Many of you know that teaching rather runs in the family around here. Between my mother, Charlie's Grandma, and my home schooling the kids, our children stand no chance of missing possible lessons! After Charlie's grandma passed away this year, we all inherited her books and curriculum left over from her teaching days.
Many of the books were from younger ages, though there were some really fun ones, as well as some great reference and culture books. Some, we will use for the fun of a springboard into a lesson. Wyatt and I ended up storing three large boxes worth in plastic totes in the shed. For some reason, this one ended up on the dining table.
Amidst some random conversations last week, I picked it up and began reading. The kids wee sitting there at the table, with Bailey not knowing what I expected and Wyatt looking at me strangely. So then, I couldn't help myself...
I read it, showing pictures to the kids, and going all out with the voices... hey maybe I should be one of those librarians...
We learned about a fictional boy whose first and middle names were George Washington, after our first president, and about how this boy wanted to know everything about our six-foot-two inch first President who showed us what it meant to be a leader, a Commander in Chief, and to peacefully do what was right for a nation.
And we learned that almost none of the books about him talk about what he ate for breakfast.
Apparently, President Washington was rumored to have hands so big and strong that he could bend horseshoes with them. Hmmm...
And apparently he ate hoecakes for breakfast. Three of them. With the same number of cups of tea.
Hoe cakes apparently have many different recipes and are named for the shovel they would be cooked on in the fire. That was the first bone of contention. Apparently in the story, there were no hoes inside George Washington's house when the boy went to visit, so they used a griddle because the grandma in the story refused to cook with a hoe. Seeing as how it is monsoon season here, and lots of stuff ends up mucking things out with the flooding, thee was no way I was trying to make a hoe clean enough to cook breakfast on!
So over the weekend, I pulled up a couple of recipes, and learned that originally hoe cakes were simply cornmeal with water, later using things like milk, eggs and sugar as well. So the first round was as simple as they could be...
They didn't hold together very well!
They looked a little like mangled hush puppies, rather than breakfast when I served them.
Wyatt decided that real maple syrup would have been around there, so he had some hoe cakes with his maple syrup... see how these History lessons can go south? But he did prove timelines. That child should be a lawyer...
They were really crumbly, but not bad. So then I added some milk, thinking we could enjoy a discussion about tracing the lineage of recipes in history, something we have discussed when talking about processed foods and organics.
These seemed a little better formed to me, more like a pancake.
They also seemed to hold together a bit better.
The kids liked the original version better. They thought it just had more flavor and texture in the first one. Funny how that happens with the original getting watered down sometimes, isn't it?
I had originally promised to let them break into some Boston trading company tea, but then we forgot. Oops.
But I have a feeling that Wyatt will really want it when we make another revolutionary war themed meal he has been looking forward to- fire cakes. Maybe this next weekend we can delve into that one!
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