Presidents' Day Dinner

American presidents rarely gather by the dozen. But that is what happened in our dining room last evening.

I spent a lot of my day preparing for their arrival. Unlike the White House that has a calligraphy department to handprint dinner invitations, I needed to make my own place name tags. Unless I miss my guess, the chief calligrapher's position remains secure, even if Biden sees the name tags I made for my dinner guests.

Inside each place name tag, I printed interesting tidbits about our presidents like, 

"Thomas Jefferson was fluent in English, Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and Spanish. He also spoke some Dutch and Arabic. Jefferson claimed Spanish was so easy that he learned it in 19 days at sea." 

And one more: 

"Jimmy Carter was a speed reader, having been recorded reading 2,000 words per minute. The average reading speed of most adults is 250 words per minute. Also, Harry S. Truman read every book in his hometown library."

I planned my menu days in advance, selecting president favorites from Wide Open Eats and Insider. The lists on those two sites vary. Wide Open Eats attributes fried apple pies to Franklin Pierce, for example, and the Insider says his favorite food was fried clams. But why wouldn't they vary? If you asked me last Saturday what my favorite food was, I might have honestly told you it is hot-from-the-oven Garlic Naan from Taj Mahal, an Indian restaurant John took me to on a date. But on a cold winter day with wind howling around the house, it wouldn't feel dishonest to say a hot bowl of chili is my comfort food. 

So two lists of presidential favorites make sense to me. Plus, it gave me more options to choose from. Our finalized menu looked like this:

The leather britches listed on the menu came from no one's closet. In Appalachia, green beans used to be strung up and dried to be preserved for winter. When they were rehydrated and cooked (often with fat or ham hocks), they gained a wrinkled, leathery appearance. Leather Britches, then, are dried green beans. Ours were imitation leather; I found out too late about the dried bean part. 

I also selected Hoppin' John, a rice and bean dish, because of its name. (When children are your target audience, recipes like Leather Britches and Hoppin' John look good on the menu.) I happened to have a ham hock in my freezer for the first time in my life. When simmered for a long time with the dried beans, it added a delightful flavor to the recipe, making Hoppin' John my favorite dish of the evening. 

At least three presidents listed apple desserts as a favorite food, so I felt it was fitting to end our meal with one of those. Apple Pan Dowdy is basically apple pie with the crust cut into squares and overlapped on top. I used this recipe from Martha Stewart and am sharing the picture from her site since I didn't take one of mine. It was good enough that I understood why John Adams chose this as his fave.

Rutherford Hayes banned alcohol from the White House, which earned his wife the name "Lemonade Lucy." That's how we picked lemonade for our beverage. And I should note how fun it was to make Mamie Eisenhower's fudge using her recipe. It makes a lot--plenty to share with friends. 

Our Presidents' Day Dinner was a great education for our whole family. Ken Albala, a professor who teaches a course on the Great Courses Plus, says that just as you can learn much about history through art, so you can learn much about history through food. I agreed with him when I read about Abe Lincoln treating honey like a delicacy all his life because it was one luxury in a poverty-stricken childhood. Andrew Johnson naming rice and dried beans as a favorite food and Donald Trump famously serving McDonalds to guests in the White House also verify that U.S. history can be mapped through foods our presidents enjoy. 

Here is a fun fact to end on: 

"America is only as old as four presidents' lives. President Biden was alive at the same time as Herbert Hoover, who was alive at the same time as Andrew Johnson, who was alive at the same time as John Adams, who was 40 when America was born."

--Philip Bump, The Washington Post

Credits to Katrina Lee for the dinner idea and for going out of her way to send me the photo props. You can see her Presidents' Day Dinner on her website, katrinahooverlee.com.

February Fun Month, Part One

One of my schoolteacher role models is Deana Swanson. I follow her blog, The Plain Professors, and I cob ideas she uses in her classroom, tweaking them if needed to fit my school of two. Deana suggests six months of school is long enough for winter doldrums to set in, so she implemented February Fun Month in which every day of the month has a special activity to do or something to celebrate. By adopting her idea, February became my favorite month of school. In late January, the children help me decide what activities we will do. Many ideas come from The Plain Professors or the National Day Calendar, but this month we added some of our own as well.

February Fun Days, 2021, Weeks 1 & 2:

Backwards Day
Traditionalists that we are, we usually study school subjects in the same order every day. But on Backwards Day, we reverse that order, starting instead with Science and ending with Arithmetic. 

Groundhog Day/Bring a Critter to School Day

We watched Punxsutawny Phil predict six more weeks of winter, a believable guess, considering the piles of snow all over town. We don't own a groundhog, stuffed or otherwise, so the children invited other stuffed friends to join them in school for the day. 

Mix-Up Day

In this favorite, the children pull slips of paper from a hat, shake them from a gravy shaker, find them in nooks and crannies, pop balloons to retrieve them, or unwrap them like gifts. No matter what system I use, they always love Mix-Up Days--particularly the extra activities I include like treats, extra breaks, or unexpected art projects. 

Popcorn Day

We usually don't have midmorning snacks, but this day, we ate our fill of flavored popcorn. 

National Bubblegum Day

Chew gum during school hours? Not here, except on National Bubblegum Day.

Green All Day

The children used green ink to write spelling words and ate salads for lunch. 

We made green collages.

Wore green

Drew green plants in our creative journals

Day 100

Another annual favorite happened to land in February this year. 

My children never saw candy bar
letters before--for a good reason--
but they enjoyed getting acquainted.

After receiving their letter, we had our regular school day with irregular activities mixed in:

--Measured 100 yards and ran the 100-yard dash. No Olympic records were broken, probably because we had six inches of crusty snow and six pounds of snow gear.
Oh, and because Tyler was carrying the measuring tape,
a detail he said definitely hindered speed.

--Put together 100-piece puzzles

--Learned to say 100 in French and Spanish

--Found out who was President, what stamps cost,
and what a new Chevy cost 100 years ago

Drew pictures using numerical
100's as the base

Traditional Day 100 lunch

Mismatched Sock Day

No-brainers like this one add interest to a school day without exhausting the mom. This year, I chanced upon cheap, silly socks in time to surprise the children with them on this unusual holiday.

No Desk Day

A day in which no child may do bookwork at their desk. 

Spelling Class

Chinese New Year

Another annual favorite. This year I learned about Chinese children receiving red envelopes with crisp money or notes of blessing in them. I found a template on this website and printed envelopes. To receive them, the children had to bow to me and say Thank you in Chinese. Well, sort of Chinese. We learned it from Google Translate and you know how reliable that is. My children didn't receive money in their envelopes, but found fun activities to do instead. 

Being low on red paper and not being superstitious,
I used a variety of colors.

Eating popcorn with chopsticks. 
Most of us were successful...

--We drew Chinese flags in our creative journals and made Chinese lanterns. 

I made place names for our Chinese dinner.

A delicious ending to a full week.

That brings us up to date! Next up for us is a Presidents' Day dinner made up of favorite foods of our Presidents. Guests have been invited and excitement is mounting. Speaking of that dinner, I have shopping to do and food to prepare.

Later, friends!