Tasty Tuesday posting on Friday!

Wow it has been one of those weeks (really 2 weeks).  This week for Luke’s 4-h project we took a tour of Jungle Jim’s.  In case you haven’t heard of it Jungle Jim’s is a huge I mean 212,000 square feet! 

  This is a picture of the front which doesn’t do justice to show the size of the store.  This rail used to be part of the safari at Kings Island! We learned that Jungle built this store with may recycled items.  He purchased things from places like Kings Island the old Americana Amusement park that shut down a decade and a half ago.


We took the tour with our county 4-h foods department.  There were about 17 of us in attendance counting the kiddos and the adults.  Here is a picture of my handsome Luke in the front of the store as we were  gathering and waiting for everyone to get there.  You cant really see it but the sign behind him is welcoming our 4-h club.  


Of course it wouldn’t be a Tasty Tuesday post with out food, right?  We tried so many foods as we walked through the store.  First we had strawberry smoothies!  I am not a strawberry person so I passed on this.  Luke said they were really good!  Next we had red velvet chocolate.  Hello it is chocolate of course we loved that!  As we walked thru the store our tour guide explained to us many different things about Mr Jungle  like how he named the boat in the store after one if his amazing cashiers at the Fairfield store who passed away, or how another decoration for the store went to Dayton instead of Cincinnati since Mr Jungle was from Dayton and he had to travel up there to get the boat.  It was damaged so he took it to the Fairfield store where he has his own fab shop to make the repairs himself!
    As we proceeded through the store we stopped at the seafood department.  I am not found of this department however we usually stop because the kiddos like to watch the lobsters.  When we got there they were cleaning the lobster tanks.  Someone brought out two lobsters for us to see and touch (no thank you).  We also got to see an octopus!  Check out the picture!  They are smaller than I thought they were.   They looked pretty yucky to me.  I don’t eat seafood though.




Another department that I wasn’t too fond of was the hot sauce department.  I don’t like those either.  My boys however do!  Luke wanted to go back and get some Tobasco when we were finished or on our next trip.  They even had an adult hot sauce department.  Check it out!

Our tour guide showed us all kinds even the one that you have to have with some kind of beverage.  It could burn your insides!  Yikes!  I won’t be purchasing that for my family!  We did get to try a lot more things like Colby-Jack cheese curds, Asian chocolate bear cookies, Pears, Boars Head honey ham, and tortilla chips with salsa.  The chips were really thick and tasty.  I think my favorite ones.

We had a great time on our 90 minute tour, tasted a lot of foods and learned a few things about the store and Mr Jungle Jim!  This tour was set specifically for the 4-h foods department, so the other kiddos in our family were not able to attend.  Our tour guide said that they love to set up tours and would be happy to set on up with our homeschool group!  We will be doing this again!  With all the foods that we ate we decided that we didn’t need lunch afterwards so we stopped by Sweet Frog and had a frozen yogurt!  Luke had never been so as I was explaining to him how it worked and that it was self serve, he saw this and had to take a picture for his Lego building brothers.


              It was a sweet tart Lego brick!  He was excited since he and his brothers have been building with Legos for years!  What a great finish to a great tour!

The Classical Historian {Mosaic Review}

         


 History was not my favorite in school.  I wasn’t good at it.  There were too many dates and different people. and I didn’t test well no matter how much I studied.  As an adult I am more interested in history,  however it is still not my favorite subject or hobby.  It intrigues me to see how our country started and how far it has come.  When looking for history curriculum to teach the kiddos I look for hands on curriculum.  Any game, activity or yes even a video that would allow my children to learn history painlessly is at least up for trial in this house!  When I found out I was reviewing the Go Fish Ancient History card game I was so excited!  If we had played games, watched movies or did hands on activities maybe I would have caught on quicker with history.  At least I may have found it more interesting in my school career.

A little about The Classical Historian …..
            The classical Historian was founded by John and Zdenka De Gree.  After working in private and public school education for over twenty years, John realized the great need in American society to promote independent and critical thinking through open and thoughtful discussion of history. Zdenka realized that nowhere could she find fun games that taught history.  Together they founded this company that was based on the  Socratic Discussion.  This form of discussion is a negative form of hypotheses elimination.  Named after the classical Greek Philosopher Socrates, it uses two or more parties to debate or pin their opposing viewpoints against each other.  The opposing sides may try to point out facts that contradict the opposing side’s theory.  I have never liked debates or arguments of any kind, so I have not tried this style in our homeschool.  I am however like I said up for anything when it comes to history, so it won’t hurt to check it out, right?  You can check out their website here and take peek.  You can also take advantage of their FREE summer lesson on Independence Day!


From The Classical Historian I received the Ancient History Go Fish Game.  This sturdy laminated deck of cards contains 48 jumbo cards and is recommended for ages 3 and up for 3 or more players.  Included with the cards are directions for  4 games:  Continents Game, Collect the Cards Game, Chronology Game and Ancient History Go Fish.  The playing cards cover areas of ancient histoy, of course, like: Asia, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece and Roman Republic. 

  As you can see (hopefully) on the cards they can be grouped together.  There are four cards in each group.  When I received the cards I gathered my children around the table and told them we were going to play a game.  They were eager to know what game it was.  We often sit at the table and play Apples to Apples, Monopoly or some other board game.  I wasn’t sure how they would react when I said it was a history Go Fish Game. I figure the two older ones would get up and say “No Thanks”  however they stayed and we played. We asked for Ancient Greece, Seven Continents and the like and had fun telling each other to go fish.  I liked the concept of incorporating the games however I felt that these games were not set at the appropriate age level for my younger kiddos.
  We moved on and tried to play the continents game and found the same thing.  The older children were able to match most of the continents.  I think that this is a great idea/concept, however it wasn’t a great fit for our family.   These are probably a great asset to supplement the curriculum from The Classical Historian.  The card games are set at a great price of $14.95 so they don’t break the bank if you wanted to try them out.

  You can check out The Classical Historian
on the web at http://www.classicalhistorian.com/
on Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/classicalhistorian?fref=ts

Tasty Tuesdays-Grilled Pizza!

Can you guess what we had for dinner tonight?  Grilled pizza and salads!  Here on the farm we love to grill and charcoal grill at that.  We like the flavor of the charcoal better than gas even though it takes longer to heat up.  Zakery has asked several time to try to grill a pizza. That just sounded like a huge mess to me so we hadn't tried it.  Now Luke is taking a grilling project for 4-h and in there is a recipe for grilled pita pocket pizzas.  So tonight we made them!  Now they weren't Larosa's (which is our favorite) but they were really good!

First, we assembled them: Pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni, bacon and pineapple were the choices.  Yep the caddies also wanted one with all the choices in one.  We wrapped them in foil and labeled them so that we knew what was inside of each foil pack.  Can you see this "B"?  They really weren't as hard to read as this picture is. 

 

                                              Next, we put them on the already heated grill.

                   We heated them for 10 minutes then started to check them to see if they were warmed up.  Our grill was a weaker heat at barely 300 degrees so it took about 25 minutes. We didn't have as much charcoal as we had thought.  The recipe said that it would take about 10.

 

                                                        Check this out, doesn't it look tasty?

 

 Now I know it probably sounds funny, but I do not eat meat.  Yep I live on a farm, raise chickens and grow a garden (one day hopefully we will add goats too!)  However, I do not eat meat.  I don't claim to be a vegetarian or vegan but I currently don't eat meat.  Silly?  Maybe.  Anyhow, in my pizza pocket I had black beans and cheese, yum!

  I am soooo looking forward to the rest of the grilling that will be done with this specific project! The caddies also want to try grilled tacos. Not sure how that will turn out but now we are up for trying it out!