Lamb Stew, an original recipe!

I started out with a lamb shank and thought that I had read a recipe online for a lamb stew using a shank and navy beans. Then....I couldn't find it. My beans had been shelled and soaked, the lamb thawed.

So I decided to just make a stew myself. I read a couple sites to get a feel for what seasoning typically get used for lamb, what veggies get added, and official temperatures and such.

As typical for me I read the package wrong and they were lamb leg STEAKS not shank. So it was. I had carrots on hand and onion too, but I was out of chicken stock. Hmmmm.

So here is the incredibly simple recipe that I put together this morning an set the oven before going to church. An amazing and nutritous lunch was ready when we came home four hours later. So easy, so good.

1-2 1b package of lamb meat.
3 carrots cut up, bite size
2 cups of, soaked overnight, beans. We used our own, varieties were Jacobs Cattle bean and Ying Yang bean. A seven bean mix like the kind sold for ham soup would work though.
1 medium yellow onion
1 T Rosemary
2 T French Thyme
some butter
about a teaspoon of course sea salt
enough water to fill the dutch oven after ingredients are added.

*optional, a slice of bacon leftover (or hidden for this purpose) from breakfast.  usually my family vetoes wasting bacon in such a manner! I used cottage bacon from "Eggs and Bacon" for the addition and the only way I managed it was making a whole pound of bacon and extra eggs, leaving one small slice back in the pan. Everyone ate and was full and unawares of the rebel slice. The hardest person to keep from eating it was me. Ha!

I melted the butter in the dutch oven and browned the lamb on both sides. Then I added everything else. Covered and set in the oven at 400 for 30 minutes. Then I turned it down to 200. That was at 8:45 am and at 12:30 it was done and AMAZING. I'll add pictures in a bit.

Dearest said it was the best soup I have EVER made, possibly the best meal ever too. He really likes lamb. Both girls finished their bowls. I served, as a side, crusty 5MAD bread with butter.

I was nervous to use seasoning other than cayenne. The joke is around here that I don't know how to make anything without it. Ha! Well, it is kind of true actually. Even my cinnamon rolls and sugar cookies get kicked up a notch. What can I say? I really like Thyme though and since I was out of chicken broth to use as a soup base, the herbs really played an important roll in creating a good broth.

Frozen in the Mud

This time of year I get a ton of stuff done and then have off days where I feel mentally stuck. I came across a concept plot theme online, called Being Erica, where the main character gets to go back in time and fix things that have gone wrong, her regrets. A little like Quantum Leap except that it is all just her.

It got me thinking. What are my own regrets? Have I righted them? One of my regrets was a ring that a friend gave me in middle school. We both thought it was play jewelery and when I found it it was a garnet set in white gold, I told her but refused to give it back. I was 12 and stupid. You know what, I still have that ring and the thing I regretted was that I felt it ruined that friendship. I sought her out on facebook, admitted my folly. You know what? She didn't even remember the ring, BUT she was thrilled to hear from me!

Another regret I have is my manuscript drawer. I have an almost complete manuscript in there, unfinished. I also have a folder containing a slip of paper from the New Yorker saying that my work was just not quite right, but could I revise and resend? I initially took this as a rejection letter, but yet it still sits there untouched. It came when we were moving and I had a lot of other things going on. What excuse do I have now, 11 years later. Every day that passes, I regret not mailing it out.

I regret getting out of the habit of writing. This I can fix, I think.

Ah. I regret firing my daycare provider #2 the way that I did. It was cowardly and I handled the aftermath poorly. She made a bad decision and I had every right to fire her, but I should have done it in person and not by email and the resulting flame email back and forth is what killed our friendship. Though in retrospect, it was fading out anyway. I guess the point is that I regret not being a better person and handling it all with grace. I have since tried a lot harder to be honest and in person with people. Sometimes I miss her, but I know that it is a dead friendship and there is no need to waste time feeling sorry for myself. I also regret the time I lost feeling sorry for myself.

You know, that has been my problem for many years. Being honest and in person with people. Not that I lie, but I guess it is a lie to say everything is fine when it isn't. Or that I'd rather not talk about it when I would. It is a skill I learned when I was growing up, to make the best of the situation I was in. The one time I sought help, no one believed me anyway. Abused kids don't ask for help, I didn't fit the profile. So I regret not standing up for myself, advocating for my own welfare. Being a little selfish on that front.

But on the opposite end of that (or maybe as example of that), I regret not having a better relationship with my sister. I think I get all huffy and puffy about things that don't matter because of the things that do matter to me that I can't talk about. I have told her how I feel and I get the brush off or she cries (thus I can't talk about it). So we stick to the safe topics which end up with us bickering and me reverting to the know it all role. Perhaps it is based in resentment that she escaped the abuse I suffered, not that I wish it on her in any way, but because it allows her to view the situation in a rosier light and still allow the abuser such a huge role in her life. Why wouldn't she, she wasn't physically hurt.

You know though, regret is an anchor that weighs our heart down. I don't want to change my life or where I am in it, but by reflecting on these things I can make a point not to repeat these mistakes and actually conquer the beasts in the manuscript drawer! So you see this is a season of reflection for me, and soon the days will get longer and the sun will shine again.

Homeschooling Time

One of the biggest worries families seem to have approaching homeschooling is the time factor. The time it will take away from the day, the time invested, the time taken away from the primary teacher planning and grading and teaching.

Stop thinking schoolish thoughts for a minute. Institutional teachers plan curriculum and structure simply because of legal requirements and crowd management issues. Sure, homeschooling can look like that, but that doesn't mean that it has to. Homeschooling looks different through many eyes but also in many homes.

Here's what homeschooling looks like for us. Lil'Bug LOVES computer games. She needs help sometimes, so I put the computer for her in my bedroom and I fold laundry while she plays. Her favourite game involves pages that quite frankly look like school worksheets. I loathe busy work, but she enjoys them so she plays and learns. She whipped through the entire K-1 program in about a week and now she is repeating the program by her own choice. I have the next and a few others, but she wants to repeat. So I fold and they play.

Lil'Bug does farm chores and learns hands on about animals and their needs. She comes in and washes up. We talk about hygiene sometimes. Then she helps me with dishes and making our food. When we grocery shop we plan and talk about budget and I talk her through it as we walk the rows. I explain my choices and let her make some of her own. We talk about taxes and fees. She spots the produce manager and greets him asking, "What's fresh and in season today?" or, "What country is that watermelon from?" or, "Please could you help me reach the Brussel sprouts, they are my favourite!" He says I have her well trained and I respond that it is simply and wonderfully her.

We watch movies together. We sing together. We dance while cleaning up. We count things for fun. She likes doing workbooks in the long car rides to and from town. We play with friends. She goes to art and music classes once a week. Sunday school at church. We talk about the lessons. We practice. We pray.

The girls have free access to art supplies, some of the mediums are quality some are crayola. Lil'Bug loves painting with gouche and she also loves attending an art class in town.

When the weather warms up we will spend time in the garden, planting and tending. Lil'Bug has always helped with these tasks. Blueberry does too, as much as a baby can! They both help harvest and eat. Washing vegetables and fruits are fun!

I don't worry about teaching my then 4 now 5 year old to read. I read to her. We look at signs. We talk about words and letters. Some classical schooling methods don't worry about reading and fine math skills until 8-9 years old. If I change my mind about unschooling, I can always revert to Charlotte Mason or Waldorf. LOL. That's a little bit of unschooling humor there. We read a lot. Because we read a lot, Lil'Bug has learned to read early. She hid this from us though, she some how got the idea in her head that she would have to read to herself when she learned and would lose bedtime reading with us. Silly, but, to her, a real concern. She's over that now.

Life is learning. I used to catalog our day and match the activities to schoolish concepts, but I don't do that anymore. It can be helpful for someone who is new to homeschooling, or for filling out the legal forms required by our state. The problem is when school think invades your learning and there is no other way. The beauty of homeschooling is the freedom that we experience, not additional restraint.

Our days are free to explore. If I have more work to do one day, I do it. If we spend all day watching NG videos on penguins, we do it even if laundry piles up. If we burn dinner, we eat out or make a snack plate or eat leftovers. It's all fine. To an outsider it may look like we have no structure, but that is an illusion. We do have a pattern to our day, our week, our months. All humans do naturally as dictated by our sleep wake and season cycles. When we are at home, we move through our days naturally, sleeping when we are tired (ok, not me but the kids do) and eating when hungry. We go to town once or twice a week. We visit the Amish farm down the road once every other week. There is pattern, but it is not dictated by scheduled bathroom breaks or bells that ring and tell us we have to stop doing math. Sometimes the day gets away from us, but we just become skilled at bending time. We make time for things that matter to us, make time for things that need to be done too.

So I spent an hour scanning through pictures to find good ones to illustrate what our homeschool looks like. Then it dawned on me! That's what this entire blog is. Our life. Just scroll through the past 2 years and that's it. Life.

Facing my Fears: Facebook

Facebook. For goodness sake, I blog, so I already put it all out there. Why on earth am I so uncomfortable with Facebook? Really its just an organized way to stay in touch with the local mamas, right?

Then I got my first friend request from someone I don't really know. She's a nice person, a friend of my sister's, but I don't think I've ever had a conversation with her. Not even once. Why would she friend request me? So I started poking around. Some of these folks have 300+ "friends". Really? I mean, really? So my thought is perhaps it is like collecting Pokemon, gotta catch 'em all. Right?

To test this theory I name searched an old classmate who was very popular and valued just that. My conjecture would be that she'd have a lot of friends. Yup. 500+ Wow, I mean, just wow.

But people use FB for different things. It is a social media. Some people add people that they work with, that they went to school with, family, and the list can grow really big pretty quickly.

So I decided that I will accept invitations from people I actually know. You know, friends. That may limit my list to like 20 people but I am very ok with that. You know? The huge list of people doesn't seem to change the personal nature of their twitter like updates. But then I started thinking, it is different than blogging in that you SEE who you are sharing with, unlike blogging which is an open book.

So then, I started poking around my old classmate's list. I didn't attend the reunions for either of my old high schools, but people certainly look just as I imagined they would. Pictures can say a lot about what they value and personality too.  So then I was contemplating the value for me in connecting with old classmates. I'm not really all that different, just grown up.

But that's the thing. I am different. Not in personalty or likes, but in circumstances. When they knew me I was a scared little kid in an abusive home, bullied at school, and not a lot of hope. Then I moved to Iowa. Things didn't change much until I finally moved out and moved on. It takes a lot to extract oneself from the claws of the abusive person. But I did it. It was not painless, but it was necessary for the health of me and my family (though they still reach out and dish the hurt, ugh).

So that said, would connecting with any of those strangers really benefit me? Do I have time for that? I'm not really one for reminiscing over the glory days since they were pretty awful for me. I have to say I much prefer my life now. Another thing, I could not have imagined myself here, as I was then. What good does spending so much time connecting with old friends really do? Does it just keep us mired in the past instead of relishing the present and working for the future? Like Lot's wife, does looking back turn me into a pillar of salt (presumably from tears?)?

Then there is the issue of truth. Even the local mamas I know don't post a complete picture about themselves on FB or even their own blogs. So who are we really connecting with online? I see my use of FB as a local network and communication tool rather than some yearbook/online dating hybrid.

But by participating in Facebook I have put my picture and real name reachable. I think that's the heart of what bothers me. The anonymity of blogspot and my MP profile feels slightly protective, a mask that I take off when I choose, but that buffers my family, my children, our real lives- the ones we actually live now, from the world a little bit.

And then after all the hee hawing over what to do, I did it. And in doing so reconnected with three of my best friends from Illinois, friends that I had not seen or spoken to in 16 years.  That's half my life ago! For me it was a rewriting of the past, not fictional, but taking a fictional version and rooting out the truth. Replacing hurt and heartache caused by lies with simple truth. I needed that. I needed it more than I imagined I ever would. It was like taking a wound and finally allowing it to heal. I needed to remember that friendship to complete the picture of my past with something other than the abuser's version. Sounds sappy I know.

I still limit my friends list though. Call me cautious.