Dinner Celebration for Owl Moon

Tonight we celebrated the end of our first book that we rowed. The title is Owl Moon. Our recipes came from Becky Jane’s FIAR Cookbook. We're cooking up chili and corn bread muffins. John and Gracie both love to help me in the kitchen and I know that it's good for them. Maybe I'll eventually work myself out of a job.

I actually let Gracie pour the buttermilk into the measuring cup. This made me a little nervous, but she did an excellent job. I think my reading the book, "Mommy, Teach Me" really helped me take the plunge on letting her do it. I'll talk about that book more in another post.

John really does an excellent job in the kitchen. My mom is the one who started him cooking and helping her out what seems like ages ago. She says she did the same thing when I was little, but I don't remember it at all. Sorry, Mom. Sometimes it's discouraging thinking about all the things we do as mothers and they'll never be remembered, but we have to remember the bond we create will last forever.

I definitely gave John and Gracie a talk on how dangerous the grater could be, but they did such a good job. Plus they had fun grating a little for themselves to snack on. We talked a lot about measuring like we always do when we cook. I showed them how to level off the dry ingredients. We also had lots of exposure to fractions too with 1/4 cup and 1/2 tsp. etc. This is real Math in action.
Check out these eggs. They're green. John and Gracie get a real kick out of them and I love the fact that they're fresh eggs from chickens that are allowed to roam around free. John can crack the egg and put it in the bowl, but poor Gracie only cracks it. She doesn't like to get her hands dirty, another thing my mom says is like me when I was little. She said I use to cry when I'd get dirty. Thankfully, Gracie is not that bad.

Here's the results of all our labor. It's terrible to say that I've never made homemade corn muffins before. I've always used the ones out of Jiffy box. They weren't hard to make at all. They weren't sweet like the ones from the box though, but everyone sure ate them up.

Here is Gracie with her muffin.John with his yummy chili. Now I know the pictures with the children drinking I'm going to take some flack for from some family members, but this was a special occasion. Yes, the children are drinking Root Beer Floats. Now for those of you who don't know me personally, my children have never drank pop before (except for the time Aunt Nene snuck John some when he was really small). Anyway, I digress. John really liked it, but poor Gracie kept saying that it was hot.


Gracie drank some, but didn't like the pop at all, so I just removed the ice cream and she ate that. It made this momma happy that she didn't like it :) The cup Gracie is drinking out of was mine when I was little. I do remember it, Mom. It's a Kool-Aid man cup. Does anyone remember those? My poor children don't even know what Kool-Aid is.
Everything was really good tonight and I feel really good about making special memories with my children. Even if they don't remember it, I will.