Easy, Cheap and Fairly Healthy

I don't really like to cook. Baking is ok now and then, mostly because I want somewhat healthy baked sweets, not because I actually enjoy the act of baking. But cooking is usually too much effort for too little results. I do not make meals, I make dishes that serve as meals. Pasta, for example, is a one-dish meal. My family is lucky if I make a salad with it. I will never do a whole spread with meat, pasta, salad, bread, dessert unless company is over which is maybe once a year.

All of that being said, I have been hitting some homeruns in the cooking department lately. Homerun meaning at least 3 out of 4 of the solid food eating members of my household like it and it requires minimal work and preferably creates leftovers. My husband has been out of town for work, which means I have to actually attempt cooking (he usually does it), because my kids are not happy living off of oatmeal, fruit, granola bars, salad and cookies like I am (no really, they turn down cookies).

I discovered supercook.com, where you can input the ingredients you have in your kitchen and it will spew out recipes that use those ingredients.

This is colcannon, which is an Irish version of mashed potatoes (come to think of it, they probably invented mashed potatoes in the first place). Anyway, in my quest to make as many things as possible vegan, I think next time I will use coconut oil instead of butter.


The girls have been asking for pancakes every single morning since I started using this recipe. They are vegan, whole wheat and fluffy, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it's true! It's the massive amount of baking powder that's the secret.



Egg salad with rice to make it stretch. (We were at my mom's for dinner and she said she was going to use rice to make the chicken grow. E looked out the window at grandma's garden and said "You grow chicken?!" Grandma explained that no, chicken is an animal, we are just using the rice to make it stretch.... No. Wait. We aren't really stretching chicken either. And we wonder why it's hard for people to learn English when they move here!) Anyway, the girls and I liked it in a flour tortilla with ranch and lettuce. (Yes, I'm a total hypocrite talking about trying to eat vegan and then chowing down on eggs and ranch dressing).

Latkes are potato pancakes and we had them for the first time at a Hanukkah party. Serving them with applesauce is key, they just aren't the same alone or with ketchup.

My oven broke, so I was looking for microwave cake recipes and found a few that I combined into my own. They turned out more like granola bars, but they are sweet enough for dessert.

Mix in a bowl:

1/2 cup oil
1 1/3 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar (next time I'll try honey and see how they turn out)
2 eggs (I skipped them one time I made this and just added a little water and they still turned out good)
1 t vanilla
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg

Then add:

1 cup chocolate chips

Optional:

1/2 cup cranberries (this makes them really tangy and yummy

Microwave for 6 minutes or until firm. If you do it longer, they are more like crunchy granola bars. If you do it for less time they are a bit chewier.


One of my favorite dishes is pasta with alfredo sauce and I've missed it since I stopped eating dairy. I finally learned how to make a good, vegan white sauce and it's so easy. Just make roux with olive oil instead of butter and rice milk instead of cow's milk. Since I never know what seasonings to use, I made it with vegetable broth instead of rice milk. At that point it was no longer anything like alfredo, but with some chopped spinach and sundried tomatoes on top of egg noodles, it was delicious.

Following Interests

I think something that can be confusing for some people is when unschoolers talk about "following an interest." I think they imagine that the child comes to mom and says "I'd like to learn about baking and money today," and then they sit down together and pour over information, do worksheets, maybe a field trip. While E has told me what she wants to learn about in so many words, that is rare. Usually I pick up on her interests through our conversations and if we can't look up the answers to her questions right that minute, I write them down and we do things later. Also, I bring a lot of things into her world that she didn't know existed, because she can't possibly be interested in them if she doesn't know they exist.

For example, a few weeks ago some kids came to our door offering babysitting and dog walking services. I politely declined since we don't have a pet and I won't be leaving my kids with 8 year olds, but I told them that I was impressed with their desire to make their own money. E asked how she could make her own money like those kids were doing and we started brainstorming some ides. She settled on baking and selling apple pies. I invested $10 into her business to buy the ingredients and together E, L and I made 2 apple pies. Then we put the pieces on individual paper plates and put them in a basket. She walked around our neighborhood and sold them to our neighbors for $2 per slice. I hung back while she knocked on the doors by herself, told people what she was doing and offered them a piece for "ONLY $2 each!" which people found cute and she came up with herself, little saleswoman. After paying D and I back with slices of pie, eating a few themselves, and getting a few tips, they made out with $24.

She said that was "WAY BETTER" than waiting to get the $2 we give each of the girls every week. She spent $10 of it to buy a jewelry making kit, because she wanted to continue her business venture and sell jewelry. The rest went towards fun at the county fair.

All of this came about because she made a little comment about wanting to make money too, and I utilized my adult knowledge and resources to help her run with it.

If you think your kids have no interests besides playing, just start talking to them! I can't even keep up with all the possible interests there are to learn here. In the last two days I've written down just a few of the many things that have come up in conversation:

How deer hide their babies until they lose their spots, where deer live and what they eat
Why magnets stick to metal
What a curtsy is called and the difference between a bow and a curtsy
What security guards do
The weather in the the antarctic
The arctic, Eskimos and igloos
Where Alaska and Canada are located on the map in relation to California and Oregon
Dinosaurs, carnivores, animals hunting
Big Foot
Nerves, brain, heart and how our bones protect our vital organs

All of these things are conversations that create learning in the moment, as I answer questions and provide new information, but sometimes they are 2 minute exchanges, barely a blip on the radar of our day if I'm not paying attention. I do try to pay attention though, because they are also interests that can be explored further. I figure if my kid is asking, she's interested! Now when I provide more information or a project or related trip later on, if she no longer cares about that topic, she'll tell me and I'll respect that. But that happens very, very rarely.

I don't say "I'm going to teach you about XYZ now that you expressed an interest in it," I say, "Hey look at this video of deer that I found" or "Remember last week you asked about what security guards do? Well I just met one and he can tell you about his job."

It's all about being engaged, interested in them and open to whatever comes up.