For Love of Figs

It’s late summer, and that means one thing to me: figs.

Figs are my favorite fresh fruit. Two weekends ago, a friend invited me over to pick figs from her trees, and I happily took her up on her offer. She has no idea what kind they are; she inherited the trees when she bought her house. After a bit of research, I identified them as Celeste figs. They are a small fig but quite sweet when you let them ripen sufficiently.

My favorites – and the sweetest to my palate -- are black mission. I wish I could grow that variety, but they don’t do well here in the American South.

People ask me what I do with figs, and I tend to reply, “Eat them.” Duh. Figs are so seriously good that eating them out of hand is the absolute best way to enjoy their flavor. But you have to wait until they are perfectly ripe, bordering on overripe. Sitting out on the counter, they get that way fairly quickly.

I also enjoy figs for breakfast. A few sliced figs, a dollop of plain Greek yogurt, and a swirl of honey creates a bowl full of joy.

I also adore fig preserves. Aforementioned friend and her mother put up several pints of homemade fig preserves, and I was the happy recipient of a jar. Scrumptious on a spoon!

However, in case you are the type to want more options, here’s a link to a Pinterest search page in which I looked for fig recipes. Just for you. http://bit.ly/1EFygIT

Enjoy!

Linking up with:
A Delightsome Life's A Return to Loveliness
Share Your Style at Common Ground

The Lovely and Useful Tradition of Elevenses

The girls and I recently decided to add that delightful British custom of elevenses to our schedule most days. I say "most days" because one really can't support a break when one has only worked since 9:30 or 10.

A more traditional tea time doesn't work for us because our afternoons are busy with activities and Miss Priss's math lessons at the tutoring center. Even so, I find that a break around 11 AM is best for us. Elevenses allow us to refresh ourselves, refocus our efforts, and reframe our day, if need be.

Refresh
Everyone is ready for a cup of tea and a snack by 11 o'clock. Our blood sugar needs a boost and our minds need a break. But what to nibble, you ask? Traditionally, it's something sweet: a slice of cake, a few cookies, a scone. I rarely have cake in the house and as for scones, well. . . . So we opt for cookies, but we keep a few varieities for elevenses only, such as Biscoff, McVitie's or Burton's rich tea biscuits, Jammie Dodgers (also from the UK but available at my Publix grocery), or a special cookie from Trader Joe's. If you'd like to do a little more, AllRecipes.co.uk has a page of recipes for elevenses. The Squidgy Chocolate Muffins look tasty. And what a great name!

Refocus
During elevenses, we go over our day's schedule and check everyone's progress thus far. If someone is straggling, this is a good time to point out what needs to be done and when. We also lay out a general plan for the rest of the day, including time to visit with friends or enjoy a favorite craft. Often, this spurs a straggler on to complete her work in a timely manner. If the day is nice, one or both of my girls may decide to take her remaining readings en plein air.

Reframe
We may find that circumstances dictate a reframing of our day. A gift of beautiful weather means that Tiny Girl will want to spend more time at the barn. An unexpected invitation leads to an assignment being  postponed until evening. My work schedule may change. We talk about these things at elevenses.

As the girls grow and mature, they will begin to work more independently. A break for elevenses in those years will mean a chance to touch base with one another, to talk about our day's work, to discuss points of interest and points of concern. I look forward to that.

For now, the girls mainly look forward to a break and a snack. And that's wonderful. I can ponder the fine points of elevenses and what they mean to the flow of our days.


Photo credit: H is for Home / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Tea, the Blessed Elixir: Matcha at First Sip

"When tea becomes ritual, it takes place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things."
-- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (one of my favorite books)

The girls and I were at the mall a couple of days ago and stopped in at one of our favorite stores, Teavana. Since we visit the mall a handful of times per year, we stocked up on an old favorite blend of ours, Youthberry and Orange Blossom, and we tried a new herbal tea: Citrus-Lavender-Sage. They were holding a sale on all tea accoutrements. I've been interested in trying real matcha tea, so I purchased an Imperial Matcha Collection, which included a tin of ceremonial matcha tea powder, a bowl (chawan), and a whisk (chasen), at a 75 percent discount. Yay!

Matcha, in case this is new to you, "refers to finely-milled green tea, most popular in Japan. The cultural activity called the Japanese tea ceremony centers on the preparation, serving, and drinking of matcha. . . . Matcha is a fine ground, powdered, high quality green tea and not the same as tea powder or green tea powder" (Wikipedia article).

Following the directions on the tin, I mixed one teaspoon of matcha with eight ounces of hot water. Then I whisked it until frothy-ish. I don't think I whisked it long or briskly enough, though. Next time I'll put more effort into it.

I was surprised at the bright green color and opaque quality of the prepared tea.

According to the Wikipedia article, matcha comes from shade-grown tea leaves; the tea bushes are covered to protect the leaves from direct sunlight. After harvesting, the leaves are laid out flat to dry. They are then called tencha (碾茶). The tencha is deveined, destemmed, and stone ground to powder (matcha).

Looking for more info, I hopped onto Teavana's matcha webpage. You can see a photo of matcha in its powder form there. Apparently, the directions on the tin are the "contemporary brewing" method, which produces a thin tea (usucha). The traditional preparation calls for one teaspoon of matcha to four ounces of hot water, resulting in a thicker tea called koicha.

Matcha is touted for its health benefits, including fiber, antioxidants, and amino acids. But I must be honest; its flavor did not knock my socks off. Teavana describes matcha as having a "smooth, complex vegetal flavor with a full palette and a silky finish." I can attest to the vegetal character. Spinach came to mind. I actually like spinach, both cooked and raw. (In fact, I regularly add raw spinach to my breakfast smoothies, along with the yogurt, water, and frozen fruit.) The "vegetality" of the matcha didn't disgust me; however, it's not something I've come to expect or anticipate in my tea.

So I added some sugar, which improved it immensely.

Will matcha replace my favorite brew? Nope. But I enjoyed learning about it. And I can always spoon some into my smoothie.

One more thing occured to me. As I stood in my twenty-first-century American kitchen, heating water, carefully measuring, and whisking my new chasen, I thought about a Zen tea master -- who had trained for years -- presiding over a somber tea ceremony in  fifteenth-century Japan. We couldn't have been more different, he and I. But my actions, a mere shadow of his ritual, served as a sort of thread connecting me with the tea master in my imagination.

Weekly Wrap-Up: Vats of Tea Required

I'm a tad late writing my Wrap-Up for this past week. Yesterday was too crazy-busy, and this morning we were bike shopping for the girls. They'd outgrown their other bikes quite some time ago. Now they are happily tooling about the neighborhood with their friends.

We had an odd week, but in a mostly welcome way. Due to weather two days this week, our regularly scheduled activities were cancelled. Another day, we spent the morning doing chores, since we were overdue for a cleaning and straightening up detail, and we did our lessons in the afternoon. On one of the rainy days, I awoke with a headache, took some medicine, and went back to sleep until almost 10 AM! Our Wednesday evening church activities were cancelled for the Ash Wednesday service, which I blogged about here, and last night was our church's Big Event for fourth and fifth graders: capture the flag, pizza, and ice cream sundaes with 53 nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds.

When we were at home, the girls stayed in their pajamas and we all drank copious amounts of hot tea all week long. Miss Priss favored a chai mate/white tea mixture we bought recently at Teavana; Tiny Girl opted for peppermint most days; and I sipped (on different occasions) both PG Tips and another Teavana blend, Lemon Lime Kampai and Blueberry Bliss rooibos.

Despite the unusual aspects of the week, our lessons clicked along smoothly. Here are some highlights:

- To add another element to our study of Emily Dickinson, we watched Act One of The Belle of Amherst, a one-act play starring Julie Christie from 1976. Tiny Girl was diasppointed that it was not a real movie; but both girls enjoyed it when they recognized lines from poems we've read.

- Both girls began practicing their two new piano recital pieces. These are typically longer and wee bit more challenging than their weekly pieces; but we are all pleased with the selections.

- I stood over their shoulders a couple of times while they did their Rosetta Stone French. Since this is independent work, I wanted to check their progress. Tiny Girl still needs my help with the writing portions, but other than that I am amazed at how well they are doing.

- They spent about an hour one day with their card-making kits from American Girl, which I found for 40 percent off at Michaels. Tiny Girl wrote thank-you cards for her recent birthday gifts...

... and Miss Priss made a birthday card for an upcoming party.

As you can see, this was on a pajama day. Note the blue Fiesta teacup on the table. In Tiny Girl's photo above, you may be able to catch sight of her orange Fiesta teacup behind one of the cards.

- We did a lot of bird-watching. I attempt many photos during the week, but only a few do I deem worthy of sharing. Here's a brown thrasher I caught on "film":

Brown thrashers are very shy and don't typically visit feeders; however, this one feeds from our tray feeder, suet feeder, and on the ground. I suppose s/he feels safe in our yard! The goldfinches are still prolific, and the males are beginning to show their brighter yellow coloring. I can't wait til they are all decked out, black facemask included. We often see pine siskins in amongst the goldfinches.

Other birds that escaped my camera lens but not our study this week: dark-eyed juncos, cardinals, Carolina wrens, Carolina chickadees, downy woodpeckers, titmice, white-throated sparrows, a song sparrow, and robins. On two occasions, we also watched with our binoculars a red-tailed hawk.
 
That wraps up our week! To read more, swing by Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Thanks for stopping by!

Life is a Celebration

While I was waiting for a doctor's appointment, I happened to pick up a magazine (from 2007, of course) to flip through and ran across an astonishing essay by Dagny Scott Barrios. After her mother died, Dagny helped her father go through her things in the house. She came across her grandmother's china, lovingly wrapped and shut away in a dark cabinet. She pulled out a few pieces and began unwrapping them to use for the next meal.

"Not those," her father protested. "Those are for..." But he stopped speaking because the special occasion those dishes were saved for would never come now.

Dagny owns the dishes now and uses them regularly for simple meals, like roast chicken and sweet potatoes. She writes so eloquently:

Because always savings one's best things for a better day, a different day, carries with it a judgment: that the life you're living right now doesn't count; that it isn't good enough. And I've decided it is.

I have a set of special antique china, too, which Himself and I spied at an antique shop in Tennessee. Both of us admired it, and he secretly made a trip back there a few weeks afterward to buy the set for me for Christmas. We don't use most of the pieces regularly because they have to be hand washed, and I don't want to face that chore too often. But the girls do use the cups and saucers for tea (I prefer a mug), and I lovingly wash them afterward before placing them back on the display shelves of my china cabinet.

Life is worth celebrating, and one of the ways we can bring joy into our days is to use our cherished and beautiful things, our best things. And breathe a word of thanks every time.

The Week of Standardized Testing -- ACK!

This week, Tiny Girl is wading through the CAT/5.  There are ten separate tests, and we're doing two per day.  She proclaimed yesterday's tests "easy"; they were word analysis and vocabulary.  Right now, she's struggling with the spelling test.  Spelling is not her strong suit.  There's been a bit of wailing and teeth-gnashing in the last few minutes.

I can relate.  I understand the word analysis, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and arithmetic as necessary evils of a standardized test; but spelling?  It's difficult, as her mother-teacher, to know that we haven't covered all these words or spelling rules, yet she has to undergo testing on them anyway. It's a set-up to fail.

I'm not a big fan of standardized tests, anyway.  Since our home education model differs greatly from the public school model, our material doesn't coincide with theirs.  But in our state, homeschooled children are required to take some sort of nationally-recognized standardized test every three years, starting in third grade.

There are a few options.  Many homeschool stores and hybrid "homeschool" schools (two days per week of instruction; assignments completed at home) offer ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) testing on their premises for a reasonable cost.  Last year, I planned for Miss Priss to take the test in this fashion, but she vehemently objected.  She did not want to go to another location, sit in a room with other unfamiliar homeschool students, and take a test administered by an unknown proctor for two days, three hours per day.  She had a point.

After a bit of online research, I located Family Learning Organization, a company in Spokane that offers consultation, assessment, and standarized achievement testing services to homeschoolers.  I signed up, and they sent me everything I needed to administer the third-grade CAT/5 (California Achievement Test) to my child at our home, where she is most comfortable.  Since I was able to keep the materials for two weeks, we could do reasonable portions of the test over a longer period of time.  After she completed the test, I sent everything back, and two weeks later, we received her scores and a report.  The whole process was smooth and satisfactory, much better than sending my third-grader to an unfamiliar location to take a daunting examination.  We'll save that for the SAT, right?

Besides, I doubt seriously any testing facility would provide Raspberry Zinger tea and Burton's Rich Tea Biscuits for the students to enjoy as they filled in the little answer bubbles.

Weekly Wrap-Up: Just Keep Swimming. . .

For several reasons, this week was lighter than normal.  This was not my plan; it just happened.  For a good part of the week, I was, as I described it in yesterday's post, wallowing in a cesspool of angst and indecision, and -- surprise! -- that put something of a damper on my attitude.  Then there were numerous activities going on this week, some of which were atypical.  Apparently, all of this is going around, if any of the blogs I've been reading are an indication, and I'm guessing they are.  Kris, from Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, wrote an excellent post in a similar vein.  Ah, 'tis the season!

We managed to focus on the basics, however.  For math, I put aside our regular curriculum, and the girls completed addition, subtraction, and multiplication worksheets.  They actually enjoyed the change-up.  For copywork, they continued with their choice of verses from Psalms, and they did their spelling workbooks.  And they read independently.  A lot.

That's about it.  We did do a few of our family readings and a touch of Latin.  They also practiced piano.  Today they have their homeschool science class.  Right now, Miss Priss is working on a project for a Girl Scout badge.

Thankfully, I was able to cut myself a little slack yesterday while I thought about our situation and drank my Lady Grey tea.  (Today, in case you're interested, I'm drinking PG Tips.)  I still need to set aside some time to review my plans for the rest of this year and get a better handle on everything.  I'll do that this weekend.

In other weekly news, Jasper is doing great!  His second puppy training class (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one, but it's fun) is tomorrow afternoon.  He's also discovered the joy of chasing squirrels.  He's a good reminder to me that life is made up of little things, small joys to be savored.  I keep forgetting that.

Remembering to Breathe

I posted a couple of weeks ago about some homeschooling woes in which I was wallowing (lots of comments -- thanks!), and I've still got one toe in that cesspool.

It so happened that, while looking over the Ambleside Online schedule for Year 3, I saw that we had missed some books we were supposed to have already covered.  I know how it happened; I'd made a few substitutions, and then forgot about the others.  Of course, panic set in.  What would we do now?  How could I fit all that in without backpedaling?  Was it possible?  It seems we are always treading water.  Are we ever going to move forward?

Then a dear friend told me that, at this point, she's picking and choosing items to cover because covering everything simply isn't an option.  I blinked.  She was so right.  And anyway, when is covering everything ever an option?

So today I took a deep breath, exhaled (very important to remember!), and thought things through.  I also had a cup of Lady Grey tea, which was very helpful.  Here's what I came up with:

It's mid-March, not the best time to reinvent the wheel.  Instead of trying to cram more things in, I'm going to either cover some things this summer (perhaps in a more streamlined form), or look ahead to see when we'll cover this material again in later years and leave it until then.  I also need to remind myself that whatever we're doing is still more than what they would be doing in school.  So basically, we're just going with my plans for the rest of this year.

I feel better already.  More tea?

Ah, Blessed Tea: The Elixir That Heals All

On Saturday evenings, I love to tune into our local PBS station to watch an evening of Britcoms (that's British comedies, for the uninitiated). I've been doing it for years. Dh has lost his fervor (we've seen all the episodes of our favorite shows, is his complaint, but this bothers me very little). Last night in an episode of As Time Goes By, one of the characters (Sandy, if you know the show) is somewhat spooked when she realizes someone is following her home after dark. Once she's safely indoors, she relates this to Jean and Lionel (parent figures with whom she lives -- there's more to it, but I'm cramped for space and you for interest), and Lionel rushes out to the street to investigate. Of course, the street is empty. Lionel's remedy: "I'll put on the kettle."

I love it! Stalker following you home from work? Have a cup of tea!

Now, in case you are wondering, let me be absolutely clear: I am not being facetious. Not only do I love tea, but I am also a firm believer in tea's ability to refresh, calm, and, in general, raise one's spirits. I tend to begin the day with a cup of tea. In the winter, I end it with a cup as well, a nice herbal or rooibos that's perfect for cold winter evenings. I also love the ritual of tea: boiling the water in my electric kettle, measuring out the perfect amount, warming the pot, brewing an exact number of minutes, slicing a lemon or pouring some milk into a small cream pitcher, setting out some sugar cubes, and, finally, pouring tea into one of the pretty china teacups from my collection. Then again, sometimes I use a tea bag and a big mug. It depends on my mood. Sometimes, it depends on the weather. Rain and fog call for a mug.

For me, tea has always alluded to Britain. I grew up reading books (often set in that land of my forbears) where the characters' taking of tea was more than a tradition. For me, it was a common thread running through the fabric of a culture. And it seemed so necessary and immutable; no matter the circumstances at the moment, teatime prevailed. How stable and dependable.

So, when Dh and I honeymooned in Scotland (my first trip abroad), I looked forward to joining in the tradition. We often stopped at hotels for lunch. At different establishments, we dined on gorgeous and tasty small sandwiches or hot soup and crusty bread or shepherd's pie, and we washed it all down with a pot or two of tea. I've now been to England three times (and counting) and have drunk vast amounts of tea while there, to my delight and satisfaction. However, once, in London, I bought a coffee at a fancy (read: pricey) coffee shop. It just wasn't the same.

But I always have to leave England and come back home. (Well, my family does live here, after all.)

Until recently, I could not understand why the tea I prepared at home was not in the least like the tea I enjoyed in Britain. I don't mean my fancy teas; I mean my plain hot tea. Then my grocery started to carry several shelves' worth of British goods, and I brought home a box of PG Tips. Eureka! It was the tea itself! Now my morning cuppa tastes like the tea I grew to love on my trips to the U.K. And that will have to do until I can get back to Britain.