Potato Rolls and Hopps Starter

Amazing things are happening in my kitchen today. 

Adele and I both had plans that required baked mashed potatoes. 

So we started our day baking potatoes. 

Then, Adele used the potatoes to make homemade potato rolls... 

to go with the meatloaf and carrots she is making (under benevolent supervision) for dinner tonight. 

Wow! 

(Adele is often so busy in our kitchen now that I am somewhat relegated to sous chef/ dihswasher, but I can't say I mind.)

It's a joy to watch her and advise her when needed. 

And I get to eat what she makes. 

Today, I also made hopps starter with my portion of the morning's baked potatoes. 

This is a mixture of a "hopps tea" made from dry hopps flowers steeped like tea, then strained, then some of the "tea" is boiled with cornmeal, then all of everything is mixed in a big bowl with mashed potatoes, sugar and salt... 

this ferments on my counter in a warm spot for at least twenty four hours...

before mellowing in the fridge for a few days... 

before I stir it and use it to make the next bread in Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Bread. 

Like I said, amazing things are happening here! 

Art and Design

Avril's taking Around the World Through Art and Design with Delightful Art Co. this year. 

This is a recent project done in the style of Australian dot art. 

The girls have taken Delight Art Co. classes for years. 

And their skills have grown year by year. 

These art classes been a great way to infuse our Classical homeschool curriculum with beauty and vitality. 

Your Best Friend's Recipes

I was at my BFF's house while she was making dinner, so her recipe box was out and open and I had occasion to flip trough it. 

I took pics of some recipes that sounded good to me. 

Flipping through a best friend's recipe box is great idea that I can't believe I hadn't thought to do before then. 

What a great way to get some new ideas! 

Cooking and Baking in Our Homeschool

Adele has discovered cookbooks. 

And it's wonderful! 

She and I both enjoy reading them, and sometimes we actually read them together while sitting on the couch or table. 

Last week, she made the most delicious scones any of us had ever tasted. 

She also made sugar cookies (not shown here, but I can still remember the taste of them if I close my eyes.) 

She also made lemon eclairs- Twice!

Eclairs! 

What I love about Adele is that she's only thirteen, so in her mind, anything is possible as she reads these cookbooks. 

She doesn't have to work through failures/ baggage I've have to work through to try more difficult recipes. 

She just goes for it, and it usually ends up alright.  

So her attitude is very inspiring to an old cook like me. 

We're not eating everything she makes ourselves. 

We have had several occasions to share her baked goods with friends at church or dinners or parties.  

Now she wants to make meatloaf. This is thanks to Ree Drummond's cookbook with the most enticing, mouth-watering photographs. 

So I plan to let her help me make dinner one night this coming week. 

Her sister, Avril, can cook, too, of course. 

In fact, Avril's cooking the bacon in the oven for tonight's "breakfast for dinner."

But, Adele is the one really passionate about baking and cooking right now, and she's cranking out the goodies daily. 

And we all really appreciate this. 

I started making the girls bake/ cook several months back. 

I'd literally assign them a recipe as part of their homeschool day. 

And obviously, I'd give them the time to do it. 

I'd start with simpler things like a box brownie or muffin mix or a simple from scratch recipe like no-bake, nut-butter energy  balls. 

With repetition of those simpler recipes, they both gained confidence and competence and they can do harder things now. 

Like eclairs! 

And now that Adele has some skill and she has discovered the potential inside the pages of my cookbooks... 

Magical things are happening here! 

Buttermilk Bread

       I made bread #8 from Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads- Buttermilk Bread. 

This was a second try, and this batch of bread came out beautiful.  

The first time I made this bread, I was working after dinner, the dough wasn't rising quickly, and I did not have time to let the loaves rise all the way up out of the pans before I put them in the oven. So I cut the second rise short in order to have time to bake the loaves before bed. And so those first loaves came out of the oven the way they went into the oven- flat.

But they were delicious, so I was motivated to give it a second try and see what I could improve. 

This time, I was up before dawn, so I got started early. Taking notes from the previous loaves, I found some ways to improve rise time in my winter kitchen. I used a dough warmer for the first rise. Then I put the loaves in their pans on the top of the toaster oven set on low for the second rise. With the help of the added warmth from these kitchen devices, the risings went quicker. And I had time to wait for these leaves to rise well over the tops of their pans before baking... 

Beautiful! 

 

Greek Koulari

Almost every day we were in Greece, I had a koulari, a sesame bread round. I ate it for breakfast or for a snack, always with a cup of strong coffee. 

I so enjoyed koulari, in fact, I was sad to come home, because I may never have it again. But then I wondered if I could learn to make these for myself someday. 

I have been doing a lot of bread-making as I bake my way through Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads. So I have gained knowledge and skills (and weight) that I didn't have a few months ago when I first dreamed of making koulari for myself. 

I found a recipe online yesterday, and it was actually easy to follow, and I had all the ingredients and equipment, because of all I had learned through bread making. 

And it was fun! 

The girls pitched in, especially Adele, who loves to cook and bake. 

We made traditional koulari with sesame seeds, but then we ran out of sesame seeds, so we also made a few rounds with Everything Seasoning. 

Everything Seasoning has white and black sesame seeds, along with other delicious salts and spices. Avril and Adele actually ended up preferring the koulari bread with Everything Seasoning. 

This homemade koulari is delicious! Especially since it came to me fresh and from my own oven! 

I'm so grateful to be able to enjoy koulari at home in Connecticut of the USA.

Even though it's the middle of winter here, I can close my eyes, bite into this bread, and it takes me right back to Greece and its constant warm breezes. 

 

Creamy Eggs

Adele and I made creamy eggs for breakfast today. 

We adapted a recipe from Jessica Fisher's Good Cheap Eats: Dinner in 30 Minutes or Less!

We greased our ramekins, added a tablespoon of heavy cream to the bottom of each, then cracked two whole eggs into the bottom of each. Then we added a bit of cooked bacon, chopped, that we had left in the fridge, shredded cheddar cheese, and green onions. 

We put the ramekins on a baking sheet (just in case they bubbled over.) We baked these at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. The whites were hard and the yolks were firm but still soft enough to smear on toasts.

These were amazing! 

We'll definitely have them again! 

These would also make a nice brunch for weekends or breakfast-for-dinner idea. 

Sourdough Cont.

With temps in the single digits here, my sourdough wasn't quick to rise. So I gave it more time. +

I also turned on the oven and put the dough on the stovetop, so it had a warmer environment. +

The colder environment created a tighter boule with more tension. +

I also used a banneton for my second rise this time, 

so it had the beautiful, concentric circles on the bread. +

And when I scoured, I kept the razor almost horizontal this time. +

= 

one beautiful loaf! 

And many things learned in one day! 

Learning Chemistry at Home

Avril's doing Chemistry in our homeschool this year. 

We use Apologia's text. 

She reads one module (or chapter) every one or two weeks, and she completes all the On Your Own Questions for every module. 

She or I or both of us together will check her answers to the On Your Own questions in her notebook with the text's answer key, and then she makes corrections as needed until she gets all the right answers. 

But she usually has very little corrections to make, because she read the material carefully to begin with. 

How quickly I make her move through the modules depends on how much time we have, which depends on how much vacation we've been taking. 

Right now, she's reading one module a week for the next few weeks to make quicker progress through the text, since we just took a few weeks off of school to go to Florida. 

I make her choose one lab from each module to complete. She gathers the materials and/or tells me what she needs if it isn't in our homeschool closet or kitchen. 

She makes a record of each lab and the results in a lab journal that I assess every week. 

She's using the same lab journal she used for Biology last year. 

I don't really believe in tests for Chemistry, so I don't make her take them. 

It's more important to me that she learns the virtue of steadily reading and working through the huge text and completing all the assignments and labs to gain and demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the subject. 

I want her to learn how to learn a subject like Chemistry as much as I want her to learn Chemistry.  

And I'm certain that since she's actually steadily working through the material, she's learning it. 

I can't tell you how often in public high school, I passed a class like Chemistry having never read the textbook or engaged with the material much with my own mind, but rather, the expert teacher lectured and gave tests on the lecture notes, and I just passed those tests on the notes and forgot everything before the next test.  

So I never really learned Chemistry. 

I believe I would have been better served by a Chemistry textbook and consistent time and quiet to read it and let the information become a real part of my soul.

So, Avril's grade, at the end of this year, will be based on whether or not she did all the reading and questions and assigned labs, whether or not she actually did the very personal work of learning Chemistry. 

She will, most likely, get an A, because she doesn't move to the next module until she has completed all the reading, questions, and labs and gotten the right answers to the one before. 

Homeschooling through a subject like Chemistry doesn't take an expert; It isn't rocket science. 

It just takes consistent reading and engagement with the outstanding Chemistry textbook we have.  

Mastery of anything, even Chemistry, usually comes easily enough if you are simply willing to show up and actually do the work. 

Snow Sabbath

A snow storm covered us (and a lot of the United States) in snow last Sunday. 

It's a good thing church was cancelled and only online that day, because if people had been out at church or anywhere else, the roads would have gotten too bad too fast. 

Everyone knew the snow as coming for a while. But once the snow started, it came down fast and steady and kept falling all day and night. 

So, we started a fire for the first time this winter, gathered in the living room and watched church, and we got a lot of rest on that snow sabbath (unless we were out shoveling). 

The plow came Sunday and cleared the driveway, but the snow just kept coming.  

On Monday morning, it was as if the plow never came; There was so much snow! 

The girls had work and/or homeschool work to do on Monday, so they weren't free to play until Monday evening, about the time the sun went down. 

But they went out anyway. They turned the outside lights on and explored the yard and edges of our woods and built a snow fort inside the massive pile of snow the plow made on the side of the driveway. Below is a picture I took from the warmth of the inside while I was making dinner. 

I imagine they won't always want to play in the snow, but I'm glad they are still young enough, or young enough at heart, to want to play in the snow. 

And I'm thankful for the pockets of quite stillness and rest winter provides. 

Winter can be, in a sense, one long sabbath if we are apt to observe it. 

An Element of Chaos

Arcus brings a lot of joy and an element of choas to our otherwise orderly days. 

 He's a fun friend to have hanging around. We're so thankful for him. 

Braces Off!

Avril got her braces off! She celebrated by immediately chewing a piece of gum on the way home from the orthodontist. 

English Muffin and Sally Lunn Breads

I am still baking my way through the breads in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.

I made two batches of English Muffin bread; That's four loaves. 

We enjoyed a loaf and a half at home ourselves. 

I shared half a loaf my our hairdresser, one whole loaf with my homeschool co-op, and another whole loaf with one of my besties. 

I did buy some pretty, paper bags to make it easier to share extra bread with others. 

Now that I've given a few loaves away, I have to say, sharing fresh bread is almost as great as eating it! 

Later in the week, I made a loaf of Sally Lunn bread. 

This is a sweet, fluffy loaf of bread traditionally eaten as a roll at tea time, so I made it in the evening, sliced it, and served it with hot tea for dessert. 

It tasted almost exactly like a sweet, soft, traditional dinner roll!

I've always wanted to be able to make delicious dinner rolls rather than buying them at the store. 

I want to adapt and find a pan so that I can create the smaller, more traditional Sally Lunn dinner rolls, rather than I large loaf like the one above. 

 

Teaching Gideon For A Season

I'm co-teaching a ladies' Bible study on the Old Testament hero, Gideon, at our church every week for the winter session. 

We are using Priscilla Shrier's Gideon workbook and videos. 

We have close to forty ladies in our class. 

The book and videos make it very easy to led the group. 

That said, I'm still taking the opportunity to dig into the material for myself as a learner and grow spiritually. 

I do the workbook for my own morning devotions then personally wrestle, think, and pray through the Biblical text on my own. 

This particular portion of the Old Testament is very challenging to me. 

The Bible reading is provoking questions in my own heart that the Gideon workbook is not asking or answering, so even though my personal questions aren't likely to come up in class, I'm reaching out to friends/ scholars and dusting off/ digging into other resources I haven't used in years, maybe since Bible college. 

I'm also simply praying about my questions and waiting on God to answer one way or another. 

I am so thankful to have a class to teach again in this season! 

I felt led to stop leading Classical Conversations a few years ago. 

At CC, I was always needing to teach some group: a Challenge level, an Essentials class, a group of moms at a teacher-training event, etc.  

After putting out my fleece about one million times, leaving CC felt like the right decision or about one million reasons in that season. 

Nevertheless, I still grieved the loss of my students and the loss of the opportunity to use my teaching gifts in community. 

But it can be the right thing to make a change when seasons of life change, and it can even be right to stop using your primary gifts for a season. 

Instead of teaching in public, I focused on my own homeschool more. 

I went to grad school and became the student again. 

I freed myself to visit and serve my aging mother and my aging mother-in-law more, since I had less teaching commitments. 

But now, I am truly thankful to be teaching again. 

This time, it's for church, not co-op. 

So it's a different group, a different subject, but it is another right way to use my gifts to bless my community. 

Sourdough Cont.

I made two loaves of sourdough last week. 

I baked one loaf inside a new, enameled, cast iron loaf pan with a lid. 

It made the same dough into a traditional, rectangular loaf that shaped like the sandwich bread you can buy at the supermarket. 

I baked the other loaf in my enameled, cast iron cloche-shaped pan. 

I really enjoy making sourdough this way. 

However, in this pan, the bottom of my round loaves becomes very thick and hard when I complete the baking time on the recipe (45 minutes covered, 15 uncovered). 

Perhaps I'll adjust the baking time to see what can be done to get a thinner bottom crust.  

One of the things I am starting to really enjoy about cooking and baking is the opportunity to improve and adjust recipes to suit my own tastes. 

Winter Joy

I am really enjoying this winter in Connecticut.

It's not like I have never felt joy in winter here, but the winter joys in previous years were isolated to brief moments here and there. 

This year is remarkably different; I am truly loving every moment of winter for the first time in my entire life! 

I have a few ideas as to why this is the case. Some are related to body; Others are related to soul:

First, we just got back from weeks in Florida. Maybe getting away to a warm place simply takes some of the edge off winter.

But second, we replaced all the windows and the roof last year. Our house is dramatically more secure from the cold and my body is not struggling to stay warm while I'm inside. 

Third, I'm healthier than I have been in years. My body is not constantly struggling against overwhelming infections. After more than a year of intense Lyme treatment, I am finally winning against the disease. My capacity for joy seems to increase as my body recovers its vitality.  

Forth, after over twenty years here, I finally feel that CT is my home, and maybe I have finally had enough years in CT to begin to recognize the winter sights as signs of home. The electric blue sky, the bright green moss, the sun going down and casting rays over the stark landscape, the pond frozen over, the weeds with their branches and seed pods covered in ice or snow- I'm used to these sights now, and they bring me a sense of nostalgic joy over their unique beauties. 

Fifth, I've slowed way down. I don't have the stressful commitments that I compelled myself to keep in previous years. Those commitments added hours of stressful work to our daily lives without much pay. I finally realized that the benefits of those things no longer warranted the costs. Now we have time to move through the world at a more humane pace. I don't resent winter for slowing me down now, because I am already going slower. 

Sixth and final, I have lowered my expectations. This goes along with slowing down and giving up stressful commitments. I have simply stopped expecting so much from myself, from others, from life in general, and odd as this sounds, this has led to an increase in my soul's contentment and thankfulness. When you aren't expecting so, so much, you aren't looking at life like something's wrong with it all the time. You begin to see what you do have as a gift. Then you can begin to see how much is right and and how much is, in fact, really, really good- including winter! 

Vero Beach January 2026

We've enjoyed a lengthy visit to Vero Beach this month. Activities included:

 Long beach walks everyday

Three books of Earthsea = read by me. (This will be our new family read aloud after dinner. It's amazing!)

Time spent together just talking

Watercolor painting

Reading quietly with Grandma

More walks

More painting

Watching Clone Wars after dinner with ice cream at intermissions

Shell collecting, organizing, and identifying- 

I found shells I have never found: two nerite shells (shown in the picture above) and I also found a spiny jewel box (the yellow shell in the picture below)

We always take a collection of shells home and create a keepsake jar for every visit to Vero. (We have over ten! They make beautiful decor for our basement living room.) 

But we had so many magnificent shells by the end of this trip and I had so much time here that I purchased these cases, labeled everything, and gifted this collection to Dwayne's sister/ her beach house, so the whole family can enjoy it. 

Avril painted Howl's Moving Castle- Amazing work! 

Card games with Grandmom

The beach changed everyday. It was lovely to spend so much time there! 

 It was lovely to spend so much time with family, especially Grandmom. We also got to meet our nephew and his wife's new baby. What a blessing! 

The Shire

When the girls were little, I'd get them Lego sets for Christmas, and then we'd put them together on Christmas day and keep working into the next day if needed. 

We made the best memories putting Legos together at Christmastime in front of the fire, so Legos became one of my favorite things to do at Christmas. 

But the girls have been getting older, and they have not been asking for Legos or even interested in them much. 

So I was prepared to go without Legos at Christmas this year...

But my awesome family gave me Legos this year! 

I got The Shire in Legos this year! 

So when I am not cleaning or cooking, I am putting this together while listening to audio books or music or just enjoying the slow silence. 

And the youngest, Adele, has asked to help now and then. 

I'm thankful for that.