Recipes for kids abroad. Homeschool and Afterschooling for kids at home.

FOOD!!! Yes, I need pictures! My recipes need pictures around them to identify instead of just a title. They are tweaked to work for us in terms of ease, ingredients frequently on hand, real or pure ingredients(for the most part), our family taste, and usually SOY-FREE or easily adapted to be SOY-FREE. SOY-FREE tagged recipes still mean you have to know what ingredients you are putting in are truly SOY-FREE and even if is was SOY-FREE in the past, you have to check it each time you buy it. Ingredients change frequently and can even be different from store to store or expiration date to expiration date for the same product. Homeschool and Afterschooling notes and ideas are here too. I'll probably separater the blog later, but for now, this is the place for family and friends to look. Time Impaired Living has many definitions that I may update as time goes on or doesn't. To begin with, I'll say that Time Impaired includes time lost because of the schedule of a wonderfully dynamic family. It also includes the nonexistent sense of time when disability kicks in.
To see or print the recipes, Mouse over the image and you can enlarge the recipe. You can also enlarge it a second time.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Nick's Chili Recipe - 2nd Grader Style

Cameron's Chili Recipe was made in Elementary School years ago, so it just goes to figure that Nick would want to come up with his own recipe.  He says that if you don't have enough hamburger then use some chicken you cook from the freezer or the canned kind from Sam's Club. ( the Sam's Club canned chicken has been soy-free in the past so that's why we have about 30 cans in the cupboard.)   A key to it is also to drain and rinse the green chili's or it will be too spicy for little brothers or sisters.  Corn bread crumbled over it can help tone down spiciness though if needed.

This is a great kid recipe because it pretty much involves opening cans and stirring.  Here is the raw hand scrawled version.

"Two Egg Cake"

Here are the versions of our most used cake recipe because we never used mixes.  Use any one of them at your own discretion.  One of them really does work but its up to you to figure out which one.  I am not listing the sources but I bet you can tell which one I WON'T be using again.

OK, most of my siblings that were around when we had the rule that everyone had to try at least 1 or 2 bites of whatever creation any of us made for the family should remember the "Best Two Egg Cake" I made.  All mom and I could figure was that I must have mixed up the Flour and the Baking Soda with reversing the amounts of each.  I put something like 2 cups of soda into it and really thought I was following the recipe so well.  It was the basic cake recipe we used through the years for most birthday cakes and cupcakes and seemed to always work without fail.  SO, how did I make it so awful that one time and have it be one of the continuing family jokes through the years.  I can still taste how awful it was and at the same time how funny it was that everyone had to eat some.

The answer came about a year ago when I was looking up the recipe online and soon after visited Mormor and Papa and was able to get a copy from the old family "Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book" from 1976.  It is so worn and

stained and covered in years of pancake and other batter spilled and wiped off from 9 plus kids using it as THE cookbook until mom bought the Fanny Farmer Cook
book when I was maybe in high school.  I was surprised to find the old book still around.

 I copied the version from the cookbook but also found online one version of the cake listed "2 1/2 cups of Baking Powder/"  I vaguely remember that mom had bought a paperback version of the cookbook when I was young because it was the NEW NEW version and our older one was kind of worn way back then.  I also vaguely remember how she got frustrated with it and threw it away saying she was staying with the old one because the new one just didn't have things work right.  Well..... it now seems that the edition I think she threw away had at least one major error in one of our most used recipes and the terrible cake I made was from that edition.  Kind of nice after more than a couple decades to find out I followed the recipe correctly and it really wasn't my fault.  To all my siblings that had to suffer, this was one time that I didn't play a joke on anyone.  Yes the toothpaste frosting and that time I did the terrible Tabasco sauce Popsicle were real jokes but at least the salty cake wasn't.

Banana Bread - Not My Favorite

YUCK!!!! Just pulled out a frozen pack of ripe bananas from the freezer looking for chicken.  NO! Banana Bread is not my favorite and I only occassionaly tolerate it but my family likes it so here is the recipe we've used.  If you're making it for me, please add nuts and NEVER add chocolate chips.  Something about chocolate chips in banana bread makes my stomach turn when I bite into it and I've heard the same from some others when its been served at church potlucks too.  OK now that I've offended every person that loves the chocolate chips in it and has given it to us as gifts or served it to us, there are enough people in our family that like it that way that it is always eaten and enjoyed. 

Please mash, smash, pulverize the banana enough so it doesn't have chunks of slime throughout.  I think the chunks of slime bit is what has turned me off from banana bread in general.  Its the surprise in a bite I just don't want to find.  Kind of like the instant slime rehydration of seaweed in California Roll sushi that makes me stay away but not to the slime factor of Sea Urchin in sushi.

Divinity Recipe

BUMMER!!!!!  Divinity just doesn't work when it's humid from raining.  You can try and make adjustments but even if you get it to work, it quickly changes with the humidity and you have to try drying it out again in the oven before serving, SO since this was a really wet Christmas season this year we didn't make any, but here's the recipe anyway so you can make it when weather dries out.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

12th Day of Christmas, Pistachios

11th Day of Christmas, Pumpkin Pie

10th Day of Christmas, Homemade Caramel Corn



9th Day of Christmas, Raspberry Chipotle Dip

Yes this image says 1st Day of Christmas not 9th but I switched the 1st and 9th days this year.

8th Day of Christmas, Coconut Chex Mix

This is great munchy food.

7th Day of Christmas, Molasses Crinkle Cookies


This recipe has 2 versions in my binder.  One is the one with adjustments made on the actual recipe to change it to how we like it and the other is one printed for others a couple years ago.  I think the major difference was to have both white and brown sugar and up the spices, but I'm not up to thinking that much right now.





“My Book House” edited by Olive Beaupre Miller

“My Book House” edited by Olive Beaupre Miller is my favorite collection of children's literature.  The 1st edition is my favorite in the green binding from 1922.  The second set that I have enjoyed is the blue bound set published in 1948 for a thirty second printing with a copyright of 1937.  As I was reading from book 2, "Story Time", to my son this morning, I thought of looking online again to see what was currently available and found that some of the editions and volumes are online.

This morning we enjoyed reading "The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat," "The Little Gray Pony," "Ole Shut-Eyes, the Sandman," "The Two Crabs," and "Belling the Cat."  Volume two has shorter stories with many authors as well as fables adapted from AESOP.  Volume one has wonderful Nursery Rhymes and Verse with Illustrations.  All the volumes have great illustrations and I would love to frame many of them but the books are too wonderful to take apart.  My mother read these as a child and she read them to me, and I read them myself and to my sibbling, and now I am reading them with my children.  I hope to find digital easily read versions for my children to have them for their children. 

There was a reprint sometime in the 1970's or 1980's but so much had been taken out that they weren't the same.  Although, if one of those versions were available, I would probably buy it.  The older copies' pages are getting brittle and their are fewer and fewer available online and in bookstores.

As time permits, I may do more with My Bookhouse on this blog but for now, here's some starter resources if you aren't lucky enough to have any of the volumes or didn't grow up reading them.

A 1921 easily read scanned version of the "The Latch Key" volume can be found at :
http://www.archive.org/stream/thelatchkey01millarch#page/n5/mode/2up
If the link doesn't work, try a copy and paste in the browser or the site may be gone.

The following two links are to a blog by a librarian in South Carolina that gives some good information about the volumes.
http://mybookhouse.net/about-ms-kathy/

http://www.mybookhouse.com/2006/09/my-book-house-backstory.html

Wikepedia also has some information on the author and the series.