31 Days: All in a day’s work
Bread baking went MUCH better today. Granted, it had nowhere to go but up after yesterday’s excitement. Here’s the recipe we used: Cheesy Batter Bread. It’s a great recipe that doesn’t require a lot of special bread-baking talent, though it does have to rise twice. It is delicious enough to make the work worth it. Pictures and taste test results tomorrow!
Today’s book, Seven Loaves of Bread, by Ferida Wolff, also involves bread that is worth the work it takes to make it. Unfortunately, one of the main characters, Rose, fails to realize this until it is too late. Rose’s sister, Milly, usually makes the bread for their family, the menagerie of animals on their farm, a neighbor, and the peddler. When Milly gets sick, Rose takes over the bread-baking duties, and uses a lot of shortcuts. Slowly, these shortcuts result in less bread, and thus, chaos on the farm. Not surprisingly, Rose sees the error of her ways just in the nick of time, and manages to correct her lazy mistakes and gain some perspective in the process.
The vintage illustrations by Katie Keller fit the mood of the story, and make it more believable. There’s definitely some suspension of disbelief here, especially when it comes to Rose’s ability to put the farm back in order in a single day, but the under-eight crowd has never seemed to mind. In the classroom, this is a great book for looking at some basics of economics: types of resources (human and land, in particular), scarcity (of time), and plain old personal responsibility. People reading at home with their own little ones will find opportunities to discuss the same lessons.
If you’d like to see what else we’re reading this month, just click on the picture below.