This Week

We have been studying the Great Depression for the past few weeks, but doing a little more hands on as we studied it last year and they seem to have remembered a lot. But, since our history book covered it again this year we read a lot of historical fiction and articles and even looked at a lot of photography from the depression this time around. We have been making some depression era recipes this week and it was interesting. The first thing they made was a potato recipe - diced potatoes and onions cooked in a skillet and then when they are soft you add a sliced up hotdog. All the kids said they liked it a lot. I even asked them if I made it for dinner would they be happy and they all said yes - except Sarah. 

They then made dandelion salad. We watched a video of a 94 year old woman telling how her family ate dandelions during the depression and how they fixed it to make it rather tasty. The kids went out and picked the dandelions and then washed them well, then soaked them for a little while. Then they added lemon juice, oil and salt and ate it as their salad. This one was not as much a hit as the potato recipe but several of the kids ate quite a lot. Bethany said it was a disappointment to her, but it was not terrible. 

Today they made biscuit bread. This was a favorite. You basically mix up a biscuit recipe, then mold it into a mound,  put it in a hot cast iron skillet and cook it then flip it over and cook the other side. They really liked this and it was so easy to make. Tess made it alone in just a few minutes. I don't have pictures of it, but it looked really good. They ate every bite of it and said they would like to make it again. I think we will try a few more recipes before we end this study as they are really having fun doing it. 

Yesterday we hung our new bird feeder and we already have birds and squirrels eating at it. It is kind of fun to look out and watch them. I think we will put up a few more this next week. 

It has been a nice week with beautiful weather and we are starting to feel like warm weather is here to stay. We are going to plant our garden either this weekend or the beginning of next week. Our only problem right now is how do we keep all the deer out of our garden. Last year they literally ate everything we planted. So, we have to come up with a solution or there is not much point in planting at all.