Category: Travel

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Airstream Accessories Homeschool

Road School: The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That

Using Cat and the Hat Books for Roadschool

Traveling the United States, we’ve visited many different areas and ecosystems. Beaches, forests, swamps, and mountains are all different and provide many learning opportunities. Many of the National Park sites we’ve visited have well-stocked gift shops with relevant books about the area. One of my favorite series of books for the kids are The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot about That.

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“Miles and Miles of Reptiles” We picked it up in the Everglades. “Clam I Am?” From one of the many National Seashores we’ve been to.  Since I’m a sucker for books at National Park Visitor Centers, we end up procuring quite a lot of these as we travel. We also manged to pick up quite a healthy stack of these used for cheap at Powell’s bookstore in Portland, OR.

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There’s been many occasions where the kids spout some nugget of knowledge from one of these books. They are fairly comprehensive, accurate, and more importantly, fun to read! Each book ranges from $5-$10 and it just depends on where you find them.

Some of our favorite titles:

Inside Your Outside! – The Cat and the Hat take Sally & Nick on a ride through the human body.

Miles and Miles of Reptiles – lizards, snakes, turtles, and crocodiles!

Wish for a Fish: All about Sea Creatures – Jellyfish, manatees, whales, sea cucumbers & more!

Oh The Things You Can Do That Are Good For You – physical fitness, eating right, showering, handwashing, etc. Great when paired with Inside Your Outside during a body unit!

There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System – See ya later, Pluto! (still makes me sad). All about the types of planets, asteroids, and other fun space stuff.

Recently we also found this Step Into Reading book for Cara from Costco: Stories about Bees and Trees And Feet and Fur- and More! And let’s be honest, when you see something this good at Costco you grab it since it might not be around for very long!
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She loves it! Its easy enough for an early reader, and once we’ve read a story together she has enough confidence to read it on her own.

We don’t officially incorporate these into our road school curriculum, but the kids love to read and by just having them lying around the books get read! See how sneaky I am?

What are your favorite books for road or home school?

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Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Italian Meatball Wedding Soup

Its a rainy day here in Arkansas, which is a perfect day for soup! This is one of our recent favorites, although I apparently don’t make it enough. Each time I was asked what’s for dinner, and responded with, “Italian Wedding Soup”, I received an “Ooooh! Yum!  I LOVE that!” comment. Cara is our pickiest eater (at 5.5 years old) and she’ll gobble down the meatballs and turn her nose up at the spinach. That doesn’t fly around here and I make her eat it anyway. So mean.

I usually make the meatballs one day and we’ll eat half of them over zucchini noodles (or zoodles),  and then freeze the other half of them to make this soup later in the week. The ingredients for both meals are very similar, but they are totally different meals. Works great when you have very little fridge space.

I serve the soup with our Cast Iron Skillet Vegan Cornbread or a salad. Depends on my mood and how many other veggies we’ve had that day.

Italian Wedding Soup

Serves 6, 2 cups each

Ingredients

1 tsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups spinach (or greens, but we usually just have spinach on hand)
20 Italian Meatballs (or however many you have left over after eating pasta – see recipe HERE)
2 large eggs
2 Tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground black papper
2 tsp lemon juice (or fresh lemon cut into wedges – which we never have)

Directions:

  1. Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook for 4-6 minutes or until translucent.
  2. Add garlic, stirring frequently for 1 minute.
  3. Add broth and bring to a boil.
  4. Add greens. Reduce heat to low and boil uncovered, gently for 10 minutes.
  5. Add meatballs, cook for another 5 minutes stirring occasionally.
  6. Combine egg and cheese in a small bowl and whisk to combine.
  7. Slowly pour egg mixture into hot soup, stirring constantly. Boil, uncovered until eggs are just set (takes about 30 seconds).
  8. Add lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately!

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Categories
Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Cast Iron Skillet Vegan Cornbread

We recently acquired a 10″ cast iron skillet, and are convinced that everything tastes better in it. I had been making this recipe in our 9×13 glass pan, but the first time we tried it in the skillet we were blown away by the deliciousness. Super soft, moist, and full of flavor, this cornbread recipe is sure to be a hit at parties and get-togethers. Plus, it doesn’t have a lot of butter (something many recipes do) so I like to think its a little bit healthy.

Cast Iron Vegan Cornbread

adapted from livinlightly.com
serves: 10″ skillet – how many people depends on how big you cut it up!
Ingredients for Cornbread
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
3/4 cup water
2 cups non dairy milk (we use Lactaid)
1/2 cup canola oil (melted coconut oil works too)
2 cups flour (we usually just use white)
8 tsp baking powder
2 cups whole grain cornmeal
1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray skillet with non-stick cooking spray (probably not needed, I do usually do it anyway just in case).
2. Heat water in a small sauce pan on stove. Once it is boiling, add the flaxseed. Reduce heat and whisk until you get a gel-like consistency.
3. Combine milk & oil in a large bowl. Add sugar and mix well.
4. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture (Sift flour if you want – I’m always too lazy!) and mix well.
5. Stir in flaxseed mixture.
6. Spread cornbread mixture into a cast iron skillet. It’s pretty thick, but don’t worry.
8. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
9. Drizzle with honey  & enjoy!
Airstream Kitchen -Cast Iron Vegan Cornbread Recipe

Categories
Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Italian Turkey Meatballs Over Zoodles

I usually make the meatballs one day and we’ll eat half of them over zucchini noodles (or zoodles),  and then freeze the other half of them to make Italian Wedding Soup later in the week. The ingredients for both meals are very similar, but they are totally different meals. Works great when you have very little fridge space. Usually I will serve this with french bread or whole wheat biscuits, and then cooked carrots or broccoli.

Italian Meatballs Over Zoodles

adapted from beachbody.com
Serves 10

1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1/4 cup reduced fat milk (any kind)
2 tsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed (the more the better in our family!)
2 lbs raw ground 93% lean turkey breast
2 large eggs
1/4 cup fresh parsley, or about 1 tbsp dried
2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp dried oregano leaves
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper

4 medium zucchini
Hot water
2 tbsp finely shredded fresh basil
2 Tbsp grated parmesan cheese
Your favorite Tomato Sauce (I’m lazy, and usually just do Ragu)

    1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees, and spray a large baking sheet with non-stick spray. (Most recently I cooked these in our cast iron pan and that worked great too.)
    2. Place bread crumbs and milk in a large bowl and soak for 10 minutes.
    3. Meanwhile, heat oil in medium skillet and add onions. Saute 5 or 6 minutes or until translucent.
    4. Add garlic and cook stirring frequently for about a minute.
    5. Add onion mixture, turkey, eggs, parsley, cheese, oregano salt, pepper to the bread crumbs. Mix well with a spoon, or clean hands (my preferred method). It’ll be a little stick at this point, so cover and refrigerate for an hour.
    6. Form turkey mixutre into 1-inch balls and arrange on cookie sheet or pan. You can use your hands, but I’ve found those awesome cookie scoops work really well for this. They aren’t perfectly round, but I just finish them off with my hands. Its so much faster and less messy.
    7. Bake for 13-18 minutes or until browned and cooked through.
    8. While your meatballs are cooking, boil a large pot of water.
    9. Using a cheese slicer (not the wire kind), a vegetable peeler (this never worked as well for me), or a spiralizer (if you are being super fancy) cut each zucchini into lengthwise strips about 1/8″ thick. Turn zuchinni slightly after each cut, so you are working evenly around the outside. Stop when you get to the seeds.
    10. Ideally you’d steam these, but I just throw them in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes until tender.
    11. Once your meatballs are done, pull out half to save for soup later, and add tomato sauce to the rest. Heat through.
    12. Top zucchini noodles with meatballs & sauce, basil, and cheese.

Italian Turkey Meatballs Over Zoodles

Categories
Faith Florida Road Stories

Funny How Things Work Out Sometimes – Long Key State Park

2016-01-04 17.23.41We weren’t even supposed to be at Long Key State Park. After the Dry Tortugas, we originally had planned to stay at Bahia Honda for another five days to decompress. We knew we’d need to catch up on work and school and little to no driving sounded great. However, we found an open spot at Long Key State Park that fit our dates, wasn’t that much farther of a drive, and we had heard good things from other traveling friends so we switched up our plans because we like new places.

I’m so glad we did.

Sam was grilling outside at the picnic table our first night, and as a woman was walking up and down the beach she eventually approached him with a question. She had seen our website on the back of the Airstream, looked up the blog and realized that we were also a traveling family and desperately needed advice.

After that first meeting we hit it off. The Siminoff family have two kids that are right around our kids’ ages, had been on the road in their truck camper only a few months into their year long sabbatical and were really struggling with schedules, motivating their kids, and finding a balance. Ellen fired off question after question after question while the kids happily played in the bedroom due to the pouring rain outside.

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We loved talking with them. I can’t say we got a whole lot of school or work done those two days, but we definitely made some life long friends. We invited them over for a Family Home Evening where Sam gave a lesson on the prophet Noah and Ellen taught us how to make Key Lime Pie. Afterward the kids played Castle Panic, and the adults sat in the bedroom alternating discussions between theology (we are LDS, they are Jewish) and full-time family travel until far too late into the night.

You know when you meet someone and you just click? It was like that. Our time together was far too short, but we made the most of it.

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The spin-off from this meeting happened a few weeks later when Ellen and I were texting about their upcoming plans to fly overseas and tour New Zealand and Australia before finishing the United States. Back in college Sam and I participated in a New Zealand study abroad with the Recreation Management program and we were hosted by the most amazing elderly couple whom we’ve kept in close contact with over the last twelve years. Just recently the wife died, and Dave, our host dad, has been a bit lonely. He loves to travel, having taking us touring the South Island during our studies, and we knew he’d have great advice for the Siminoffs.

Before I knew it, Dave had offered to pick them up at the airport, and TOUR them around in his eight passenger van! I was so happy for all of them! If we couldn’t visit New Zealand and hang out with Dave, at least our friends could. Their meeting came a great time for both parties and from what I’ve heard everything is going swimmingly.

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Everyone once in awhile we receive affirmation that we are where God intends us to be. Its no secret we feel led to travel. I’m sure there are many reasons including personal growth, education, and opportunities to spend time together as a family. Most importantly the people we meet. When life and events come together so perfectly, I can’t help but be amazed at the love and understanding God has for our lives.

We love all the friends we’ve met along our journey and continue to be inspired and encouraged by everyone we meet!