I just read an article in Modern Dog magazine about how there are groups of therapy dogs who help children learn about bullying. In general, the dog and handler will spend an hour a day for a week in a class, where the handler will teach the children about how to be a good pet owner. They use this opportunity to teach the children any number of interesting concepts. In this case, mostly concepts about bullying. How to recognize it, how bullies often start by being mean to pets or other animals, how bullies behave and how bullying can be stopped. It is easy and natural for a child to feel empathy & become protective of an animal, some will recognize that they have been bullies, others recognize that they have been bullied. And others have watched bullying and not known what to do. This program helps them learn how to intervene, and to choose to intervene in the first place.
Apparently, the program can work miracles. I believe it.
I have used dogs to teach another issue... about our internal energies, and our food needs, and our socialization and our need for discipline and to know our place in life.
Dogs need to be fed healthy food. They will eat what you give them, and if you give them junk, you will end up with an unhealthy dog.
Dogs need a certain amount of exercise. Inertia is not natural. We train ourselves and dogs to learn to sit quietly, but naturally, both people and dogs have a certain amount of energy that they want to work out. Learning to self-regulate behavior without taking the opportunity to work off this natural energy, is counterproductive. We end up feeling stressed, distracted, and even physically uncomfortable. We self-medicate with foods that cause sluggishness, and we wonder why our society has started being more pudgy than healthy.
If we do not give our dogs enough opportunity to work off their energy, we end up with a chewy, yippy dog. The same happens with children... oh, you're right, they probably won't chew up your shoes if you don't take them for a morning walk, but ... just try this experiment. For one week after school, bring them home, sit them down, make them do their homework immediately and don't let them bounce around. You'll see distracted, frustrated children whose adrenaline is not being worked off... the next week, bring them home from school and have them do 45 minutes of physical activity, then give them 15 minutes to calm down, before they sit down and do their homework... I'll BET you see less of the chewy-puppy-like behavior and a lot more calmness.
But start also looking at the other aspects of responsible dog ownership and you'll see more similarities. Dogs need to be properly socialized. So do humans. Dogs need to have consistent, easy-to understand rules with many reminders... so do young humans. Dogs respond better to positive behavior controls rather than physical punishment... don't be surprised to hear that humans ALSO respond better to positive behavior controls.
My dog knows that treats come to good puppies, and pups who jump up on visitors do not get treats. Pups only get treats if they sit properly and politely. (oh yeah, and treats for her are less about food and more about praise, attention, or the opportunity to play fetch).
And children in my house know that if they want to watch TV or use any electronic device, they need to finish their homework first. If they want to fuss & delay over the homework, the ability to watch TV or play video games will be delayed until they have finished their work first.
It's not a perfect system, but it's amazingly effective, and all done without anyone ever having to worry about time out, or spanking, or yelling... Like I said, it's not perfect. I've had a dog bark at me because I'm not throwing the Frisbee fast enough... or a child yell because she really does not feel like doing her homework right now... but there is always a choice. I'll throw the Frisbee after you stop barking, we'll turn on the TV once the homework is finished... you can keep barking or yelling or delaying as long as you want. I'm fine with that. When you're ready, we can get on with the fun.
Of course, if the dog is too full of barking or the child is too full of bouncing, maybe I've not given them enough activity, and so if I want to encourage them to succeed, I need to re-think my organization. Make sure they've worked off their friskies before I expect them to be able to sit quietly... it's not rocket science.
Showing posts with label projects with kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label projects with kids. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Single serving, oatmeal-free apple crisp
We are foster parents. The house can go from 2 adults to 2 adults & 2 kids before you can say "boo", and with new children in the house, you don't know if they go bananas when they eat sweets or not, so this fruit-based dessert is perfect, and the recipe can be altered to suit how many people are coming to dinner. The kids can help make it and they love that... plus they love how easy it is to make a fancy dessert. And every ingredient is a staple in our house. We've ALWAYS got apples in the fruit bowl, butter in the freezer, brown sugar & flour in the pantry, and cinnamon in the spice cabinet. It's a no-brainer... a modification of my Grandma Lindquist's recipe.
About one apple for 2 people (Granny Smith apples are GREAT for this). For one apple, get 2 ramekins... About 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter. About 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of flour. Cinnamon. A pinch of salt.
Your choice, pecans, Walnuts, raisins, craisins.
Peel, core & slice the apple. Put the apples in individual ramekins. sprinkle cinnamon on them & toss. If you're using raising, walnuts, craisins or pecans, put about a tablespoonful in each ramekin. Mash the rest of the ingredients together with a fork, add more cinnamon (we LOVE spice in this household), divide & crumble over each of the two ramekins.
Cook at 350 degrees for a half hour.
About one apple for 2 people (Granny Smith apples are GREAT for this). For one apple, get 2 ramekins... About 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter. About 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of flour. Cinnamon. A pinch of salt.
Your choice, pecans, Walnuts, raisins, craisins.
Peel, core & slice the apple. Put the apples in individual ramekins. sprinkle cinnamon on them & toss. If you're using raising, walnuts, craisins or pecans, put about a tablespoonful in each ramekin. Mash the rest of the ingredients together with a fork, add more cinnamon (we LOVE spice in this household), divide & crumble over each of the two ramekins.
Cook at 350 degrees for a half hour.
Notice that the one on the right looks different from the one on the left. I just made these for Wayne & myself. This recipe allows you to personalize each one. He likes more pecans and less topping, I like more topping. YUM!
Monday, June 10, 2013
my first art quilt: The secret heart of my niece
OK, it's time to start posting about my projects. The most recently finished was one for my niece. She's a recent immigrant from Thailand. And at age 16, having been taken from her friends and brought to this country where she's not so comfortable with the language, she's not too happy. She's homesick, and she wants her freedom.
She is also an artist, which at age 16, means to her that she feels deep, artistic thoughts. She feels very dark, and feels like she has to keep her feelings inside. She goes to school and smiles, but there are things she's not too happy about. Sometimes, she just wants to hide, or have everything go back to the way it was. But it can't be, so she just feels... sad.
And she's also got everything else about being a mid-year teen going on. So it's tough.
I wanted to do something for her to help her understand how to open herself up to this experience, how it could end up being a great thing for her if she lets it be... so I thought of this quilt I once saw... it was an artistic quilt, where flaps had been sliced into the quilt so that it flapped outside of the frame. It was pretty cool, and it would work for what I wanted.
I asked her for her favorite colors... the answer: Grey, blue, orange... those colors work REALLY well for what I wanted to do.
I asked my brother to please spell some words for me in Thai characters: Niece, Pretty, Smart, Artistic, and Loving. He sent them to me in a word document, so I was able to enlarge them to see them pretty well.
I essentially made 6 quilts. Five of them have progressively smaller windows/flaps. The top quilt, when all the windows are closed, is dark gray. The bottom quilt, when all the windows are open, is bright orange. In the middle, are various shades of blue. darker as they get closer to the orange, so it would pop out.
The orange window opened to a heart quilted into the fabric. I followed the line around and allowed it to get progressively less heart-like, until by the time it hit the uppermost quilt, it was just an oval over the top of it.
Each window... when closed, at the bottom of the window, has a word... the top quilt's word is "niece". The more important words come as you start opening up the layers. You can barely read it, because it's my nieces "SECRET" heart, not her OPEN heart, you know? It's our secret, that we know it's there (shhhh, only those who are in the know, know). On the inside of the window, only legible when you open it up, is the quilted word, the English translation of the Thai word on the outside of that same window. These are printed at the bottom of the window so that when all the flaps are open, you can see all of the English words, one on top of the other. And when you finally open all of the windows for my niece, you see her beautiful, bright heart.
It's made to hang, and it's made to generally keep the windows open all the time...
Two days before I was scheduled to drive to see her and I was going to bring this to her, she was frustrated about something and posted on her facebook page, "I never SAID I was PERFECT!!!" Perfect, 16 year old frustration, right? Well, this was perfect for me, because this little quilt was my first on this style, and it's WAY not perfect. The words were tough to write, my first attempt at that, and the laywers were each made with a single piece of cloth as the topper... with the window made as a buttonhole stitch through that quilt, and then opened up just the way a buttonhole would open. I didn't want to bind those edges, I wanted them to fall easily rather than stiffly, and I did not want a contrast in the closed window. I wanted the most minimal line to indicate it opening, and a buttonhole stitch seemed the best way. But buttonholes have little threads that you don't see when it's on the button. the edging doesn't necessarily make a clean cut. And my measurements were WAY from perfect... I made some adjustments to the size of the windows as I went along, so that the lowest window, the heart, would be big enough. And adjusting the holes as I went meant the slivers of fabric you'd see of each later (other than the window) would be not as uniform as they could have been. This whole quilt is a little wonky.
It's not perfect. But, as I answered to my niece on the night that she posted that frustrated cry... "sometimes the most beautiful things are not perfect. it's the imperfections that make them beautiful."
Thank God for that, right?
She is also an artist, which at age 16, means to her that she feels deep, artistic thoughts. She feels very dark, and feels like she has to keep her feelings inside. She goes to school and smiles, but there are things she's not too happy about. Sometimes, she just wants to hide, or have everything go back to the way it was. But it can't be, so she just feels... sad.
And she's also got everything else about being a mid-year teen going on. So it's tough.
I wanted to do something for her to help her understand how to open herself up to this experience, how it could end up being a great thing for her if she lets it be... so I thought of this quilt I once saw... it was an artistic quilt, where flaps had been sliced into the quilt so that it flapped outside of the frame. It was pretty cool, and it would work for what I wanted.
I asked her for her favorite colors... the answer: Grey, blue, orange... those colors work REALLY well for what I wanted to do.
I asked my brother to please spell some words for me in Thai characters: Niece, Pretty, Smart, Artistic, and Loving. He sent them to me in a word document, so I was able to enlarge them to see them pretty well.
I essentially made 6 quilts. Five of them have progressively smaller windows/flaps. The top quilt, when all the windows are closed, is dark gray. The bottom quilt, when all the windows are open, is bright orange. In the middle, are various shades of blue. darker as they get closer to the orange, so it would pop out.
The orange window opened to a heart quilted into the fabric. I followed the line around and allowed it to get progressively less heart-like, until by the time it hit the uppermost quilt, it was just an oval over the top of it.
Each window... when closed, at the bottom of the window, has a word... the top quilt's word is "niece". The more important words come as you start opening up the layers. You can barely read it, because it's my nieces "SECRET" heart, not her OPEN heart, you know? It's our secret, that we know it's there (shhhh, only those who are in the know, know). On the inside of the window, only legible when you open it up, is the quilted word, the English translation of the Thai word on the outside of that same window. These are printed at the bottom of the window so that when all the flaps are open, you can see all of the English words, one on top of the other. And when you finally open all of the windows for my niece, you see her beautiful, bright heart.
It's made to hang, and it's made to generally keep the windows open all the time...
Two days before I was scheduled to drive to see her and I was going to bring this to her, she was frustrated about something and posted on her facebook page, "I never SAID I was PERFECT!!!" Perfect, 16 year old frustration, right? Well, this was perfect for me, because this little quilt was my first on this style, and it's WAY not perfect. The words were tough to write, my first attempt at that, and the laywers were each made with a single piece of cloth as the topper... with the window made as a buttonhole stitch through that quilt, and then opened up just the way a buttonhole would open. I didn't want to bind those edges, I wanted them to fall easily rather than stiffly, and I did not want a contrast in the closed window. I wanted the most minimal line to indicate it opening, and a buttonhole stitch seemed the best way. But buttonholes have little threads that you don't see when it's on the button. the edging doesn't necessarily make a clean cut. And my measurements were WAY from perfect... I made some adjustments to the size of the windows as I went along, so that the lowest window, the heart, would be big enough. And adjusting the holes as I went meant the slivers of fabric you'd see of each later (other than the window) would be not as uniform as they could have been. This whole quilt is a little wonky.
It's not perfect. But, as I answered to my niece on the night that she posted that frustrated cry... "sometimes the most beautiful things are not perfect. it's the imperfections that make them beautiful."
Thank God for that, right?
Thursday, March 14, 2013
lip gloss
A few months ago I saw a Pinterest on lip gloss. I looked it up and saw that several people have used the same recipe. Problem is, the recipe as written, results in gritty lip gloss. More appropriate for a lip scrub. And while lip scrub of that sort is wonderful to help reduce dry flakes, it is not the type of gloss that you'd love to wear and would feel... well... KISS-able.
The basic recipe is to take drink mix like crystal lite or Koolaid, and stir it into petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline). One of the recipes announced that you just have to stir it longer, but I tried it, and it does not work.
One of my biggest complaints about recipes in some networks (and on some internet sources, and in some books) have not been tested. I had wondered about this for years, and then I saw "Julie, Julia", where they mentioned that a specific cookbook of Julia Child's era had not been tested. The recipes were made up by what sounded good, but without regard to the chemistry of the process. For example, there may have been no explanation that the reason pasta water needs salt is that this is the only opportunity to season the pasta from the inside, where it needs it. And when you boil the pasta in salt and it gives off its gluten, it makes a liquid that is perfect for the task of giving sauces the proper texture. Save some of the pasta water and you've got the perfect additive to cheese to form the perfect alfredo, for example.
Watching that movie made me realize that the problem with many of the ideas out there that people have, for food as well as home improvement projects, as well as smaller craft projects such as I am describing here, is that they were created without regard to whether or not they really work.
Which is why I found myself wondering whether I could figure out how to mix a watery drink mix with the crystals dissolved, into a hard oil like Vaseline. I decided to try it out. I took some drink mix, put just enough water in to dissolve the crystals. But it was clearly not going to mix up properly. It didn't work. So I left it on the counter, overnight, rather than washing out the little dish. I was thinking on it.
Miraculously, the next day, the water had mostly evaporated, leaving a sticky, nasty mess in the little dish. A mess that would have been a pain to wash... like syrup, not like a drink. BUT... WAIT... it's no longer watery. Maybe...
I tried mixing in a little Vaseline. Wow. Magic. LIP GLOSS. No crystals, no strange problems with water refusing to mix with oil...
So, here's the formula. Get a small dish, put drink crystals in it that are colored in the palette you choose (pink lemonade may yield pink... pomegranate may yield darker rose, cherry will be red, etc.) Put a few drops of water in until it's all dissolved, and then let it wait. Once the mixture is sticky and no longer watery, mix it with Vaseline. Then fill a lip gloss pot (available at craft stores, or in kits for air travel liquid containers), and enjoy. The flavor is more enjoyable than most lip glosses, so be careful, you will be tempted to re-apply more frequently through the day.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil instead of Vaseline. The difference is that coconut oil is an opaque white color when room temperature, more the texture of a lipstick, and may hold the color better. It will be less like gloss and more like lipstick. IF this works.
Stay tuned, I'll let you know the results of that experiment when I do it. But first, I need to finish using my wonderful new lip gloss!
Oh, and P.S. This is a great project to do with your teen girls. It tastes great, and supplies just a tiny bit of color to the lips, just like the glosses that are made for tweens, but much, MUCH less expensive and much more fun!
The basic recipe is to take drink mix like crystal lite or Koolaid, and stir it into petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline). One of the recipes announced that you just have to stir it longer, but I tried it, and it does not work.
One of my biggest complaints about recipes in some networks (and on some internet sources, and in some books) have not been tested. I had wondered about this for years, and then I saw "Julie, Julia", where they mentioned that a specific cookbook of Julia Child's era had not been tested. The recipes were made up by what sounded good, but without regard to the chemistry of the process. For example, there may have been no explanation that the reason pasta water needs salt is that this is the only opportunity to season the pasta from the inside, where it needs it. And when you boil the pasta in salt and it gives off its gluten, it makes a liquid that is perfect for the task of giving sauces the proper texture. Save some of the pasta water and you've got the perfect additive to cheese to form the perfect alfredo, for example.
Watching that movie made me realize that the problem with many of the ideas out there that people have, for food as well as home improvement projects, as well as smaller craft projects such as I am describing here, is that they were created without regard to whether or not they really work.
Which is why I found myself wondering whether I could figure out how to mix a watery drink mix with the crystals dissolved, into a hard oil like Vaseline. I decided to try it out. I took some drink mix, put just enough water in to dissolve the crystals. But it was clearly not going to mix up properly. It didn't work. So I left it on the counter, overnight, rather than washing out the little dish. I was thinking on it.
Miraculously, the next day, the water had mostly evaporated, leaving a sticky, nasty mess in the little dish. A mess that would have been a pain to wash... like syrup, not like a drink. BUT... WAIT... it's no longer watery. Maybe...
I tried mixing in a little Vaseline. Wow. Magic. LIP GLOSS. No crystals, no strange problems with water refusing to mix with oil...
So, here's the formula. Get a small dish, put drink crystals in it that are colored in the palette you choose (pink lemonade may yield pink... pomegranate may yield darker rose, cherry will be red, etc.) Put a few drops of water in until it's all dissolved, and then let it wait. Once the mixture is sticky and no longer watery, mix it with Vaseline. Then fill a lip gloss pot (available at craft stores, or in kits for air travel liquid containers), and enjoy. The flavor is more enjoyable than most lip glosses, so be careful, you will be tempted to re-apply more frequently through the day.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil instead of Vaseline. The difference is that coconut oil is an opaque white color when room temperature, more the texture of a lipstick, and may hold the color better. It will be less like gloss and more like lipstick. IF this works.
Stay tuned, I'll let you know the results of that experiment when I do it. But first, I need to finish using my wonderful new lip gloss!
Oh, and P.S. This is a great project to do with your teen girls. It tastes great, and supplies just a tiny bit of color to the lips, just like the glosses that are made for tweens, but much, MUCH less expensive and much more fun!
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
homemade lip gloss and lip scrub
In an effort to cut costs, going with cheap make-up is one option. But sometimes the cheap stuff has odd ingredients, changes color, aggravates allergies, etc. And of course, for a girly girl who likes to play with make-up, it's not as much FUN. Flavored lipsticks are less intense if they're the cheap variety, and then there's the whole feeling of "I'm cheapening up on myself", which never feels good.
But what MIGHT feel good is knowing you've got a homemade, (green), healthy, CUSTOM-mixed option.
In the past, I have made my own custom face masques, hair rinses, hair conditioners, and cheek blushers. Those, I will offer later. Today, I present my homemade lip gloss and scrub. All over the internet, I found recipes for a lip gloss. The result was ALWAYS gritty. Some of the recipes even admitted that they were gritty. One offered a remedy to smooth it out... "stir longer". I tried. That does not work.
You see, the recipe generally goes like this. You take petroleum oil such as Vaseline, add a drink powder such as Crystal Light or KoolAid, and voila... lip gloss.
When I made it, it was a lip scrub, and no amount of stirring will fix that. It's as though the people who made up the recipe and passed it around did not bother to test it out, or maybe they were willing to settle for less than the best they could do. I had to take it a step further.
Here's the fix for getting rid of the grit in homemade lip gloss: The night before, put your powder in a small dish. Drop just enough water into it to dissolve the grit. The result should be a little too liquid to even envision mixing with Vaseline. So let it sit overnight. The next morning, you'll find the stuff in the dish has turned gummy. PERFECT. NOW put in a little Vaseline and mix it up. You'll find no need to stir & stir & stir... the granules are already dissolved, the grit is gone, and as long as it has not crystallized again, it will now mix up perfectly.
The taste is yummy. The tint is very faint. Perfect for younger women who might crave the chance to use make up but who you might be a little worried about them taking that step just yet. And, if you use more drink mix powder, you get a stronger color. Less is a fainter color. AND, of course, if your lips are cracked or chapped, and need a little treatment... skip the step where you dissolve the granules.
Clean lip gloss pots can be bought in packs with travel-sized containers, or you can take an old one of your own and clean it out REALLY well. There is nothing more fun than using a lip gloss that you made on your own.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil. At room temperature, coconut oil is hard, more like lipstick, and white... so maybe it will leave more color on the lips when used? Or less? I know it has nutrients that are good for the skin and lips, so it's worth the try. I'll write another post when I do that. Stay tuned.
But what MIGHT feel good is knowing you've got a homemade, (green), healthy, CUSTOM-mixed option.
In the past, I have made my own custom face masques, hair rinses, hair conditioners, and cheek blushers. Those, I will offer later. Today, I present my homemade lip gloss and scrub. All over the internet, I found recipes for a lip gloss. The result was ALWAYS gritty. Some of the recipes even admitted that they were gritty. One offered a remedy to smooth it out... "stir longer". I tried. That does not work.
You see, the recipe generally goes like this. You take petroleum oil such as Vaseline, add a drink powder such as Crystal Light or KoolAid, and voila... lip gloss.
When I made it, it was a lip scrub, and no amount of stirring will fix that. It's as though the people who made up the recipe and passed it around did not bother to test it out, or maybe they were willing to settle for less than the best they could do. I had to take it a step further.
Here's the fix for getting rid of the grit in homemade lip gloss: The night before, put your powder in a small dish. Drop just enough water into it to dissolve the grit. The result should be a little too liquid to even envision mixing with Vaseline. So let it sit overnight. The next morning, you'll find the stuff in the dish has turned gummy. PERFECT. NOW put in a little Vaseline and mix it up. You'll find no need to stir & stir & stir... the granules are already dissolved, the grit is gone, and as long as it has not crystallized again, it will now mix up perfectly.
The taste is yummy. The tint is very faint. Perfect for younger women who might crave the chance to use make up but who you might be a little worried about them taking that step just yet. And, if you use more drink mix powder, you get a stronger color. Less is a fainter color. AND, of course, if your lips are cracked or chapped, and need a little treatment... skip the step where you dissolve the granules.
Clean lip gloss pots can be bought in packs with travel-sized containers, or you can take an old one of your own and clean it out REALLY well. There is nothing more fun than using a lip gloss that you made on your own.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil. At room temperature, coconut oil is hard, more like lipstick, and white... so maybe it will leave more color on the lips when used? Or less? I know it has nutrients that are good for the skin and lips, so it's worth the try. I'll write another post when I do that. Stay tuned.
Friday, March 1, 2013
What foster kids miss
In many states, children whose parents are unable to care for them, are allowed to make the decision on whether to continue to be wards of the state, or allow the foster care social workers to find an adoptive family match for them. Some get discouraged by previous attempts to find a placement, in what we would think of as the traditional "Li'l Orphan Annie" style... where all the orphans clamour for the opportunity for a new home.
In more situations, the children choose to remain without a permanent family for much more complex emotional reasons. Perhaps they cannot contemplate breaking the connection between themselves and their birth parents. And then there is the typical teen belief that adults are a mere inconvenience. Teens in a normal nuclear family that is not falling apart, want to find ways to separate. They want to ignore us. We are an embarrassment, old fashioned, stupid. After all, we think texting is unnecessary and that the posting of too much personal information on Facebook is a bad idea. We are holding them back. In a few short years they'll be allowed to drive, then vote, then drink. They will be on their own and supporting themselves soon. So we are excess baggage that they have to figure out how to work around until they can push their way forward into adulthood.
Like baby chicks working furiously to crack the egg and burst out on the scene, they wish we'd just get up, release them from the incubator, and let them get on with life.
In an intact family, however, the parents work hard to hold the kids back. The kids are not allowed to say "no" to family time, they are forced to sit through family meals and watch their favorite TV shows with Mom & Dad. They are given chores and not allowed to use Mom & Dad's money to buy too many treats for themselves. It does not matter how much Mom & Dad have given to them, the moment when the gravy train stops, they try to angle to get more. It's their job. To see how much they can get from us without working too hard for it. If they were offered the opportunity to live with minimal supervision, with no adult holding them back, or the promise of quicker entry into adulthood, many would choose it.
It is a shame that our government allows children in it's care to make these choices. Most competent parents do not allow their kids to have this opportunity. Our government is being negligent in allowing this.
What do the foster kids miss, when they shove aside that opportunity for permanency?
Most obviously, they lose the soft place to land when they become adults. They lose the home that they will boomerang back to when jobs are hard to find or marriages fail. They lose the connection and tradition to come home for during the holidays. The lines from the songs, "I'll be HOME for Christmas", and "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go"... and similar sweet, holiday memories... they become meaningless for a young adult who has no home base.
But then there are the subtle things. Things that are much more important to the young person's eventual success or failure as an adult. The Friday evenings watching "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Bridezilla" with Mom making comments about the wastefulness and budget issues brought up in those TV shows. The weekends spent renovating the rec room with Dad, where he shows the importance of maintaining safety in using tools. The dinners where Mom & Dad discuss maintaining a balance between work and home, choosing vacation destinations for that year's time off, and budgeting appropriately. The moments when either parent is chauffeuring the kids to their various events, coaching them about how to approach the event, how to be a good loser and a humble winner. There is something that a kid gets, almost by osmosis, from watching and listening to their parents talking about how to conduct their lives. Some people might not present the most perfect example of decisionmaking, but the fact that they are presenting SOME example is important. The effects of a complete absence of that opportunity is clear.
Foster kids who age out of the foster system are more likely to lose opportunities for post-secondary education, to become homeless, or to go to jail, than children who found a "forever home". Children from intact two parent families, are the most likely to go to college, have a career, stay out of jail. And the infamous "single family home", where the parents are estranged from each other, whether or not the co-parent has tried to remain in the picture, puts out children who fall, statistically, somewhere in the middle.
Whoever in our system has decided that foster children should be allowed to decline to be adopted, needs to be held accountable for the results. It's nice, in theory, to say that teens should not be forced to do something they don't want to do, but in NORMAL families, that happens all the time. Teens from intact families are not allowed to skip the visit to grandma, they are required to go to church with the family, they must negotiate their relationships with friends and romances, with their parents' supervision. They may rebel against it, but the teachable moments that arise every day, where teens learn the most basic skills that will guide their success in life, are necessary. Our system should not allow the children who are in the system, to succeed in avoiding these moments where other teens would not be permitted to avoid them. Our system has been negligent.
To that end, if we are going to allow kids to choose whether or not to have parents, then we need to figure out how to give them the information necessary to make an informed decision on that issue. We need to find a way to explain to them what they will miss. Not some statistic-filled boring lecture, but a real, visceral understanding... We need our foster kids to be a little more like the orphans of yester-year... clamouring to find parents, not rejecting them.
Any ideas would be welcome!
In more situations, the children choose to remain without a permanent family for much more complex emotional reasons. Perhaps they cannot contemplate breaking the connection between themselves and their birth parents. And then there is the typical teen belief that adults are a mere inconvenience. Teens in a normal nuclear family that is not falling apart, want to find ways to separate. They want to ignore us. We are an embarrassment, old fashioned, stupid. After all, we think texting is unnecessary and that the posting of too much personal information on Facebook is a bad idea. We are holding them back. In a few short years they'll be allowed to drive, then vote, then drink. They will be on their own and supporting themselves soon. So we are excess baggage that they have to figure out how to work around until they can push their way forward into adulthood.
Like baby chicks working furiously to crack the egg and burst out on the scene, they wish we'd just get up, release them from the incubator, and let them get on with life.
In an intact family, however, the parents work hard to hold the kids back. The kids are not allowed to say "no" to family time, they are forced to sit through family meals and watch their favorite TV shows with Mom & Dad. They are given chores and not allowed to use Mom & Dad's money to buy too many treats for themselves. It does not matter how much Mom & Dad have given to them, the moment when the gravy train stops, they try to angle to get more. It's their job. To see how much they can get from us without working too hard for it. If they were offered the opportunity to live with minimal supervision, with no adult holding them back, or the promise of quicker entry into adulthood, many would choose it.
It is a shame that our government allows children in it's care to make these choices. Most competent parents do not allow their kids to have this opportunity. Our government is being negligent in allowing this.
What do the foster kids miss, when they shove aside that opportunity for permanency?
Most obviously, they lose the soft place to land when they become adults. They lose the home that they will boomerang back to when jobs are hard to find or marriages fail. They lose the connection and tradition to come home for during the holidays. The lines from the songs, "I'll be HOME for Christmas", and "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go"... and similar sweet, holiday memories... they become meaningless for a young adult who has no home base.
But then there are the subtle things. Things that are much more important to the young person's eventual success or failure as an adult. The Friday evenings watching "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Bridezilla" with Mom making comments about the wastefulness and budget issues brought up in those TV shows. The weekends spent renovating the rec room with Dad, where he shows the importance of maintaining safety in using tools. The dinners where Mom & Dad discuss maintaining a balance between work and home, choosing vacation destinations for that year's time off, and budgeting appropriately. The moments when either parent is chauffeuring the kids to their various events, coaching them about how to approach the event, how to be a good loser and a humble winner. There is something that a kid gets, almost by osmosis, from watching and listening to their parents talking about how to conduct their lives. Some people might not present the most perfect example of decisionmaking, but the fact that they are presenting SOME example is important. The effects of a complete absence of that opportunity is clear.
Foster kids who age out of the foster system are more likely to lose opportunities for post-secondary education, to become homeless, or to go to jail, than children who found a "forever home". Children from intact two parent families, are the most likely to go to college, have a career, stay out of jail. And the infamous "single family home", where the parents are estranged from each other, whether or not the co-parent has tried to remain in the picture, puts out children who fall, statistically, somewhere in the middle.
Whoever in our system has decided that foster children should be allowed to decline to be adopted, needs to be held accountable for the results. It's nice, in theory, to say that teens should not be forced to do something they don't want to do, but in NORMAL families, that happens all the time. Teens from intact families are not allowed to skip the visit to grandma, they are required to go to church with the family, they must negotiate their relationships with friends and romances, with their parents' supervision. They may rebel against it, but the teachable moments that arise every day, where teens learn the most basic skills that will guide their success in life, are necessary. Our system should not allow the children who are in the system, to succeed in avoiding these moments where other teens would not be permitted to avoid them. Our system has been negligent.
To that end, if we are going to allow kids to choose whether or not to have parents, then we need to figure out how to give them the information necessary to make an informed decision on that issue. We need to find a way to explain to them what they will miss. Not some statistic-filled boring lecture, but a real, visceral understanding... We need our foster kids to be a little more like the orphans of yester-year... clamouring to find parents, not rejecting them.
Any ideas would be welcome!
Friday, February 22, 2013
PIZZA
OK, so if you find things to cook at home that are easier than going out, and taste at least as good (if not better), then you'll cook at home more often. A few years ago, we found how to cook pizza so that it's better than what we can get from a restaurant, takeout-or home delivery. I'm not kidding, we've had foster kids who declared it to be the best they'd ever had.
Of course, for the foster kids, helping make their own meal added to the flavor. It's always so much more satisfying when you do something on your own that turns out to be GREAT, right?
So we start with pizza stones. We went to Home Depot and got a couple of stone tiles to use. You don't want a glazed stone for this, the glazing will ruin this. If you can get an unglazed clay tile, like saltillo, then great, but any unglazed stone will do. Get it BIG, you want your whole pizza to fit on it. We got two 12 inch tiles, and they aren't exactly large enough for one 12 inch pizza. We cut the second tile to fit across our oven.
The trick with pizza stones, which I forgot last night, is to get them VERY hot before you put the pizza in to cook. If they are hot, the bottom of your pizza will cook fast, making it crispier. Not having a hot stone in the oven means the bottom of your pizza cooks last. Your toppings may be great, but your crust will be limp or soggy, cooked last (if at all). Having the stone hot is the most important trick to a tasty, firm crust at the center bottom of the pizza!
We use Mamma Mary's thin & crispy 12 inch pizza crusts. One is about the right size for a pizza for 2 adults. Teens, you probably need more than half a thin crust pizza... children, there will be leftovers (cooking leftover pizza in a minute). You start by putting a very thin layer of oil on top of the cold crust, seal it JUST a little from sauce soaking in and making it soggy. And now I'll put in a tiny word for Mamma Mary's crusts. We discovered them a few years ago. This company makes crusts that are reasonably priced, comes with the thin & crispy style we like, do not have excess dough or stray flavors cooked in, so that we can make it what we want. AND they keep on the pantry shelf for MONTHS, till we're ready to use them. They come two (or more) to a package and the package contains a separate baggie to put your leftover into so you can keep it in the fridge for the next time you use it.
We made tomato sauce from our garden last summer, but sometimes it's not as thick as we want. I mix some of the homemade tomato sauce with tomato paste to thicken it up. The alternative is to use canned tomato sauce (keep a tupperware container available for leftovers). Add some basil or oregano, and little bits of garlic or garlic powder, to give it a little oomph, if you've used canned tomatoes. If you make your own tomato sauce with your own spices, whatever you choose to put in your basic sauce is fine for pizzas. The only problem seems to be the texture. Thin is fine for pasta, but for pizza, you want a tomato sauce with a little body to it!
Slices of tomato are fun, too... and can be really cool if you're doing a specialty pizza like one that has feta or ricotta, apples or pears, walnuts... all those cute toppings that you find at a chic and adult pizza place... but today we're looking for reasons not to get take-out, so we're going to work with the usual take-out toppings... not the pears & ricotta...
Cheese is always an issue. We put the tomato sauce on first, then any veggies... we saute the veggies a little to soften them up and pull out any sweetness we can get from them, and put them on the 'za before we put on the cheese. We use part skim cheese or full fat. Anything less fat than "part skim", and it does not melt or bubble up properly.
The biggest mistake people make with cheese on pizza is that they put on too much. It really does not require a lot of cheese to make a pizza great. Too much and the pizza will not crisp up right, it will melt but not get those wonderful little brown bubbles, the toppings will be smothered. EVERY time I think I've not got enough cheese left to make a pizza, and I put one together anyways and hope for the best, it turns out to have been the PERFECT amount of cheese, creating a bubbly, thin layer that browns up nicely.
And with meat... if you're using sausage or burger, please, PLEASE brown it first in a pan, sweating out as much of the fat as you can, before you put it on top of all that cheese. If you're using pepperoni, it seems to not leave as many little puddles of fat on a pizza cooked the way we do (with the stones, and not too much cheese), but sausage can REALLY produce too many puddles of boiling oil on your pizza if you don't take off some of the fat first by giving it a little swirl in the browning pan. Interestingly, people make a mistake of putting on too much cheese, they make a mistake of putting on too LITTLE toppings. Remember that if you have a slice of pepperoni that's about an inch & a half around when you put it on, it will shrink during cooking. If you put the pepperonis on so they look like you want the pizza to look when you're finished, it'll be clearly too few pieces. Generally, it works best if you put the pepperonis in an overlapping pattern... start from the center and just overlap as they go out. Same goes for thin slices of ham or any other type of meat that will shrink up as it cooks.
Let the meat be on top, so it cooks fully and crisps up nicely. Assuming you've not overloaded the pizza with toppings, and pre-heated the stones till they're super-hot, the cooking time is about 10-15 minutes... depending upon how crisp you want it. Around here, we like it a little crunchy at the edges.
For the thin crust pizza, take the toppings ALL the way out to the edge. For a chewier crust, choose the thicker crust, which has a slightly larger edge. EVEN if you're used to ordering the chewier crust from your take-out place, TRY the thin crust for the DIY pizza. I suspect you'll like it better than anything you can buy in a restaurant or take-out. When you're making a pizza for home, and do it right, and the toppings are on properly and the taste is good, suddenly you're less interested in wasting perfectly good crust by not putting toppings on it! If you want something to dip, make a bread stick, you know?
And most importantly, this one is great for the kiddos to get involved. They love getting their hands oily by putting a tablespoon worth of oil on the crust and spreading it around... they like stealing random pieces of pepperoni. They learn to appreciate veggies like Onions and bell peppers if they help in sauteing and putting them on the tomato sauce. And maybe more importantly, they learn that too much cheese is not only high fat and unhealthy, but messes up the pizza by making it harder to get that good, crispy crunch that everyone seems to like so well...
In our house, except during Lent, Friday night is Pizza night... and it's a dinner that EVERYONE looks forward to... a great punctuation for a good workweek, and a great start to the weekend!
Of course, for the foster kids, helping make their own meal added to the flavor. It's always so much more satisfying when you do something on your own that turns out to be GREAT, right?
So we start with pizza stones. We went to Home Depot and got a couple of stone tiles to use. You don't want a glazed stone for this, the glazing will ruin this. If you can get an unglazed clay tile, like saltillo, then great, but any unglazed stone will do. Get it BIG, you want your whole pizza to fit on it. We got two 12 inch tiles, and they aren't exactly large enough for one 12 inch pizza. We cut the second tile to fit across our oven.
The trick with pizza stones, which I forgot last night, is to get them VERY hot before you put the pizza in to cook. If they are hot, the bottom of your pizza will cook fast, making it crispier. Not having a hot stone in the oven means the bottom of your pizza cooks last. Your toppings may be great, but your crust will be limp or soggy, cooked last (if at all). Having the stone hot is the most important trick to a tasty, firm crust at the center bottom of the pizza!
We use Mamma Mary's thin & crispy 12 inch pizza crusts. One is about the right size for a pizza for 2 adults. Teens, you probably need more than half a thin crust pizza... children, there will be leftovers (cooking leftover pizza in a minute). You start by putting a very thin layer of oil on top of the cold crust, seal it JUST a little from sauce soaking in and making it soggy. And now I'll put in a tiny word for Mamma Mary's crusts. We discovered them a few years ago. This company makes crusts that are reasonably priced, comes with the thin & crispy style we like, do not have excess dough or stray flavors cooked in, so that we can make it what we want. AND they keep on the pantry shelf for MONTHS, till we're ready to use them. They come two (or more) to a package and the package contains a separate baggie to put your leftover into so you can keep it in the fridge for the next time you use it.
We made tomato sauce from our garden last summer, but sometimes it's not as thick as we want. I mix some of the homemade tomato sauce with tomato paste to thicken it up. The alternative is to use canned tomato sauce (keep a tupperware container available for leftovers). Add some basil or oregano, and little bits of garlic or garlic powder, to give it a little oomph, if you've used canned tomatoes. If you make your own tomato sauce with your own spices, whatever you choose to put in your basic sauce is fine for pizzas. The only problem seems to be the texture. Thin is fine for pasta, but for pizza, you want a tomato sauce with a little body to it!
Slices of tomato are fun, too... and can be really cool if you're doing a specialty pizza like one that has feta or ricotta, apples or pears, walnuts... all those cute toppings that you find at a chic and adult pizza place... but today we're looking for reasons not to get take-out, so we're going to work with the usual take-out toppings... not the pears & ricotta...
Cheese is always an issue. We put the tomato sauce on first, then any veggies... we saute the veggies a little to soften them up and pull out any sweetness we can get from them, and put them on the 'za before we put on the cheese. We use part skim cheese or full fat. Anything less fat than "part skim", and it does not melt or bubble up properly.
The biggest mistake people make with cheese on pizza is that they put on too much. It really does not require a lot of cheese to make a pizza great. Too much and the pizza will not crisp up right, it will melt but not get those wonderful little brown bubbles, the toppings will be smothered. EVERY time I think I've not got enough cheese left to make a pizza, and I put one together anyways and hope for the best, it turns out to have been the PERFECT amount of cheese, creating a bubbly, thin layer that browns up nicely.
And with meat... if you're using sausage or burger, please, PLEASE brown it first in a pan, sweating out as much of the fat as you can, before you put it on top of all that cheese. If you're using pepperoni, it seems to not leave as many little puddles of fat on a pizza cooked the way we do (with the stones, and not too much cheese), but sausage can REALLY produce too many puddles of boiling oil on your pizza if you don't take off some of the fat first by giving it a little swirl in the browning pan. Interestingly, people make a mistake of putting on too much cheese, they make a mistake of putting on too LITTLE toppings. Remember that if you have a slice of pepperoni that's about an inch & a half around when you put it on, it will shrink during cooking. If you put the pepperonis on so they look like you want the pizza to look when you're finished, it'll be clearly too few pieces. Generally, it works best if you put the pepperonis in an overlapping pattern... start from the center and just overlap as they go out. Same goes for thin slices of ham or any other type of meat that will shrink up as it cooks.
Let the meat be on top, so it cooks fully and crisps up nicely. Assuming you've not overloaded the pizza with toppings, and pre-heated the stones till they're super-hot, the cooking time is about 10-15 minutes... depending upon how crisp you want it. Around here, we like it a little crunchy at the edges.
For the thin crust pizza, take the toppings ALL the way out to the edge. For a chewier crust, choose the thicker crust, which has a slightly larger edge. EVEN if you're used to ordering the chewier crust from your take-out place, TRY the thin crust for the DIY pizza. I suspect you'll like it better than anything you can buy in a restaurant or take-out. When you're making a pizza for home, and do it right, and the toppings are on properly and the taste is good, suddenly you're less interested in wasting perfectly good crust by not putting toppings on it! If you want something to dip, make a bread stick, you know?
And most importantly, this one is great for the kiddos to get involved. They love getting their hands oily by putting a tablespoon worth of oil on the crust and spreading it around... they like stealing random pieces of pepperoni. They learn to appreciate veggies like Onions and bell peppers if they help in sauteing and putting them on the tomato sauce. And maybe more importantly, they learn that too much cheese is not only high fat and unhealthy, but messes up the pizza by making it harder to get that good, crispy crunch that everyone seems to like so well...
In our house, except during Lent, Friday night is Pizza night... and it's a dinner that EVERYONE looks forward to... a great punctuation for a good workweek, and a great start to the weekend!
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