IHC: Kale chips

Kale, kale, kale. What to do? It's bitter. Really bitter. My general solution to anything bitter (well, to anything, really) is to add lots of salt and oil. They make everything all better.

So try this with that beautiful bunch of kale you bought on impulse because it's soooooo healthy and you really should be eating more of it: Wash and dry it, douse it brush it with olive oil, and heap sprinkle about two teaspoons of salt all over it on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes until it looks crispy and a little brown.


Then, tell the kids they're having green potato chips for snacktime.

Adventures in canning

From this...

Canning fresh produce like strawberries and tomatoes has long been toward the top of my bucket list. Every spring I would think, "This'll be the year," and then after a quick Google search I'd become cross-eyed from discourses on acidity and pressure. I mean, there's a reason I'm not a physicist.

But this year I resolved that I would indeed make and preserve strawberry jam. The impetus is our subscription to a produce-delivery-service which brings all kinds of cool veggies, like kale and bok choy (actually, the kids love kale chips as long as I refer to them as "green potato chips." Bok choy -- not so much). But we also get strawberries -- fresh ones, picked the day before. Between the delivery and picking them ourselves at local farms, yesterday our fridge was sagging under seven pounds of berries. Can or rot!

...to this.

So I kicked the kids out of the kitchen for safety issues (lots and lots of boiling water), put Dominic down for a nap, read through the recipe about a dozen times, took a deep breath... and an hour later I had four pints of beautiful red strawberry jam cooling in cute Mason jars. Unbelievable.

And yes, I am totally going to make dorky red-checkered labels for the jars.

This Old Stump

Our yard is little, but I suppose that to insects it's pretty dang big. Recently we spent an afternoon turning over rocks, riffling through damp ivy, and checking the undersides of flowerpots for insects -- all in the pursuit of education, and not just because it was a heck of a lot of fun.

Okay, maybe it was the latter.

One of the greatest bug habitats we found was a tarp that had been cast on the ground overnight. When we pulled it up, the whole underside was covered with slugs. Delight all around.

But the piece de resistance was the old stump. About ten years ago a hurricane polished off a bunch of pine trees in our yard, and we were left with their stumps. Rather than pay to have them dug out, I figured they would decompose sooner or later. I was right! They were mushy and rotted, and -- score! -- home to all sorts of insects. The kids used butter knives and plastic spoons to chip away layers of bark. They found ants and termite larvae (kill! kill! kill!) and a bunch of other creepy crawlies, and we even kept some of them in a plastic container for the afternoon. Luckily the kids bored of "playing" with them quickly, and we ceremonially released them to return to their mommies and daddies (except the termite larvae).

And sure, I'm still missing a couple butter knives, and now instead of ugly stumps we have decimated wood chunks on which children or small animals could easily impale themselves, but was it worth it from an educational perspective?

You bet.

Herbfest: Not as boring as it sounds

The Butterfly Princess becomes a clown

Last season on one of the Food Network's competitions the contestants were tasked with naming their own cooking shows. A chef named Herb came up with the incredibly creative moniker HerbTV. You could tell by the judges' faces that the second he said it he was GONE.

Cut to our town's annual Herbfest on the grounds of the historic Page-Walker Hotel. We were accidental visitors last year and had a great time, so this year I attempted to round up a group of homeschooling friends for a field trip. No luck. Most reactions were along the lines of Herbfest? Is that as boring as it sounds? 


The town needs to add a tag line to reflect that you don't just stand around admiring lavender and thyme. There are booths showcasing and selling nature photography, wool skeins, old-timey crafts, plants, natural foods, birdhouses and goat soap (that's soap from goat's milk, not soap to wash the goats living in your garage).

Or the town could just mention that the Great Harvest Bread Company gives away free samples of its blueberry-lemon bread.

There is just as much for the kids as for the adults. My three walked out with flowerpots decorated for Mother's Day and dinosaurs and flowers painted on their cheeks by members of the Cary Teen Council. V-Man finally saw inside his beloved smokehouse (see the Smokehouse Birdhouse post) and while he was disappointed that there wasn't meat hanging from the nails, he did see a drying cotton plant for the first time.

Sometimes holding a butterfly sounds better in theory

The best part, according to the kids, was the Butterfly Lady. She was in a corner booth surrounded by... wait for it... butterflies. And caterpillars, and eggs, and little tiny squiggles crawling around plastic containers that were freshly-hatched caterpillars. And she didn't mind one bit when 18-month-old Captain D pile-drived her mesh butterfly house full of monarchs. In fact, she asked if MM would help her release the butterflies by dressing up as one.

Fulfilling a lifelong desire to morph into a butterfly princess, MM uttered a breathless YES. A few minutes later, the crowd gathered around the Butterfly Lady for the release and MM bounced up to the crowd's front, awaiting her moment of fame. MM pranced around when the Butterfly Lady strapped wings on her back. Then the Butterfly Lady explained how well butterflies can hear and took giant ears out of her bag. The Butterfly Princess looked rather nonplussed as she added the over-sized ears to her couture. Then the Butterfly Lady covered MM's feet in pink felt (I forget why, as I was too busy snickering at the Butterfly Princess' quick transformation into a clown) and plopped antennae on her head. By the time the goofy giant yellow sunglasses made an appearance MM wanted to quit. But she suffered through the indignity and even took a bow for the crowd, and then removed her extra appendages much more quickly than she ever manages to remove her clothes at bedtime.

Captain D contemplating the smokehouse

At the release, the monarchs fluttered around, landing on arms and feet and heads. Captain D did his best to bat them out of the air, and V-Man patiently held out his finger and called, "Here, butterflies, land on me" -- and then promptly screamed when one did.

So seriously, the town needs to add a tag line so that families realize that Herbfest is a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. Something like...   

Hey, I've got one. Herbfest: Not as boring as it sounds.