Spontaneous is not a word your could use to describe me. While I am not an organized person, I like to have a pretty good idea of where I’m going and what I’m doing. I get nervous when I’m put into unfamiliar situations.

It’s one of the things I don’t like about myself and I’m actively working to remedy it by purposely putting myself into those kinds of situations and working my way through them.

Today was one of those activities. Tim and I got in the car and we just started driving. He had a general idea of where we were going, but I was just along for the ride. We drove for a few hours and came up a town neither of us had been to before.

While we had never been to that town, I knew there was a large book sale nearby so we dropped in there and bought the kids some books. Other than that we just drove around, taking roads that piqued our interest, and pretty much rambling through the countryside until we decided to head home. It turned out to be a lovely adventure!

Feeling nostalgic this evening…❤️❤️

Once again our adventures led us to water. We had recently been told about a nearby park that used to be a golf course. The golf course has long been closed and the property is now owned by a university. They maintain the paved trails that remain from the golf days, and the trails meander through the countryside and down by the river.This morning we met with the cousins and explored. We found an offshoot path that took us right to the river and up a small creek. The kids spent time wading through the water and playing around the tiny waterfalls that made up the stream. The water was cold and refreshing against the heat of the day. We saw a lot of butterflies, a snake, and pretty flowers.When they were done playing we went back to the cars and headed to the park for soccer practice. We had a picnic lunch before practice. C got to be the goalie again this week and even blocked the other team from scoring a goal. Both the big kids loved practice.From there we came home and kids played with the neighbors and then spent the evening with church friends, so they had close to twelve hours of activity today.With any luck that means we should get to sleep in tomorrow!

Adventure season is upon us!!

Last week we finished our first year of homeschooling! We didn’t shout it from the rooftops because even though we see finished with our curriculum, there are still a few subjects the kids will be working on through the summer to catch up.

But now that our school time is much shorter, we have more freedom to adventure! This morning we took my mom to a doctor’s appointment and while she was in there, we found a park just across the parking lot.

The kids got very excited to discover a stream there and they immediately took off their shoes to wade in it. When they tired of that we followed the paths and picked our fill of honeysuckles until my mom called saying she was finished.

This evening we were invited to a church in our district for a night of opera and congregational singing. The singer, Phil Webb, is an international Opera singer, but also works at the Masters University in Los Angeles. The evening was filled with traditional hymns and songs we got to join in on. It really was a lovely experience and I’m glad we were able to attend!

Were It Not For Grace

Do everyone’s parents have a random stack of old cookbooks from various churches and clubs they belonged to way back in the day? You know the ones that were made on a typewriter and assembled by hand. And you flip through them and see where your parents or grandparents have made notations of the recipes they’ve tried, the changes they made to them, and the ones that were made once and that was enough?

The one I stumbled across last week was for a nurses’ auxiliary in Pennsylvania. By the look of it, I would date it at some point in the mid 70’s. The cover is creased and the pages are browned with age.

Out of curiosity, I was flipping through it this morning when I came across a very peculiar recipe- Tomato Soup Cake. A quick google search informed me that this was a legit thing back in the Depression era when women learned to replace milk and eggs with a can of tomato soup. It seemed just disgusting enough that I couldn’t pass it by. What would a tomato soup cake taste like? Was this Ms. O’Kane on to something? Have I been missing out on an incredible delicacy for years out of sheer ignorance?!?!

So I went to the store and bought a can of soup… tomato soup.. FOR MY CAKE…

I got home and quickly assembled my ingredients.

I decided right off the bat to make two changes- swap out the crisco for some butter, and drop the raisins completely because raisins were just a bridge too far in my tomato cake.

Mixing up the butter and sugar got me off to a good start. I mean, that seems like a completely acceptable dessert right there, am I right??

Then I dug out my mom’s sifter. It’s the first time I’ve used a sifter since the mid-90’s but it’s kind of like riding a bike, you really don’t forget how to use it. I let the kids help me with that part because of the novelty-wow factor. They thought the sifter was awesome. We added all the dry ingredients except the spices.

This is where things got a bit dicey. I really had to talk myself into pouring a whole can of tomato soup onto my perfectly white, perfectly normal baking concoction. Everything about that seemed completely unnatural, and to make matters worse, it started to smell like ketchup. It wouldn’t be a lie if I told you I started breathing through my mouth at that point.

Next I added the spices- ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon. I regretted my decision as those smells began to mingle with the tomato aroma. But I had committed to this experiment, so I pressed on.

The batter moistened quickly with the tomato soup mixed in. At that point it both looked and smelled as if it had been eaten before and returned for an encore…

But then the strangest thing happened. As the batter took on a cake mix form, the smell of tomatoes went away and all I could smell was the pleasant aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon.

I poured the batter into the pan and placed it into the preheated over.

Curious as I was to the flavor of this experiment, I was not yet brave enough to try the batter. So I did the most sensible thing I could think of and invited the three children to try it for me. I was surprised when all three of them told me how delicious it was and I was even more surprised when I snuck a bite myself and agreed with them. It wasn’t terrible at all.

I set the timer for 40 minutes and went to work on my computer to pass the time. As I sat there, the house began to fill with the aroma of a freshly made cake.

When the timer went off, I carefully removed the cake from the oven.

And when it cooled off, I got it onto a plate. From the recipes I had seen online, tomato soup cake tastes the best with cream cheese frosting, so I melted some down and drizzled it over the top of the cake and let it cool.

The only thing left was to wait for dessert time! The kids rushed through their dinner so they could get a piece of cake. When I finally cut into it, I was surprised at how soft and moist the cake was. It was denser than a traditional box cake. When I took my first bite I discovered that I couldn’t taste the tomato in it at all! It tasted exactly like a spice cake with cream cheese frosting! I was shocked!

All in all, I would say that the great experiment was a success!! The whole family enjoyed it and the kids asked for seconds. I’m not sure that this will become a regular staple in our home, but I’d definitely make it again.

Now I want to go through all the old cookbooks and find more crazy recipes to make and feed to my family. If you see any, feel free to pass them on my way! And if you ever want to invite me to a potluck, I’ll bring the tomato soup cake!!

I’ve mentioned before how happy I am to be putting in a ‘garden’ this year. It isn’t much, a few vegetables in pots and some flowers planted into the flower beds. There were still a few plants to get into pots today, but it was so hot we decided to wait until later in the evening when the sun started setting. Most of it was smooth sailing, and we made a lot of progress.

It was getting late and I wanted to get two more small mint plants into planters before calling it a night. Everyone else had gone inside except me and Big E. We pulled over the pot, the mint, and the large bag of potting soil. As I was filling the pot, I asked Big E to grab the seed starter mix I had been using over the past several weeks. It was closed up and propped against the house. He picked it up and noted how light it was.

At this point, night has started to settle in. The sky was almost dark and we were working by the light of the front porch. Big E and I both knelt down beside the planter as I started to pour the contents of the bag into the pot. All of a sudden I felt something drop into the pot and a sudden movement. It was dark and my eyes took a moment to comprehend what I was seeing. It was like something was trying to jump out of the pot. And that’s when I realized it was a snake recoiling, leaping, recoiling, and leaping itself out of the pot less than a foot from our faces!!! Big E and I both screamed and jumped back as quickly as we could. It was dark, but I was pretty sure it was a black snake. Big E ran towards the front door. Tim must have heard my screaming because he came out to investigate the racket.

Poor Big E was in tears and my adrenaline was pumping hard. We needed to track down the snake to make sure it wasn’t poisonous. After finding flashlights, we determined it was a black rat snake about four feet in length. It was very agitated. Tim found a rake and twisted him up onto it like a large noodle and managed to dump it in the woods behind our house.

Needless to say, I was done gardening at that point. Tim put everything back for me and I have vowed to never garden after dark and never trust an open bag of ANYTHING EVER AGAIN.

Big E and I had a good laugh about it later, but if he has a lifelong fear of snakes, I think we can point with some confidence to the events of this evening!

Also, if you are keeping count, that’s three snake encounters in the last four days!! I think we’ve met our quota.

Over the past several months we have been assigning more and more chores to the children. One of Big E’s favorite chores is to water the plants. It is his responsibility to water the flowers in the flower bed and the potted plants on the front porch. It takes him ever so many trips with the watering can, but he is very conscientious and is sure to water each one.

He’s doing a great job at it and this morning I counted 34 bean plants in our planters!! Our flowers are looking lovely too!

The weather cooperated this afternoon for us to go to soccer. Over the course of our season, the kids have gotten more comfortable with playing. Today C even asked to be goalie. She did great and even stopped the other team from getting a goal!