The Garden School Tattler

What a great day - a real day day. The little kids were not overwhelmed by the demands of the older children looking continuously for something to do. Interesting they rarely find something real to do. But they can find some real annoying stuff to do at the expense of everyone else.

Sounds like we don't like the big kids - we do - but mixing certain ages is just very difficult. What I imagine for the big kids is someone like Tom who can take five of them and work with them all summer taking them places, teaching them to do things and to think in alternate ways. You can't do that with a lot of little kids hanging around.

At the same time, you can't teach little kids to think as little kids do when you have big kids filling in your deliberate word gaps and contradicting most of what you say. It's a different patois and trying to balance the two is purgatory stuff.

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The food program inspection has brought a lot of things to light. I've been cooking for children for 35 years. My first and foremost thought in meal planning and serving is that food is an investment in the health of a person. Building bodies goes beyond birth; it's a daily activity.

At the same time, food is a natural enjoyment. It's often festive, fun, engaging and satisfying, so dressing up to cook with a stainless steel helmet and fire gloves, boots and long handled tongs is not my idea of cooking. I'm not a plastic and chemical person; I'm a last minute let's have this because it's fun cook. I'm a try this; I promise you'll love it.

Planning menus today for next week leaves me cold. Who knows what will be fun or available next week? If pomegranates come on the market at 10 cents a dozen, and I have canned rhubarb and spinach loaf on the menu, it would be a sad thing to have to pass by the delicious for the disgusting. So...I compromised-- sort of. I wrote out a general menu which you will find at the front of school from now on. Suggestions are extremely welcomed -- use a post a note.

What I am trying to do - or what I am doing which Edith would call trying - is to pack each week with all the foods kids should get. Mondays are ground beef days; Tuesdays are pork days; Wednesdays are egg and cheese + days; Thursdays are chicken days; Fridays are fish or pizza days. Last week we had a whole baked salmon. This week it's homemade cheese pizza. The fruits and vegetables I will fill in as we use them or come by them. It makes sense to me. Bread is easy and is often an experiment anyway.

Today we had summer sausage and quiche or egg and cheese pie, and fresh fruit and fresh garden vegetables and homemade muffins and milk. Tomorrow is baked chicken, rice, corn, melon, bread and butter of some kind - maybe bread sticks with cheese dip, and milk.

This planning will allow me to buy a little of everything and make different things as the desire and the interest and the curiosity flies. The question with cooking is always - can it be done, and secondly would anyone eat that? MMMM.

Tonight I am making sundaes with my usual axle grease chocolate sauce, and I'm trying some raspberry jelly boiled into it. Axel grease is something I make for the kids - it's one part butter to one part sugar to one part cocoa to one part milk. Stir and boil three minutes to make sure sugar has de-crystallized. The end product is a thick heavy chocolate fudge stuff that's hardy and gives a real boost to plain ice cream.

The problem with the new rules is that we HAVE to serve the children even if they don't want it. So we are serving several things so that each child can choose two edible veggie and fruit components. It's a compromise as well. My question is: if one child likes one thing and another likes something else, is there a "rule" on the books which would prevent very sly children from swapping? I would of course turn a blind eye.

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The PC party today went very well. We are always so grateful to our parents for their help and generosity.

Classes went quite well today. We are learning two new songs in music and a bunch of new things in Spanish Class. Kelly is so good.