Kids Love Taco Bake - Guest Post

Hello.  My name is Peter, age nine.  I would like to tell you about a casserole your kids will really like.  It is called Taco Bake, and it is very easy.

Ingredients:

1 envelope low-sodium taco mix

1 20-ounce package very lean ground turkey or beef

1 regular size frozen bag steamable corn (Paul doesn't like corn, so we leave it off one end of the casserole.)

1 15-ounce can no-salt diced tomatoes, drained (Paul doesn't like tomatoes, so we leave them off one end.)

2 15-ounce cans black beans, drained (Use only one can if you don't like beans very much, or use 2 cans refried beans.  Black beans are the most healthy.)

12 ounces grated colby-jack cheese (or your favorite cheese)

1 bag plain tortilla chips, regular size

Directions:
1.  Brown meat and then add taco-mix with 1/2 to 3/4 cup water.  Daddy doesn't like onions so we use onion powder.  You can cook diced onions with your meat.

2.  Simmer for eight minutes.

3.  Spread meat mixture on bottom of 13x9 casserole dish.  We use a slotted spoon to drain some of the extra liquid.  Maybe you won't have extra liquid.

4.  Spread tomatoes over the meat.  We use a slotted spoon to drain the tomato liquid.

5.  Spread corn over the tomatoes (after you steam the corn).

6. Spread beans over the corn.  We use a slotted spoon to drain the black bean liquid.

7.  Spread cheese over the beans until you hide all the beans.

8. Spread crushed chips over the cheese until you hide all the cheese (most of your bag of chips).

9.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.  Let sit for five minutes.  Then dish it on plates.  Add some fruit or salad with it.

Let me know if your kids like it.  Have fun.

Love,
Peter

Mother's Day Craft - Guest Post

Hello.  I am Paul, age 7.  I really like arts and crafts. I found some tissue paper flowers to make for Mother's Day.  Here are some pictures to show you how to do it.

Your materials:

tissue paper

scissors

green pipe cleaners for stem (or any color)

ruler

pencil

Step One:

Stack several tissue papers.  Measure an 8 inch square, or a 5 X 7 rectangle.

Step Two:

Cut out your tissue paper figures.

Step Three:
Accordion fold your papers.  Maybe an inch or less for each fold.

When you are done folding, you have a long rectangle.

Step Four:
Use the top inch of your pipe cleaner and twist it around the center of your rectangle.

Step Five:
Pull up on and unravel your fold.  Do each side.

To make fuller flowers, stack more papers when you do your folding.  I showed it to you with just one paper.

This website shows you a fuller flower and gives you directions.  It also shows multi-colored flowers.

Have fun!  You can do this for your Sunday School, or for grandmas and aunties and moms.

spring announcement

It's time for me to take a spring blogging break.  We've got a lot going on here and I don't anticipate having any writing time.

Have a good week!

With Love,

Christine

Post Script on Roald Dahl, Author's Corner

My husband and I had a discussion today, and last night, about the nature of humour.  It's surprisingly absent in the Bible, but at one point the Apostle Paul encourages people to avoid "coarse joking" (in the King James). Why we never see humour in the Bible is curious, but I don't think that means it can't be a vital part of a balanced life.

I don't want to offend anyone who holds a more conservative view of what constitutes appropriate humour, or what constitutes appropriate censorship in children's literature.  I haven't read James and the Giant Peach yet, but last night in my research I learned it was censored in some schools because of the word "ass" and because of an "attitude of disrespect".  I don't know how the word "ass" was used without reading the book.  In any case, I would probably just mark it out with a pen in my copy. As far as the alleged disrespect goes, I would probably weigh whether it was directed at the antagonist or the protagonist, and decide from there.

My husband wisely pointed out that the Bible teaches us to respect positions of authority, meaning that if we don't like a particular president, or a child doesn't like a particular teacher, the position must still be respected, and thereby, the person holding it.

So then I wonder, is all rebellion against evil inherently bad? Without rebellion, can we progress as a society, or does might always make right?

What exactly is the nature of humour?  Is it inherently irreverent, to some degree?  I enjoy physical humour, for instance, and while I laugh at people slipping on bananas in old movies, I would never laugh if this happened to someone around me.  I believe people, including school-age children, get the notion that we can't really behave this way.  In the same way, I give school-age children credit for understanding that exaggerated characters, and the humorous way they're portrayed in stories, don't represent real life.

Humour comes from a certain point of view--from the outside looking in. If you've ever known outrageously funny people, you've probably noticed they have a hard time being serious--it's unnatural to them.  In my view this isn't a flaw in their character, but a particular personality type.  Might I suggest that God gave humour to us, through this personality type?   We shouldn't abuse the gift of humour and engage in "coarse joking", but neither should we devalue it as another of God's graces, to get through hard times spent on a fallen earth.

If you take a more conservative view, I understand that and don't mean to devalue it.  Our daily reality here, living with special needs and other issues, makes our need for humour great. As a result, my reading shelves may look different than yours.  

Author's Corner, Roald Dahl--laughter in literature

Our new read-aloud, which I asked you to name yesterday, is The BFG, by Roald Dahl (1916 - 1990), accelerated reader level 4.8 (fourth grade, eighth month).

Roald Dahl also wrote James and the Giant Peach, Boy, Danny the Champion of the World, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among many others.

His work, including James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was at times censored due to "undesirable" content; he is number 52 on the list of the 100 most censored books.  There is a certain "us" against "them" theme to some of his books, in terms of pitting children against adults--the author siding with the children. Roald Dahl attended English boarding schools as a child, where he and his comrades were beaten and otherwise treated cruelly.  These unfortunate school years lent a defiant flavour to his literary work.

You'll find a good adult versus a bad adult, as well, in his work.  He believed that to interest and delight children, a writer needed to make the good characters very good, and the bad characters very bad.  His exaggerated characters, not surprisingly, are a hit with children and adults alike.  His work enjoys wide circulation today, well past his 1990 death.

While Dahl's James and the Giant Peach is required reading in many schools, his work hasn't received prestigious awards, I presume due to his bizarre sense of humour.  Serious works of art dealing with the human condition earn awards, but humorous works are often undervalued.  And why?  It takes a unique, ingenious talent to make masses of people laugh, generation after generation.  If we are to live balanced lives--and teach balance to our children--can we truly dwell only on serious content, however wonderful, however worthwhile we deem it?  The Bronze Bow, which we just finished, truly is my second favorite book, but people, it was heavy, serious.  We're deeper, smarter people for having read it, but my instinct as a person, as a mother, tells me now we must laugh!  And laugh a lot--wholeheartedly.

When my family sits together laughing outrageously, I consider it a gift! Day to day life on this fallen earth is hard, and don't we need the reminder to hold everything loosely?  To laugh at the days to come?  I will always be grateful to artists who place high value on laughter--as a medicine, as a lifestyle.

Here are other hilarious excerpts from The BFG, (which stands for Big Friendly Giant)"

"But if you don't eat people like all the others," Sophie said, "then what do you live on?"
"That is a squelching tricky problem around here," the BFG answered.  "In this sloshflunking Giant Country, happy eats like pineapples and pigwinkles is simply not growing.  Nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable.  It is called the snozzcumber."
"The snozzcumber!" cried Sophie.  "There's no such thing." (page 48)

"Here is the repulsant snozzcumber!" cried the BFG, waving it about.  "I squoggle it!  I mispise it!  I dispunge it!  But because I is refusing to gobble up human beans like the other giants, I must spend my life guzzling up icky-poo snozzcumbers instead.  If I don't, I will be nothing but skin and groans." (page 50)

Here is the teaser from the back of my Puffin Book copy:

Just imagine suddenly knowing you may be eaten for breakfast in the very near future; dropped like a rasher of bacon into a frying pan sizzling with fat.
This is exactly what worries Sophie when she is snatched from her bed in the middle of the night by a giant with a stride as long as a tennis court.  Luckily for Sophie, the BFG is far more jumbly than his disgusting neighbours, whose favourite pastime is guzzling and swallomping nice little childers.  Sophie is determined to stop all this and so she and the BFG cook up an ingenious plan to rid the world of troggle-humping, bogthumping giants for ever!