Giveaway: Green Pasture FCLO

Just a head's up to a great giveaway. Green Pasture's has products I've been looking into getting for a while now and I just haven't had the extra money to do so. But they're giving away 20 bottles of FCLO so enter below:


http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2010/10/22/giveaway-green-pasture-fermented-cod-liver-oil-twenty-winners/

Warm Bread Pudding w/ Bourbon Sauce

So my sister and I were over at her house earlier this week making pear cider (I'll post pictures and info on that process when we've tasted the final product) and I happened to have brought the items to make bread pudding. My sister hates bread pudding. I hate bread pudding. However, we both went to Flag Fork Farm's Garden Cafe a while back and they had warm bread pudding with bourbon sauce for dessert. I fell in love with this stuff! So this is bread pudding for bread pudding-haters. I deconstructed the recipe for the pudding and sauce. When I asked, they said they used Jim Beam. My sister wrinkled her nose and I laughed when they said that because she had been talking about how Jim Beam is rotgut. Cass happened to have Maker's Mark (she lives ON the Bourbon Trail and I live close to it) so that is what we used.

I tried to think of a way to make this more nutritious, but then I gave up and realized that sometimes it's okay to have a little BPA, sugar, and alcohol. ;)

Recipe:

3 brioche rolls or equivalent amount of french bread, shredded into quarter-sized pieces
4 eggs
½ cup of sugar (heaping)
2 tsp vanilla
12 oz can evaporated milk
1 cup water
 
Blend eggs, sugar, vanilla, milk, and water together until fully combined. Put in a blender if necessary. Put the bread pieces in a casserole dish. Pour the custard over the bread, making sure the custard covers it all.  Push down on the bread with hands to make sure all the bread is soaked in custard. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Serve warm. You can also make this ahead and reheat before serving. Add nutmeg if desired, but the bourbon sauce comes through better without it.

Bourbon Sauce:

1 stick salted butter
1/3 - 1/2 cup sugar (to your taste)
2 tsp vanilla
1/8-1/4 cup or several good splashes of bourbon

Put the whole stick of butter in the pan. Pour the sugar and vanilla on top and crank it up to high. Let sugar and butter liquefy and start to boil. Slowly drizzle in bourbon, as much as desired. Cook and stir till slightly thickened, where it coats the back of the spoon. I usually add a small splash after that just to make sure there is still some alcohol in it. Stir it well and serve over the pudding. Enjoy!

Snap Scouts

Okay so I came across this by accident. At first I thought it was a joke and I laughed. Then I looked into this and realized it's not a joke at all. Snap Scouts . . . sounds pretty innocent, right? Take a look at the picture below.

According to the website: "Want to earn tons of cool badges and prizes while competing with your friends to see who can be the best American? Download the SnapScouts app for your Android phone (iPhone app coming soon) and get started patrolling your neighborhood. It's up to you to keep America safe! If you see something suspicious, Snap it! If you see someone who doesn't belong, Snap it! Not sure if someone or something is suspicious? Snap it anyway! Play with your friends and family to see who can get the best prizes. Join the SnapScouts today!"

Hello Hitler Youth anyone? How dare someone think that it's okay to use our children in this way! And you know, they will likely use them most against us. Take my family for example. We homeschool. Many people consider that to be sort of weird and some people even think of it as abusive (yes, we're denying our children the right to have their heads flushed by jocks and to have inappropriate relations with other 9 year olds between classes). I'm sure that this system could possibly catch a crime, but how often will that happen? According to the website, 600 crimes have been reported already in 3 countries. How much more often will they 'catch' innocent people and send their pictures to be profiled for later use?

Snap Scouts asks their participants to: 'Once you've found something suspicious or caught someone in the act, you can tag it to report what type of crime it or just to let us know it "Looks Suspicious". After you've tagged it, you can enter the name and address of the people in the photo, too. The photo gets submitted to our super secret servers, where a team of trained security professionals reviews every image for possible illegal activity.'

Are you frightened yet? As my husband put it, 'it's like 1984 with a cartoon finish'. And just remember that 'SnapScouts was designed and developed for children to use, before they form stereotypes of other people. They're the perfect reporters, unbiased and unprejudiced by media concepts'. So that means that we should absolutely raise our children to spy on their neighbors because they are such perfect reporters! If this disgusts you, give me a 'heck yeah!'

Mrs. Yoder

Review: Time4Learning

Okay, so here is my promised Time4Learning review.

Pros: I have to say that my daughter absolutely loved this program. It was a lot of fun for her with the games and activities. It has several areas for preschoolers such as colors, shapes, numbers but also other things like 'at the farm' where she got to do learning games based on farm items.

It also showed her HOW to use the computer, such as the mouse and keyboard, and it asked her if she wanted to proceed in ways she could understand such as using a green nodding smiley face for yes and a red frowning face for no.

Time4Learning did help my daughter with her numbers, shapes, and colors. It is remarkable how well she now knows her colors, and it helped to reinforce her number skills so she can count to 15 without skipping any numbers now. She especially enjoyed the paint program where she could actually mix secondary and tertiary colors. Time4Learning kept her attention for hours at a time and gave me the opportunity to work with my son on his schoolwork or to actually get some housework done.

Cons: My son wasn't too keen on the program. He only logged in once to try it. My son is older, 9, so maybe it's better for younger kids.

We had a lot of technical difficulties trying to get the program online and actually working. I had to jump through several hoops on my browser, but Time4Learning gave me step-by-step instructions online and I didn't have to call anyone to get the issue fixed so that made me very happy.

I also think that the program should have rewarded my daughter with a virtual blue ribbon only if she actually did a good job instead of when she also did poorly. It could have encouraged her to try again for the blue ribbon and made the blue ribbon a real badge of merit instead of something given no matter what. This is one of the reasons we've decided not to do Upward Basketball again this year with my son because they give prizes to everyone, no matter what, and I heartily disagree with that mentality.

As it stands, though, it's a small thing and could easily be overlooked provided you discuss the values of true merit with your children, or even set up a special rewards program just for them to use so they can understand your values.

My main problem with this company has stemmed from the fact that they seem to be a little dodgy in their wording. Since I was part of their review program and had a 30 day free trial, I received an email that said the following: As a thank you for posting your review, we want to offer you an additional free month if you decide to continue your membership.  After your review has been posted, simply log into your parent administration page and select “Convert Membership into an Automated Monthly Billing”. You will receive your second month with Time4Learning absolutely free.

So I went online and signed in to reactivate my membership and ran into an error. It said that my card was declined. I checked my bank and everything was fine. I assumed that they were going to authorize for a dollar and then drop the charge until next month when the full amount would go through. When I called, I was advised (just before she ran the card) that she was going to charge me the full price for this month. When I told her I was supposed to have my second month free, she told me that I had to pay for a month before I received one for free with the review program. When I looked back at the email, I saw that it could be taken to mean that, but it isn't what it actually said. If I hadn't run into an error online, my card would have been charged $35 when I wasn't expecting it because the page said $0.00 to be charged.

I've therefore decided that Time4Learning really isn't for our family, but maybe it will be for yours.  If there is information here that has not yet made itself known to me, I will surely post it here.

Mrs. Yoder