Random Rant:- What to do, what to do?

Each of us faces an important decision at least once every day. Aside from cultivating good habits, we must concern ourselves with sticking to these habits, and picking and choosing which habits are good and which habits are bad. We live in the information age, in which almost anything is accessible to us and in which it is possible to immerse ourselves in "virtually" anything we choose.

This, however, seems to only confuse us further. The majority of women used to know what to do with our little lambs because we saw the successes and failures of our parents. Now we read forty books on the subject and debate with other moms on the internet instead of watching our own mother do it.
We used to treat our husbands a certain way because we "were taught" that this way was the right way, now we decide for ourselves whether to accept or reject what we were taught, how to incorporate what we learn in school and in church and on the internet.
We used to know how to run a household, now we spend hours reading about different ways other women run households and plotting and planning online while our house falls to pieces.

This confusion can be helpful if we work through it to sort out what we really believe and stick to it! But more often than not I find myself "solving" a problem and then revisiting it again and again to see where I stand, as if I need some sort of re-enforcement or re-convincing. I am often overwhelmed with all the choices and ideas out there, because though I know the answer, I get sidetracked by the questions and the judgements of the women who disagree with my solution for whatever reason. I find myself wanting to answer to them instead of remembering that I will answer to God for how I have lived.

When it comes to marriage, parenting, family life, liturgical questions, work problems, new technologies, and scientific "advancements" of a questionable nature...."Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. "Do not be swept off your course by all sorts of outlandish teachings; it is good that our souls should gain their strength from the grace of God." (Heb 13:8,9 NEB).
I am confident that the old ways still work! Love God and love people, obey God and serve people-- And all will be well for you!

I realized yesterday during our meeting of the St Gianna Vocation to Motherhood group that we women are always asking ourselves questions upon questions about how to run our homes. Even when we find a method that seems to be working quite well, we re-examine it and spend some time questioning ourselves. I will probably do this long after my little ones have left home... but the more I thought about it, the more I realized than in this tumultous world which is so uncertain and in some ways so frightening, one thing always stays the same: Christ.

Love God, serve people. Jesus says this is the whole of the law.
If you are contemplating a new parenting method...
If you are debating about stopping contraception...
If you are wondering about taking on a new job even though you have children at home.
If you are struggling with your choice of infertility methods...
If you are wondering about homeschooling...
If you are choosing an educational style and philosophy for your little ones...
If you are wondering whether to shop at a certain place or support a certain business...
If you are wondering how much or how little to take on in your week...

Does the choice I'm deciding on demonstrate love for God and His law? Does the choice I'm deciding on serve others, especially those under my care, instead of myself?
Does your question get answered in this way?

Tasty Tuesdays- French and Irish Baking

St Patrick's day is just around the corner, and while to many people that means beer and beads, to us Catholics it's a day to celebrate an incredible saint whose passion for God and whose faith and service drove demons out of Ireland by the power of God and brought an entire pagan island to love and serve the Lord and His Church.
Many families like to celebrate with a traditional Irish Feast, which can mean anything from Corned Beef and Cabbage to Shepherds' Pie. Long story short, if there are potatoes, go for it. A popular and almost always present side dish is Irish Soda Bread, one of the greatest things ever for those of us who can't have a lot of yeast.
Because it's yeast free bread, we can make it quickly and easily, and it tastes great. Here is our family's favorite Irish Soda Bread Recipe: 

Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cook Time: 50 Minutes Ready In: 1 Hour 5 Minutes Servings: 20

"The batter for this unadulterated soda bread features buttermilk for a special richness."

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups all-purpose flour 4 tablespoons white sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 tablespoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup margarine, softened 1 cup buttermilk 1 egg 1/4 cup butter, melted 1/4 cup buttermilk

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease a large baking sheet.
2.	In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and margarine. Stir in 1 cup of buttermilk and egg. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead slightly. Form dough into a round and place on prepared baking sheet. In a small bowl, combine melted butter with 1/4 cup buttermilk; brush loaf with this mixture. Use a sharp knife to cut an 'X' into the top of the loaf.
3.	Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean, about 30 to 50 minutes. You may continue to brush the loaf with the butter mixture while it bakes.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2011 Allrecipes.com

 The other bread we bake almost every day around here is a French Baguette, the crunchy, fluffy amazing bread I was raised eating at every meal. Serve it with jam in the morning, alongside soup or salad at noon, with nutella at teatime, and with a rich, hearty dinner to sop up sauces and finish off dishes. Yum. It's a 24 hour bread, you make the starter early in the afternoon and start baking at 3 or 4 am if you want it fresh for breakfast. But around here, I make the starter last thing at night and then start the process first thing in the morning, which means we usually have fresh bread at lunchtime or snacktime and always with dinner, using leftover first thing in the morning. The recipe I use is from Bread Alone. Total prep and baking time is 6 hours, not including the poolish. Makes 4 baguettes, 12-14 inches long, 1 inch wide.

POOLISH:

Spring Water  1 cup

Dry Yeast 1/4 tsp

Organic all purpose white flour* 1 1/2 cups

(I sometimes substitute half and half whole wheat.)

Combine water and yeast in a large bowl and let stand for 1 minute. Stir with a wooden spoon until yeast is dissolved. Add the flour, and stir until consistency of the thick batter. Continue stirring for 100 strokes until the strands of thick gluten come off the spoon when you press it against the back of the bowl. Scrape down thesides with a spatula and cover with plastic wrap or a clean, damp cloth. put in a modertately warm draft free place until it doubles in volume. (I leave it overnight)

FINAL DOUGH:

Full batch of Poolish

Spring Water, 1 cup

Dry Yeast 1/4 tsp

Organic All Purpose White Flour, 5 cups

Fine Sea Salt 1 tblsp

Measure and transfer one cup of the poolish to a new bowl. Discard the rest. Add the water and yeast and stir to break up until it loosens and foams slightly. Add 1 cup of the flour and stir until well combined.  Add the salt, stir, and then add just enough flour to make a difficult to mix. Turn it out onto a well-floured surface and knead, adding more of the remaining flour until dough is soft and smooth, 15-17 minutes. The dough is ready when a small amount pulled from the mass springs back quickly. Shape the dough into a ball and let it rest on the well flooured surface while you scrape and clean the bowl. Lightly oil the bowl, and place the dough inside, turning it once to coat all sides with oil. Cover with a clean damp cloth or plastic wrap and put in a moderately warm, draft free place until doubled in volume and a slight indentation remains after pressing finger into the dough. (2-3 hours)

Deflate the dough by pushing down in the center and pulling up on the sides. Transfer to a lightly floured board. Knead BRIEFLY. Divide into four equal portions. Flatten with the heel of your hand and shape into small, tight ball. Cover with clean damp cloth or plastic wrap and put in moderately warm, draft free place for 30 mins. 

Flatten each ball with the heel of the hand and shape into a 14 inch loaf. Place the loaves seam side up in a well floured couche (if you don't have one, just place them on the surface you will be cooking them in, WELL FLOURED and shaped.  Cover with cloth or plastic wrap as before and leave in place until they increase in volume and a slight indentation remains when the dough is pressed with a finger tip, about 1 1/2 hours.

About an hour before baking, preheat the oven to 450. If you have a homemade hearth or baking stone, you are awesome and your bread is almost guaranteed to turn out. If you don't (like me) then this is where it gets interesting and practice makes perfect. Once the oven is preheated, spray (or fling, lacking a spray bottle) some water into the oven to steam it up (be super careful not to hit the lightbulb or it will explode if it's lit.)

Stick the bread into the oven on the baking sheet or turn it out from the couche onto the baking stone or whatever you are doing with it, and let it bake for 15-20 minutes. The first ten minutes, open the oven at 0, 5, and 10 minutes to spray water in and add moisture. (NOT on the bread, but around it)

Take them out at 15 minutes and check for doneness. Loaves will be a rich caramel color and crusts will be firm. Turn them over and strike the bottom firmly with your finger. If they are done, it will sound hollow. If they don't sound hollow, bake another 5 minutes. 

They are best eaten warm, so don't wait to cool them completely before digging in. Seriously, the best way to eat these is to grab some friends and some quality olive oil, a glass of wine, and just dig in and dip.

Bon Appetit, and Sláinte! 

St Patrick, pray for us!

Mama Mondays- On Catholic Classical Methods and Charlotte Mason

It's Spring! Time for most of us homeschooling mothers to re-assess the past school year and make decisions about the direction next year takes. For some of you, this likely will involve a shout of hurray and a celebratory dance, as you have discovered a system that seems to be working for your family necessitating very little tweaking.
Others, like myself, are sort of boo-hooing about the past year but optimistic about what the future holds. On our end, the Appian Way Teaching Home here in Fayetteville, North Carolina is certainly going to go through some changes, but I'm kind of excited about what I learned NOT to do for my other children and I'm glad I'm only at the beginning of this long journey!
Having been determined to homeschool since the beginning of my first pregnancy and having devoured virtually every book on the subject, I had, even as a protestant, determined that a Classical Education was the way to go for our family. It still is-- my husband is a philosopher and thinker through and through, and both of us are HUGE on virtue and character, and the idea of teaching people to be good thinkers and moral people first, believing that learning follows.  We have great admiration for the "ancient " methods and a tendency to be "heavy handed" both academically and in the realm of discipline of the mind and body. A classical curriculum seems the obvious choice. We are even more convinced of this than ever, as the Classical Method is the spiritual heritage of the Roman Catholic Church.... it IS our educational method and always has been.

Last year was the first year I "officially" began schooling my oldest, who is turning five this month. I had been given several wonderful complete sets of classical-oriented curriculae along with books, etc and determined to just go ahead and go for it.
For the first three months, I bravely stacked workbook upon workbook, rounded my kiddos (even the baby) up around the kitchen table and drilled and instructed them in all the things I felt they should be learning. At this point , I had read "The Well Trained Mind" and absorbed most of what it has to say, implementing it as I understood it alongside the complete K Seton curriculum I had been given, along with a daily adaptation of a GREAT book I was given called "First Grade Learning at Home."
We did this for about two hours a day, and it was NOTHING like I had hoped. In fact, I fought my way through the entire experience, my kids backtalking and just generally loathing the entire thing. My oldest, who had been showing an uncanny desire to read at three was now completely disinterested, I was exhausted, and the thought of one more interjection from my non-Catholic father in law as I drilled my tiny pupils in catechism because he always seems to be making toast while we are doing call and response catechism questions was making me want to tear my hair out. I was a mess. A frustrated, angry, dejected, and probably quite depressed mess.
I realized, one morning, after having fought for over an hour with my oldest to get her to write one single "B," and then watching her daddy teach her to write an entire word in the space of five minutes with seemingly no effort at all, that I needed to RELAX and HAVE FUN with this or it wasn't going to take.
(I know, I know, they say it in all the books! But I somehow missed that. Selective hearing, and all that.)
Even though I enjoy more than anything sitting down with a giant, fat reference book and analyzing the heck out of a text, and writing neat lines down a perfectly fresh, lined sheet of paper..... my kids are KIDS. All they want to do is fling mud and eat cheerios. They are in the Grammar Stage of the Trivium... not quite ready to take apart Plato yet. Hah.
Fantasy of homeschool life, meet reality.

What followed was a rather deep depression. Amidst all the other stresses we were undergoing as a family, I could see myself losing touch with my kids and what's worse, having no idea how to correct it. I wanted desperately to homeschool but as my oldest approached five and cared less and less about "doing school" I knew that I was going to have to figure something out or off to my Public School nightmare she would have to go. Terror and depression gripped me, so I turned to God and asked Him  for some help.
It came to me in the funniest form. I was upstairs re-organizing stacks of willow house catalogs and decided to dump all the homeschool "stuff" I had accumulated on the shelf that I hadn't touched to make some room. As I took out coloring books and play guides, I came across a box: Saxon Phonics, for K. Inside was a brand spanking new Saxon Phonics set, and I brought it downstairs, determined to use it with my daughter. I thought to myself- "Hey, if ALL I do is teach her to read and count, have fun, and obey me this year, that's ALL that matters."
(Which, hello, is basically the premise of the Classical Method, but again... haha... somewhere in the confusion of learning "how to" homeschool, I missed that.)
Amazingly, as soon as I dropped all the "subjects" and "workbooks" and "units" and just started teaching her phonics, math, and directed play (play that taught her something according to her interests and ideas I gave her) school became AMAZING. And my other two began to be able to participate.
So fast forward a few months as I perfected this method-- here it is early March and I've been "officially" schooling for almost seven months. And I have only NOW begun to really school her, because only now have we come to a system that actually works! ALL we do is three simple programs: Saxon math, (although I'm considering a change to Math U See) Saxon Phonics, and an incredible program called "5 in a Row." (read about it here.) 5 in a Row is the beginnings of a "great books" program for little people... an in itself a complete curriculum, because it teaches science, history, geography, and fine arts all from a story the family reads together. It's perfect.

Even more amazing, as I studied the homeschool options further having put a school year under my belt and with the experience to know what to look for, I came across a method I had encountered only briefly before, a method created by a Victorian Age Englishwoman named Charlotte Mason. And what I found, in her method, was EXACTLY what I had uncovered-- a classical education with a few tweaks to make it more versatile and functional for the YOUNG mind. The more Charlotte Mason I read the more Charlotte Mason I loved, and I felt so drawn to her  ideas because I had just TRIED schooling the other way for a year and I knew it just didn't work unless we implemented the very things she was recommending. I think that at the base, ANY Classical method family is already doing most of  the things the CM method recommends.

There was something, though, that I found unsettling, and that prevented me (and prevents me still) from completely making the jump from a Classical Curriculum to the Charlotte Mason approach. I continue to ponder this "feeling" of concern, and I would love to know the experiences others have had both Catholic and protestant, using Charlotte Mason or avoiding it and what you might think. My concerns stem from her worldview. First, she was profoundly secular, even in her vision of Christianity (being a protestant herself) and thus she has often written in ways which set of "warning" alarms in my head as I read... often making appeals to the pride of her readers, using, quoting, and admiring historical persons with deplorable lives or pasts as far as the "Christian" character of the virtues she expounds. On the one hand, I admire this, because she has easily been able to draw what is good, right and true from even the most depraved of persons, and this is surely a very "Catholic" approach, and an example of charity in a world where it often lacks. However, I think she just seems to "miss the mark" a little when it comes to the practical application of her techniques and ideas, for example, possibly (and again, I'm not sure because I haven't seen it in practice, but--- possibly) focusing a little too much on the "Self," or on a more child-led than parent-led education, which is of great concern to me.
I am also ever wary of almost ALL things that came from the Victorian Era, and especially from England, a place and a time period which certainly lacked in every way the interior Catholic and Christian virtues necessary for a good and holy life. I am wary of her "modernizing" effect on the traditional Classical Method.... she preferred English books to Latin and Greek, whereas in our family we believe we must continue to bring these to the center of our children's lives. On the other hand, I have found her methods to be perfectly in line with the Classical Approach and very compatible. I have found them easy to "reorder" in a Catholic sense (for example, her ideas about scripture memory and bible time are PERFECT additions to a regular Catholic catechesis, in which we teach the "correct interpretation" of the Bible reading we have done.In other words, I think the Traditional Catholic "concern" I have seen in homeschool circles over Catholics using the Charlotte Mason  Method is not entirely misplaced, but possibly misdirected....let the method be what it is, and accept it's good qualities, for they are many, accepting also its flaws, and perfecting on them the best way we can.

Be aware, then, of a secular and modernist mindset in her work, and look for ways to perfect her ideas so that they conform to true Christian doctrine. But by all means, I think, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater! The Charlotte Mason method seems, to me, to be an easy way to implement a Classical Curriculum for the early years. I don't really have an opinion for the later years as I'm not quite there yet, as you can see. :)

As it is now, we are using an almost ENTIRELY CM curriculum which is adapted to fit the "Trivium" guidelines, with a major emphasis on the great books. Some CM things we do each day (or that we will be doing in the next schoolyear as this schoolyear is drawing to a close.)

1. Focus on habits. Charlotte Mason believed strongly in instilling good habits and this is something we try to do daily. We initially tried to use the Proverbs "Christian Character" chart used by the Duggars, and will continue to use it this year. It is a series of proverbs based virtues and an idea for the implementation of each one.

2. Nature Walks. I avoided these like the plague last year because we live in North Carolina and it's either roasting hell-like hot or freezing cold. I recognize, though, that I have to suck it up, because my kids need it, love it, and want it.... and it's an excellent "teachable moment" I ignore every day.

3. Copywork. Again, this seems so obvious but it never occurred to me until I read it in the Charlotte Mason system: at this age, air writing, writing in rice, sand, etc, writing on poster boards, dry erase boards, and chalkboards. Tracing letters. Etc.

4. Handicrafts and Life skills. This is a department we are already strong in, but I plan on being more "serious" about it--- sewing, knitting, baking, cooking, and other forms of creative housework.

5. Art. There are so many times my kids see a painting and show interest in it and I say "yeah. that IS pretty!" and let the moment go by. The Charlotte Mason method includes Picture Studies, and I will be doing more picture studies with the kids. Ditto for music, especially classical music.

6. Poetry. We already read a lot of poetry in the "Moral Compass" book we do for bedtime stories. But I'm going to add more purposeful poetry.

7. Bible. Again, we already do a lot of Bible reading! But Charlotte Mason teaches parents wonderfully easy scripture memorization ideas, and gives lots of advice for helping children get used to hearing Bible Stories in their original form, not dumbed down. I love that!

Happy schooling, mammas!