Co-op(eration)
This home-school year has been a lot of fun when it comes to co-op groups. Three families have joined together to provide different educational and social activities that have been a huge hit with our children. We designated every Wednesday of the month for a different activity.
The first Wednesday of the month is an art class; the second Wednesday is sewing, and the third Wednesday of the month is cooking. I don’t know who is having more fun, the girls or me!
We started our cooking course with a class titled “Preparing for Success in the Kitchen.” They learned all about kitchen first aid, tools and utensils, appliances, the use of knives, cooking terms, common abbreviations, equivalents, and measuring accurately. Then we got into the hands-on cooking classes: “Quick Breads”, “Yeast Breads”, and “Baking Cakes”. They have made Irish soda bread, banana muffins, biscuits, a sweet buttery bunt cake, and red velvet cake. Now c’mon, who wouldn’t like cooking class!
Our most recent class was “Fruits and Vegetables”. The girls learned how to pick ripe fruits and vegetables and how to properly store and freeze them. They were then able to practice different cuts on a variety of fruits and vegetables, from chopping, dicing, and mincing, to roll-cutting, bias cutting, and julienne.
In addition to learning to prep fruits and vegetables, they learned different cooking methods such as baking, boiling, steaming, roasting, blanching, and stir-frying.
We also made garlic and Parmesan roasted green beans, caramelized onions, and baked apples with brown sugar and butter which they got to enjoy at the end of the class with snicker-doodle ice cream. Yumm!
[box] “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’”
(Genesis 1:29).[/box]
Praise God for the bountiful harvest that He has supplied!