have realized something foundational to the holidays - nothing is worth having a stressed-out Christmas. Nothing. (I've gone that route before.) So if we're doing Christmas into February (or June), fine. 

So, this season, most Christmas activities (cookies, etc.) didn't happen before Christmas. Or Epiphany.

King Cake for Epiphany. Whoever finds the hidden treat is "king for the year."

Or Candlemas.

Or Ash Wednesday.

So here we are, in the beginning of Lent, taking Christmas cookies to neighbors. (Really. I'm not kidding.)

Better late than never?

(Or make them just a bit later, and call them "Easter cookies.")

At least we did manage to get most of our Christmas activities done. Decorating Christmas cookies, baking lepkuchen, concocting our Christmas pudding (which we traditionally light on Candlemas, but illness and jobs prevented that this year), baking fruitcake, building gingerbread houses - most of it got done. The only things that I couldn't quite finish were baking the last bit of lepkuchen and serving our Christmas pudding, both of which will be frozen until after Easter.

Merry Christmas, y'all. 

(Oh, and our decorations are still up. Oops.)

Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses! This year our eldest rejected my "cheat" of assembling the houses with hot glue, and insisted on using the proper royal icing alone as a cementing agent, and surprisingly, it came together well. I also had the experience of making royal icing without a hand mixer - my hand mixer having received mortal wounds in the effort of making dairy-free nut-based cheese (which was awful). Surprisingly, making royal icing by hand was not difficult, and turned out better than my usual royal icing. 

***

But back to the topic at hand - kitchen islands.

Whose idea were they, anyway?

Because the ideal - a beautiful clean surface cheerfully serving as an extra kitchen prep area - is completely different from the reality - an insanity-producing clutter attractant.

Seriously, you guys. 

Our kitchen island does very little other than attract clutter. And mean clutter, mind you. The easy-to-put-away clutter doesn't stick around. What does stick around is the hard-to-put-away clutter - the stuff that really doesn't have a home; the stuff that is a serious nuisance. And work as hard as I might, the clutter flows onto the kitchen island far faster than I can put it away.

In fact, a week or two ago, I spent a serious amount of time clearing the surface - and the clutter was back within 30 minutes. I did this three times in one day. It was utterly futile.

And thus, I do question the sanity of whoever created these clutter-attracting beasts. "Hey! Let's make a two-ton clutter-attractant, and put one in each American kitchen! Great idea, yes?"

Some ideas are better left on the cutting room floor.

And now, some books!

***

Lord of the Flies (William Goulding, 1954) – Realistic fiction.

This book - a work of fiction in which a group of English schoolboys, marooned on a desert island, gradually descends from orderly government into savagery and barbarism - is considered a classic, and is an interesting interpretation of the workings of human nature, especially human nature in social groups detached from general society.

I have wanted to read this book ever since high school - it only took me 25 years or so to get around to it!

My reactions were mixed. The book was fairly gruesome, and made unpleasant reading. Also, some parts - such as the part about the pilot - were puzzling. I don't think I'll be going back for a re-read.

At the same time, the book is valuable and contains good material. The ending is splendidly written. And the book contains valuable insight - namely, that human nature is not naturally good. While human beings are made of good stuff, we have much evil contained within us (just as the Bible teaches, and the Founding Fathers well knew). It takes good methods of government to control the evil side of human nature, and bad forms of government can release a hellish force of evil if they do not acknowledge and allow for the evils inherent within human nature. 

I would love to hear what others thought of this book. Thoughts, anyone?

Fast Food Genocide (Joel Fuhrman, 2017) – Nutrition and nutrition politics.

I've noticed that nutrition books often have titles that are not accurate portrayals of the book's true intent. For example, a famous book about wheat has a title that implies "you should stop eating wheat," but what the author actually means is that "you should stop eating wheat, all grains, sugar, and practically all carbohydrates." And it's the same thing here. The title implies "you should stop eating fast food," but the author's message is that "you should stop eating fast food, junk food, processed food, salt, and meat, and eat a vegan diet." I really prefer titles that accurately portray the message of a book, and not just a tiny bit of it. 

I enjoyed this book. It's got a lot of great material. One thing that I especially appreciated is the author's grasp of a little-realized fact - that diet has a real influence on mental health. This is one of those things that is well-documented in the literature but not acknowledged in common medical practice, and it's a  fact that is not receiving the recognition it deserves. Our food influences our mood, and our mental health. (The author does, in my opinion, take this theme way too far, attributing everything from racism to crime to dietary deficiencies. So, a good beginning, but took it far past logic or reason.)

Two downsides of this book:

First, wokeness. In the middle of the book, the reader is suddenly treated to a pages-upon-pages chapter on the evils of Southern whites. It's long, and it's vituperative, and it's really unnecessary and out of place. A one-paragraph summary of the author's point (that nutritional deficiencies could have contributed to racial strife, which is questionable anyway) would have sufficed. 

Secondly, there are hints throughout the book that the author would prefer nutritional policies to be not just recommendations but goverment mandates. In other words, the government should control what and how people are allowed to eat. Really? 

I do understand the frustration of watching people destroy their health with bad food choices. But governmental control is, in my opinion, not the answer.

As one reviewer noted:

"I have eaten the diet that Dr. Furhman advocates since 2013. It is definitely the safest way to eat, tastes good, and has helped my health. For this I will always be thankful. But not all of Dr. Fuhrman's words in this new book, in fact, maybe only a quarter of his words in this new book, are factual. He has a political agenda and would legislate the way people eat. Perhaps it is because he cares about us, or perhaps because he would back his atheistic beliefs and feel good about himself; and also perhaps that he would grow rich in this world's assets. It is one thing to expose the poor eating habits of Americans and educate them, and now, those copying American society around the world; but it is another to enforce through civil law the way people eat."

There is good material in this book - but I'd prefer a book about straight nutrition that leaves politics alone. 

Witness (Whittaker Chambers, 1952) – Autobiography of a Communist agent turned informer during the first half of the 20th century.

A friend heard that I'd never read this book and promptly handed me a copy. In my ignorance, I thought that it was a book off of which the movie "Witness" had been made - it's not, and the two have nothing to do with each other. But without further ado, I plunged into the book.

"Witness" is the autobiographical account of the life of Whittaker Chambers, from his (very dysfunctional and sad) childhood through his young adulthood, when he became passionately and deeply involved with the American Communist party, up until his departure from the Communist party - which was an extremely dangerous thing for him and his family - and through his participation as a witness in the Alger Hiss trial (which, again, I'd never heard of).

This book has to go on my list of top favorites. It is fascinating, well-written, engaging, and covers a lot of very important American history, especially regarding the spread of Communism in America. I wish that this book were on more high school level reading lists - I'm guessing that it is the book's length that prevents this (it is quite long), but this book is a keeper.

For more on the history of Communism in America, another person to check out is Bella Dodd, who was - during the same time period - responsible for placing Communist agents in the American public school system. She also has an amazing story to tell.

Highly recommended!

Gaudy Night (Dorothy Sayers, 1935) – Realistic mystery set in the 1930s.

A young woman (Harriet Vane) works to solve the mystery of a "poison pen" amongst the female dons at Oxford. Harriet's friend (and disappointed lover), Lord Peter Wimsey (a professional detective, and one of Sayers' ongoing characters) comes down to help her, and the mystery is solved. Even more interestingly, the book contains the final answer to "will she or will she not finally say yes to Lord Peter Wimsey's proposals"?

I have heard of Dorothy Sayers for years, and I was so glad to finally pick up one of her books. While I am an avid Agatha Christie fan, I actually don't usually go for mysteries, so I wasn't sure if I would like this book. But I enjoyed it very much.

Unlike Agatha Christie novels, which are the soul of brevity and inevitably get straight to the point, Gaudy Night was super-long and had a gentle, relaxed tone that made for a very long and leisurely read. The descriptions and character developments are first-rate.

The downside to the book was that there were so many characters that I simply couldn't keep them straight, and by the time I reached the "who done it" denouement, I didn't really know who the culprit was - or much care. But I enjoyed the book thoroughly for its workmanship, and I loved meeting Lord Peter Wimsey, another detective who has become a classic, and it was fun to compare him with my beloved Hercule Poirot.

One interesting note was how deeply embedded the doctrines of feminism were in this text - perhaps not too surprising, as the story took place among female academics, but surprising to me, as the book was written just about 100 years ago. It goes to show how far back in history the feminist movement goes - unlike many modern Christians who intone that "everything was fine through the 1950s." This book had so modern a tone that I would not have questioned anyone who told me that it was written in the past couple of years. I wondered, also, how much Sayers herself subscribed to feminist views, or if they were simply taken on for the sake of the book, or if she even realized that she was espousing feminism. A most interesting study in worldview.

I very much enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading more of Dorothy Sayers.

Any other Sayers fans out there? I would love to hear your take on her books. 

Suicide of the West (Jonah Goldberg, 2018) – Political and worldview analysis.

I expected this book to be an easy read, but it was actually much more of a challenge than I expected. But it was a good challenge, and I enjoyed it very much.

Because this book was written during Donald Trump's presidency, the author deals with a lot of Trump politics, focusing especially on the rise of populism. The author is not particularly pro-Trump, and he goes into detail about the trends arising around Trump's rise to popularity. Having always been mildly pro-Trump myself, it was really good for me to read a conservative commentator's thoughtful and well-reasoned arguments (instead of unreasoning hysteria) for not being in favor of Donald Trump, and I came away from the book with an appreciation of the non-Trump side of conservative American politics.

I enjoyed this book. It was worth the effort to read, and I gained a lot through reading it. 

Anyone have thoughts on this book?

A Severe Mercy (Sheldon Vanauken, 1977) – Autobiography.

I am an enormous fan of C. S. Lewis - and I expect that you are too, dear reader. His books have influenced and challenged and blessed me enormously. 

C. S. Lewis's books have, to my mind, a distinct flavor - a feel, a style - that one can detect at sixty yards. It's like a delicious scent that one immediately knows as something beloved and familiar. 

This book had the delicious scent of a C. S. Lewis book. I recognized it immediately. And yet the book is not written by C. S. Lewis at all. What was going on?

As I read, I discovered that while this book was not written by C.S. Lewis, it was written by a man who was befriended by C. S. Lewis, and later became an intimate life-long friend.

I guess C. S. Lewis awesomeness can be gained by association!

A Severe Mercy is Vanaukin's autobiographical account of his youth and young adulthood, focusing on his courtship and marriage with his wife, Davy, until her early death (at around the age of 40), and of his grief after her passing. It is also the telling of the couple's coming to the Christian faith, under the mentorship of C. S. Lewis, and the development of their faith through the years. 

To put it mildly, A Severe Mercy is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. I enjoyed it tremendously. And it's not just a love story - it's got a lot of real depth to it as well. As literature, as a love story, and as a religious work, it is a work of great merit.

I learned that there is a sequel, titled Under the Mercy - which is, alas, out of print and rather pricey to find used. However, I think it would be worth the money to snag a copy, and I'm currently working on that. 

This book merits not an "it's okay, maybe read it" label, but a go out and buy it right now! designation. 

I know you'll enjoy this book as much as I did. 

Jeeves & Wooster Books of the Month!

This month my Jeeves & Wooster selections included the following:

• Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse) 
• Very Good, Jeeves! (P. G. Wodehouse) 
• Right Ho, Jeeves

For Children: Picture Books

They Were Strong and Good (Robert Lawson, 1940) – Autobiographical account of the author’s immigrant and pioneer ancestors.

A wonderful picture book - well drawn, engaging, and full of both historical merit and positive character messages. Highly recommended. 

Christmas in the Trenches (John McCutcheon, 2006) - Non-fiction.

The story of the 1914 Christmas truce - in which German and British soldiers spontaneously declared a cease-fire in order to celebrate Christmas as friends - I find one of the most moving of all war stories, and I was thrilled to find a children's book telling the story. 

The author, John McCutcheon, wrote a song about the Christmas truce titled, appropriately, "The Christmas Truce" - you can watch a video of the author singing the song here. 

This book would make an excellent addition to a study of World War I. It's also a great character builder in the qualities of mercy, compassion, and peace building. 

Enjoy!

For Children & Teens: Novels

Ballet Shoes (Shoes series by Noel Streatfeild, 1936) – Realistic fiction.

It is a tragedy that I did not know about this wonderful series during my own childhood!

The "Shoes" books form a six-book series written all about girls in different dance or artistic pursuits - ballet, dance, theatre, skating, etc. The books are extremely well-written and entertaining, as well as educational - both about the artistic pursuits, and about life in an earlier time (the first Shoes book was written in 1936).

Some of these books are easily available, while some are difficult to find. A five-book set is available here (missing "Dancing Shoes," which is thankfully one of the easier books to find, so you can buy that one separately to complete the series). 

I highly recommend this series. I read it myself, just for fun!  

Classic Starts books (various) – Various titles abridged for elementary-aged children

There are several mainstream series of abridged classics for children, and I have really fallen in love with this one - "Classic Starts." The series includes many classic works, and all are tastefully written and illustrated. All of our children have benefited from this easy introduction to classic literature.

The House of Sixty Fathers (Meinert DeJong, 1956) – Realistic fiction set in World War II Japan.

I'd heard of this book for years, but never read it - and wow, was I missing out. This book - a wartime story in WWII-era China - is an absolute delight, and both I and our children loved it. It would be a lovely addition to any unit study on WWII or modern history, and any age from mid-elementary and up would benefit from it - and enjoy it!

Highly recommended. 

Brady (Jean Fritz, 1960) – Realistic fiction set in pre-Civil War Pennsylvania.

We've always enjoyed Jean Fritz's Revolutionary War era books, as well as her other books, so I was excited to read Brady, a new read for me. The book follows a young boy through his experience with pre-Civil War politics and slavery issues, including his family's participation on the Underground Railroad.

I enjoyed this book very much.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Ian Fleming, 1964) – Fantasy.

The adventures of a flying car and the family who owns it!  In all honesty, it's not really my style, but there's no doubt that it's fun, well-written, and an established classic. Give it a try, or let your kids have at it. 

Archimedes and the Door of Science (Jeanne Bendick, 1962) – History.

The life of Archimedes. Very well-written, and includes a lot of history as well as early science. Highly recommended!

A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl’s Journal, 1830-32 (Joan W. Blos, 1979) – Historical fiction set in early 1800s New England.

Very well-written and realistic. As I've written before, there are loads of poor-quality historical fiction books for children out there - thankfully, this book is not among them. It is a great book, and will be a good addition to any homeschool library.

A few notes from the kitchen:

This Christmas season included a few wonderful new recipes:

Pumpkin Crumble Cake - see my notes in the comments as to how to make a dairy-free version, as well as how to replace the cake mix with a homemade version. For the recipe itself, I reduced the sugar to 1 1/4 cups, and am going to try to reduce it further to 1 cup. 

Creamy Cornbread Casserole - I used a homemade Jiffy copycat mix and also (because I was out of bell peppers) substituted a can of green chilis for the bell pepper. This was an immediate hit around here. 

***

Another great recipe was Autumn Pancakes - they have an awesome texture, and even our oatmeal-hating child loved them. My only change is to let the oatmeal mixture sit for longer than five minutes, which gives more time for absorption and softening, not to mention cooling. Given how long things take around here, that's an easy thing to accomplish. 

***

Another kitchen adventure around here lately was our first ever Super Bowl party. This was not something that I ever saw myself doing, as I have a passionate dislike of football (and sports in general), and an even more intense dislike of the politics that seem to surround the game nowadays. However, it happened - mainly due to our children's sudden enthusiasm - and they had a wonderful time decorating and hosting friends. 

In case anyone saw the creepy "He Gets Us" ad, I wanted to share - along with a great response article) - an intensely awesome and breathtakingly beautiful how-it-should-have-been-done video (don't miss this one - it is so good!): 

***

Now, onto a more light-hearted kitchen theme - birthday cakes!

February is a big birthday month for us - we literally can't finish one cake before it's time for another. 

Our first cake of the month was an utter disaster. A complete. and. utter. disaster. So bad that I didn't even take a picture of it. We just quit in the middle and ate it - it was delicious - and I promised the birthday child that I would re-do the entire thing after birthday season. That adventure is yet to come. 

The second cake of the month was a much bigger success. The theme - dinosaurs. I found this cake to be my inspiration:

I loved the idea of two tones of green. I approximated her colors by using plain green for the deep green, and green plus yellow and one drop each of black and brown for the yellow-green. The contrast was great. Upon discovering that I don't actually have a grass tip, I used this fun tip to approximate:

For the cake itself, I used a favorite cake of ours - Beat and Bake Orange Cake. This is a splendid cake, and super-easy to make. My changes:

• I find that regular sugar works just fine.
• I increase the orange zest, and add an equal amount of lemon zest. (Maybe a tablespoonful or so of each.)
• I used this frosting, which has less sugar (I find most frostings unpleasantly sweet). It would be a bit on the soft side for layer cake frosting, so if you're planning a layer cake, either chill the frosting a bit first, or omit the orange juice and use a teaspoon of orange extract instead:
• 2 sticks (1 cup) butter
• 2 (8 oz. each) cream cheese
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tsp. each vanilla, lemon zest, orange zest

And the outcome was - while not anything near the model - a great cake that thoroughly pleased both birthday child and guests.

***

This past week, we attended what I think may have been the most awesome children's birthday party ever.

Why so amazing?

Because the mom pulled it off without destroying herself - something that parties tend to do to women, and which certainly happens to me. 

Here's how this act of brilliance went, via text:

"Hey, everyone - a couple of our kids are having birthdays soon. Meet us at the park on Saturday to celebrate - we'll bring pulled pork and cake. Bring your own lawn chairs and sports equipment, and post here what food or disposable dishes you'd like to bring."

And that was it.

The kids played wildly for several hours - no pre-planned activities needed - and the adults got to talk. At the end, everyone helped clean up.

Zero headaches, zero exhausted-overworked-overwhelmed mom, zero "I will NEVER DO THIS AGAIN" moments.

This is my new model for how to throw a party.

****

Another kitchen adventure was our much anticipated FROG CUPCAKES for Leap Year! (Frogs leap. Get it?) Very uncomplicated, very unprofessional, but very fun - and our children anticipate this for months (years!) in advance. This time I used Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Cake as the base. By halving the recipe and then reducing the 1 cup of sugar to 3/4 cup, the batter was just perfect for a dozen cupcakes.

My favorite all-natural green coloring is chlorophyll, which you can buy at Sprouts or online. The eyes are made with trimmed marshmallows + chocolate chips, and the mouths (we're going to do pink next time) were piped by the 9yo.

It's hard to realize that this is a first-leap-year-ever for two of my children - and by the time it rolls around again, our eldest teen will no longer be a teen, and we'll have two more of the younger crew who will be teens. Wow.

Happy Leap Year, y'all.

Music & Dance

I am a huge fan of English folk dance, and we recently discovered the YouTube channel Historical Dance. Oh, what a treasure trove! Try this one on for size:

We found that one a bit hard for us to learn right away, but we did learn this easier one - give it a try! Super-fun, and not too difficult. (It also revealed to me how completely out of shape I am - ouch!):

There are so many wonderful videos on this channel. Enjoy!

***

We are just starting to enjoy the music from Laudate Mennonite Ensemble. Here is one of their recent productions:

I recently learned of the existence of many wonderful Mennonite choirs. If you haven't yet searched out this area of choral performance, give it a search on YouTube.

*** 

Speaking of historical dance forms, we are currently enjoying videos of Irish dance. Try this one!

***

To end the music & dance section, I'll leave you with our 2yo's current favorite (he is currently fussing in my arms because I'm writing about it rather than playing it!

***

Okay, folks! That's it for this entry. Write and let me know how you and your families are doing - and if you've read any good books lately. I hope that each of you is having a good spring and a wonderful Lent. 

And in the meantime, pray for me, as I pray for you.

Happy Easter!