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! 

 

First Loaf

I made regular bread for the first time ever without the help of a bread machine. 

It was incredible fun! 

My family rose and a blessed me with their mouths full of soft, warm bread and homemade beef stew.

I used Bernard Clayton's "first loaf" recipe. 

 

Another Semester Begins

 

Another semester of graduate school is well underway. I'm working towards a masters in Classical Liberal Arts Education through Belmont Abbey. We've already read, discussed, and written on Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. This week and next we are reading Beothius' The Consolation of Philosophy. This has been the most beautiful, challenging, soul-edifying education. 

Another Homeschool Year Begins

 

We've started another homeschool year. 

Avril is in 11th grade. 

Adele is in 8th. 

The girls started online classes last week. They both take art with Delightful Art Co. and Literature with House of Humane Letters, and Avril takes Speech and Debate with Kepler/ Colorado Christian College. 

This week is what I'm calling the "Pre-Week." We've started reading some of the texts we will be reading together aloud everyday like the Bible (chronologically) and Land of Hope (for American History) and The Roar on the Other Side (for Poetry), and the girls are doing some of the their independent work.  

Adele is reading The Phantom Tollbooth. Avril's started Chemistry, etc.  

Next week, we'll begin the complete schedule. We'll start reading everything we plan to read together every morning (including Shakespeare/ Plutarch), and the girls will start all their independent work like math, etc. 

It's been lovely having the freedom to ease into the school year adding a little more each week until we adjust to the full schedule. 

 

Greece Cont.

Next day, we got up early for breakfast and to meet our boat for a cruise of the Aegean. 

Our tour included the islands of Agristi, Metope, and Agina. We explored, shopped, and swam on the beach at Agristi and Agina. We didn't actually dock at Metope. We just anchored near it, jumped overboard, and swam in the deep water. Amazing! 

Cruising and swimming in the Aegean was a dream come true after reading the epics. 

Pistachio gelato

 That evening, we strolled through Monastraki on the way to dinner, where we discovered an old book and print shop. It was a dream of dreams to find and bring home a print of Parnassus. Climbing Parnassus is a symbol for getting a Classical Christian education, so Parnassus is an important symbol for me personally. 

After looking for a long time, I asked the man in charge of the shop if he had any prints of Parnassus. He made it his mission and after digging in the corners of his very cluttered, very dusty, very, very interesting shop, he brought out several prints. The one I liked best also happened to be the most affordable. So my dream of dreams came true, and I brought home my very own print of Parnassus from Athens! 

We had an authentic Greek dinner at the most wonderful restaurant- Mamma Callas. If I close my eyes, I can still feel, taste, hear, and smell this wonderful place and the meal from start to finish. Again, we could sit for hours and enjoy the music and the drinks and the food and one another. (We would go again two more times on other nights of our trip.) This place may live on in my memory as the best dining experience I've ever had. 

Homeschool Planning is Difficult and Time-Consuming But Invaluable

Arcus and I are spending a lot of time together in my homeschool classroom where his cage is, because I'm at the table, surrounded by books, working on a detailed plan for our next year of homeschooling. 

It's a lot of work to make my own plan! 

This will be our second year homeschooling without CC, but this is the first year I am making my plans with little to no reference to my old CC guides. 

I know many homeschool moms have been making their own plans from the beginning of their homeschool journey, so the work involved is no surprise to them. 

But for more than a decade, we got our homeschool plans from CC, and we were very happy do whatever we needed to do to follow their plans (as far as was humanly possible) to be a part of our beloved CC community.  

That worked for us and blessed us for many years, in fact. 

But even as a diligent CC parent and Challenge director, and I was very diligent, I often felt off balance and back on my heels, because I was always discovering what someone else had planned for me and my children.

As often as I read my guides and as carefully as I ever studied them, I was simply in the position of accommodating myself always to someone else's purpose and vision for every single assignment all year long. 

This was, in fact, exhausting and often exasperating. 

Now, even though it is difficult to make my own plans at the start, there are already some true advantages occurring to me as I work it all out for myself. 

First of all, I am moving forward into this homeschool year knowing exactly what I am doing and why and how.

I know the plan "like the back of my hand," down to the details and purpose of each assignment, and I am entering this year with a peace and a confidence that I didn't experience when I was getting my plans, as good as they were, premade.

Second, I would still consider our homeschool plans very challenging, even rigorous, but the amount of work will never venture into the impossible or the absurd.   

As a business, CC probably has no incentive to cut anything from their curriculum that may add to the value and appeal to their product, and they want to provide more than enough work for anyone/everyone in their programs, so one solution to the constant dilemma of too much work for many CC families was/is to "scale" or "taylor" and simply do less than what is assigned in the guides week to week. 

Now I can simply scale as I plan! 

My plans for this coming year are challenging. We'll have to be as disciplined and diligent as ever, and we will still need to stretch to accomplish it all. But my plans are much more humane to begin with, so we won't be demoralized by the amount of work, and we'll likely have the satisfaction of finishing our school work every week. 

The final and major positive to making my own plan is that we will finally be doing a lot of work together. 

When we were in CC and I was directing a Challenge level and the girls were in their age-assigned Challenge levels, we'd all be working in the same room, but we were each doing very separate work. 

I became more and more conscious of this fact and less and less comfortable with the reality of what CC was doing to our lives and even our homeschool. 

Much of the time, my daughters, who are best friends, were too busy doing their separate Challenge work to engage with each other over the ideas they were encountering during the school days for long. 

In fact, much of the time, I was too busy working for CC as a director or an SR to engage in my own homeschool for long before I had to get back to my CC work.  

So this year, we will read Scripture and Shakespeare together, study poetry together, and read American History together. 

The girls are in different levels of math and Latin, of course, so they will still have some independent work to do. 

But whatever we can do together, we will. 

I am certainly living with the consequences the choice to leave CC. 

Now I am forced into making plans to accommodate my own vision for our homeschool. 

So it is taking hours and hours of planning up front. 

But for once, I am actually giving myself entirely to the work of making a plan, and I will continue to be free to give myself entirely to our homeschool this year.      

In many ways, all this planning is proving an invaluable blessing. 

I have taken ownership of my homeschool, and I earnestly believe I will be leading my precious daughters in learning together better than ever before. 

Greece Cont.

 

We took a day trip from Athens to Delphi. Here is a picture of Mount Parnassus.  

We toured the museum briefly. I saw this statue of Socrates. 

We had a delicious, authentic lunch in the mountain village of Arachova where they served us labneh (beet and yogurt dip) with fresh bread. We also had greek salad, fried zucchini balls, roasted chicken, roasted pork, roasted vegetables... The houses in Arachova were perched on the sides of the cliffs. 

This is picture of the medieval clock tower on a cliff in Arachova. We did some shopping there. I purchased some olive oil lotion and a Turkish coffee pot. We found some homemade chewy candy (similar to loukomi/ Turkish delight) made with walnuts and covered in sesame seeds that we sampled, liked, and purchased to bring home to the girls. 

When we returned to Athens, we rested before heading out for dinner. We continued to explore the shops, hunting for one-of-a-kind earrings for each of our daughters. Dwayne found a pipe made of olive wood that he was able to enjoy on the deck of our apartment once he also found a tobacco store. We took the shop owner's recommendation for dinner, and enjoyed a late meal on a rooftop with a view of the Acropolis. One of the remarkable things about Greece is that they allow you to sit for hours at dinner and never rush you. Once you have your food, they won't even come to the table unless you wave your arm to let them know you need something. At first, the pace was too slow for us/ we were used to the pace of New England where even a leisurely dinner takes no more than one hour, but as the days went on, we started to relax and enjoy this slower pace a lot. 

We walked around after dinner and happened upon a gelato place. Wow! I feel as if I have never tasted ice cream until I tasted the gelato in Greece. This is cherry gelato. It was unbelievable. 

 

Greek Food

Since coming home from Greece, I've been making several of the dishes we ate there. 

Greece had delicious breads, so I have been making fresh bread every few days to serve warm with dinner or have delicious toast at breakfast. We haven't had to buy store bought bread, and we don't miss it. Fresh bread is delicious! 

On Sundays, I've been roasting a whole chicken and lemon potatoes and serving these with a fresh Greek salad made with Corinthian olive oil we brought home. Delicious! (And of course, I save the chicken bones and scraps to make broth.)

We picked up fresh eggplant, squash, and tomatoes from the farmer's market, so I made briam (roasted vegetables) to go with grilled Greek chicken tenderloins. 

I used leftover briam for breakfast, eating a fried egg with a soft yolk on top of the saucy vegetables with toast (from my homemade bread toasted to sop up all the yummy briam sauce and egg yolk.) Delicious! 

Today, I made a lemon chicken and potato soup using leftover broth saved from the lemon potatoes mentioned above.  I served it with warm, fresh bread. Delicious! 

All in all, the visit to Greece and eating meal after meal of delicious, wholesome, homemade foods inspired me to spend more time making better meals now that I'm home.  

Greece 2025

We rented a penthouse with an amazing view of the acropolis from the front and an amazing view of the Temple of Hephaestus from the back deck. We unpacked, enjoyed showers, chilled wine on the deck, and a nap before going out to explore. 

One of my favorite parts about Athens is the constant, warm breeze and dry air. I was able to shower, put on a robe, and go out on the private back deck and dry off in a few minutes while I sat and enjoyed the view. It was lovely. It was also incredibly easy to hang up towels and laundry to dry in just a few hours. 

On our first evening, we shopped as we walked through the city then walked around the Acropolis. Near the top, we saw the prison of Socrates. 

This is a view from the Areopagus Hill over Athens. 

Next morning/ first morning, we stopped at a place near our rental for Turkish/ Greek coffee, koulari, and spanakopita for breakfast. 

We also stopped for yogurt covered in honey and nuts. 

We visited the National Archeological Museum where I saw the death mask of Agamemnon and other artifacts from the Mycenaeans. What an amazing experience connecting real artifacts with my favorite myths and epics. 

Statue of Athena

We stopped for traditional Greek doughnuts at Kinos. 

We walked around the open markets and shopped for olives and halvah.

Later, we visited the Roman forum. There were stray cats all over. I picked some wild lavender near the Tower of the Winds and pressed it in my travel guide. That sprig of lavender scented my bag for days; It was so fragrant! After that, I picked wildflowers from all over Athens and different places in Greece to make a pressed flower art when I got home. 

The view from our apartment at night

 

Kids Camp 2025

Avril was a class helper for the 5th and 6th grade. 

Adele was on the song/ dance team. 

I was the snack lady for the third year in a row. 

My bffs Kari and Rachel also volunteered. 

Kari was in charge of crafts. She's also been doing this for years and years. 

Rachel helped me with snacks. 

It was an exhausting week. 

On top of working hard every morning, we had plans every day with friends in the afternoons. 

So it was a great time! 

But I'm always glad it's only once a year! 

Norah Heads Back to College

Norah left for college this morning. She took a year off to heal from Lyme and her other active co-infections, work, and save money. At first, it was heartbreaking that she was not healthy enough to stay in school. But early on, when I was in crisis over her health, I felt the Lord say, "This time is a gift." And that is exactly what it has been. Her sisters have enjoyed having her around, talking late into the night many times. I'm glad they will have more memories together. Obviously, the main thing was that Norah had time to heal, but the time together truly was an unexpected gift. 

Homeschool Update- Learning Continues Without CC and Through Summer

We are still doing some homeschool work through the early summer. 

In the photo above, both girls are doing their Latin. Adele is following my old Challenge A guide from Classical Conversations, but she's going much slower through all the same content. Avril is following my old Challenge 2 schedule, but we are also tailoring the work so that she does less Latin everyday. 

The girls are not in the same Henle book, but they enjoy working together, fellowshiping or commiserating as they work. Their attitude towards Latin depends on their mood and/or how hard the new material is at any given moment. I come in and help as needed, but Avril is often Adele's go-to helper. They work fairly independently, but I check their work at least a few times a week to make sure it's progressing and correct. 

This was the first year in twelve that we did not join a Classical Conversations group for support, so we did not have to follow their timing. For this year, we followed my old CC guides, but we made changes as often as we wanted to, and we usually took longer to finish everything. 

Sometimes, I feared we were not making good time, but as the year went on, I realized that those CC schedules for the schoolwork are, in fact, arbitrary, imposed on members because of the need to help community function. 

One of the real positives of homeschooling without Classical Conversations has been that we have the freedom to finally do what is absolutely best for us as far as timing goes. Who says you have to be done with your science fair project in one-two months? One real benefit of taking months to complete the project is that the science research, experiments, and conversations have gone on and on, and they became a more natural part of our everyday lives. How is that a negative? 

So taking it all slower was decidedly positive for everyone even though, yes, we are still working into June. But no one cried this year (including me) because they had too much CC stuff to do in one week along with all the other things our family was trying to do. 

Now, as we finish with math books, geography plans, or biology texts, the girls just stop that subject altogether until fall, so their school days get lighter and lighter as we go further into summer. By July, the girls should be done with everything, and we should enjoy a nice break through a few weeks of July and early August until we start again with next year's work. 

Next year will look very different. I don't plan to use my old Challenge guides as a base like I did this year. I'll be venturing into making my own plans, combining my favorite CC resources with many other excellent resources to make my own plan.  

Land of Hope

Listening on and off for several weeks while I was getting ready in the morning or cleaning house or cooking, I just finished the audio book of Land of Hope. 

This was recommended reading for my graduate class on Democracy in America at Belmont Abbey, but I was too busy reading and rereading the required primary sources like De Tocqueville and The Federalist Papers to read/listen to this during the term. 

However, with summer comes leisure time to luxuriate in reading all the books I don't have time for in the school year. 

Part way through this narrative, it occurred to me that I was really, really enjoying it. 

I also really, really enjoyed A Patriot's History of the United States, listening to that three times at least.  

I believe I like history as a narrative. It's as interesting as any novel, and why shouldn't it be? All the same interesting things happen, but in history, they have really happened. 

Now that I am done, I find I may like this narrative even more than A Patriot's History. 

This text seemed to be more critical of America's bad decisions, but nevertheless, respectful of America and how complicated the issues were. Therefore, it seems more balanced and honest, and I really appreciated that. 

We've used A Patriot's History in our homeschool as the text for America History, but I may use this in the future.  

I have a host of books on my to-be-read list, so I don't think I'll restart this book again right away, but I definitely want to listen again. 

I cherish the accumulated knowledge of the flow of America history from one age to another, one President to another, and throughout the major events in the timeline until today. 

A better knowledge of this country's history makes our present, problems included, so much more comprehensible and the future much less fearful. 

Father's Day 2025

Father's Day 2025 Itinerary

We attended church. 

We lunched on leftovers, napped, read quietly, etc. 

We went to Wayback Burgers for dinner. 

We saw the live-action remake of one of our top five favorite family films, one we can all quote.

(It was awesome, so moving at times, it was like seeing it for the first time.)

We overheard the girls discussing the film, enthusiastically comparing and contrasting, for hours. 

Great Pond

We met up with a few of our precious homeschool friends at a local pond for a swim date. Moms visited in a bunch. Kids visited in one big bunch or many smaller bunches. My heart is full, because of the people who God has given us to walk with through this season of life.