Canada

What's Schoolin'? (What's Cookin'? is below)

We're focusing on North America right now and today we snuggled up and skimmed through some Canada books I checked out from the library.  Some were easy readers and some much more detailed.  All of the ones shown below are now in ANOTHER book basket because the three library baskets under the coffee table are too full of other books we're using!

I'll start with the easy readers:  Rookie Reader Canada; True Book Canada; A to Z Canada; Countries in the News Canada; Globe Trotters Club Canada.

More detailed:  Vancouver (Cities of the World); Canada-Enchantment of the World; Countries of the World Canada; The Canada Goose.

Even more detailed (longer reads):  Steve Nash - Leader On and Off the Court; Lakes, Peaks, and Prairies

I saved my favorite overview books for last! 
Wow Canada! - Exploring This Land from Coast to Coast to Coast:  It goes through each province with more details and is written in scrapbook format from the point of view of a 12 yr-old boy going across Canada with his family.

The Kids Book of Canada:  This is sort of a picture atlas but with more info.  It also goes through each province.  It has info such as the flag, flower, etc for the province, a timeline, quick facts, animals, a map, and a section called people, places, and events.







































































































What's Cookin'?

Peppermint Patties:  Wow, I guess you really CAN find just about anything on the internet!  I was thrilled to find a recipe for homemade PPatties that I thought I could handle.  Several weeks ago dd was drooling over a York PPatty at the checkout and I casually said that maybe we could make some.  Well, her birthday is tomorrow so I've made some as a surprise for her.  I picked up a York one also the other day - I took out the York patty and slipped in my own to give her as a gift with a note to look in the refrigerator :).

Here are the York PPatty ingredients (they don't separate the filling from the coating):  sugar; corn syrup; semi-sweet chocolate (chocolate, sugar, cocoa, milk fat, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, PGPR (petroleum?) as emulsifier, vanillin as artificial flavor); inverted sugar; egg whites; oil of peppermint; milk.

Here are the homemade peppermint patty ingredients:  Powdered sugar (I use homemade from rapadura); butter; peppermint oil (food grade only!)(I used 2 drops for the batch and then added 2 more drops to the last third for more kick); real vanilla; milk (instead of evaporated milk from the recipe and it worked fine); Enjoy Life chocolate chips (NO soy, dairy, etc); Palm shortening (NO trans fats like crisco).  Oh, and the ingredients for the Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolate chips are: evaporated cane juice; chocolate liquor; non-dairy cocoa butter - that's it.

Except for the fact that it's still sugary junk food I feel good about her eating the homemade version, lol - no hidden msg, no trans fats, no petroleum, no gmo corn syrup, no possible gmo beet sugar, and I can't even remember why inverted sugar is bad but it is :).

Here is the recipe I used (and adjusted as noted above):
http://www.joyofbaking.com/printpages/PeppermintPattiesprint.html