TUESDAY: Book Review

Whether you are looking for a fun unit study or a great gift idea, Science with Magnets is a great find. And through Monday, August 25th, this great kit is only $6.73! That's half price!

This kit has everything young scientists need to perform the simple experiments from the 24-page book. Complete with 3 magnets, a compass, 5 feet of coated wire, corks, clay and paper clips, the kit will provide hours of experimentation and fun. Children can easily explore the mysteries of magnets with these safe projects.

Click the picture to learn more.

TUESDAY: Homeschooling Link

Many homeschoolers are single income families. Therefore, we need to watch our pennies. Currclick: Curriculum in a Click helps us keep our homeschooling costs down. When you order something from them, you download it and then only print what you need. I love that! And, if you subscribe to their newsletter, each week you will get a link in your inbox to a free download! Every week! Check them out :o)

MONDAY: Menu Plan Monday, Aug. 18th

Be sure to visit every Wednesday for our new weekly feature Leftover Magic.

This week will again be pretty simple. I'm coming down with a cold, so I know I won't feel like cooking much on Monday. Our menu will reflect that. In addition, my birthday is Friday, and dh & I will be going out to dinner without the kiddos. Remember that the items in bold are locally grown or raised.

Breakfast (with milk and fruit):
Baked Oatmeal
Eggs and ham
Whole grain pancakes with homemade fruit preserves
Apple muffins

Lunch:
Broccoli Cheese Soup (Leftover Magic)
Turkey Roll-Ups
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Baked Potatoes topped with "your choice"

Snacks:
Homemade Cookies
Fruit plate
Blueberry Popsicles
Strawberry Smoothie
Fig cobbler

Dinner:
Tabasco Chili (from the freezer) over Frito's with cheese and sour cream and a veggie plate.

Beef Fajitas with red peppers and onions, sour cream, tomatoes and fruit.

Meatloaf (turkey) sandwich with tomato, basil and mozzarella salad

Pan fried chicken strips, purple hull peas and fruit.

Check out more menus and Menu Plan Monday on I'm an Organizing Junkie.

THURSDAY; Gardening

Last Friday, we got the first real rain in about 6 weeks. Couple the lack of rain with the 100+ deg temps we'd had over the previous two weeks and you can imagine my garden looks rough (I'll get pics up as soon as I can). The rain on Friday and the repeat on Monday have helped start the recovery. We're still getting cukes, a few tomatoes, peppers and my current favorite, purple hull peas. The corn we planted in mid June is silking now as well, so in about 2 months, if it doesn't freeze first, we will have corn from our garden :o)

Gardening has been an interest of mine for a long time, but this is the first home we've lived in where conditions were right for a garden. We've been enjoying both the process of gardening and of course the product of our garden.

Currently, the garden contains mostly hybrid plants but we do have seeds for 2 and 3 plants that are open pollinated or heirloom plants. We have seeds (for next year) from a beautiful purple tomato and seeds for a purple bell pepper (it tastes like a cross between a sweet bell and a purple onion). We also have a watermelon plant, 28 or so purple hull peas and 32 onions that are non-hybrids.

What is the difference between a hybrid and an heirloom plant? Well, basically if you save the seeds from an heirloom, you will get another plant that looks and acts just like the parent. If you save hybrid seeds, you will get a plant that doesn't look much like the parent and that either produces little fruit or none at all. In other words, for hybrids, you must buy your seeds from a seed company every year.

Up until a few years ago, I didn't really care or understand why I would want heirloom plants. I believed that all plants were the same. But then I learned that before the industrialization of farming, we had tens of thousands of varieties of plants that were farmed and now we are down to only a handful of varieties per plant family. When you think of things in terms of eating having only a few varieties doesn't sound that bad, but when you consider the possible impact of a disaster on the existence of our species, the picture changes a little.

Relying on only a few varieties of plants is like putting all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak. Should we be taking that chance with something as important as our food supply? Biodiversity is important. And many heirloom varieties of plants are close to extinction. But if we plant them and incorporate them into our diet, we help ensure that they will be around for many years to come.

If you are interested in gardening with heirloom seeds, here are a few links where you can buy them.

Heirloom Seeds

Baker Creek Heirloom

You can find lots more by typing heirloom seeds into a google search. You can also get seeds by trading with someone who grows them. Mention your interest in heirlooms to other gardeners who may be able to help you. You can also buy heirloom veggies at some farmers markets and save those seeds.

WEDNESDAY: Leftover Magic

I'm a reformed food waster. I used to be really bad about throwing out food. We wasted at least as much as we ate. Terrible, I know. Things are different now, but its not always easy. We often live with (and maybe even gave birth to) people who don't like leftovers. This makes it difficult to save money and not be wasteful. Thus the need for leftover magic - transforming once served foods into something completely different.

My very favorite form of leftover magic is to create vegetable soup out of leftover veggies. Today I'll share our use for leftover broccoli. You will notice that broccoli cheese soup is on our menu very often. We're really blessed - our kids LOVE broccoli and so do we. Broccoli is served with dinner at least a few times per week and sometimes we don't finish up all that was prepared. A half cup of leftover cooked broccoli is really all it takes to make a nice broccoli cheese soup. Here's my recipe:

Heat about a tablespoon of oil (I use butter) in a sauce pan until it shimmers (for oil) or bubbles (for butter). Then sprinkle about 3 tablespoons of flour over the fat and stir to combine (if you've never made a white sauce before, this will look like a thick paste). Next, slowly add about 1-1.5 cups of milk, stirring to combine. Continue stirring over heat until this mixture thickens, adding more liquid if it gets too thick. Next, slowly add cheese, a little at a time, stirring each addition until completely melted before adding more. If you add more before the previous addition is incorporated, you might end up with stringy or clumpy cheese. Finally, once you have the cheese to your liking, add about 1/2 cup broccoli and stir. Once heated through, serve.

You can use just about any kind of cheese in this recipe. Because my littles really like American cheese, we often use it, but sometimes, we also use cheddar. This week, I'm going to try it with Havarti because we have some of it in the fridge that I need to use up before it goes bad :o)

You can also use less milk when making the "soup" and you get a nice cheese sauce to pour over leftover veggies to transform them somewhat :o)

Do you have a favorite Leftover Magic recipe? I'd love to know about it. You can post about it on your blog then link to it in the comments or if you don't have a blog, post your recipe in the comments. :o)

More Bloggy Organization :o)

My Mozilla Toolbar crashed two weeks ago and I lost all of my RSS feeds - . Slowly I'm finding things again. Since I'm working on organizing my blog, I thought I'd update my "favorites" on the blog, too. I'll try to remember to continue updating my favorites as I locate other lost blogs, that way, when (not if) my toolbar crashes again, I can still find my favorites. Check out some of my favorite places in the blog sphere in the list on the left.

:o)

TUESDAY: Homeschooling Link

We are big fans of Art in our home. We look at it, read about it and create a lot of it. Today's featured link (Masterpiece Art Instruction - Teach Art at Home) offers many curricula but what I love most about it is the newsletter. It contains a free project that so far (we've been subscribers for over a year) has always been wonderful, easy, creative and unique. I also love that her projects are art and not crafts. She offers directions for your child to follow, but your child still has lots of room for creativity. You can subscribe by clicking on the hyperlink above and visiting the site.

:o)