Switzerland: Post 2

This last week was "Cheese Week" at our home school. I couldn't really find any good books about cheese for little kids, although I did find an interesting book called, "And that's how you make cheese." And I read it and learned all about it. The key, apparently, is cleanliness and sterile utensils, which interpreted, means I'm probably never going to be really good at making my own cheese (although after we get a goat in maybe 10 years, I would like to try.)

We chose to make Queso Blanca which is what the stores sell as Monterey Jack. However, homemade it is more bland, a little sweet, and less rubbery, so said the book.  Ours turned out quite differently.

First you heat up a gallon of whole milk to 180 degrees F and let it stay at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Then you add a 1/4 cup of cider vinegar and stir the milk until the curds separate from the whey.

You take all your curds and let them drain for four hours in high quality cheese cloth. (If you don't want to waste all that whey, use it immediately to make Ricotta cheese - we didn't do this, though, because it required bacteria cultures with long names that I didn't want to go out and buy.)

Then you have your cheese! Ours was so bland. It just tasted like milk. I'm pretty sure the author forgot to mention you are supposed to add salt at some point in the recipe. So I added Swiss Alpine Spices to about a half cup and it was so delicious!  So delicious in fact, that for dinner that night we had home made whole wheat toast with home made Swiss Alpine herb cheese and home grown garden fresh tomatoes on top. I was feeling very domestic and self-sufficient!

For breakfast the next morning I used the non-salted cheese and mixed cinnamon and sugar in it for a kind of sweet cheese spread and we ate it on sliced bread. It was really good.

Also that day we had cheese fondue for lunch. Did you know cheese fondue is a Swiss invention? Ours turned out, well, gross. At least I didn't like it. But the kids thought it was the best thing they'd ever had! So it was still a great success.

Our big field trip was to the Heber Valley Cheese Co. in Midway, Utah. The weather joined in on the fun and delivered a typical Swiss day experience - rain. Lots of rain. The store is kind of small and they only had a few samples out - but we tasted the various cheeses displayed and looked through their window into the room where they actually make all their cheeses. We bough three different flavors - which I forgot up in Midway at my in-laws so we will have to have our cheese taste test this weekend when we are up again. Oh well. Spread out the fun, I guess.

After the cheese co. we went to my out of town in-laws to take care of the indoor plants (the outdoor plants were getting thoroughly watered already) and just play around a bit until the weather let up. While there, I felt like I was on a Swiss scavenger hunt! Look at all the Swiss stuff I found! And this isn't even the beginning of it.

And then before driving home, we drove around Midway to take some photos of the Swiss architecture. I had promised Joshua for a long time that we would do this, and I had originally hoped to go by foot, but the Swiss weather didn't permit. It may have been better this way. I took photos on my camera through my car window and Joshua took photos with my old camera through his car window. Here are some of my favorites.

The other days this week we worked on our lapbooks and put them all together. We also wrote a letter to some Swiss relatives that I really should get in the mail soon. But I will wait to post on the lapbooks for a while still until they are completely done.

This week has been geography and Globi! I will explain later.

Water, water, everywhere

The other day it rained... a lot. But after an hour it was all dry again. Good thing we went outside to play in the puddles when we did.

And now I can say I have been to all four splash pads within 30 minutes of my house. This one is at the Riverwoods Mall. It was an impromptu splash pad encounter.

There are Derek and Kaleb in the background - coming back from the local raw honey booth - $5 a lb, that is a total rip off. We get ours for $2 a lb (in bulk, though)

Yep, that's my kid. gross.

There he goes again.

Switzerland: Post 1

We started our Swiss Unit on August 1st, which is Swiss National Day (and mine and Derek's 7th wedding anniversary, by the way).  We flew the Swiss flag on our flag pole and baked some Zopf (Swiss braided bread).  It could have turned out better, but we ate it anyway. Next time instead of two huge loaves I will make 4 or 6 small loaves.

We also made some more little Swiss flags to hang up on our playroom window.

And we made a Swiss Onion Pie. It was ok. I had to use almond milk and almond flour in it to accommodate food sensitivities so it didn't turn out exactly how I would have liked (plus I couldn't put a crust on it, but it was still pretty good.

We did a ton in our Switzerland lapbooks and read a bunch a couple of books about Switzerland, but I don't want to show the lapbooks until they are completely finished, so this post will just make it look like we hadn't done so much. We read a fascinating book about St. Bernards. It's always so weird. The book I think is going to be really boring and the one I think doesn't really apply to our unit but I check it out from the library anyway, is generally one of my favorite books! St. Bernards are so awesome! If we ever get a dog, I am getting one of those! Nobody knows when they first really appeared in Switzerland, but they are definitely a Swiss dog. They were trained by the farmers to work on the farms, but a couple hundred years ago a monk took some dogs up with him to the Bernese Pass - a mountain pass from Italy to Switzerland. The monks lived up there in the monastery so that when travelers got lost in the blizzards they would be able to help find them and restore them back to health and send them on their way - saving many lives. The St. Bernards are natural life savers. The monks began breeding them and the dogs were so good at saving people, the monks didn't even have to go out to look for people. They would just send a group of dogs out, the dogs would find the travelers, if the travelers were unconscious, the dogs would lick their faces until they woke up, then one or two dogs would lie down next to the nearly frozen traveler to warm him up while the other dogs would run back to the monastery and get the monks. Sometimes you see images of St. Bernards carrying little hot chocolate barrels around their necks. The book didn't really mention those, but Derek said that is what they were for - the hot chocolate barrels were for stranded travelers. There are more recent stories of St. Bernards saving lives - one newly adopted St. Bernard was home when his owner's house exploded (I know, weird, the book didn't explain how the house exploded) and while the house was on flames the dog ran inside and brought out the first little girl, then ran back for the second little girl, and then ran a third time into the house to save the pet Chihuahua! Honestly. These dogs are like people. How can a dog think of something like that? Somehow they appreciate life and have a natural instinct to protect life. Anyway, I want one. They are so good with children that they are often called Nanny dogs (think of Nana in Peter Pan. Didn't you always think it weird that the parents just left their three kids home alone at night with only a dog to watch over them? Well, Nana was a St. Bernard, so I guess it was ok. We had to get out our Peter Pan book to make sure.)

Another book we read is called "The Apple and the Arrow" about Wilhelm Tell. It was kind of over the kids' heads but they really enjoyed it and wanted me to read it again. It is about the famous defiance of Wilhelm Tell and how he was challenged by the evil Gessler to shoot an apple off of his son's head with his crossbow (it wasn't much of a challenge since Gessler said if Tell didn't shoot the apple, Gessler would kill him). Anyway, Tell was successful and shortly thereafter the first three cantons of Switzerland joined together to revolt against the king of Austria for their freedom. Later the other cantons joined them and today we have Switzerland. There are other things I would have liked to do with this story - such as listen to the Wilhelm Tell Overture and some bow and arrow practice in the backyard, but we just didn't get that far. Maybe if I have time at the end of the unit...

We made Schenkeli. They are kind of like cake donuts but flavored with lemon rind. They are really easy to make, although I think ours were a little too thick. Next time we will make them thinner and sprinkle powdered sugar over them.

"schenkeli" means, roughly translated, leg or thigh. Derek thought they looked like, ahem, something else.

And this last week (it was a short week because my friend and I ended up spending two days canning pears) we had our Swiss chocolate week. We learned about the Swiss chocolatiers and learned where chocolate comes from and how it is made. We also had a chocolate taste test. I wanted to show the kids that not all chocolate is created equal and you can change the flavor of the chocolate by adding different things. Had I been more prepared, I would have also had an extra dark chocolate bar to sample, some baking cocoa, and perhaps a chocolate bar with chili's in it, or other fun ingredients (my favorite is with sea salt and toffee chips!) The chocolate taste test was a great success.

We represented dark, milk, white, Swiss, French/Swiss, American, and Utah chocolate

The results are in! Abigail likes white chocolate the best - 7 stars out of 5, in fact.

Lukas wanted me to take a picture of his chocolate taste test results, too.

And to help the kids remember the chocolate making process, we made books about it. From cacao tree to chocolate Easter bunnies. These books are so cool because there is a secret panel you have to discover to find the last page of the book. These are what Joshua and Abigail's books look like. We did sort of skip one step in the chocolate making process (the grinding of the nibs) but oh well. Also, just FYI, did you know milk chocolate and white chocolate are Swiss inventions. AND white chocolate has absolutely no cocoa in it. It is made purely of the expressed cocoa butter, sugar, and milk. (somehow I already knew that.) And it is my favorite, too.

I love how Joshua spells "Chugr"

It is really hard to tell from this photo because it actually takes two hands to reveal the secret panel, but you pull apart at the middle of the book, sort of where you see me opening it up and then right above my hand as well, you pry the page open and pull in opposite directions and the panel just pops right up. It is really cool.

Lots of chocolate chips :)

Next week is Swiss cheese week! And we are taking the first of our two Swiss field trips! (Both are to Midway, Utah, but they are for different things so it will be lots of fun.)  We are having so much fun with home school! I love it. We are still doing our math and writing and reading every day, and after the Swiss unit we will plug right into our regular course work for the regular school year,  and that will be a lot of fun too, but this summer has been especially fun and it is kind of sad to see it go. But I am looking forward to this upcoming school year. Abigail is in a neighborhood pre-school co-op so that will be fun. I've stopped teaching her how to read because I think she isn't quite ready for it, so we will still work on all the letters and numbers during the pre-school year and then start up reading lessons again next summer. And Joshua will be starting piano next month. Abigail and Lukas were going to a music class this summer and another session is starting up sometime this fall so I am excited for that too! Lukas loves music class and Abigail was the star of the class. She has got a natural musical talent which is fun to see. So all in all, things are going well and we are excited for the future.

PS. And Kaleb is still cute and he still loves to eat - especially solid foods.