What's better than homemade bread?

HOMEMADE CHOCOLATE BREAD

This bread was the moistest quick bread I have ever had. I thought it could use a little more chocolate.  Next time I will add mini chips into the mix (which I didn’t have enough of too add this time) and use a darker chocolate bar to melt. I would also add the glaze (left it off this time around). It tasted a little salty; in the future I will use ½ as much salt as called for. This bread would be a great gift for family and friends for the holidays. It makes the perfect chocolaty snack. This is one recipe I will definitely try again.
Enjoy, Kiah.

 

Triple-chocolate quick bread

1 ½ cups miniature semisweet chocolate chips, divided

½ cups butter, softened

2/3 cups packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 ½ cups unsweetened applesauce

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Glaze:

½ cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

1 tablespoon butter

2 to 3 tablespoons half and half cream

½ cup confectioners’ sugar

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt 1 cup chocolate chips; set aside to cool. In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and cooled chocolate; mix well. Add applesauce and vanilla; set aside. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in the remaining chocolate chips.

Spoon into four greased 5 3/4in x 3in x 2in loaf pans. Bake at 350* for 35-40minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing to wire racks.

For glaze, melt chocolate chips and butter in a small heavy saucepan; stir in cream. Remove from the heat; stir in confectioners’ sugar, vanilla and salt. Drizzle over warm breads. Cool completely.

Makes 4 mini loaves.

Taste of Home, January 11, 2012, pg.25 recipe by Karen Grimes of Stephens City, Virginia

The booklist.....

I am frequently asked "Can you recommend a good book for me/my child/my class?". I have also become the "Oh, ask Stefanie, she will know which book to recommend." My favorite is trying to recommend books for boys ages 12 - 16. Do you know how long ago I had a boy aged 12 - 16? It was a long time ago. Well, in an attempt to pull all of my book lists together and make it easier to find and recommend books or authors, I am making a master list of "De Voe Family Favorites". This is by no means a complete list and it will probably change and be added to over the coming days, weeks, months and years.  Here is an attempt to put some of it in one place. And yes we have read all of these, as a matter of fact I'm reading them again with the younger set of kids. As for the appropriate age and/or grade of each book that is up to you the parent. If there is something that you don't feel is appropriate for your kids don't read it. The final decision is yours. Let me know what your favorites/must reads are. Enjoy.

In no particular order:

PICTURE BOOKS/ EASY READERS/FIRST CHAPTER BOOKS
The Story of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
The Jolly Postman by Jan Ahlberg
Paddington Bear by Michael Bond
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
The Very Busy spider by Eric Carle
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
The Very Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle
Bread and Jam for Francis by Russell Hoban
Best Friends for Frances by Russell Hoban
Owl and the Woodpecker by Brian Wildsmith
Miranda's Smile by Thomas Locker
There's a nightmare in my Closet by Mercer Mayer
The story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
Brave Irene by William Steg
Mama, is it summer yet? by Nikki McClure
The old woman and the wave by Shelly Jackson
Mama, Do you love me? Barbara M. Joosse
When I was built by Jennifer Thermes
Priscilla and the hollyhocks by Anne Broyles
Violet the pilot by Steve Breen
Owen by Kevin Henkes
Through moon and stars and night skies by Ann Turner
The funny women  by Arlene Mosel
The purple coat by Amy Hest
From Dawn to Dusk by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Mrs. Rose's Garden by Elaine Greenstein
Cora Cooks pancit by Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore
V is for von Trapp by William Anderson
The Jolly Postman by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
One Morning in Maine by Robert McClosky
Blueberries For Sal by Robert McClosky
Make Way For Ducklings by Robert McClosky
Linnea in Monet's Garden by Christian Bjork
Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel
Cam Jansen by David Adler
Magic Tree house by Mary Pope Osborne (series)
Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
Winnie the Pooh by A.A.Milne
Dr. Seuss series
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg
Hansel and Gretel
Jack and the Beanstalk
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Little Engine that could
The Little Red Hen
Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
The Princess and the Pea
Rapunzel
Rip Van Winkle
Rumpelstiltskin
Cinderella (not the Disney version look for something with amazing pictures)
Sleeping Beauty (not the Disney version)
Chicken Little

CHAPTER BOOKS
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (if you have a son start with Farmer boy)
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
The Gift of the Magi by Carol Lynn Pearson
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
Stuart Little by E. B. White
The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard & Florence Atwater
The Great Brain by John D Fitzgerald
Homer Price by Rovert McClosky
Henry Huggins books by Beverly Cleary
Henry and Beezus by Beverly Cleary
Ramonia (series) by Beverly Cleary
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
The American Girls Series
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
 Matilda by Roald Dahl
 The B.F.G. by Roald Dahl
 The Witches by Roald Dahl
 Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting
The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
Misty of Chincoteague; King of the Wind by M. King
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Heidi by Johanna Spry
The Adventures of Tom Swayer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
Little Women; Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott
The Jungle Book
King Arthur and the Round Table by Thomas Malory
A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
The Moffats by Eleanor Estes
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle
The Wizard of OZ by Frank L. Baum

The Borrows by by Mary Norton

Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton
The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgkins Burnett
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Real Mermaids Don't Hold Their Breath by Helene Boudreau
The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling
Into the Land of Unicorns by Bruce Coville
Song of the Wanderer by Bruce Coville
A Glory of Unicorns by Bruce Coville
Dark Whispers by Bruce Coville
Goddess Boot Camp by Tera Lynn Childs
The witch of Blackbird pond by Elizabeth G. Speare
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene (original series not the rewrites)
The Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon (original series not the rewrites)
Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls; Best Friends and Drama Queens by Meg Cabot
Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls; The New Girl by Meg Cabot
Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls; Moving Day by Meg Cabot
                                                                                                                                                                                   

Kiah's english assignment

In an attempt to excite Kiah about writing (you can stop chuckling now Jonna) we have decided to take a new approach. She will be choosing a recipe, making that recipe and writing a review of it. I hope that she will gain a few things from this. 1) a vast collection of tasty recipes, 2) a new found confidence in herself that she can do many things well and 3) find joy in writing. I know that is asking a lot of a simple task but if it works I am all for it. I hope I can continue with the weight loss and not have it turn into weight gain. So with out further ado here is Kiah's first public (of sorts) recipe and review.

Root Beer Cupcakes

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

2eggs

2 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

1 cup root beer

1-1/2 cups whipped topping

12 root beer barrel candies crushed

 

In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and allspice; gradually add to creamed mixture alternately with root beer, beating well after each addition.

Fill paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 350* for 18-22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Just before serving, combine whipped topping and crushed candies; frost cupcakes. Refrigerate leftovers.

Yields 1 dozen

This recipe comes from “Taste of home” magazine, fun food August 2010

 

The root beer cupcakes were very good but next time I think I would choose a different brand of root beer. Maybe A&W. I would also change the frosting from whipped topping to a more traditional vanilla butter cream and sprinkle the crushed candies on top instead of mixing them in.  This cupcake tasted very similar to a spice cake. That took us by surprise.

Enjoy, Kiah

Summer Astronomy

This summer we have been exploring the space beyond our atmosphere. It has been a blast!! As partners in our journey to outer space, our friends the O's have joined us. So in age order we have Kiah, Tessa, Kali, Lana, Logan, Toran and Laci. With Anique, Micah and Dan looking on from the wings. We started at the sun and have journeyed to Saturn. Over the next few Saturdays we will finish our study of the solar system. It will bring the official end of our summer and start of fall. My kids were just beginning to understand what that meant and I heared a chorus of "WAIT, WHAT, WE WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE THE O'S EVERY WEEK". Not fun for me either. We just love those guys! Of course right after the whine fest came the "what are we doing next summer with the O's? Oceans, insects, rocks, anatomy, botany, fish" you get the point. So what have we done/learned.

                       1) God is great and has made an amazing universe for us to explore.
                       2) If you can use food to make the point, it is sooooo much better.

Phases of the moon in Oreos

Making models of the Earth in rice crispy treats, gumdrops and mini chocolate chips

                         3) Volcanoes are really cool whether they are on Earth or Mars.

building of the volcanoes

ERUPTION

  4) Shooting off rockets in the driveway is a ton of fun.
  5) Shooting off soda bottle rockets with Dan's air compressor is even more fun. Sure wish we had taken pictures of the rocket blasts. Sorry, we will have to have a take two and post pictures later.

Beyond that we have learned that meteoroids and asteroids are pretty much the same thing they just differ in size. Comets are dirty snowballs streaking thru space (imagine that, even God has snowball fights). Jupiter has a mini solar system all its own and it has rings(I know right). Mars is home to the largest and tallest volcano in our solar system(bonus points if you know the name of it). The sun on Mercury looks white because Mercury has almost no atmosphere. Venus rotates in the opposite direction of all other planets. Isn't that amazing? God spun Venus backwards, that is just so amazing to me. It was almost as though He was adding His signature to His creation. Saturn is the only planet in our solar system that is less dense than water. That means that if you could find a body of water big enough to put Saturn in, it would float! No, I don't know how they know that, I'm sure math was involved. We have talked about Curiosity; the rover that is on Mars as I type.   We have even looked at some of the pictures it has sent back to Earth. Totally cool!!

I have to say I'm not really ready for all of this fun to end. Fall will be a major let down after all of this fun summer schooling. I am looking forward to the future adventures for the summer school gang!! Hope your summer was as far out as ours was.

Christmas Already

Is it to early to be thinking about Christmas? Well, I have already started the thinking about and planning process of this never ending holiday. My list has been started and I'm looking for sales. I've started cutting and sewing and soon we will draw names so that the kids can work on gifts all fall for their siblings.  Anyone who knows me, knows Christmas is my least favorite holiday. I love the spiritual side of Christmas and the hope and joy one can feel during this time of celebration. What I don't like is the santa, buying frenzy, it's never enough crazy part. I know that most people won't agree with my desire to tell my kids that late last night santa died in his sleep very peacefully and his funeral will be next week, but that is exactly how I feel. So instead of killing the old guy off we have decided to have him come on St. Nicholas day. This is the day that St. Nicholas visits good children in parts of Europe and now in parts of the United States as well. This year he will come on December 6th and I will be done with him for the rest of the month and we can get on with the study and celebration of Christ's birth. The real reason we celebrate CHRISTmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Tessa's Birthday Trip

Tessa's birthday was so two months ago and I still have written nothing about it. So I have finally decided to put all else aside and get to the business of blogging about it. Tessa decided that for her birthday she wanted to go to the Worcester Art Museum in (get this) Worcester Mass. It is a museum started by a very wealthy family back in the day and of course they thought it would be a great idea to gather a bunch of artsy stuff and put it in a building that they paid for to show the community that they were something special. Isn't that how most art museums start? This one is pretty cool. They have three levels to cover different time periods, downstairs was the ancient to medieval time period. They had Romain mosaics that were very interesting, there were pictures of the mosaics being taken from Italy (I can't remember what part or Italy), as well as the story behind the removal and transport of the mosaics. They also had the explanation of the story being told with the mosaics, which was good because I sure didn't know the stories. There were Roman statues, busts and coins. There were Greek urns, metal plates and clay dishes. Jars and offering plates for the Greek gods. They had a room from an old monastery chapel called the "Chapter House" complete with stained glass windows. Tessa really liked the window and the fact that the only furniture in the room were long wooden benches that the monks would sit on and discuss the financial business of the town and church. There were many wood carvings of Christ and His apostles. The people in the 1500's were very fond of the Crucifixion and enjoyed portraying it in all of its horror. One of the coolest things we saw was a carving of the Jesse tree that was done in the mid 1500's. It shows the lineage of Christ and has many intricate details and carvings of each person. I guess that is what you did before Polaroid. There was also ancient oriental art, glass, jade, porcelain and china as well as many statues of Hindu gods and Buddhas galore.  They have several Japanese rice paper prints that are amazing. They carve a scene into wood (the negative), paint it with ink and press it onto the rice paper. They do this over and over to layer the colors, think silk screening. It was amazing. Apparently the very wealthy would have some of the panels of their rice paper walls done with these rice paper prints. Early wallpaper anyone.

The next floor up got a little boring for very little girls it was a lot of paintings of people, some of them looked very scary and angry, more crucifixion art and dead animals. I think the live ones moved to much. There was a full suit of armor that was pretty cool. On the third floor we discovered that we are not fans of modern art, if you can call it art. My personal opinion is, if I can do it, it should not hang in a museum. No kidding one of the pieces had tape on the floor around it telling people not to sit on it because it was art. It looked like a bale of hay done in paper decoupage. Yep, I could do that. Another one was three orange ovals on white canvas. Yep, I could do that. Water bottles hung from wire in the shape of a tree. They weren't even new water bottles. At my house that is called trash. But my all time favorite was the one titled black canvas. Yes you guessed it, it was a white canvas painted black. It wasn't even painted well because you could still see some white peeking out of the black. Give me the old stuff, that's all I have to say on that.

After walking the museum for a couple of hours we headed to the cafe and had an amazing lunch. Some where I have a picture of the sandwiches we ate and if I can find them I will post them. Of course no trip to the art museum would be complete without a trip to the gift shop where everyone found a trinket to remember the day by and then we headed back out into Worcester traffic and made our way back home for cake and ice cream. What kind of cake did Tessa want this year? Asparagus. That's my Tessa.

Next birthday trip will be planned by Kiah. I think New York will be at the top of the list and Dylan's candy bar will be a must see.

Yoga anyone?

The young women at church (girls ages 12 - 18) did yoga last night for their combined activity. The beehive's ( girls ages 12 -13) were in charge, so Kiah was asked to bring a "healthy snack" to share. Of course being us we began the whole "we don't believe in healthy snacks, only nom yummys" silliness. We all helped her decide on making brownies as her healthy snack. Yes, you read that right, brownies. These brownies weren't just any box mix or throw together typical brownies. Nope, these where good for you brownies. How can brownies be good for you, you ask? Well these brownies were made with whole wheat (that we ground ourselves), milled flax seed, pureed blueberries and spinach. Yep that's right spinach and a lot of it. The young women were amazed and mildly freaked out with the thought of spinach in their dessert food. But as Kiah put it, "I totally brought the best healthy snack". That's my Ki.