Amey's Blog

I planned for this to be about homemaking and homeschooling, but now it's just a chaotic jumble of news and ideas about animals, kids, food, and other random thoughts.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

My New Books

More-with-Less, by Doris Janzen Longacre (a Mennonite cookbook)
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery
Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style, by Harvey & Laurie Bluedorn

For school:
It Couldn't Just Happen, by Lawrence O. Richards
First Language Lessons, by Jessie Wise
The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, by Susan Wise Bauer

I haven't read any of them all the way through yet, but I have skimmed through most of them. The Carla Emery book (it's huge!) is very interesting. It has about anything you might ever possibly need to know if you live in the country. The front cover says it includes "how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, can peaches, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, catch a pig, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more." I can vouch for the "more" part. This book is comprehensive to say the least. It should help us learn more about raising chickens and ducks, which would be great since we know next to nothing about it and we're doing it anyway. :-)

I've read a good part of the More-with-Less cookbook (it has more than just recipes in it). The author is coming from an unique perspective, I think. She's a Christian, yet very concerned about world hunger, the environment, and sustainability. Not that I think Christians are unconcerned about world hunger, but I don't think we (in the U.S.) usually make a connection between what we eat and how that effects what someone on the other side of the world eats (or doesn't eat, as the case may be). The main point of the author seems to be that overeating protein from chicken and beef is an inefficient way of meeting our bodies' protein needs, and that more would be available for other people if we got more protein from other sources such as grains, beans, legumes, and eggs. I'm still considering what I'm reading, so maybe I'll post more later. I think I have some things to learn from this book. Not that I think that everything she says is valid (I don't), but I'm thinking about it all. More later in another post.

More spring news:
My husband found the first tick of the season! I had a dream a few weeks ago that I found the first one. I'm glad it didn't come true. Ticks must be in the competition for the creepiest bugs on the planet.

We also saw the first bats of the season this evening at twilight. Go bats! Eat those bugs!

My daffodils are blooming. Yay! Unfortunately, as I was spading in my flower bed I sliced into one of the hostas that was just beginning to bud and was still under the ground.

Can I just say: I LOVE SPRING!!!

1 Comments:

Blogger Queen of Carrots said...

My husband came up with a tick on Sunday, too. I'd never seen one before--we didn't have them where I grew up. Ewwwww.

Now I have to dread summers to come of children getting them. I suppose I'll get used to it in time, but I agree that they are creepy.

6:46 AM  

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