Friday Fruit Explorations: Strawberries

The other day Hazel decided we should go on a fruit exploration. She pulled out her magnifying glasses so we could look more closely at some of the fruit. We started our adventure with strawberries--one of our favorites. 

First we looked at the outside of the fruit to see what we could find.

We noticed the seeds which we knew were there. Did you know strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside? After she was done looking at the outside, I cut one in half so we could look at the inside.

The white lines in the interior of the strawberry bring the nutrients to each seed. Of course to learn all these little facts, we got some books from the library.

Two books focus on the growing cycle of strawberries and the third shares a Cherokee legend on the first strawberries. I was hoping to find some information on the nutrition of strawberries, but have not found books with it. However I did find it on-line. A serving size of one cup has 49 calories. That cup of strawberries contains 12 grams of carbohydrates of which 7 gram are sugar and 3 are dietary fiber. There is also 1 gram of protein and gives you 149% of your vitamin C for the day. They also have a small amount of iron and calcium. The other minerals that strawberries provide are potassium and manganese. Strawberries also contain omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. (Source) 

Strawberries have also been rated the 27th best among U.S. food, however due to the large serving size needed for the top foods, strawberries move to the 3rd position when considering of which foods you would eat the 3.5 ounces. Strawberries are fragile fruits that start to lose their nutrition after only two days and ideally they will be in 90-95% humidity (most refrigerators have less humidity). An interesting discovery is that when sugar is eaten with strawberries, the blood sugar spike caused by the sugar is reduced by the strawberries. Strawberries also have anti-inflammatory affects. (Source)

To go with our strawberry exploration, I wanted to do some crafts. Hazel and I have had a busy week, so she was not able to make any of them with me yet, but I thought I would share a few. The first two involve handprints and I found them on Pinterest. The first one is inspired by Activity Village: Handprint Strawberry. Theirs was done with paint, but I had some foam handprints and just used those to share it with you. The second  is from French Toasty: Strawberry Handprint Kid Craft. I did not add the seeds, but if I do it with Hazel we will. The third are needle felted strawberries. I will provide a tutorial below to make them. And finally are Strawberry Treat Box Printable from Oh Happy Day! I wanted Hazel to cut one out to make, but she was too tired after her busy day--she got her first filling/crown today at the dentist and then came home to a playdate. 

Now for our needle felting tutorial. The supplies you need are some red roving, green felt and the needle felting needle and mat. Roll or wrap the roving to be a basic strawberry shape and then needle it to firm it up. To cut the leaves, cut a small square of felt and fold it along the diagonal two to three times. Then cut a triangle from the sides. Open it up and trim how you want it. Then needle felt it to the top of your strawberry.

These are quick and easy to make.

For more ideas on strawberries (mostly recipes):

• Native American Strawberry Corn Bread
• Strawberry Shortcake at Strawberry Festival
• Strawberry Banana Muffins
• Strawberry Muffins
• Strawberry Jam
• Strawberry Cake
• Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream
• My Fruit Pinterest Board (with crafts of different fruits)

Join us next week for a different fruit exploration!!

Spring Means Gardening--Fruits, Vegetables & Cooking Farm Fresh!

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Spring is in the air!! Up in New England the weather is slowly getting warmer--or at least more consistent. We have been having a roller coaster of temperatures this year. As spring starts up people start thinking about about gardening and fresh fruits and vegetables. Today I am sharing three picture books that focus on just that--gardening, fruits, vegetables and cooking with fresh garden harvests. All three books have an age range of 4 to 9. And all three books are being released today!! The first is I Love Strawberries! by Shannon Anderson and illustrated by Jaclyn Sinquett. 

Happy Family Times 13: Making Strawberry Jam

Have you done something fun and different with your family this week? Or did you dance in the living room together? Kelly over at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I are hosting a link party to share our happy family times. Please share below with us and visit everyone else to be inspired for more quality times with your family!

Around the World in 12 Dishes: Exploring Ukraine through Food and Craft

With Ukraine in the news so much, it is a perfect time to explore the country through food, books and crafts. It is also a perfect time for lessons with older children about current events and such. Since we do not let Hazel know about current events or watch the news, we looked at tradition, food and crafts. 

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe and is the largest country that is entirely in Europe. For more information, read the introduction post at Around the World in 12 Dishes. I shared the books we have read and not read about Ukraine. Have you read Jan Brett's The Mitten? I know it is really popular around here and it is the retelling of a Ukrainian folktale.

 We decided to try two different Ukrainian recipes. The first we found in the Ukraine book of the Festivals of the World series.  It is written by Volodymyer Bassis (or Vladimir Bassis--all the sites seem to list both spellings). The recipe is for Strawberry Kysil. Kysil can be made with different berries, but Bassis claims strawberries make the best one.

Strawberry Kysil 
(from Ukraine by Volodymyer Bassis)
Ingredients:
2 quarts of fresh strawberries (I am sure you could use frozen)
2 cups cold water
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon potato starch (we used tapioca starch since we could not find potato starch)

1) Wash and hull the strawberries. Put in pan with water and bring water to a boil. Boil on high for a minute then turn down to low and let simmer for 10-15 minutes. I let Hazel use the potato masher while the strawberries cooked to help get the juice out. This makes the next step a bit easier.

2) Push the strawberries through a fine mesh strainer with a wooden spoon. Put juice back in pan.

3) Stir in sugar and bring back to a boil. Boil over high heat for 2 minutes.

4) Reduce heat to medium and stir in starch and dissolve it (Hazel did not do a good job of dissolving our starch so we have chunks in it). Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes stirring until it thickens. 

5) Cool to lukewarm and then put in refrigerator to get cold for a few hours. Enjoy!

Strawberry Kysil is a bit like strawberry soup or eating a liquid form of strawberry jelly. It is delicious but you will not want to much at one time.

Our second recipe came from Ukrainian Classic Kitchen and International Cuisine and it is Ukrainian Yabluchnyy Korzh. Hazel likes to call it what it tastes like--apple pie. It is a type of cookie crust with apples inside. It is delicious!

Ukrainian Yabluchnyy Korzh
Adapted from Ukrainian Classic Kitchen and International Cuisine
Ingredients
Dough:
5 cups of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
6 large egg yolks (if I made again I would use whole eggs)
1 cup sour cream

Filling:
7-8 large apples (we used Granny Smith)
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Start by making the dough:
1) Stir together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. then add the butter and mix with your hands (Hazel loved this part) to make a coarse flaky mixture. 

2) In a small bowl mix egg yolks and sour cream together. Then add it to the dry ingredients. Work it with your hands into a firm, smooth, not sticky dough. (Ours never really formed a good firm smooth dough.)

3) Divide dough into 2 pieces, making one slightly larger than the other. 

4) Turn oven on to 375 and grease with butter (we used the wrappers) a 13 x 9 x 2 baking pan. Do not use baking spray to grease.

5) With the larger dough, cover bottom and sides of pan. The instructions say to roll it out, but I found ours was just too crumbly to do this. I pressed it into the pan.

6) Time to start filling. Peel and thinly slice the apples (we used our food processor). Mix with sugar and cinnamon.

7) Add apple mixture to bottom crust.

8) Roll out top crust or pat it on top. Try to seal apples in.

9) Bake for 45 to 55 minutes. It should be brown in color and the apples should be tender to a knife. Set on wire rack to cool for 20 minutes.

10) Now you can attempt to remove the pan (I did not attempt due to the crumbly nature). To remove: Run a sharp knife along the sides and then put a wire rack on top and flip it over. Remove pan and put other wire rack on bottom and flip back the correct way.

11) Serve at room temperature. You can dust it with powdered sugar (we didn't bother). Refrigerate leftovers but bring to room temperature before eating.

Since it tastes similar to apple pie (Steve's favorite dessert), we all love it!

We also have been reading Urkainian stories. We found a Cinderella tale, The Golden Slipper, which we shared last week. We also found many versions of a Christmas tale involving spiders. All the crafts I could find had to do with spiders as Christmas ornaments or pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs).

Pysanky Source: By Carl Fleischhauer (Library of Congress employee[1]) 
(http://www.loc.gov/folklife/cwc/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Since we already posted about pysanky, we made a silver spider web and spider Christmas ornament. We found the instructions in Christmas Crafts from Around the World by Judy Ann Sadler. 

In the Christmas legend, the spider on a Christmas tree spins webs of silver for a poor family who has no money for Christmas. Thus why the ornament is done in silver!

Ukraine's Flag

Now it is time for the Around the World in 12 Dishes Blog Hop! Please visit the other posts and feel free to share any Ukrainian crafts, food, etc. posts that you have done.

Gluten Free Birthday Cake

This year I broke my one rule about birthday cake. Normally, I refuse to bake my own cake and we go to the fancy bakery to buy one. Since I am trying a very reduced gluten diet, I didn't want a normal cake sitting around for a few days, so I decided to try making a gluten-free one with Hazel. Hazel really wanted to make strawberry cake. I found this recipe on Gluten-Free Makeovers.

Since I had planned on making a yellow cake recipe I found that used all purpose gluten-free flour, that is what I had, so I used that. This is the first time I did gluten-free baking, but with a bit of research it was not a problem. Here is how I adjusted the recipe from Gluten-Free Makeovers.

1 12 ounce bag of frozen unsweetened organic whole strawberries
1 3/4 cups all purpose gluten-free flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons xanthan gum (needed whenever baking gluten-free)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), at room temperature
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 tablespoons soy milk, at room temperature

Since I did not plan ahead, my frozen strawberries were not very defrosted. I put them in the food processor and let Hazel push the button until they ground up. I did not drain them or strain them.

Next we mixed the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, xanthan gum, salt and baking soda together in a bowl and set it aside.

Then we creamed the butter and sugar together in the mixer. Then we added the three eggs and vanilla and beat it some more. We then added the milk since I had not read the recipe again. Next we added the dry ingredients and mixed them in. Then we mixed in 3/4 of a cup of the strawberries. (Save the rest for the frosting). 

We spooned it into two 9-inch cake pans that had been sprayed with non-stick spray and had some of the all purpose gluten-free flour spread in them. Then we baked at 350 for 30 minutes. We kept them in the pans for 10 more minutes out of the oven and then cooled them on wire racks.

The next day we made the frosting. I tried to follow the recipe, but found the frosting was too watery, so here is how I would adjust it. This recipe was with the cake recipe at Gluten-Free Makeovers.

1 8 ounce package of light cream cheese
1 stick of butter softened
Leftover strawberries from above
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 to 5 cups of confectioners sugar

We creamed the cream cheese and butter together. Next we added the sugar one cup at a time until we got the consistency we wanted. Then we added the strawberries and vanilla and beat it. Again, I checked the consistency and added more sugar if necessary. You can add milk if it is too thick as well.

Hazel loved helping frost the cake and then she went to town decorating. I think I need to restock our sprinkle supply. I wrote the words for her.

At this point the plumber came to fix our leaking garbage disposal. He told Hazel to stop making it so well or might take it. (The best gift was finally getting this fixed since it had been almost a week of dealing with it and trying to find a plumber.)

After she finished it, we put it in the refrigerator. This was a mistake as it made the Skittles very hard and chewy. We will not be decorating with them again if we want to refrigerate the cake. Then my mother-in-law came and we went out to the Wenham Tea House and the Wenham Museum. 

We enjoyed the cake at dinner with Daddy! Hazel called my sister to get her to sing "Happy Birthday" with her since Steve doesn't like to sing. We lit the two candles. Hazel told me I didn't need too many candles--just two or three. Here is a view of the inside of the cake. We all loved it (except the extra hard and chewy Skittles).

It was a lovely birthday!

Needle Felted Acorn Top Strawberry

So yesterday I mentioned we had collected some acorn caps when we walked back to our car after checking out the swans. After letting them sit for a few days to make sure there were no bugs in them, we wanted to needle felt some acorns. Our plan was to bring them to school as part of Teacher Appreciation Week. I tried to choose wool roving colors for different seasons and one of them was red. Hazel commented on how the red one looked like a strawberry. We decided to make strawberries. Since we have already shared our Strawberry Exploration, we will just share the craft today. We painted the caps green first.

While the paint dried we began needle felting. We took some red roving and rolled into a strawberry shape. Then we needled it as much as possible. I have some safety needle felting tools for Hazel to use, but she did catch her finger once. I always had to finish them since she was afraid of holding them and needling. We also decided to make some unripe ones so we could show the progression of strawberries. 

For these we mixed some colors to make them look like they were ripening. Once the shapes were solid enough, we glued them into the caps. Then let them dry overnight. Now we have some lovely needle felted acorn top strawberries. Hazel decided she wanted to keep all the strawberries and acorns we made for herself and give them to the teachers, but she also wants to make more.

For more ideas on strawberries (mostly recipes) and fruit explorations:

• Native American Strawberry Corn Bread
• Strawberry Shortcake at Strawberry Festival
• Strawberry Banana Muffins
• Strawberry Muffins
• Strawberry Jam
• Strawberry Cake
• Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream 
• Pineapple Exploration 
• Raspberry Exploration 
• Blueberry Exploration 
• Strawberry Exploration
• My Fruit Pinterest Board

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Little Sister and the Month Brothers

Today we are going to discuss a wonderful Cinderella story called Little Sister and the Month Brothers. From the research I have done it looks like this story is from Czechoslovakia. There are also other versions around, but I have not checked them out yet. In the collage below are the other two versions as well as both the paperback and hard cover of our featured book.  I also found another version on-line here.

Before going into the story a little history on Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was a sovereign state from 1918 to 1993. On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia split into two countries: Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Source

From 1939 to 1945 Czechoslovakia was under Nazi Germany rule, however its government was still operation in the United Kingdom. In 1945 the Soviet Union took over the eastern part of the country.(Source)

Now onto our story. I found the full text available here.

In this story, there is Little Sister. No one knows her name and everyone calls her Little Sister. She lives in a cottage with her stepmother and stepsister. Little Sister is an orphan and her stepmother makes her do all the work. However Little Sister is always singing or humming to herself and always pleasant. Each day she grows more beautiful and kinder. One day the stepmother realizes that if a suitor was to come to the house he may choose Little Sister over her own daughter. The stepmother and stepsister plot to rid themselves of Little Sister. They decide to send her out in the cold winter weather to look for violets. They lock the door behind her and tell her not to return without the violets.

Little Sister knows she will not find violets in the winter, but searches for them anyway. She walks without a coat through the fierce wind and snow. Finally when she feels she cannot take another step she sees a light high above her. She goes towards and and uses all her courage and energy to climb a tall rock mountain. At the top of it she finds twelve men around a fire. She knows at once that they must be the Month Brothers. She approaches them politely and January asks her what she needs. She asks politely to warm near the fire and then explains about needing violets to return home. Since she is so polite, January tells his brothers they must help Little Sister, so he passes the staff to Brother February. February passes it to March  who passes it to April saying April is the only one who can give violets. Sure enough with each pass of the staff, the weather and trees change like the seasons. When April has the staff the grass grows and the violets grow. April tells Little Sister to pick as many as she would like. She uses her dress to hold them and fills it and runs home.

Stepmother and stepsister are amazed to see her with the violets. They do not thank her, but try to come up with another scheme to get rid of Little Sister. The next night they send her out with a bucket telling her not to come home without fresh strawberries. Again she does not have a coat, but she knows where to go this time. She heads to the Month Brothers. Again she is polite and they help her. The staff is passed to June. June tells her she may pick only five strawberries, which she does and runs home. The stepmother and stepsister greedily eat the strawberries and find them to be the best thing they have ever tasted. They ask her where she got them. The next day the stepsister dresses in all her fur to go out and get more. She finds the Month Brothers and when January asks what she needs she says she will only talk to June and is very rude. The brothers do not like this so January bangs the staff on the ground and there is a blinding blizzard and stepsister cannot see. She tries to find her way home, but cannot. After waiting quite awhile for her daughter stepmother becomes worried and goes to look for her. They were never seen again. 

Little Sister still had to do all the work, but now there was no one to complain, yell or order her around. One day an honest farmer came and asked her to marry him. She did and they lived happily in the cottage sharing the work with  minimal complaining.

Our craft for this story was to color twelve outlines of men as the Month Brothers. Then we made them into a wreath. We used an embroidery hoop wrapped with  four seasons of ribbon.

We taped the men onto it and then added some tissue paper in the center to be their fire.

Strawberry Banana Muffins

The other day Hazel and I made some muffins. We had some ripe bananas and Hazel decided we needed to add strawberries to them. So we came up with strawberry banana muffins, which I must add were delicious. We adapted the basic muffin recipe from our Better Homes and Garden Cook Book.

• 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour (we used white whole wheat because it is what we had)
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup oat bran
• 1/3 cup flax seed meal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 beaten egg
• 3/4 cup nonfat milk
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 3 ripe bananas mashed
• 1 cup frozen strawberries, thawed a bit and sliced in food processor

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large mixing bowl combine the dry ingredients.
2. In a medium bowl combine egg, milk and oil. 
3. Add liquid ingredients and banana to the dry ingredients.
4. Add strawberries and mix well.
5. Scoop into prepared muffin pan. (Either lined with cupcake liners or greased.)
6. Bake for 20 minutes and then turn onto rack to cool.
7. Enjoy!

Hazel decided it was Ducky's birthday and the muffin could be his birthday cake, so we had to put candles in one. Luckily after that she got side tracked. I think she may have liked these more than our blueberry banana muffins we usually make.

My Garden Birthday Party Ideas

So Penguin Kids challenged me (and you) to come up with some birthday party ideas based on favorite books this month. They will be sending me some books to do this with and also wanted us to use our own favorites. I decided our first party idea would be to the theme of the book My Garden by Kevin Henkes. This is one of my favorite books and Hazel loves reading it still. We shared it a couple years ago with a few different crafts and ideas as part of the Virtual Book Club for Children. This story is about a girl telling us how her garden would be different than her mother's. The girl is very imaginative and it includes things like growing jelly bean buses and shells and having only chocolate bunnies. We decided to start with the table settings.

Baking a Strawberry Cake

With all our valentine preparation we have been thinking pink a lot. We have been talking about making a strawberry cake, so yesterday was the day. I looked on-line for a recipe. Most of them used strawberry gelatin which we did not have on hand, but I finally found one that used strawberries at A Dash of Sass. I made a few changes to the recipe, but not too many. I did not have self rising flour--I have cake flour, all purpose flour, organic white bread flour, whole wheat flour, and I think I may still have some brown rice flour, but no self rising flour. So I looked on line for a substitute (and to find out what it is) and found on Buzzle an easy substitute, so this is one of the changes I made.

I forgot to take pictures of us making the batter and even of the batter, but here is the empty bowl with a bit of batter left. I did not use any food coloring and didn't really think it needed any.

In the oven

The recipe makes a three-layer eight-inch diameter cake. We only had two eight-inch pans so we made one nine-inch as well.

Then we made the cream cheese frosting recipe included with the cake recipe. It tasted good, but did not spread well. I don't know what I did wrong, but something was definitely wrong. I did not use the milk and used all three cups of sugar.

But it tasted good, so we aren't too worried!

All three of us enjoyed a piece after it was frosted and enjoyed it!

The cooked color was not as pretty as the batter, but I would rather not have the artificial food coloring, so we will keep it that way. I think next time I might consider making it a bundt cake and doing a chocolate glaze for the top.

Anyway, my cake recipe adapted from A Dash of Sass:

3 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
(baking powder and salt are not needed if you use 3 cups of self rising flour!)
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup canola oil
2 cups pureed strawberries (I used frozen ones that I thawed in the oven at 250 for a few minutes and then pureed in my food processor--I did not strain the seeds out and did not notice them)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs beaten

1) Preheat oven to 325. Spray three 8-inch round cake pans with non-stick spray.
2) Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Then gather the rest of the ingredients without adding them.
3) Once you have all the liquid ingredients you can add them to the dry ones and mix. Then distribute evenly into the three pans.
4) Bake for 27-30 minutes.
5) Cool on rack in pan for 10 minutes than remove from pans and cool completely.
6) Frost or glaze however you would like.

Enjoy!!