Turkey and Noodle Soup (With Thanksgiving Leftovers)

I used our Thanksgiving turkey bones to make stock. 

Then I used that homemade stock and our leftover turkey slices in this recipe. 

Ingredients:

Olive oil 

4 cups of turkey stock

2-3 cups of leftover turkey pieces, sliced

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

2-3 stalks of celery, chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1/2 bag of large egg noodles

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Heat your pot on medium heat. 

Pour in olive oil and onions and celery. Cook until veggies are softened. 

Add turkey stock, salt, pepper, and fresh, chopped parsley. (You could also add the salt, pepper, and parsley at the end.) 

Add carrots and cooked turkey chunks and let the soup simmer for about ten to fifteen minutes. 

Then add egg noodles and let them cook another six to eight minutes. 

Turn off the heat and the soup sit for about five minutes to cool a little before serving. 

Enjoy! 

Sourdough Continued

 

I've made two loaves of sourdough this week, and I'm planning to make another this weekend.

I've started scouring my dough with a design. 

I do not like my current bread lame with a long handle, so much so, that I prefer to take the razor off it and hold the razor between my fingers to scour. 

So I've ordered a small lame with a retractable razor to use for scoring instead. I look forward to using that once it comes in the mail. 

The Perfect Boulden Beef Stew

I've been trying different beef stew recipes for decades. I finally created one that is perfect for my family's tastes. 

Beef Stew

Ingredients:

Olive oil

Approx. 1/8- 1/4 cup dry red wine

1/8-1/4 cup Arrowroot powder

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

Two large carrots, peeled and chopped

1-2 pounds beef stew meat, cut into smaller pieces and sprinkled with salt and pepper before cooking

Four medium Russet potatoes or two large, cleaned, partially peeled, and chopped

Approx. 4 cups beef broth

Kosher salt and fresh cracker pepper to taste

Two tablespoons dried thyme

1/4 cup frozen peas

Directions:

Heat a pot on medium heat and add a generous amount of olive oil to the bottom. 

I like to use an enameled pot, so I can see the star develop on the bottom of the pot as the beef sears. 

Sear the beef pieces. Let them cook as long as necessary to get rid of all water. Turn them as often as necessary. Allow them to get a bit charred, and the oil and beef bits on the bottom of the pan to char, but not burn. 

Pour 1/8-1/4 cup of wine in. let it sizzle and stir the beef around to releasing the char from the bottom of the pan. This will flavor your stock. 

Add your chopped onions and allow them to cook for a few minutes, stirring as necessary.

Sprinkle in the 1/8-1/4 cup of arrowroot powder and stir everything together. 

Now add your broth, carrots, potatoes, salt, pepper, and dried thyme. 

Cover and simmer on low until the carrots are soft when poked with a fork. 

Turn off the heat and add the frozen peas and stir. 

Allow the soup to sit for several minutes uncovered before serving, so the peas thaw and the soup isn't too hot. 

Enjoy! 

 

Leisure Time Not Screen Time

When we take time off school during the holiday, we do not allow the girls to fill that leisure time with screens. 

No games. No movies, etc. 

This has been the case all along. 

And since what we say goes, the girls don't fuss. 

But with all the leisure time, the girls are often bored enough to be interested in doing real things. 

Case in point: Over the holiday break, Adele finished a miniature garden house. 

This sits between the books on her bookshelf. 

It's magical! 

Preparing for Christmas 2025

We always decorate for Christmas on the days following Thanksgiving. 

We have Advent traditions that begin on December 1, so we like to have the house ready when those begin. 

There are many decorations that the kids look forward to seeing again. 

But decorating in and of itself has become a tradition, too. 

This is so much so that the girls were eager to help without even being asked this year. 

Sometime after breakfast the day after Thanksgiving, we all get dressed with shoes on. 

Dwayne goes up to the attic and with help from our girls, now that they are big enough to catch and carry boxes coming from the attic, he brings down the tree and the several boxes and Tupperwares filled with Christmas items. 

We turn on Christmas music. 

In years past, we would play our Christmas CDs starting with Jars of Clay's "Little Drummer Boy." 

But this year, we actually switched things up and played our Christmas records. 

With the music on, we all get to work. 

We always have to rearrange furniture in order to fit the tree in the living room. 

This year, you can see in the pictures, we put the tree in front of the bookshelves where my computer desk usually sits. 

Note: We haven't put the angel on the tree yet. We've decided to wait and put her up on the first night of Advent. 

As we rearrange furniture and set up the tree, we also take the opportunity to sweep, mop, dust and reorganize thoroughly. 

I take the opportunity to purge, throwing away old magazines and papers and donating books we don't want anymore, etc.  

I reorganize closets and drawers as we take items to them. 

We have so much decor, that we have to get rid of our regular, everyday knick-knacks to make room for all the Christmas items.  

So, as we unpack Christmas decor from tissue paper, we take down our knick- knacks and wrap those in the same tissue paper and pack them carefully away in the Christmas boxes to go back to the attic until we take all the Christmas decor back down sometime January, maybe. 

Last year, we added a smaller tree with colorful lights in the homeschool classroom.  

It's a lot of work to decorate for Christmas, but the house ends up totally reset and refreshed.  

All our feet end up aching, but when we finally sit down, the house ends up clean and reorganized and beautiful. 

 

Poetry for Neanderthals

New game this day. 

Big hit with fam. 

Man and I, one team. 

Girls, one team. 

Neck and neck whole time. 

Man says, "North and East. Part of here. Soup." 

"Clam Chowder!" I yell. 

For the win. 

High five. 

Girls in awe. 

Much years one flesh. 

Now one mind.

Thanksgiving 2025

 Happy Thanksgiving!

Mid-day

Productivity is messy. We grab gym shorts from the dryer before running out of the house for weight lifting. I prep dinner but have to take a phone call before I can clean up. I am reading Plato and posting assignments online. The girls are doing Latin, and Math, poetry... and the books and notebooks pile up by the end of the day. I'm thankful for the beautiful things we get to do here every day, but sometimes, mid-day is not so beautiful unless one has eyes to see. 

Sourdough

I made sourdough again. 

This time the loaf was huge! 

The recipe I use is from "Sourdough for Lazy People" on You Tube. 

It says to let the dough rise overnight, briefly shape the loaf on a floured surface, put it in the pan, then let it rise for 90 minutes before baking, etc. 

But this time, when I checked it after 90 minutes, the shaped loaf hadn't risen that much. 

So I let it rise longer before baking, for 2-3 hours actually. 

The loaf had filled up the bottom of its pan when I put it in the oven, and of course, it ended up rising even more while baking. 

So the loaf came out larger than ever. 

So from now on, after shaping my loaf, I may adjust my rise time from 90 minutes to anywhere from 2-3 hours before baking. 

Sourdough loaves cost around $8, so this is a wonderful thing to be able to make for myself with just a few cups of flour, some salt, and water.

Amazing! 

Frisian Sugar Loaf

I am working my way through Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads.

So I made the Frisian Sugar Loaf. 

This bread is pretty special. 

You take a cup of sugar cubes, cover them in cinnamon, and knead them into the bread dough. 

You can still see the sugar cubes in the photo above, popping out of the top of the hot bread. 

A day later, those sugar cubes "melted" and became sticky, sugary spots of deliciousness throughout the bread that taste exactly like the inside of a cinnamon roll. 

We ate one loaf in one day, so we gave the second loaf to friends.

Baking bread is amazing, but sharing bread is the only way to make sure we don't overdo it.   

Annie The Musical at Walnut Hill

Our church is putting on Annie The Musical. Our youngest daughter, Adele, is one of the orphans in the cast. You can see her in the picture above in the blue dress and orange coat.

Here she's dancing with other orphans. She's wearing the blue dress with a pink apron.

Our middle daughter, Avril, is in the stage crew. Here, you can see her on the right behind Annie when she and the other crew members came out to take a bow.

The Show Must Go On!

The zipper on Adele's Annie costume broke.  Tonight's dress rehearsal! 

So I gave myself a pep-talk, ripped out the old zipper, and put in a new one. 

It's not perfect, but the show must go on! 

Sewing achievement unlocked! 

 

Fundraising

This year I'm on the fundraising team for the youth at my church. We're raising money for the missions trips this coming summer, trips my teens will likely be involved in. 

Every year, the fundraising team asks for donations from businesses, artists, and people in our church to host a raffle of themed prize baskets and a silent auction that take place during the church play. 

In the photo above, you can see one of the "baskets" we will be raffling off. It's actually a handmade bag my friend donated. Another friend of mine made the handmade print inside. We added inspirational journals and pens that were also donated to the bag to make it complete. This is one of eighty "baskets" that will be raffled off throughout the weekend of the play.  

Yesterday, the team worked for several hours wrapping up these sorts of prize basket bundles and getting them ready for the raffle. 

It took hours, and I do not exaggerate when I say we could hardly walk out of church; We were so exhausted! 

The basket raffle and silent auction always add a lot of fun to the church play. It's always fun to win a prize at the end of the show. 

In fact, Dwayne has brought home a few, special Ergo Chef knives from this auction over the years. 

Last year, our daughter won the voice lesson with Justin Stoney, which was an awesome experience for her. 

I'm thankful to be a part of the team this year.

Hopefully, the raffle and auction raise a lot of money for the youth group as it has in years past. 

That will make it possible for more kids to be involved in the missions trips, and that's what it's all about- more kids growing in their faith and more people hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Sourdough Success

My sourdough adventures continue. 

My loaves have been delicious, but they have not been rising well, so something had to be done. 

I troubleshooted with the help of a friend. We guessed that my starter was too wet making my dough too sticky and my loaf incapable of rising well. 

So I had to rehab my starter to adjust its hydration and get it to 100%. (That's a sentence I never thought I'd say.)

I saved 2 ounces of my too-wet starter, discarded the rest, added 4 ounces or flour and 4 ounces of water, let it sit on the counter for one hour, then refrigerated it. 

Then I repeated these same steps again the next day. Discarding the extra starter and adding new flour and water, etc. 

This "reset" my starter and got it back to the right hydration for the recipe and method I'm using. I follow "Sour Dough for Lazy People" on You Tube (if you want more details than I provide here.)

I finally tried out my rehabilitated starter and the results are in. 

The loaf was amazing! It rose beautifully and tasted delicious! 

 

Noah at Sight and Sound

We took a quick trip to New Jersey to see Dwayne's mom, sister, and brother in law. We had dinner with them and visited until late and spent the night. The next morning, we took Mom to Sight and Sound in Pennsylvania to see Noah, and then we all enjoyed Shadymaple's Smorgasbord and massive gift store before driving Mom home to New Jersey then driving directly home to Connecticut before bed.  It was a great time and an awesome show! 

 

Annie The Musical

Our church is putting on Annie The Musical, one of my favorite musicals since childhood. It’s a busy season with Adele in the orphan ensemble and Avril in the stage crew. The girls keep a volunteer notebook that accounts for all the hours they put into service and arts projects like this. They use the book to answer questions about volunteer work when it comes time to apply to colleges and scholarships. Adele has already been at the church over three days when you add up the hours she's been at rehearsals so far! I’m thankful for a church that nurtures the arts. 

 

Sharing the Salt

I recently attended a conference at Belmont Abbey for students of Classical Liberal Arts Education was that was entitled “Sharing Salt." 

It's based on a quote from Book 8 of Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," his chapter on friendship. The quote says, “It is not possible for people to know each other until they have eaten together the proverbial salt.” So for a few days, those at the conference got to "share salt" by reading and discussing that portion of Aristotle’s Ethics, a portion of The Gospel of John, Willa Cather’s short story “Two Friends,” and John Henry Newman’s sermon on “Love of Relations and Friends." 

I’m grateful for my friends- those at home, and these friends at school, too. The best sort of friends need to be what Aristotle calls “alike in virtue" in the sense that they seek truth together and want to embody truth in virtue, the greatest of which is love of Jesus Christ. 

At the conference, we shared a supra dinner, an amazing experience that lasted for hours and was a true foretaste or the fellowship and overflowing thankfulness and joy believers will share in Heaven. 

We also got to hear from several leaders in Classical Christian Education at the conference, who spoke to us on "salty" topics like "Whether or not Classical Education can be taught in a secular setting" with both sides powerfully represented and "What are the heresies present in current Classical Christian education?"  

I have come home fascinated, and therefore, refreshed and inspired to get back to work in my home and homeschool. 

I'm also dreaming and preparing for work outside my homeschool someday, but... not yet. After all, John Henry Newman says, “The best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely, is to cultivate an intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately about us.”

Orlando

Dwayne had to go to Orlando for a week for a conference, so we tagged along and made a mini- vacation out of the week.

The hotel where we stayed and where the conference was held, the Signia by Hilton, had an epic lazy river connected to its pools.  It took a full 15 minutes to float around the entire lazy river. We enjoyed the pool, lazy river, and hot tubs a few times throughout the week. We enjoyed the Starbucks at the hotel lobby everyday, managing to get addicted to cappuccino. A cappuccino maker is going on my Christmas list. 

On the nights when Dwayne was free for dinner, we went to special places like The Rainforest Cafe and Kura Revolving Sushi Bar. The sushi bar was probably our favorite experience of the entire week.  

When Dwayne was working for dinner, we went to special places, too, only without him. Lol! The girls and I went to Melting Pot. A fondu pot or two is also our Christmas lists now! 

We were able to use the Waldorf Astoria's pool, so we went over there for a few hours one lovely Florida afternoon.

When the conference was over, we took a few days to go to some parks. The girls had never been to SeaWorld; They didn't even know what it was. So we took them there. 

We love waterparks, so we enjoyed another day at Volcano Bay just playing together as a family. 

The girls had lots of new experiences and we're thankful for the memories made together. 

The Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy

I've got one more class before I earn my masters in Classical Liberal Arts Education from Belmont Abbey. 

And I'm devastated. 

I want to continue going to graduate school, because there are a few more graduate-level classes that I have heard about from my classmates that I don't want to miss- one on the quadrivium that includes Euclid, another on rhetoric that includes speeches from Cicero through Lincoln, and one on faith and reason that includes Aquinas.

So obviously, I want to take them all. 

Alas. 

Technically, I have only one more class before I am done. 

But, thankfully, this class includes Plato's Republic. 

I did not want to finish graduate school without reading that book. 

This class also includes Aristotle's Poetics for which I am thankful. 

I love all things Aristotle. 

My graduate studies started with his Categories; It will end with his Poetics, and that seems just as it ought to be in liberal arts education. 

This class also includes The Oedipus Cycle. 

I have only read Oedipus Rex, so I am curious about the other two. Of course, I have heard of Antigone, but I have not read it yet. 

I can't say enough about the effect this course of study has had on my soul and my intellect and my understanding of education. 

So as I begin what may be my last class, my heart is full of gratitude that the Lord's will for my life included this beautiful journey through the Classics. 

Sourdough- Take Two!

I made a second loaf of sour dough, this time in an oblong pan. 

I'm a novice to all the sourdough methods, but as far as I understand the madness I'm using a recipe for a cold, unfed starter straight from the fridge with 100% hydration with an overnight rise with zero stretch and folds. 

I got this recipe from "Sour Dough for Lazy People," because it was recommended to me by a friend who uses it, and I love her bread, and I have no interest in the other seemingly absurd methods that require a full-day process- at least not yet. 

My dough was so wet and sticky as it poured from the bowl, it was nearly impossible to work with. I added enough flour to it to shape it into a loaf and salvage it. 

This is the second loaf that came out of the bowl too sticky to work with. 

So now, I know that I definitely need to adjust the hydration of my starter, something I suspected after my first loaf, but wanted to confirm with another test. 

There's a method to adjusting the hydration of your starter that I won't explain here, but I am hopeful after that process is complete, my loaves will begin coming out of the bowl better formed, easier to shape, and hopefully, then, I'll also get a better rise. 

So this second loaf isn't the prettiest. 

Neither was the first loaf. 

But I bet it's going to be delicious nevertheless, because the first loaf was. 

I'm making homemade beef stew tonight. 

We'll have it with some freshly baked sour dough! 

Scottish Buttermilk Bread

I made Scottish Buttermilk Bread from Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads. It was similar to Irish Soda Bread; It was also similar to homemade buttermilk biscuits, so we ate it like biscuits with eggs or butter and jam, etc.  This was my least favorite bread so far, honestly. 

Egg Harbor Bread

 

I made the Egg Harbor bread from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Bread. 

This particular bread has five rises, so it was the most complicated bread I've made so far, and it took the longest by far. 

I am working my way bread by bread through Clayton's book in the order that the recipes come, and I'm growing in competence and confidence. 

One important thing I have learned from my mistakes: Check the temperature of your water before adding yeast to it. This way, you don't end up killing the yeast and preventing your dough from rising. 

Cuban Bread

I made Cuban Bread, the third recipe in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. 

I pulled a chunk off while it was still warm, buttered it, and...  delicious! 

I also bought the entire box of active dry yeast at the grocery store, because I grew tired of running out- so I have 36 (minus the two I used today) packages total. 

So count on more breads to come!

 

My First Sourdough

I made my first loaf of sourdough with starter given me by my friend Rachel. There's room for improvement as far as rise, crumb, and crust goes, but the flavor was unparalleled; My whole family agreed. I'm using the You Tube Channel: Sourdough for Lazy People for my recipe, recommended by my friend Rachel also. 

Thirty-Minute White Bread

I made the next recipe in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, the "Thirty-Minute White Bread." 

I think I've officially entered my bread-making era. 

I find bread-making delightful and satisfying. 

And, though it took me longer than thirty minutes to make this recipe... I'm just saying... it was still quite easy, and the time and effort is totally worth it. 

Deliciousness for days! 

Great Wolf Getaway

We took a quick trip to Great Wolf Lodge in Massachusetts. Our friends, the Catalanos, met up with us there. 

We left right after church Sunday, stopping at Nardelli's in Waterbury for lunch, a favorite back when we lived there. 

We arrived at Great Wolf in time to check in, get in our room, and meet up with the Catalanos to ride waterslides for an hour and a half before having joint dinner then going together to the ropes course, arcade, etc. 

I love the ropes course at the Fitzburg, Mass. location. I remembered it from years ago when we went. And this time, it was even better since they added a zip line that takes you back to the start of the course, so you can begin again from the start. 

We met up at the waterpark this morning, and we all played/ visited until early afternoon when our family left to head home. I wanted to get home for my graduate school class online. Dwayne needed to get back to work Tuesday, etc. The Catalanos stayed on for another night/ day. 

But before we left Great Wolf, we spent the rest of our credits in the arcade, quickly accumulating enough tickets to get to the girls some stuffed animals. Dwayne and I agreed we'd like a ski ball machine in the basement. I could play ski ball for hours.

We enjoyed Chickfila on the way home, indulging in limited-time pretzel breaded sandwiches and milk shakes or frosted coffees. Then we stopped again at Chesire Coffee and indulged again. The girls had delicious boba teas. Dwayne had a perfect capacchino. I had a maple salted latte with oat milk, which was divine, but it may also be why I am still wide awake this late... 

So it was the quickest of getaways- just enough time to make some great memories with friends!