Vanilla Extract

Back in college, a friend gave me a small bottle of homemade vanilla extract. I had other vanilla to use up first, and by the time I finished that, I had received a couple other small bottles as gifts. 

Eventually, I mixed them all together and that's what I've used since. When the vanilla got low, I added more vodka to the jar. I think over the years I did that twice.

Now my vanilla stores are low and topping up the bottle with vodka results in a weak vanilla. Time to make a new bottle. 

G sourced some Madagascar vanilla beans online along with some Minnesota-made vodka. 

It's a pretty easy recipe. Slice eight vanilla beans down the side to increase surface area. Put them in a jar. Pour 8oz of vodka over the top. Rest for six months. 

 That's the hardest part...waiting to use it!

Subbing in Fifth

Another subbing day today. This time in 5th grade, the classroom where I did my long-term subbing a couple years ago. It was nice to be in a familiar classroom with a familiar routine. The kids were pretty chatty no doubt because it's a two-day week and tomorrow is a field trip.

My mother-in-law is home from Arizona for Thanksgiving, so she was able to watch Jaron. She brought him to school over lunch, but he had had so much fun playing all morning, he fell asleep in the car right when they pulled up. I got him out of the car seat anyway, but he was so tired he stayed asleep! He ended up going home without any milk. 

I did some actual teaching today - religion, writing rough drafts for English, a social studies lesson on the fur trade. Best part of the day was starting the book Frindle as a class read aloud. I found out from the other 5th grade teacher that she had planned to use that book in a novel study after Christmas. Wonder if she still will. 🤔

I had another little snafu with the other 5th grade teacher... It was the end of the day and I had just finished teaching her class social studies. We finished a little early, and they asked if they could go out for recess. I knew my class had a PE, but I didn't know what their class was supposed to do. They said that they normally have recess while my class has PE and that Mrs. M would take them out to recess and the other fifth grade teacher would take the other class out. So, I let them go out a little early for recess. I went back to my classroom to get my outdoor gear and let my class know that we were going to have outside recess instead of PE. The other fifth grade teacher looked a little surprised when I said her class was already outside.

Turns out they weren't supposed to go outside. She had a different activity planned for them. They were going to watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and have Charlie Brown Thanksgiving snacks. But since they were all outside she abandoned that idea and just let them have recess. I felt bad about messing up her plans. She said they didn't know that they were missing out on something fun, but I'm sure she was bummed; she clearly loves all things Peanuts. Her classroom theme is Peanuts, and she even has Snoopy themed eyeglass frames.

Risen Savior Subbing

This week on Tuesday was my first day subbing at the school associated with our church. I've been on their sub list for a few years, but this is the first time I was actually called upon to teach. I taught the 5-6th graders for a day. 

Their teacher doesn't know me super well, so he made the day pretty simple. I was a little disappointed there wasn't more teaching to do, but the day went smoothly. Catechism lesson for religion, read-aloud and questions for reading, math test, recess, show a video in 5-6 science (Magic School Bus), work time on final drafts for English, show a video in 7-8 science (Bill Nye). 

I was able to find a bit of time to do extra read-aloud. The book they picked was How They Choked: Failures, Flops, and Flaws of the Awfully Famous by Georgia Bragg. We had time to read one person's story and they picked the man who owned the Titanic, Bruce Ismay. He was a very bad man. Most likely a product of his upbringing, but wow, did he make some bad decisions. It seems like the whole Titanic disaster could've been avoided. Look him up for more of the story.

G brought Jaron to school over lunch to nurse. 

All the students were well-behaved, even the 7-8th graders. I had a little time with them for read-aloud too. We did a handful of super quick mystery stories, similar to Encyclopedia Brown but simpler.

Because the day had a lot of student work time, I had time to do some reading of my own. I've been reading Grow Wild: The Whole-Child, Whole-Family, Nature-Rich Guide to Moving More by Katy Bowman. Good takeaways! Her big thing is stacking activities to build healthy habits into your life. For example, you need to grocery shop, so to add more movement, park far away to add steps. Then carry your items in a basket instead of a cart so you use your arm muscles more. Granted this doesn't work all the time, but you get the idea. 

Or, you want to go on a family hike and you want to eat dessert. Go for a walk in an area with berries along the trail and gather as you go. 

My favorite chapter so far is the chapter about clothing and movement. Our clothes are containers holding us. You will move more if the container isn't restrictive. Pay attention to the movements your kids do or don't do; perhaps their clothing is keeping them from playing to the full extent. She gave some tips about buying barefoot shoes for kids when their feet grow so fast (barefoot shoes tend to be expensive) and gave suggestions on weather-proof clothing. Like I said, I took a lot of notes!

Fire Cider

Ever heard of fire cider? It's an herbal remedy for basically any illness. Lots of ingredients! It seems worth it.

Since there's a lot of room for variation in the recipe, I made notes about how I made this match, in case I want to replicate it later or want to adjust the flavor.

I was surprised it only made one quart. I definitely will be making another batch this year! I'd like to buy all fresh ingredients and see how that compares to this container that uses some dried herbs, etc. 

Shake every day, ready in a few weeks!

Apple Cider Vinegar Ready

The apple cider vinegar sat for a month, now it's ready to test!  

Check out the mother growth on the fresh/frozen batch! 

The post-sauce apple cider vinegar had much less mother growth. Guess from now on I'll use just fresh or frozen apple scraps. 

They say it's ready when it's between 2 to 3 pH. G has some pH test strips from his kombucha making days, so it was very easy. Mine is right at 3. The big jar is more like a 3.5, so I'll let that sit longer.

The post-sauce ACV had a unique flavor, a little sweeter than the rest. The fresh/frozen had more of an alcoholic tone. The bigger jar of fresh/frozen seemed watery compared to the others, definitely didn't have as much flavor, probably because it's not quite ready yet. 

I'll leave some of them to sit a while longer, and turn others into fire cider!

Craft Day- Advent Calendar

The Heintz ladies had another craft day and I had the perfect project... Repainting this Advent calendar in colors that match my color palette better. 

It took the whole day and lots of paint mixing, but I finished! 

This little guy played with cousins and aunties and Gram so I could get it done. 

He was so tired, by supper he could hardly keep his head up while he ate!

 

The Great Heintz Baking Show

My dad requested that we do some baking together after supper one weekend. He needed to provide treats for bible study the next day. "Lemon bars and something with coconut" were his requests. I have a delicious lemon bar recipe, so that was a no brainer. A quick scan of my Pinterest dessert board came up with copycat girl scout samoas. 

Originally, the lemon bar recipe made an 8x8 pan. When I wrote it in my cookbook, I doubled the recipe and made it in a 9x13 pan. 

It had been a while since I made lemon bars, so when Dad and I were making them, the 8x8 pan size was stuck in my head and that's what we used. I should have known something was wrong when we had extra crust. But I chalked that up to Mom's 8x8 being small (I measured it). 

Then we poured the liquid in... It came all the way to the top of the pan. And that's when I realized my mistake. We had just put the pan into the oven and I was checking the recipe to see how long it needed to bake when I noticed the 9x13 size. I thought about pulling it out of the oven and trying to separate it, but in the end we went with doing an experiment.

Being that the liquid was so deep, it took a lot longer to bake than the recipe said. Also, the top part ended up cooking cooking and there was a layer of harder egg stuff on the top. I hoped that hanging out in the fridge overnight would cause it to go gooey like typical lemon bars. 

In the morning, the thicker layer was still there. I used a knife to peel it off and the lemon bars were salvageable underneath. Mom enjoyed eating the top part, so that didn't go to waste. 😅 The bars were a little messy and sticky, but tasted fine. 

Our second recipe was for copycat samoas. Holy cow, very putzy! Toast the coconut, chill the cookie base, bake the cookies, cool completely, melt caramel, mix the coconut in, spread on cookies individually, dip bases of cookies in melted chocolate and drizzle more on top. We made modifications to make it less work....

First, no cutting a second hole in the middle. That made them more like disks and less samoa shaped, but easier. 

After cutting out two pans worth, we opted to put the rest of the dough in a pan to make bars. That saved us a lot of time. 

We weren't going to dip the bases in chocolate, but we had so much I dipped one tray. Except the chocolate was so thick I had to spread it. 

So we had some cookies with chocolate just on top, some with it on top and bottom, and bars. As you can see, we're not going to win any awards for neatness and appearance. 😂

In the end, they tasted pretty good and they were all gone post-potluck. And even though as we made them Dad and I said we wouldn't make them again, as we sampled we discussed what we'd do differently next time: Definitely could make the cookies just on their own. Better with chocolate on the bottom and top. More coconut. Different caramel (maybe homemade?). The bar idea was good.

So there you go! If you've ever thought about making your own girl scout samoas, does our story make you excited to try or convince you to skip it? 😉