Et fini, la Francaise!

Like I said, I was most excited for France, but it really got the shaft.  I didn't nearly do it justice like I had planned.  Perhaps because the kids' excitement waned, perhaps by the busyness of this time of year.  I might have to try it again next year.  I took very few photos; really of just one night.  The first night we had Croque Monseiur; the next night we went to an outdoor movie in Salem, and took our dinner with us.  We had Chicken provencal, haricots vert, and more artisan bread.  The last night we had our traditional French night.  We ate chicken cordon bleu casserole, cauliflower au gratin, grape juice (since the French love their wine--we had whine of a different sort. haha), and for dessert, crepes Suzette.  I really wanted to do them flambe, but brandy was in short supply in our house.  Next time.  I really wanted to do a French tart, but didn't have time.  The last thing I made was pain du chocolat, which is basically white roll dough that you wrap around a piece of milk chocolate, bake, then lightly frost.  Yum!  We used to eat them in French class at BYU. 

Chicken cordon bleu casserole

cauliflower au gratin

Crepes Suzette

This wrapped up our theme units. Not sure if I'll repeat it next summer. It was more intensive and required more time, effort, planning, and participation. I will probably go back to the ABC's next summer, which fit better around all our other summer activities. But I really enjoyed the foreign cuisine, and found some new family favorites. And some things we will leave to the natives!

Italy

We finally finished off our Around the World unit with Italy and France.  I should have started with these 2, because I was most excited to get to France, but by the time we got there, the kids were not excited about the idea anymore.  We all enjoyed the foreign cuisine, but I couldn't muster any excitement at all for the country and its culture.  Brighton, however, continued to be interested in the language; he still says "g-way gwoh" when he burps (from our Chinese unit back in June), and demands that I count in French every time it's warranted.

Here we celebrated Italy by making homemade pasta.  It was an all day experience.  The kids had fun making it, and really enjoyed it, but were glad that we don't have to do that every time we have spaghetti or alfredo.  I actually broke a sweat!

Mixing the dough...

Rollin out the dough and cutting.

My new arm accessories.  D'ya like?

I made sauce from scratch also.  I love the smell of it simmering on the stove.  It's the smell of fall in my Mom's house as a child.

One happy customer.

And for dessert, chocolate biscotti.  I didn't bake it as long as the recipe called for, so it wasn't too crunchy.  Mmm, it was delicioso!

Day 2, fine dining Italiano style.  I planned on dining like the Italians do, in courses, so I set a fancy table, complete with candlesticks, and Josh Groban softly crooning Italian love songs in the background.  Lose the kids, and this was a very romantic meal:)

We started out with soup and bread.  This day we made gnocchi.  I've never made it before and it was oh-so-time-consuming!  But everybody really enjoyed it, so next time we'll buy it frozen:)  This is my all-time favorite soup recipe, a knock-off Olive Garden chicken gnocchi soup.  It's muy bella! (that may be a combination of a few languages).

Here is the recipe:

Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi Cream Soup

From beginning to end it takes about 10 min. of prep and 30 min. cook time
1/3 cup olive oil or butter
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 lb. chicken
1/3 cup flour
1/2 carrot shredded
1 stick of celery
1/2 cup fresh chopped spinach
2 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
3 chicken bullion cubes
Cracked pepper to taste
Gnocchi
On medium heat:
Melt butter in a soup pot, add in the garlic and sautee, add your chicken and cook through out

Add flour and stir in flour and mix well until the flour is cooked into the chicken.  Next add your milk and heavy cream.  Then add the veggies(Carrots,Celery,Spinach).  Add three bullion cubes.  Add your Gnocchi last; it takes 3-4 min. to cook throughout.  Mix ingredients well until soup thickens and stirring occasionally. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

We also had artisan bread.  Easy recipe I got from a bread class at Thanksgiving Point 2 years ago:

3 c lukewarm water (can use cold, but it will double your raising time)

1 ½ Tb yeast
1 ½ Tb kosher salt
6 ½ c all purpose high quality flour (the quality of the flour makes all the difference.  I use Canadian flour)

Add yeast and salt to the water, and add flour all at once. Stir until all the flour is mixed in. Cover bowl with a non air-tight lid and let it sit on the counter for 2+ hours, til it starts to flatten out on top. DO NOT KNEAD. Use a generous amount of flour when shaping dough.  Heat oven to 450.  Place a baking stone in oven to heat.  Shape dough into a ball and let rise on a cornmeal-coated pizza peal for 40 mins.  Before baking, cut a few criss-cross slits in top of bread, and slide onto hot pizza stone.  Add a cup of water to broiler pan in bottom of stove (or put a pan of water in with stone), and bake for 40 mins.  Let cool and slice.

Second course was chicken parmesan.

Next was sauteed spinach.  I actually liked this, which surprised me since I grew up on cooked spinach and swore I'd go hungry before I ever ate it again.

Last was pears, followed by homemade vanilla gelato.  Mmmmm..

Finishing up the week was Chicken Italiano, which is one of my favorite recipes (thanks Sallie for sharing!), and homemade spinach and tomato pizza.  Loved Italian week!

I made some salt dough one day and showed the girls the pictures of The Leaning Tower.  I had them try to sculpt it with their dough.  Savannah didn't do too bad, did she?

We finished up the week by making gondolas.  Man, I hate glitter!  It's a staticky, cleaning nightmare!  I was still finding it in odd things 2 weeks after the gondolas were trashed and long gone.

Cheerio, mates!

We are still traveling--this past week we studied Australia and England.  Not close geographically, but close in cuisine, which is what our Around the World weeks have devolved into.  Let's face it, I get excited most about the foreign grub.  That's reason #16 why I will never be thin again.  I have had so much fun planning and preparing foreign meals, and trying new things, and getting my kids to try new things.  I'll have to repeat this year after year as my boys grow up, to prepare them for missions in foreign lands.  On the other hand,  can one really be prepared for such delicacies as monkey brain soup {my hubby had it on his mission...in Arizona!}, or "dog and rice" {my cousin's hubby had it in the Phillipines.} 

Anyway, back to the subject, for Australia we had shepherd's pie, chocolate pavlova, and lamingtons.  My mother is Australian, so I grew up eating lamingtons at family events, but my children have never had them.  I learned that I am the only one that likes coconut, other than the twins, but they'll eat anything they think is a cupcake.  Here's the only photo I took of our Australia week:

Somewhere I have a boomerang or two from a long ago trip to Australia.  My plan was to teach my kids how to throw one {and, yes, there is a technique to it that works when you know how to do it...which I'm hoping is like riding a bicycle.}

Since my in-laws are leaving on an LDS mission to England within the month, I added England to the itinerary.  For dinner one night I made Cornish Pasties {made me think of Harry Potter}, and Yorkshire Pudding {which I was surprised to discover isn't pudding at all, but a popover filled with gravy.}  We didn't have the gravy or drippings on hand, so we just ate them with honey and jam.  The kids loved them, and they were so easy to make, and didn't require anything odd.  For the recipe, go here.  There's even a tutorial with it.  The second night, English food just didn't excite me, so we just had English trifle {just fruit though, no meat:)  Remember Friends?  "It takes like feet!" ---Ross Gellar}  I also made some English Christmas crackers for the kids to do after dinner.  They didn't pop like real English crackers (a specialty part is needed for that), but it was a fun activity anyway.  I filled them with candy and English cracker jokes (found them on the internet).  For directions go here.  Evidently I wrapped them with too much tissue paper as evidenced by the following photos:

We ended up having to tear the ends a little first in order to get them to "pop" in any way.  If anyone decides to make these, 1 layer of tissue is all that's needed!  We had fun anyway reading the English jokes to each other.  (How does Santa like his pizza?  Deep pan, crisp and even.)  I had intended on playing tiddlywinks, but I can't find my buttons. 
This week we'll finish our World tour in France and Italy.  I'm most excited about these two, as the food is delish!  Plus I'm a Francophile.  Plus I get to make, and eat, gelato, and call it for educational purposes!  We're going to have crepes Suzette, ratatouille, grape juice, baguettes, and pain du chocolat.  For Italy we're going to make gnocchi, fresh pasta, gelato, and pizza.  We're going to make gondolas and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  At least that's the plan...

Hare Krishna Temple

Culminating our study of India, we visited the Hare Krishna Temple today.  I've driven past it many many times, and was always curious to see inside.  I think the building is gorgeous, albeit a little oddly out-of-place in the small town it resides in.  Here is the outside.  You'll have to forgive me for taking so many photos;  a fancy camera + an interesing architectural subject=a whole lotta pictures!

We had to remove our shoes before entering the second level.

Not sure what this is, but it was beautiful.

This is the room at the top of the building.  I expected something larger and more grand, but this was it.  This is their worshiping room; they gave permission for photos, but I felt so odd and disrespectful taking them, especially of their deities, which is at the back of the room.  They burn incense and other offerings to their God here.  One has to be correctly robed to enter the space before it.

This is looking up at the center dome of the temple.

I did wonder why Lord Krishna is always blue in the paintings, and asked, but didn't get a clear answer on that.  I wondered how many of our Mormon doctrines I would be unable to explain clearly to an outsider.

Not sure what this statue represented; we missed the first part of the tour.  It gave Savannah the creeps though.

I liked the front doors with the peacocks in them.

They sang and played their instruments for us at the end of the tour.  Brighton wanted to know what their instruments were called afterwards.  The only one I remember was a harmonium (like a mini piano and accordian mixed).

My kids liked the wildlife best.  This bird was just free inside the restaurant/gift shop downstairs.

Outside, we greeted the other 3 birds.  This one greeted us with a "hi" and a head bow.  Keaton got too close and it about took off his finger.  He now says "birdie bite." 

This is Peaches, from Irelynd's narrative a few months ago.  She was calm and did not bite when we pet her.

This bird shrieked along with Keaton after his finger was bitten.  I've never heard a bird make such a noise before.  With Waverly crying too, it made quite a ruckus.

Koi pond

We liked feeding the llamas our baby carrots.