Gluten-free Pumpkin Spice Cookies

On Friday for art class(and math and chemistry and fun) we made a care package of cookies for the big sister away at college. Having turned up my nose at all the "Pumpkin Spice" products on the market this month, I didn't see it coming: that I would be happily indulging in testing various recipes involving these ingredients! 

It all started with seeing a facebook post for pumpkin-banana "ice cream." I'm not sharing the recipe here because it's buried in the depths of old posts, and really you can count on your own taste buds to help you decide how much pumpkin and spice to use and whether to add more sweetener to the mix besides frozen banana. Simply a frozen banana, smashed about long enough in a food processor, can be the base for many fine frozen desserts. It has the rich, creamy mouth-feel of gelato. Baked goods, however, involve chemistry, so I've included the exact cookie recipe we invented. It was extrapolated from a banana bread recipe, substituting pumpkin pie filling for the banana.(It took three tries to get this recipe down, but we didn't mind the work involved in research and development.)

Another special thing about this cookie recipe is that it is gluten-free. That's another food trend I had not appreciated personally until this past summer, when my son was sick enough for long enough that I was willing to do anything, including changing his diet almost completely. Improved digestion and reduced joint inflammation for both of us was significant enough that I'm now a dedicated gluten-free baker. Learning to bake gluten-free has been an interesting and tasty learning experience.  

Xanthan gum is the magic ingredient that holds these soft cookies together in place of the strands of gluten. We played with a pinch of xanthan gum and a few drops of water, finding out how slimy and sticky it becomes. It is hard to wash off––kind of like slug slime! 

I would like to experiment with an egg-free version of this recipe by substituting flax seed meal, a dairy-free version using coconut oil instead of butter, and a lower sugar version using banana as well as pumpkin puree. For now though, these cookies are great for making the whole house smell good, and fun to decorate and share. Enjoy!

Gluten-free Halloween Cookies

mix together well:
2 cups Arrowhead Mills Gluten Free Baking Mix (plus some to use on hands when rolling dough balls)
1 T. pumpkin pie spice
1 t. baking soda
1/4 t. xanthan gum

mix together well:
1 c. butter, melted
1 c. pureed pumpkin (I bought pumpkin pie filling but you could cook a pie pumpkin.) (Alternatively you could use less pumpkin and add mashed banana.)
1 c. dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla

Mix dry and wet ingredients, let dough rest at least 1/2 hour because the non-gluten flour needs time to take in the liquids.
Roll dough into 1" balls, flatten. Draw lines for pumpkin effect, decorate with chocolate chips and candied ginger. 

Bake 30 min at 350 degrees.

Rainbow Order

Click photo to enlarge and see if you can find:

   miniature sushi
   2" baby doll
   coyote skull
   deer vertebrae
   Maine sea shells
   Florida coral
   view from the cockpit of a small space craft

   Aramaic alphabet inscribed on a clay tablet

   Mom's agenda
   Child's agenda

You're right if you think the little red cards on the rainbow clothespins are Mom's agenda. The order, however, was the homeschooled student's choice. Last year I wasn't certain that we would continue to homeschool another year, so I wanted keep up with the public school 4th grade curriculum, just in case. But I wanted John to have some choice in what activities to do when. After breakfast I would select the cards representing the activities I thought should happen that day. Then, as the day went on, he was allowed to choose (mostly) in what order to accomplish those activities.

This year, having assessed what we covered last year, I felt confident that we would still accomplish what we needed to do with a simplified agenda, including fewer subjects per day. More unscheduled time and fewer transitions work better for both of us. I didn't want the day's agenda to appear as complicated, but I did want to keep track of what we were doing each day so that there was a record at the end of the year and a sense of progress. Also, a goal for John was to be more involved in keeping track of what he was learning.

Our new method of organizing is a single-page chart (a different beautiful color each week) showing the days of the week and the subjects currently being studied, with an empty grid in between. John has taken ownership of making a check in each box as it is finished. We both enjoy a sense of accomplishment and closure. For subjects he loves there is no time limit, we could both read aloud fiction and history all afternoon! But for tougher subjects, such as math, where there simply are things he needs to learn, like it or not, I like knowing we've put in enough attention to call it a good school day. Really, any activity he is into can count for some sort of credit, and it's not necessary to label it all. But the professional teacher in me gets the satisfaction of knowing that day by day, week by week, over the course of ten months, in an unstressed-out way, we are "covering" math, reading, writing, foreign language, health, science, social studies, viola and orchestra, and art. Beyond this there are still vast tracts of hiking, biking, playing outside, gardening and other life skills, and open creative time.  

75 Carrot Gold

Amount of time it took John to dig up and rinse off all the rest of our carrot crop for the year: 1 hour.

Amount earned in Minimum Wage in the State of Maine: $7.50.

Number of carrots nice enough to sell, (if we did, but we're saving them for family and guinea pig): 75.

Cost to pay a young laborer to dig and clean each carrot: 10 cents per carrot.

Value of spending a warm Autumn afternoon outside in the garden for math: priceless.

Homeschool Harvest Soup

shelling pole beans

mincing herbs

working together to make soup

Homeschool Harvest Soup Recipe

Invite at least 2 eager children to harvest whatever is still in the garden. (Hint: do it after the first frost when the pole beans need tearing down and there are still fresh herbs and scallions.)

Give them scissors and knifes and trust them to use them. (Hint: start them off with scissors and knives very early in life, such as 2, so that by the time they are 8 or 9 they are knife and scissor-savvy.)

Add plenty of herbs and season with good cheer. (Hint: don't try too hard to make this activity about math or measuring or following a recipe book, just let them invent the soup as they go along.)

Cook in a big pot for as long as it takes. (Hint: let them make corn husk dolls while you keep an eye on the stove.)

Serve warm with hugs and smiles and call it a day well spent!

Smart-Assery as a Sign of Intelligence

I heard loud giggling and snorting coming from the bedroom. John was sitting on the bed with Hana, ostensibly working on finishing his ten minute English assignment. He covered up the page and told me not to look yet, he wasn't finished, then asked his sister what a Venn diagram was.

My reason for making him do this workbook was to expose him to some typical "read, then respond, based on the text above" type of work most schools (and standardized tests) use regularly. I wanted him to be familiar with the language and able to competently navigate these forms should he ever "join the system" again and need these skills. Simultaneously, by consulting the given texts and regurgitating answers based on those texts, he would get practice writing in standard English. What you see, however, is evidence that so much more is going on in that kid's mind! 

Rather than finish as quickly as possible, this page took him half an hour due to all the extra writing. Hey, I'll celebrate whatever gets him to write more! As you can read, he stays in lockstep with the program through answer #2, but on #3 he lets his inner smart-ass come through loudly! If you read the penciled words out loud you'll hear there is a very strong "voice" coming through. 

3. What animals are omnivores? What are some animals that are omnivores?
   "Omnivores are animals that eat Plants vs I mean plants and meat such as, a zomby, oops um hehe cross that off will you. Let's see,  Google serch, AH here we go, Pigs and Humans. Finaly done." 

Credit is due for complex sentence structure, multiple tangents consciously resolved, weaving in references to popular culture (the "Plants versus Zombies" game and doing a "Google search"), and finally answering the question. Anyone familiar with Calvin, from the cartoon Calvin & Hobbes may recognize the inner muttering of one who wants to do the right thing but is under the influence of a wandering mind and fantastical imagination.

By #6 he is engaged in lively dialogue with the textbook author. 

6. Do you think Kotetsu likes jumping?

   "How do you expect me to know! What, you think I can read minds or something."

(You might argue that both sentences should end with question marks, but I'll invite you to read them as they are and you'll discover the precise tones of sarcasm perfectly coded.)

At the bottom, in the middle of the Venn diagram, what may seem like a gross or silly comment is actually a reference to an article we discussed several weeks ago about an emerging food trend in NYC involving roasting an animal we think of as a house pet. 

I'm glad I can read deeply for meaning and understand that this child's smart-assery is actually a sign of intelligence––intelligence that refuses to just regurgitate answers from the text above. I'm glad Hana explained what a Venn diagram is, so he might remember it this time (special circumstances having her home). And, I'm glad I'm not a classroom teacher who has to grade this paper. 

Still Life, Active Learning

This time of year, when apples and nuts are dropping to the ground and roadsides are lush with asters and goldenrod, brings back some of my fonder memories of teaching such as picking bouquets for the classroom. 

One of the things I felt was most important was creating a learning environment that felt connected to nature. I didn't want to just live inside a single little box of artificially lit walls all day any more than my students did. Anything to bring in a sense of connection to a wider landscape seemed to make it easier to breath. 

In the one room school house there were geraniums all along the windows in the bright cozy Reading Corner. Students' collections of sea shells, rocks, sea glass, bones, drift wood, and other natural treasures accumulated in their desks and on the Science Table. In the Waldorf classroom there was always a nature table, which changed with the seasons. We went outside for nature walks and recess at least twice a day.

One of the things I love most about homeschooling is the daily opportunity to go outdoors whenever we want to––not having to wait until lunch-recess, nor waiting for a class-full of parents to sign permission slips, nor asking the principal several days in advance. I love the excuse homeschooling gives me to be humanly aware of, and responsive to, changes in the weather, season, temperature, and daylight. We can sit on the side of the house that is in the sun while doing multiplication flashcards, and switch to the other side as the afternoon wears on, doing workbooks and reading in the sunny garden. 

Juicing apples, discovering a wild turkey feather, and collecting brilliant fall leaves can lead to "teachable moments" worthy of academic credit, but they are all worthwhile for their own sake. This day-by-day appreciation and savoring of the natural world, the little things, the simple things, like the slant of the sunlight, the colors of the leaves, and what wild flowers are in season, is one of the most important life-lessons children can learn. That these things matter. When the world around you matters to you, you want to take care of it.

Going Nuts

While my son was taking our dog for a lunchtime walk I considered what math lesson we could do next: reviewing multiplication facts, metric measuring, and/or review different kinds of angles. Then he came into the house all excited, with a handful of horse chestnuts. "Can we go gather more now?" He pleaded. I considered. 

You know how sometimes you look back and realize that was the last time you did [ x ]? Well, this is possibly the last year one of my children is going to come running to ask me to come along collecting chestnuts. So we went out with a basket. 

Each spiky seed pod on the ground contained new treasures, never before seen. I love these shiny brown chestnuts, even if they aren't the edible variety. They look like hand-dipped chocolates, or caramels. 

"Manipulatives" can add such pleasure to an otherwise dry math lesson. We played a game of reaching into the basket of nuts, pulling out a fistful, and writing down all the possible multiplication problems to represent this amount. This led to John's rediscovery of prime numbers: 11 nuts can only be written as 11x1 or 1x11. After a couple examples he was able to remember and define what "prime" meant. Then, starting with one nut, adding one more at a time, he generated a list of prime numbers up to 31. Next I asked him to start in the center of a large sheet of paper, draw a line 1 cm long, turn at a right angle, draw a line off of it that is the next prime number (2 cm) and so on. What an interesting form took shape! Tomorrow (probably) we'll use tracing paper and draw curves nestled into all the right angles and discover the universal spiral this forms, and look for where in nature such spirals occur. 

So you see what can spiral out of a little spontaneous nut gathering!