Thursday, October 20, 2011

A Kitchen Day

We are between blocks.  We finished Ancient Greece I yesterday and will start a short science block next week.

It felt like a good day to spend in the kitchen.  J-Baby was my main helper with T-Guy handling some of the clean up and garbage duties. We got a lot accomplished!

*We ground beef and froze it in one pound packages.

*We ground pork and mixed in herbs and spices to make bulk sausage, which we then froze in logs.

*We roasted meaty beef bones and made beef stock.

*We roasted bone-in chicken breasts, shredded the meat, and froze it in one pound packages. (We saved the drippings and bones for making stock another day.)

*We made pulled pork and froze it in one pound packages.

*We made a quadruple batch of topping for fruit crisps.

*We shredded cheese to have on hand for lunches.

*We made beef noodle soup and chebe cheese rolls for dinner.

Kitchen days are fantastic for natural learning. Not only do we do a lot a math, but we also observe and discuss the physics of cooking and baking. In addition, this kind of work falls under both health and vocational education, two of the subjects I am required to offer as a private school. For example, we spent time discussing safe food handling as it pertains to handling and grinding raw meat, which was a health lesson. Cooking in general is vocational arts.

Kitchen days also help make the rest of our homeschool days go a little easier because some of our meal preparation is already done.  I only wish we'd had time to make freezer mashed potatoes!

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