It's all gouda: Dairy

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Shake, Rattle, and Roll -- Vanilla Milkshakes!

My youngest rattle and roller girl has been home sick with a whopper of a sinus infection since last Friday. Along with oodles and oodles of homework, school age children bring home all sorts of lovely ailments and injuries, and my 9 year old is no exception. After shelling out yet another co-pay at the pediatricians office, I told my daughter’s teacher that I was going to start sending my girls to school in “haz-mat” suits for the remainder of the year. Hmmm ... my homeschooled son doesn’t have this dilemma. Hmmm ...

ANYWAY ... when my kids are sick, they get spoiled. Whatever they want, (well, within reason) I’ll make for them. My sickie poo wanted a milkshake, so a milkshake is what she got. And her brother got. And her sister. And her dad. You see where I’m going with this.

Do you like milkshakes? I’m not a big ice cream eater (I can hear your gasp), but I concede that milkshakes are a good thing. Now many of you are ice cream makers; are you milkshake drinkers, too? Today’s recipe is a classic, pure, lovely Vanilla Milkshake. Puristically plain, but far from boring, it’s hails top honors from just about everybody who has uttered the phrase, “got milk”. Of course, there are enough varieties of milkshakes to keep dairy cows busy forever and eternity. Let’s see, there’s Strawberry, Chocolate, Eggnog, Blueberry, Peanut Butter, and Orange Crème to name a few. Let’s check out this recipe together, and see if you’d like to shake, rattle, and roll with me.

Here’s what you’ll need
Vanilla Milkshakes

8 heaping scoops good quality Vanilla ice cream(I used Dreyers Vanilla Bean)
1 cup milk – don’t use non-fat
½ cup cream (I just poured mine in the measuring cup along with the milk)
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

To make this you will need one of these. It’s what I used today.

Or you could use one of these. I love my immersion blender, and it makes great shakes.

We won’t be needing this today. Look away, just look away from it.

Add all of your ingredients into the blender jar. Cover and blend until the ice cream and milk have a combined, smooth consistency. Don’t expect it to look like the cheek sucking thickness of what you’d find at Dairy Queen. Rather, it’s loose, but not runny.

See it here on the spoon? That’s what you’re after. Mmmm ... come to mama! This will go up the straw without causing you to lose consciousness. In fact, when I first put the straw in the glass, it stood up and then ever so sloooowly leaned over.

Ta-Da! Ooooh Yeahhhh! Mmm, mmm, mmm! This definitely will make your taste buds shake, rattle, and roll in a gooood way. Just in time for Valentine's Day, too. Oh, and this obviously is gluten free all the way, baby! What’s your favorite shake?

Homeschool Tips and Tools: 2010

Bananagrams! Not too long ago, my kids and I discovered a great new game called Bananagrams. Far more fast paced and loads easier to play than Scrabble, this game requires only a table top and kids to get the fun underway. Better yet, adults and kids of all ages can play together. The playing pieces come packaged in a delightful, banana colored and shaped, zippered cloth pouch. It's free formed fun, and great entertainment for the entire family.

From a homeschooling perspective, it's a great tool to segue into creative writing or story telling. My kids create their own Bananagram "puzzle" and then use the words they created to write or tell an impromptu story. Silly or serious, all type of stories are encouraged!

The book titled English from the Roots Up by Joegil K. Kundquist has rapidly become one of my favorite resources for building a strong vocabulary base for my children. This spiral bound book provides both Latin and Greek word roots that provides students with tools to help them determine word meanings. I absolutely love it, and the rapid results that I see in my children are amazing. This is way better than a spelling program; by studying word roots, my children are gaining a much broader understanding of language and the power of words. The lessons are very easy to administer, short in duration, and my kids enjoyed them.

On the writing frontier, there is a book called Story Starters, Helping Children Write Like They've Never Written Before by Karen Andreola that provides writing prompts in the form of partially written stories for children to complete. While I found the book to be just ok, my children love it. I read the partially written story aloud, and they write the rest. The kids really enjoyed doing this as each of them looked forward to hearing the other's completed versions. This ended up being a great experience as the kids really wanted to impress their siblings with their version, and thus put more effort into their writing.

And for the grammar enthusiast lurking inside your student, here's a great book that explains how to diagram sentences. Diagraming Sentences by Deborah White Broadwater is a 46 page workbook complete with an answer key, and is perfect for your middle schooler.

Does your student embrace Science? Do you need quality supplies to conduct more in depth experiments at home? Check out Home Science Tools. I'm very impressed with the quality of the products we just ordered. Beakers, flasks, stirring rods, thermometers, chemicals, safety equipment, and so much more can be found and ordered on their website. www.homesciencetools.com . The items we received were top quality, the customer service rep was super, and the items were extremely well packed and delivered as promised. Look out Bill Nye ... future scientists in the house!

Lapbooking and Notebooking are buzz words in the homeschool community. Here are two great resources for incorporating those strategies into your learning curriculum. Big Book of Books by Dinah Zike and The Ultimate Lap Book Handbook by Tammy Duby and Cyndy Regeling helped me enhance our homeschooling experience using lapbooks. The content found in these books enabled me to teach a group of homeschool mom's how to incorporate lapbooking into their curriculums. You'll want to laminate your copies as they will get pulled off the shelf over and over again.