Chewing on Literacy

In recent months, Jacob's literacy skills have been exploding. He rarely talks about what he does at school, but some pretty amazing things are happening in his brain.

I recently had the idea to get a dry-erase board on which I would write the weekly (or daily) menu, in order to get the kids more involved in menu planning, and, hopefully, dinner eating! I got one at Target last week, and Jacob was very excited to write out, and then, to draw, the night's menu.

Inspired, in part, by my friend's blog about learning to be domestic, I decided to make Chicken Pot Pie. This is a bit tricky for me, since I don't eat meat, but Josh was my taste consultant and he helped me get the sauce to taste good. At one point he gave it the highest possible compliment: that it tasted like his mom's cooking!

It took me all day to make the pie. I made the crust from scratch while I cooked the chicken in some home-made chicken broth that I had in the freezer from an earlier experiment this year in which I roasted a chicken (eewww, it was gross) and then cooked down the bones into broth. When I was done with the pie crust, but while the chicken was still cooking I made a roux out of cubed carrots, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, flour and milk. Then Josh salted that to taste, and I cubed and added the chicken.

Before I cooked the pie I covered it in the pie dough. I made a little chicken out of dough so that it would photograph well for the blog, and Jacob wrote the menu on the board. The only technical difficulty has been presented by Casey. Whenever one of us is not looking, Casey selectively erases bits of the board, which sends Jacob into a rage! When he calms down he goes back to the board and re-draws it.

All in all I've been very pleased with how the experiment is going. Ironically, though, everyone has been a bit sick this week, and no one besides Jacob has been terribly hungry for the chicken pot pie, the pasta/cream cheese/soy hamburger dish, or the home made vegetarian chili in the refrigerator. But at least we have a beautiful white board, and a fridge full of home made food! And a kindergartener who is learning how to read and write! And a pre-schooler who knows exactly how to make her brother insane!