Cheese for dessert?!?! Cheese making!

I fell in love with cheese when we last went to France,   I remember being at a convention in La Londe France,  with people from all over the world, and when they served cheese for desert, all the Americans looked puzzled.  Cheese for dessert, who had heard of such a thing?!?  Then we  stayed with friends in Lyon, France and we were delighted when they would bring out a platter of cheeses!  I have gotten to enjoy many fine cheeses in Belgium and I have even been to Asiago, Italy and enjoyed their very fine cheeses!      

 Cheese, what an amazing food!  I always had a unquenchable curiosity, I wanted to know how everything and anything worked.  How things were made and how they were formed.  And luckily I married a man that showed me that is was perfectly acceptable to tear things apart  and to explore!  So cheese, I needed to know how it went from milk from a cow (or goat, yummy) to this delicious texture!  So being the Renaissance Mama I am (and a geek at heart,)  I set out to have some fun with my son and got myself  a book called Home Cheese Making!  And we have been enjoying our own mozzarella cheese!

Making Mozzarella is really quiet simple and takes about 30 minutes,  it is perfect for making with children.  You need a gallon of milk that is NOT ultrapasturized, pectin, citric acid, rennin, cheese salt, and a thermometer.  You can also buy a cheese kit  that will have everything you need.  What I love about mozzarella, is that though sanitation is important, this is a quick cheese, you use a microwave too, and you do not have to worry as much about sanitation as you would with more advanced cheese.  Plus, we always make mozzarella when we are going to make lasagna.  A natural and easy extension is to make homemade whey ricotta cheese, oh it is so yummy.  But please take this advice and do not forget it like I did , always use a really good cheese cloth or you will see your yummy ricotta go down the drain!

Oh and gloves are helpful, this is my son pulling the very hot cheese!  The author of Home cheese making also has a youtube video if you are a visual person.  So, enjoy some fun and bonding time with your wonderful children, and have some fun making yummy cheese!

Please like my page on Face book Raising a Renaissance Man, and let raise a generation of children that are passionate about the world all around them!

Sushi even your child would eat!

I love love love to try new and unique items, and when I came across Kracie candy sets, I knew that I just had to try it!

When I ordered my Popin'cookin' sushi candy set  it had to be shipped from Japan, but that was a part of the fun and adventure to us!  I try really hard to encourage my future Renaissance Man to explore different cultures and what is more fun to anticipate a package from Japan.  The packaging is all in Japanese, and so are the instructions, but do not fear, there is always youtube to the rescue.  So I simply went to, KraciePopin'cookin' Japanese Sushi candy and followed along with the video.

I helped my son follow the directions, and I thought that the little roe was fascinating to make because you had to add droplets to a solution.  Then after in the tray they make the candy, they have to form the little sushi candies.

And EAT!  

Fun, interesting and he got to explore a different culture in a fun way!  

I also have a Bento Box candy kit and a donut kit.  I am looking forward to seeing how my son handles trying to deccifer the instructions on the box.. They are visually set up, step by step, and I want to see how he will draw on his past experiences  to figure out the challenge.  I know the results will be fun and actually they were enjoyable to eat!

Future peanut farmer!

When I was a little girl, I remember just being mesmerized and fascinated by a pulled up peanut plant with little peanuts hanging from it's roots.  It is like a photograph in my brain, and it's inspired me to share it with my son this month.

                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                                                    I bought the  Dunecraft Sprout an d grow peanut kit and I borrowed "A Weed Is A Flower" by Aliki from the library and we started our new adventure.  I had my son read me the book and I was am amazed that  I still had not read a book about George Washington Carver!!!  I was so very touched and amazed by his story!  We had so many wonderful conversations about this Renaissance Man!  I truly have a new hero!  I can not encourage you enough, that if you have never read about him, you should!  This man has a wonderful story and aI hope that he inspired my son to be his best no matter what!

After we read our book, and planted our seeds, I have my son write about his experiences in his science journal.

       

Another fun and exciting day in the Fox Household!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE being a geeky mom!

Spring is in the air, and being the Renaissance Mama that I am , I have an experiment that still gives me the giggles!  I have been doing this experiment for years and considering I have been in Early Childhood Education for almost 30 years, that IS a long time!  And I daydream of the day that I am holding my dear little grandchild and we are giggling at this little experiment!  Yes, everyone loves the flowers in the dye experiment.  What is not to love?!? Flowers, color and science! What a awesome combination!

This year we decided to go with white tulips, some years I have used daffodils or carnations, or even celery.  We used lots of food coloring in a little water to make it go faster, you could see the changes within 15 minutes and we let it sit over night.  I also added leaves, to show veins in those also.

And WAHHHLAAAHH!!!

You have a beautiful centerpiece!  I have to admit, every Valentines day I say no to the store bought flowers.  But I am a sucker for hand picked flowers and these very special bouquets!!!

BUT that's not all, there is more!  As a Renaissance mama, I try to get the most for my buck, so then we open one up and dissect and label all the part of the flower.  We have tried this year to hand pollinate them, add food to the water and see if we can get the ovaries to continue to grow and we will dissect that too!

But of course, as always.  I just love spending the time with my son building loving memories.  I hope that one day my children will look back on their childhoods and get a kick out of such goofy but fun experiments!

Peeps tradition

It is that time of year again where you walk down the seasonal isle of a grocery store and find a colorful selection of Peeps, and it is that time of year that I get to enjoy a Geeky Mom tradition!  Blowing up Peeps in the microwave!  You know, even if you are an adult with no children, you should give this a try at least once in your life.

1. Buy Peeps, take home and unwrap them.  I add the unwrap them because apparently in America some people can  not figure that out, I have seen warning labels on packages of bread, sheessshhh!

2. Place on plate, I am not a environmentalist, so I prefer paper.  Much much easier to throw in trash than scrub off microwaved on sugar.

3. Place plate in the Microwave, depending on the microwave set to cook at full force for about 20 seconds.  this is where your kids come in great, and make sure you get them a stool to stand on first.  I like to ask my kids to think through the process of telling the microwave "what to do" or go step by step if they are really young, and let them be apart of the process.  We experiment with this, sometimes I do more than 20 seconds so I can try to get that hard "Lucky Charm" effect, but the burned effect is no good!  The children LOVE to watch what happens and love to eat their experiment even more!  All the while you give them a little science lesson.  Me, I am no expert, so I basically say " Matter, when hit with the microwaves vibrate and get hot and they bounce off each other and cause the Peep to expand"  But you brilliant minds out there can really expand, depending on the age of the child.  There are usually several Peeps and honestly we do this a few times a season, and they release Peeps several times a year (yeah I am a bit addicted to candy), after you begin to teach them what is happening, then start asking them what they think is happening and guide their answers.  The tough part about learning is that you have to teach over and over again to get ideas through, thankfully Peeps are cheap, and yummy!

You can expand on this by having toothpick fights with them (google it) and another thing you can do is use marshmallows.  Put a few drops of food color on a plate, give them a toothpick for each color and tlet them use the tip of the toothpick to paint their marshmallow.  It is really cool to see your design expand!

So have fun, explore, think, grow and love your kids!  Trust me, it means the world to them when you take the time to do dorky little fun stuff!  Fill their lives with fun and rememberable moments!