This year, instead of “Pie Day” in preparation for Thanksgiving, I spread the work out over two Pie Days! I had nine pies to make, plus I wanted to spend as much time with Bunny as possible once she got home from college this afternoon, so I made two s’mores pies (a first for us…I’ve never made two of the same pie before!) and a chocolate-hazelnut pie yesterday (I also made the cranberries then, too). Today we took care of the rest of the pies, including a new addition to the lineup, a pineapple pie, plus pumpkin, butterscotch, caramel-apple (made by Bunny), pecan, and vanilla cream:
As soon as I saw German Girl in America’s recipe for Reformationsbrötchen, I knew I had to make them! Who doesn’t want to make rolls that look like Luther’s Rose? They’re really delicious…light and fluffy, with the perfect flavors for fall, featuring lemon and cranberry…and so cute. I left out the almonds, and we didn’t miss them, but I’m sure they make a great addition!
Chickadee and I are finishing Anne of Green Gables this week, so while we haven’t tried every recipe in The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook, it’s time to take a look back at the recipes we have tried. We made a lot of desserts, and I think the apple dumplings were my favorite (they were also something I had never made before!). I really like the way we’ve been able to tie cooking and literature together for the last few years!
Diana Barry’s Favorite Raspberry Cordial
Miss Stacy’s Baked Macaroni
White Sands Scalloped Tomatoes
Anne’s Liniment Cake
Chocolate Caramels
Old-Fashioned (Pink) Lemonade
Cowcumber Boats
Chocolate Goblin’s Food Cake
Afternoon Ruby Tea Biscuits
Coconut Macaroons
Creamy Butterscotch Pudding
Thick and Creamy Vegetable Soup
Orange Angel Cake
Miss Ellen’s Pound Cake
Puffy Apple Dumplings
Rachel Lynde’s North Shore Fish Cakes
Fire and Dew Sweet Potatoes
Maritime Gingersnaps
We’ll be taking a break from this cookbook for the time being, but I’m looking forward to coming back to it in the future!
Today I finally got around to preparing our annual family Oktoberfest! Of course I had to wear a dirndl…I think I wore five of my six dresses to various Oktoberfests this year!
I didn’t make fondue this year, but I did make pretzels, and I even experimented with making a few larger ones. I need to work on rolling them out a bit thinner, but they were good!
Of course I had to celebrate in Animal Crossing, too:
I made our favorites for dinner…Schnitzel (which at this point, I think I’ve perfected!), spaetzle, and rotkohl. I still haven’t been brave enough to make sauerkraut from scratch, so that was store-bought. I did make Jäger sauce this year, though!
Yes, our house smells like a German restaurant!
For dessert, I made our favorite Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte…I wouldn’t dare make something else!
It’s been almost a year since the last time I shared a look at the German cooking I’ve been doing, so it’s time for an update. I’ve been cooking at least one German recipe a month thanks to the great suggestions in my Rare Dirndl Facebook group. Some have been new versions of recipes I’ve made in the past (like Kartoffelpuffer, not once, but twice, with two very different recipes and a new serving suggestion of smoked salmon), but most have been new to us. I also made a lot of new German Christmas cookies last Christmas, and I’m really looking forward to making some of them again this year! I really enjoy trying recipes my ancestors might have enjoyed in their home country, and sharing them with my children to help them feel a connection to the past!
Martinsbrezeln
Lebkuchen
Vanillekipferl
Pfeffernusse
Kardamom Plaetzchen
Zimtsterne
Swiss Cheese Fondue
Bratkartoffeln
Beef Rouladen
Kartoffelpuffer
Brötchen
Lemon Strawberry Dutch Baby
Krautsalat
Currywurst
Summer Flammkuchen
Bavarian Obatzda (and pretzels!)
Kartoffelpuffer with Smoked Salmon
Sacher-Torte
I’m looking forward to continuing my adventures in German cooking!
Ladybug read about Origen and Clement of Alexandria and their differing views on pagan philosophy in religion. She worked with angles of elevation and depression in pre-calculus. In physics she started solving problems involving two-dimensional motion. She learned about mental illness in health. We finished The Hound of the Baskervilles…the Divine Comedy is up next! She finished the second section of US history, focusing on the establishment of the colonies. In grammar she moved on to punctuating with quotation marks. She read about Henry II and Thomas Becket in world history.
Chickadee started reading about Moses in religion. She continued to work on long division using estimation in math, and reviewed giving back change. In science we started a unit on the digestive system. She continued to learn about the spread of the Islamic faith in history. In grammar she worked on subject-verb agreement. We continued our study of Anne of Green Gables, and made three more recipes from The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook…Creamy Butterscotch Pudding, Thick and Creamy Vegetable Soup, and Orange Angel Cake (just in time for our Michaelmas celebration today!):
Maybe next week it will actually cool off…we’d really like to get outdoors for a change of pace!
Ladybug read about Justin Martyr and Irenaeus in religion. She learned about arc functions in pre-calculus. In grammar, she finally finished all of the comma rules. She continued working with vectors in physics, with vector addition and calculating magnitude and direction of vectors. In US history, she read about John Smith and Christopher Newport and Jamestown. She learned about various forms of neurodivergence in health. In world history, she read about how the Almohads attempted to conquer Spain. There was a murder in The Hound of the Baskervilles!
Chickadee completed the section on the Patriarchs in religion by reading about Job. She worked through more complicated long division in math. In grammar she conjugated verbs. She read about Muhammad and the Five Pillars of Islam in history. She wrote a chronological narrative of a scientific discovery in writing. In science, we continued learning about the muscular system. We continued reading Anne of Green Gables and stuck with a dessert theme in our cooking adventures (following the chocolate cake we made last week), and baked Afternoon Ruby Tea Biscuits and Coconut Macaroons from The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook.
We have had some nice days mixed in here and there, but I’m hoping we’ll have true fall-like weather soon so we can get out of the house and do something fun!
Ladybug read about Gnosticism in her study of the early church. She worked with secant, cosecant, and cotangent in pre-calculus. In grammar, she continued identifying the different comma rules. She started a new chapter in physics, focused on one-dimensional motion equations. In history, she read about Pope Eugenius III and the Second Crusade. She continued to read The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Chickadee reviewed the properties of addition and subtraction in math. In writing, she started constructing one-level outlines. She read more about Britain in the Middle Ages in history. In science we started a chapter on the skeletal system. She picked up her read-through of the American Girl stories with Meet Felicity. We continued reading Anne of Green Gables. We also started making recipes from The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook. For our first dinner, we started with one of the most famous items in Anne of Green Gables, “Diana Barry’s Favorite Raspberry Cordial.” We had “Miss Stacy’s Baked Macaroni” for the main course, and a side of “White Sands Scalloped Tomatoes.” For dessert, we had the other most famous recipe from the book, “Anne’s Liniment Cake” (but we substituted vanilla for the liniment!):
“Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavored that cake with Anodyne Liniment. I broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault–I should have warned you–but for pity’s sake, why couldn’t you have smelled it?” –Marilla Cuthbert
We also celebrated “Back to Hogwarts” today, and Ladybug and Chickadee helped me prepare all of the dishes we made from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. We started the day with Oversized Blueberry Muffins with Crunchy Tops like Mrs. Weasley might have made for Harry on the morning of his hearing in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. No Harry Potter-themed day would be complete without Butterbeer like Harry enjoyed at Hogsmeade in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We baked Hot Rolls like the ones made by Kreacher in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For dinner, we had Creamy Onion Soup like Mrs. Weasley cooked in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We finished with Rhubarb Crumble with Custard Sauce from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Summer vacation is coming to an end, which means I won’t have as much time for cooking “fancy” dinners. So even though I still have a lot of recipes left to try in The Official Disney Parks Cookbook, here’s a look at the ones we’ve tried so far. Unlike Delicious Disney: Walt Disney World, a cookbook of recipes from only Disney World which was the inspiration behind many of our Disney Dinners last year, this cookbook contains recipes from Disneyland, Disney California Adventure and beyond, Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Disney’s Animal Kingdom and beyond, and other Disney locations including Vero Beach and Aulani.
Mini Strawberry Cheesecakes
Walt’s Chili and Beans
Shrimp Boil Tacos with Andouille Sausage and Corn
Honey Crunch Cake
Totchos
Tres Leches Cake
Key Lime Pie
Charred Nebraska Corn Chowder
Pork Goulash with Sauerkraut Pierogi
Caramel Hawaiian Sweet Bread Pudding
Chef Mickey’s Breakfast Pizza
Pink Leilani
S’mores Gelato Shake
Watermelon Lemonade
Goofy’s Kitchen Cherry Tomato and Bocconcini Salad
BLT Flatbread
Red, White, & Blue Sprinkle Whoopie Pies
Naan Bread with Cucumber Raita
Mango Lassi
Tomato Florentine Soup
Lemon Soda Float
The Hollywood Brown Derby Cobb Salad
Beef Sliders with Pimento Cheese
White Chocolate Peppermint Bar topped with Peppermint Meringue Kisses
I really love our Disney Dinners, and I’m really excited about the newest cookbook in this series, Delicious Disney: Disneyland, which comes out this fall!
Time for a look back at this year’s Fairytale-themed summer school!
I came up with four crafts to go with all of the stories we read, and I’m actually pretty proud of how creative I was to come up with them. My favorite might have been “Rumpelstiltskin’s straw-into-gold ornaments.” We made traditional Scandinavian straw stars, and then spray-painted them gold…they’re really pretty, and we have the materials and tools to make more at Christmas!
If that wasn’t my favorite craft, our Lego enchanted rose was. The idea was mine, and I bought all the necessary parts, but the execution was evasive to me…Ladybug, however, sat down with all of the materials and figured out how to make a beautiful centerpiece in no time!
I bought some gingerbread houses last Christmas and put them away for this summer…that’s always a fun craft, and it never turns out the same way twice!
And we also put together a fairy garden…we couldn’t believe how quickly the sprouts started coming up, and we’re looking forward to continuing to care for it!
We didn’t do as much cooking and baking as I had hoped (mainly because we were so busy making recipes from Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook), but we did have a few fairytale dinners:
Fennel and Red Cabbage Slaw (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
Rapunzel…Angel-hair Pasta (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
Apple Punch (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
Mini Marbled Kugelhopfs (Fairytale Baking)
Golden Mountain Paella (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
Chocolate Ring (Fairytale Baking)
The only thing truly missing from this year’s summer school was a field trip…try as I might, I just couldn’t make that kind of connection. But it was a pretty fun, relaxed way to learn this summer, and that was really nice!
