Homeschool Review Crew - Meal Time Help For Busy Homeschool Moms - Everyday Homemaking Cooking

Getting my family together to sit down for dinner is a near-impossible feat, between my self-employed musician hubby's schedule and the fact that every child has their own "Will Never Eat" items, it's a challenge, so anything that will help me with meal time is a welcome treat and that's why I was thrilled to get a chance to review Everyday Cooking from Everyday Homemaking.

Other members of the Crew received:

The Everyday Family Chore System

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As a special offer for my blog readers The author is offering 10% off The Everyday Family Chore System and/or Everyday Cooking (print or e-book) through Labor Day! The code is:

TOS10books

Apply it to as many books in your cart as you'd like, but you will need to shop first, apply the 10% discount code last. 

Expires Sept 5.

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It also comes in red

What is Everyday Cooking by Vicki Bentley?

The book is written by a busy homeschooling mom of 8 and foster mom to 50, Vicki Bentley, and comes with your choice of a blue or a red cover. The contents are the same with 198 pages of recipes, menu schedules and helpful tips including shopping and cooking equipment tips. I chose blue, and I received a physical spiral-bound copy of the book that has a glossy paperback wipe-off cover. I also received a digital pdf version.

The idea behind the cookbook is to bring families together, even if it's not every night of the week, around the dinner table. Excerpts of this updated and revised version was first shared a Home Education 101 manual about getting dinner on the table the same day you homeschool with easy-to-prepare, nutritious meals that fit within a homeschooler's budget.

There are substitution ideas if you prefer gluten-free or other substitutes included in the book. While the author hopes to present healthy food options, the idea of the cookbook is more to get the family together. The hope is that if a meal takes less than 45 minutes to prepare, or you can include the family in meal preparation, you will be more likely to eat together as a family. So, a lot of the book includes suggestions for meal preparation ahead of time.

Everyday Cooking begins with an introduction and then a couple pages of tips on foods to prepare ahead of time to save time when everyone's hungry. That is followed by Breakfast ideas, appetizers, dressings & drinks recipes and buffet tips followed by blank pages to jot down notes. The next section offer bread & grains recipes including pictures of bread making, and pages for notes. The next section is main dishes & soups & sides, the next section includes recipes for desserts & snacks. There is even a section on homemade vanilla extract. YUM! Finally, there is a section on low-carb/gluten-free pantry helpers, basic measurements & helps meal planning/shopping hints with sample menus and schedules and pages for you to copy and fill in your own.

Tips like these:



The final pages include some wonderful curriculum resources for teaching home-ec type classes. They include:

Basic Cooking Skills Checklists
A 1-2 Week Food & Nutrition Mini Unit
Basic Kitchen Accessories
Kitchen Equipment

One of the final sections includes a section entitled, "The Tortoise and the Hare Run for Dinnertime Race: Slow Cookers vs. Pressure Cookers along with recipes and Pressure Cooker Tips from the author along with a glossary of terms and links to further resources followed by an index for all of the recipes inside the cookbook, information about the author, and more pictures.

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How Did We Use It?

This pic is not a recent picture, but it is a memory we need to get back to as a family. When I received this Everyday Cookbook, I was excited to see all of the cooking and meal planning tips that I think just might help us do the trick to get back to this!

The first thing I did was find the menu planning pages. Then, I handed it to my youngest and ask her to circle recipes that look good to her. I love any help I can get in preparing my children to be on their own, so this was exciting, and I thought it would make a great book to use for a home-economics course as well.

One of the favorite things my youngest child enjoys is cracking and stirring the eggs:

Here are some examples of what my children have cooked for me:

Our big breakfast

My daughter managed to put together a nice lunch. Her mac 'n cheese used shells noodles instead and not the elbow mac suggested in the recipes.

My daughter also made me her version of Italian chicken with pasta with mixed fresh veggies on the side for dinner.

What Did We Think?

Any help with cooking in my house is appreciated. I absolutely hate to meal prep, for one main reason - I have picky eaters. So, my healthy ideas get complaints and are left untouched. It gets discouraging to motivate me to want to cook. So, I welcomed this book and loved so many of the suggestions of prepare-ahead ideas. My husband especially loves the idea of the cook ahead and freeze rice bags.

FIND EVERYDAY HOMEMAKING ON SOCIAL MEDIA @:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/everydayhomemaking Tag: @everydayhomemaking 

Read what other members of the Homeschool Review Crew thought by clicking on the picture below:

Gingerbread Child Apron Cooking Fun on Etsy and My Teen Daughter's Designs

It's time to start thinking about holiday baking. If you're a "Let's hurry for Christmas" kind of person - Then, let's do it! If you'd rather embrace Thanksgiving first - Then, let's be thankful and start baking. Whether it's pumpkin pie or sugar cookies.

Let your little helper in on the fun with this sweet little apron to cover her clothes from flour and other cooking messes while looking her best.

This adorable little apron is on my Etsy shop - Graham Crackers and JEllie!

It is made to fit a toddler/preschooler approximately age 2-4.

KEEP CHECKING BACK TO THE SHOP AS I ADD NEW STUFF AND AS MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER TRIES HER HAND AT ETSY WITH HER OWN DESIGN.....STAY TUNED IT'S COMING, AND I'LL GIVE YOU ONE HINT - FOR KING AND COUNTRY FANS WILL LOVE HER DESIGNS!

TOS Review - Eat Your U.S. History Homework by Ann McCallum Books

Get out your aprons, your rolling pins, and bring your appetite. Learning just got a bit more palatable and oh so tasty. I was thrilled to get a chance to review one of Ann McCallum Books called, Eat Your U.S. History Homework. Written by Ann McCallum and illustrated by Leeza Hernandez.

What is the Eat Your U.S. History Homework?

This 48-page book presents various parts of history with stories told around recipes from throughout history. I received a physical, hard-cover book. We got to learn about:

Introduction which includes a timeline from 1607-1789
Kitchen Tips
Thanksgiving Succotash
Colonial Cherry-Berry Grunt
Lost Bread
Southern Plantation Hoe Cakes
Revolutionary Honey-Jumble Cookies
Independence Ice Cream
History Review
Glossary of Terms
Index

Each new featured recipe begins with a brief history and how the particular recipe fits this time period or historic story. Following this brief history is a 2-page spread of ingredients and instructions to prepare the featured food item. Then, while you wait for the food to cook, there are additional pages of historic fact surrounding the recipe and a section called "Side Dish" that gives interesting facts about this time in history.

After you have covered all of the recipe sections, there is a History Review that highlights each time period learned and a Glossary that contains historic terms and dates. The last pages are an alphabetical index to help you easily go back to refer to anything you want to cover again.

How Did We Use It?

Friday was our day to eat our homework. We sat down and read a new chapter each week and made sure we had all of the ingredients to make the recipe that was presented for that chapter. It was a really fun time with my daughter and I in the kitchen, but it was even more fun to watch her excitement about making something she later shared with the family. The historical facts were covered in about a page, followed by the recipe, followed by additional interesting tidbits about that time in history. So, it really was solid history lessons wrapped up in yumminess (if that's a word).

What Did We Think?

We learned a lot of history that I didn't even know, and my daughter loved eating her homework. The book is quality bound with a hard cover and jacket, plus we put it inside a plastic recipe holder so it wouldn't get messy while we cooked.

I was honestly very impressed by how much interesting historic fact this book covered while keeping recipes true to their time frames.  I'll be honest and tell you that our most favorite recipe in the entire book is the Revolutionary Honey-Jumble Cookies, and I'm not going to give away the most interesting part of the story connected to these. You'll have to get the book to find out for yourself, but I'll give you a hint: It has to do with coffee v. tea in America. And, we now will have a new holiday tradition when it comes to baking cookies, because even my non-cookie-eating hubby agrees that these cookies were the best any of us have ever had.

Members of the TOS Review Crew received a few of the other Ann McCallum Books to review. Find out what they thought of: Eat Your Math Homework Eat Your Science Homework Rabbits, Rabbits Everywhere: A Fibonacci Tale or Beanstalk: The Measure of a Giant
Read what other members of the TOS Review Crew thought by clicking on the picture below: