Falafel and Pita bread experiment

I recently purchased a bunch of dried garbanzo beans and was super excited about making falafel with them.  Started out by soaking them overnight and then the children and I set to work in the afternoon making them using THIS recipe that I found on Pinterest.  

We also made our own pitas using THIS recipe from Budget Bytes.  Unfortunately only one pita rose well, but I think that may have been because I had to keep opening the oven to see how they were doing - we don't have an oven light!

We made a yogurt sauce with Greek yogurt, feta cheese and a bit of seasonings from the pantry: lemon pepper, oregano and parsley (I think).

We LOVED them!  The falafel was a bit dense and we can try adding some baking soda to the next batch to see if that lightens it up a bit.  I might try that tomorrow!  We only cooked up half the batch, ended up eating half of that batch and froze the rest.  All in all a wonderful experiment.  

However, I have learned that making messes in the kitchen on Saturday night is NOT the way to go!  I like to take Sunday off so today (Monday) was spent trying to get my kitchen back in order!!  

All those spices smell SO yummy!

Reading 'A Horse and his Boy' while we wait for the Pita dough to rise and falafel to chill.

Getting ready to cook our pitas

cooking the falafels

The Spread

My dinner ... a falafel salad with pita on the side

My girl eating her falafel sandwich

Our Fall "to do" list

The kids and I saw this cool Fall "to do" list on Pinterest and decided we just had to do it!  We put things on the leaves like:  

• have a bonfire
•  Nature Scavenger hunt
• camping trip
• roast marshmallows
• make hobo packs

We made a list of about 10 things we want to do, added them onto our Fall "tree" and will let the leaves "fall" as we accomplish each fun Fall thing!

Dinner was SO tasty!  We are planning on doing it again when we go camping next weekend!

Playing with pastels

In case you are wondering this was not an "original by Tara".  No, I owe this fun project to Pinterest with the help of our cousin Joy who gave the kids some wonderful pastels!  Josiah went a little overboard and decided to draw his tree picture with the pastels before I caught him!  I told them both that they can use the "fake pastels" from their little art sets ANY time they want - but NOT the real pastels!  As you can see the project was a success and I think their favorite part was the blending of the colors together!

 

E's experiment goes ... mushy

I canned tomatoes earlier this summer and then I canned tomatoes again today!  Yaay!  I have about 10 pints of tomatoes for spaghetti and soups for the winter ... and we still have a dozen or so green tomatoes waiting to ripen on the vine!

What does this have to do with my daughter's experiment?  WELL ... she took a look at those beautiful tomatoes sitting on the counter-top yesterday and decided that she wanted to see what would happen to a tomato if she put it in the freezer.  She didn't tell anyone what was going on in her little head, she just went with her idea.  Chris opened up the freezer last night and thought - why is there a tomato in the freezer?  I opened up the fridge this morning and thought - why is there a tomato (& a very mushy one at that) in the fridge?

We got to the bottom of our mystery when we asked the kids and E sheepishly said, "It was me"!  We had fun talking about how she needs to run her experiments by us in the future and she got to see what happens to a tomato after it freezes (rock solid) and then defrosts (yuck).

The best part about it all is that the little experiment is totally unlike E and so it was fun to see her do something we would expect of ... her brother :)

Favorite morning pastime

It's the beginning of a new week!  I've been enjoying my morning cup of coffee along with my journal, Bible and book by N.T. Wright: Surprised by Hope.  The dog got "fixed" last week so I was hanging out with him on the kitchen floor and yesterday I sat outside on my front porch.  But wherever I am it's always good to start the day out this way!

There are how many continents?

To go along with our study of history from the beginning of time we've been also studying the continents for geography.  The kids ALMOST have them memorized in order of largest to smallest.  They have a hard time with all the "A" continents ... and Europe is a tough one for them to remember too ... but for a Kindergartner and First grader I would say they are doing rather well!

My attempt at cutting all the continents out of felt.  I didn't do so well w/ Europe!

"...let the dry land appear."  (Gen 1:9b)
E and J working diligently on the dry land "cookie"

They created one big land mass as well as mountains and a few Islands

All finished and boy are they ready to eat it!

E's song about butterflies!

E was so inspired by watching the butterflies grow that she made up her own song!