JCnaturals » fun

First Day of School

Anna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:11:34 +0000

Today was the first day of school for the boys. Jaden is now a 5th grader and Jonah is now a 3rd grader. Here are some photos from their big day!

And now, here’s the recipe for Apple Slump. If I’m remembering correctly, I got it out of the boy’s home-school curriculum a couple of years ago. It’s super easy and the boys request it quite often for a special breakfast (even though it could easily be a dessert!). I think of it as a coffee cake type of thing. :)

Apple Slump

4-6 tart apples (I’ve also used pears.)

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/2 c. sugar

1/4 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. salt

1.5 c. flour

2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. sugar

1 beaten egg

1/2 c. milk (I’ve just used filtered water before.)

1/2 c. melted butter

Pare, core and slice up the fruit. Preheat the over to 350 degrees. Grease/Spray a 1.5 qt. baking dish. Put the apple inside and cover with the sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and 1/4 t. salt. Stir to mix it all up well and bake for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, sift the rest of the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients and stir gently. Spread this mixture over the top of the apples and bake for an additional 25 minutes.

Enjoy!

Super Easy Refrigerator Pickles

Anna — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:51:59 +0000

The Lord blessed us with such an awesome house here in Colorado, and we are so thankful! It has an awesome sunny area out back for our vegetable garden (which I’m planning on expanding next spring!) and it has such an awesome kitchen. (How many times can I say the word “awesome”?? Apparently quite a few when I’m describing our home!) The kitchen has pretty much all new, matching appliances that are in top notch condition. Gotta love that! The only problem is that my stove is one of those flat electric cooktops… the kind that you’re not supposed to can on. So, instead of canning my produce, I’m having to come up with other solutions, such as blanching and freezing my veggies.

Anyhow, I was uncertain what I would do with my garden cucumbers until I found a recipe for refrigerator pickles a few weeks ago. No canning is required! I made one batch of them and wow. They are so good. You can make them with cucumbers, zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, onions, peppers and probably so much more. They are easy, they are cheap and my kiddos love them.

Jaden and I harvested 4 cucumbers today and decided to make more pickles. Let me know if you try them yourself!

Refrigerator Pickles

1.5 c. distilled white vinegar OR apple cider vinegar

1/2 – 1.5 c. sugar, depending on how sweet you like your pickles.

1 T. pickling salt OR kosher salt (do not use regular table salt)

Sliced cucumbers (&/or combination of other veggies listed above)

1/8 t. mustard seed

1/8 t. celery seed

dash or two of turmeric

Heat the first 3 ingredients in a saucepan on the stove over medium high until the sugar dissolves, approx. 10 minutes. Meanwhile, slice the veggies and fill a quart sized canning jar with them. Add the spices to the jar. When the liquid mixture is ready, pour it over the top of the veggies. You can add more vinegar to the top if needed. Put lid on the jar and set out on counter until cooled a bit. Place jar in refrigerator for 5 days. Now you can eat your yummy, crunchy pickles.

These pickles are supposed to keep for several months in the fridge and I’ve read that you can reheat the liquid mixture and reuse it to make another batch. Anyone tried this?

say what?

Anna — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:38:00 +0000

A little known fact about the boys is that they have created their own language, appropriately called, “Jaden and Jonah language”. Often times as I walk through their play area I will overhear it. At first I thought that they were just talking in jibberish to each other… but no! They actually understand each other. It it part verbal and part hand motions and it fascinates me. Sometimes when one of them doesn’t want me to hear, they will speak in their own language right in front of me. Every once in a while I get a translation, but for them the fun part is that no one else can understand it. And for those homeschoolers out there, Rosetta Stone will not help.

Halloween!

Anna — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:53:02 +0000

We had such a great Halloween this year. Jaden dressed up as a bunch of spilled spaghetti and meatballs and Jonah dressed up as a cool cowboy. Around 4pm, we headed down to the Gresham Town Center and let the boys trick or treat from the local businesses there. Then we went out to dinner at Baja Fresh – yum! Finally, we headed on over to Central Bible Church for their annual Candy Land, which we go to every year. It is an indoor kid’s carnival with plenty of fun games, candy, a costume contest and even a bounce house. In Portland, you never know what the weather will be like on Halloween, so we really like that everything is indoors, and it’s safe. Anyhow, Jonah has won the costume contest for the past 2 years (once for his own rendition of Super-Cow and once for being a homemade house!), but this year was Jaden’s year – he won the prize!! Click on the pictures below…

New toys

Anna — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:56:09 +0000

Scott has been teaching the boys how to manage money over the past year. They each opened up a kid’s bank account. Every week, they earn a dollar and once per month Scott sits down with them and they divide up their wages. They give some to the church, some to the poor, some to church planters internationally and then put the rest into their savings account. Jaden has been very focused on saving for a DS lite whereas Jonah has needed lots of extra guidance in saving for something instead of spending it all at the Dollar Store every month! Anyhow, they recently (yesterday) decided that they wanted to pool their money together and search for a used DS lite off of Craigslist… and Scott found one that they could afford that even came with a couple of games. So, this afternoon the kids took their $60 and went to pick up their cool, red DS lite!!

AND, yesterday our friends, Adrian and Deborah, came over and took the boys on a special date. They went to the pumpkin patch together and then went over to their house to play and record some music together. Jonah came home with a new kid’s guitar and Jaden came home with a pitch pipe (both had belonged to Adrian when he was a boy). The really cool thing about this is that Jonah had been saving for a guitar that he saw at Walmart and decided to instead help Jaden with purchasing the DS lite. He slept with the guitar last night and has been carrying it all throughout the house today. He has already learned a couple of chords and is eager to learn more!!