Monday Q&A-Recipe Organization, Baking Definitions, and Socialization
Every Monday I answer several questions submitted by you, my readers! If you'd like to submit a question for a future edition of Monday Q&A, leave me a comment or send me an email (the frugal girl {at} gmail {dot} com) and put "Q&A" in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
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This question was submitted by Bethany, one of my multitudinous cousins, and a faithful Frugal Girl reader. 😉
I like your recipes. They are easy to follow and require normal ingredients with great results (even for me!). How do you keep your recipes organized? I was thinking of starting a 3 ring binder.
A binder is exactly how I organize most of my recipes! My binder is in very sad shape right now though, and needs some serious reorganization/cleaning out.
Even in its less than pristine condition, my binder still serves me quite well. I use tab inserts to divide my recipes into categories that work for me like "Pasta and Pizza", "Yeast Breads", "Chicken", and so on, to make it easy to find a recipe when I'm looking for it.
While most of my recipes are printed out on letter-size paper, some of them are on actual recipe cards, and those I keep in a typical recipe box. I also have a small cabinet devoted to storing my cookbooks and cooking magazines.
So, that's my not-very-earthshaking recipe organization routine. I hope it's helpful to you, though!
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This one was sent in by Sharon, who writes Unfinished Mom.
Okay, so I've been scouring the Wednesday Baking posts and now I've got a few questions.
For rising... define "warm water" and "a warm place", please.
How warm is too warm for the water? I think when I tried baking a loaf of bread I killed the yeast with water too warm."A warm place" ... can it just sit on my counter? How warm should the house be? Is 75 too cool? 1Should I set the oven on lowest temp and put it in there?
I'm a real novice with not much luck when it comes to anything with yeast.... Help!
The temperature of the water will vary depending on the mixing method. If the recipe you're using is the type where you dissolve the yeast in water before proceeding with the recipe, the water should be around 110 degrees. If, however, you're using a recipe in which the yeast is mixed with flour and other dry ingredients before the liquid is added, the liquid should be 120-130 degrees.
About the temperature of your house.....bread dough will rise if you don't put it in a warm place; it will just take longer to double in size. In the summertime, a "warm place" is just about anywhere in your house, unless you're one of those people who keeps your AC really low. My AC is usually at 78 degrees, which is quite warm enough for bread dough to rise! 75 degrees should be warm enough, too, though, so if your bread isn't rising at that temperature, something else is probably wrong (perhaps your yeast is not fresh, or your starting liquid was too hot).
In the wintertime, our heat is set at 65 degrees, which is a bit on the chilly side for bread dough. So, I often turn my oven on for a minute or so, turn it off, and then put my bread inside of the oven to rise. If the top of your fridge is clear, that's another good place to let dough rise. Or, if you have a gas oven with a pilot light, you can let your bread rise inside of the oven, as the pilot light provides some warmth.
If you are a beginner yeast baker, you might want to try my no-knead English Muffin bread, easy French bread, or dinner roll recipes. These are all fairly simple to make and should turn out fairly well even if you aren't particularly well-practiced at kneading and yeast baking. And if your first attempts don't look quite like mine, don't give up! Like many other skills, your breadmaking expertise will improve greatly with practice...I've been honing my bread-making skills for 17 years or so (my mom taught me how to make bread when I was in my early teens).
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Jinger left this comment on my post about homeschooling a kindergartener. I'm guessing that she is not the first reader to wonder about this, so I thought I'd answer her comment here.
I am such an admirer of you in so many ways. I was a teacher for over 21 years and your methods are so sound and far better than some of the adopted programs that change yearly in schools. Just wondering if your children participate in organizations with other kids outside home.
First, thanks for the encouragement! I really appreciate your willingness to be supportive of what I'm doing in light of the fact that you were a honest-to-goodness school teacher. 🙂
My children don't participate in any official organizations yet, for which I'm grateful. My husband and I are going to try to avoid being the type of parents who spend every evening running their children about to different activities, both because we think peaceful family time at home is really valuable, and because we're trying to keep ourselves and our kids from being stressed out unnecessarily. For the record, we are not entirely opposed to outside activities...we just haven't felt like they were something that would serve our children well as this point.
That said, my children certainly do spend time around other children. When I teach piano students, the moms and siblings of my students watch my children. My children think this is a fabulous arrangement because they have a lovely supply of kids to play with while I work.
My kids also play with neighborhood children (my son met his very best friend back when he lived next door to us). We're fortunate enough to live near a lot of extended family, so my kids get to play with their cousins (and my cousins, some of whom who are not much older than my children) as well. In addition, at church there are lots of families with children, and my children enjoy chatting and playing with them.
Lastly, I should point out that since there are four children here at our house every day, my children get quite a lot of socialization experience just by living here! In the context of their sibling relationships they learn how to solve disagreements, how to put others first, how to speak patiently and kindly to others, how to work together, and how to play together. One thing I appreciate about homeschooling (although it's also an exhausting thing about homeschooling!) is that I'm able to be here to supervise these relationships all day. I have many opportunities to teach and correct my children as they relate to each other over the course of the day, and while this job can feel overwhelming right now, I hope that I am giving them valuable tools that will serve them in future relationships.
Thanks for answering my questions. I'm pretty sure I've killed the yeast with water too warm. I'm definitely feeling encouraged and more ready to try some things with yeast again.
Thanks Frugal Cousin! I think I'm going to get page protectors for mine. I haven't started it yet, might be a good winter activity...in Minnesota, it will be here soon! Thanks again!
I use a binder system similar to Kristen's. There are three differences: one, I print the recipes in three columns to a page, to get several to a page; two, I put the page into a plastic sleeve protector; three, I use a table of contents rather than tabs, because in my house, tab inserts always fall out.
This has worked for me for decades. Much better than the usual little cards, which require me to write by hand, you have to turn over while using ("wait, how much flour was that again?"), and never have enough space anyway.
I don't believe kids need a ton of after school activities either. My oldest daughter has her piano lesson every Monday and we're starting our middle daughter in gymnastics soon. My family are always bugging me and saying that my kids don't "socialize" enough and I'm holding them back by not having my youngest (who is THREE) go to preschool and by not having my older two doing some "enrichment" activity every day after school. Whatever happened to spending time with family being enriching? It really makes me mad that a lot of people act like there's something wrong with you if you just like to play boardgames and have family dinner with your kids! I've even had people call me "cheap" for giving my kids homemade gifts!
I use sheet protectors in my binder because I'm messy when I cook. It also keeps me from having to re-print pages I've dripped on.
As for a "warm place" for allowing bread dough to rise, I use my oven with the light turned on. It gives off enough warmth to allow the yeast to work its magic. Just turn it on when you begin mixing the dough to take the chill off. Obviously, this applies in the winter only! While I do bake in the summer, I turn the light on once I put the dough in to rise.
Families are so different.
Thanks for the reply! Families are so different! I could never keep my kids at home. I raised 2 children and then my granddaughter who was and still is a very active person. She thrived on dance lessons, gymnastics, and later soccer, ending up on a tournament team in adolescence. Now as a college student, her major is dance. This summer, she spent 12 weeks learning aerial dance! She was literally swinging from the rafters in our house as a child and needed constant activity to release her energy.
I have an electric oven, and I've discovered that simply leaving the oven light on usually produces enough heat in that small space to help bread rise rapidly.
Another trick I used to use in my old apartment (oven light didn't work) was to put a pan of very hot water in the bottom of the oven under the rising bread. That provided a pretty good heat source, too.
Although my siblings and I attended daycare, preschool, and public school (neither parent was cut out to do the stay-at-home thing, despite several experimental periods), we were limited to one or two activities outside of school, usually sports, and my dad was frequently a coach or active participant. We spent a lot of time at home with our parents, sans TV, video games, etc. We had sit-down dinners together every night, even with two working parents, and it was wonderful. Those conversations sustained me through four straight years of no friends at school (5th, 6th, 7th, 8th grades).
Lots of time with family is definitely important. I personally have observed that my friends who spent a lot of time with their families (provided the parents had a decent relationship with each other) tend to make for the most balanced adults. No "enrichment" program can take the place of a good, solid parent-child relationship.
well said about the "socialization issue". and cute outfit, btw!
My recipes are not even in a binder, they are just all dumped into a red file folder and when I want one, I have to go through them all till I see the right one. This is seriously disorganized for me, usually I'm very organized, which is one of the curses of being German. I think it's because the recipes are printed on such a variety of things, most are ripped out of magazines or printed off the Internet (many from Kristen's site, of course!). Only a few are written in my scribble. The funny thing is, when I'm frantically searching through for the recipe I need, I always come across something interesting that I forgot about and I usually end up making that the next day! So it keeps things fresh, in some demented way.
As for socialization of homeschoolers, in our house at the moment this comes only through play dates and hanging out at the park. Our son has taken 3 week long day camps over the course of the summer, but we don't sign him up for any other activities. He is an extreme homebody and needs a TON of downtime to process life. When he was involved in school and other activities, he was stressed beyond belief and it had a serious impact on his health. So we backed off. I'd be open to him having music lessons at some point in the future, but soccer (for example) or something with multiple meetings/practices per week would be way too much for all of us. I don't want to lose that wonderful time we have each evening for a family dinner and hanging out together. As Jinger pointed out, each family and kid is different and you have to go with what they need. I know plenty of kids who are bored if they are left at home for 15 minutes. My son would go days without leaving the house, if we would let him. (It's very frugal :-)!)
Sorry to be so long-winded, but I have to share this story: when my sister was 11 or so, my mom forgot to pick her up from band practice and she stood outside in the cold until my mom got home, saw no kid there, and raced back to the school. (This was in the Dark Ages, before cell phones.) Suffice to say, my sister never missed a pick-up of her own kids at their activities!
Concerning the socialization post. The beauty of having a large family is that there is child interaction all day long! Your children are experiencing first hand with other age groups how to handle conflict-resolution, compassion for others, and responsibility within the home. The beauty of Christian homeschooling is that Christian character building is a huge part of the experience. I cannot think of a better place for this to happen, within the loving boundries of the home and with Mom. They are learing how to interact with all age groups in a gazillion different ways. Much like the real world.
@Julia One possible solution is to tape the weirdly-sized recipes to a piece of paper, than put that into a binder.
First I want to say I love your blog and use many of your menus/recipes now. I home schooled my children because my twins both have minor learning disabilities. The Christian school near us was not set up to meet their needs him and I truly felt that I could work with them until they were ready for middle school then would be well prepared. I have a masters degree in special education with focus on auditory learning disabilities so I felt that I needed to use that for my own children. My two younger children do not have learning disabilities but I really felt that it was important to keep them together for a while. I am very grateful that I made the decision to home school them through elementary school, but I also recognized that there were limits to what I could teach them and that they would benefit from learning from teachers and ways of learning. My two boys are entering their second year of "regular" schooling and I really think they learned so much last year. Not just school wise, but also how to act around adults that aren't family members, how to stick up for themselves and their beliefs and finally their exposure to different children and families has given them the opportunity to see what they want to do and be when they grow into Men. One example I can look to is that I don't have a great science background and my boys have learned such fabulous things from their wonderful and passionate science teacher Mr. James. One wants to be a marine biologist or at least study it!
I know there isn't a one size fits all approach and perhaps my background as an educator means that I place a greater value in what different teachers can contribute to a child's life, but I do think that schooling does provide children with tools that help them thrive as adults. That being said there are lots of alternatives like home school co-ops that address the same issues.
Celeste, I agree that one size does not fit all. For us and our family right now, I am entirely positive that homeschooling is the best choice. That may change in the future, but for now, I'm completely comfortable with our decision, and because of my experience as a homeschool graduate, I haven't the faintest concern that my kids will have difficult sticking up for themselves or that they will have difficulties relating to non-family adults.
Most homeschoolers do end up in a classroom at some point. I was completely homeschooled until I went to college, but then at college, I was in regular classes with varying teachers, and I did fine (same goes for my siblings). I was able to relate well to both my classmates and professors without having had prior classroom experience.
That's funny that you mentioned about relating to adults because one of the most common comments I got from people as a teenager was that they were surprised at how well I could relate to adults. Anecdotally, it seems to be common for homeschoolers to end up spending more time around adults than regular schoolers, although of course there are exceptions.
I hope that didn't sound defensive. I just wanted to point out that it's not always necessary to attend public school in order to learn how to relate to adults, to stick up for yourself, and so on. 🙂
Anyways, people and families vary, and I'm glad you've found something that serves your children well. And I think it's great that you were able to help your kids with learning disabilities!
@WilliamB
Yep, I have actually done that with the tiniest scraps of paper---like recipes that come from a label on a food package. It's funny, because just this morning, I just stapled a recipe from a can of beans to a piece of scratch paper to make it big enough to find later. I've just been too lazy to do that with ALL the funny-sized recipes...