Learning By The Way

Raquel, Moriah and I went to a book study on Mere Christianity. We are chronically unprepared for this study, and Raquel ended up reading aloud the chapter on our way there. We had an amazing, lovely time of fellowship and discussion. The other adults were effusively impressed with Moriah’s memory and grasp of the chapter content.

One of the couples there had brought a book for Moriah. It is about a sculpture that reminded them of her. It is called Degas and the Little Dancer: A Story About Edgar Degas, and she loves it. A simply wonderful story book about Degas’ The Little Dancer

After the study we sat and talked. Somehow our Lebanese hostess began telling stories about her childhood, and her sister, a missionary to Pakistan. It was a special time, and I held this sense of privilege, to be in this beatiful place, surrounded by loving people, and listen to stories of an amazing place here in God’s world that I will probably never go, but am now touched by.

Samuel is our resident ketchup aficianado. He piles the stuff on steak, scrambled eggs, and sometimes vegetables. And despite the bottle trumpeting that it’s loaded with lycopene, I was becoming frustrated with the corn syrup and other dubious ingredients. So we told Samuel we would teach him how to make his own. This morning, he did. He and Toby looked up ketchup in the recipe index, found the page, and we mixed the ingredients together. We took the recipe from our Nourishing Traditions cookbook, which explains that ketchup was originally a fermented condiment. We did not follow the recipe exactly, as I had forgotten to pick up some fish sauce at an Asian grocery. That was very okay with Samuel. After we set our concoction on the counter to ferment for two days, Toby and Samuel designed a label and logo for “Samuel’s Home-made Ketchup” and pasted it on an empty ketchup bottle.

This morning, after completing her math page, Moriah asked if she could learn more about Blue Wildebeests. So I assigned her a short report on these creatures that I was previously unaware of. She googled for information and came up with quite a bit. She took notes, and we discussed plagiarism as she continues to struggle with putting information she has learned into her own words.