Savory Squirrel Bakes

Today is a fun day for reading blogs... you know in the cracks when we're not celebrating a birthday!

I contributed several of my posts to both the Charlotte Mason Carnival of Blogs and the Carnival of Homeschooling, both are up today.  Grab a cuppa something and have a read ;)

Today for Cullen's birthday, Javen's contribution was a special lunch!  See what he made for his brother?!

Savory Squirrel Bakes

For the last couple years the boys have been REALLY into reading the Redwall series.  While this series may be classified as 'twaddle' by CM purists, it certainly isn't dumbed down.  The animal characters all have unique accents and tendencies, for example the rabbits throughout the series are always a favorite, because according to Javen, 'they're hilarious and they've got English accents'.  Uncle Stevie and Aunt Bethany (more fotos here) bought Javen The Redwall Cookbook when they came to visit and he's been begging ever since to cook something from it.  Today was the day.  How much more special of a birthday present could you conceive of on your 11th birthday than a special meal cooked by your 12 year old brother?!  Well, I thought it was pretty special indeed.

It was also kind of an educational experience as well.  Here's how:

• First, he had to make a shopping list (he copied down all the ingredients),
• he helped me translate it to Spanish to take to the market,
• then he had to translate the whole recipe in order to tell Marmee (our house helper) how she could help (peel, grate, etc.) in Spanish,
• he had to follow the recipe... measure, use the timer, etc.
• and he got cooking experience!  

Now, the meal was a little plain and wouldn't have been enough if I hadn't thrown a couple of chicken breasts on the grill... but hey, for a first meal, he did GREAT!!  :)  And I was SO proud of him as the idea was entirely his own... ahhhh.  So perfect.

PS. Be honest, how many from the title actually thought we'd cooked squirrels?! hahahahahah!