Turkey or ham?

Now this is a turkey that I could eat leftovers from, day after day! It's gorgeous, isn't it? One pound of milk chocolate -- yum!

Do you remember the friend that I made English toffee with several weeks ago? Her sister-in-law is a local chocolatier, and sells these in November. This one was a hostess gift to us, on Thanksgiving. I wish we could keep it forever, but alas it HAS to be eaten. It would just go bad otherwise, right? Okay, I'll make the grand sacrifice. Someone pass me the hammer.

My question to you, do you do turkey, ham, beef or something else for Christmas dinner? I might have mentioned that I buy hams just before Christmas. They keep in the fridge, in their original packaging, for a few weeks, before needing to be cooked or frozen (check use by date on label). And in the next two weeks, our area supermarkets will feature them at their lowest price of the year.

In fact, 2 grocery store chains in my area have them this week for 99 cents per pound, for bone-in shank half ham, and bone-in whole hams. I was able to pick up 1 half ham and 1 whole ham (30 lbs total), at that price, the other day. This could be all the ham we'll want through early spring. But I'm still toying with the idea of 1 more half ham. I'll need to check the freezer space before making that decision. What do you think? Do you buy extra ham, to freeze? I'm on the fence.


Back to that chocolate turkey. I'm afraid no pardon for him -- his neck will be on the chopping block this weekend!

When college students come home for break

the curried carrot soup that my daughters made for dinner on Tuesday

Fall quarter has now ended at the university that my two daughters attend. One quarter down! Woohoo! Just 11 more!

Funny thing, early on in the quarter, I asked one of my daughters what she thought about her classes. Her reply, "Mom, you were right, university classes are a lot harder than high school classes." I put a surprised look on my face, but in my heart I was smiling, as I said, "Oh?" It was one of those funny parent moments. But all three of my kids are very hard workers. They all rise to the challenge of hard coursework.



My daughters are commuter students, meaning they come home every evening. But there have been days when it felt more like they were living away, as I only saw them briefly in the mornings, as I drove them to the bus, and again for 5 minutes, when I picked them up in the evenings. Family dinners went by the wayside this fall, as they used every spare moment to work on assignments and projects, away from the family, in their rooms.

Even though they've been living here all along, there are some similarities to the student who comes home on break. The one that I knew I needed to address right away, was a lack of responsibilities during break time. With classes out, their main job, to do classwork, is on hiatus.

Wednesday morning was our first morning of break together. I know myself, and I know that I would get frustrated if it began to seem that they thought break meant vacation from responsibility.  So, right off, I established the chores they would have over break. It's not an onerous list, by any means. Here it is:

-- Prepare dinner 3 days per week: Tuesdays, Fridays and Mondays. Some of the days they will get to choose the menu, other days I'll have a menu in mind. They began with Tuesday night's dinner. The two of them made this amazingly yummy curried carrot soup. They've made this a few times before, using a recipe that they've found online. I really need to get the URL for that one, and pass it on, because it is quite good, and uses very inexpensive ingredients (carrots, potatoes, onions, black pepper, curry powder, to name most of them). With the soup they made blackberry scones and peanut butter filled celery sticks.

Preparing dinner in our house is actually a time-consuming job, as we cook almost everything from scratch, and there's no room in the grocery budget for convenience items. But this is great experience for them. Learning to cook and feed themselves well, at a young age will go far with their health and finances in the years to come.

-- Clean up the kitchen every morning after breakfast. This is one of my usual chores, so I am happy to pass it off to them each day over break.

-- Clean the main bathroom every Saturday. (I'm secretly hoping that they'll start to notice when one of them leaves their pj's on the bathroom floor, and bug each other to pick up their stuff.)

-- Perform 1 big chore, of my choosing, assigned once per week (such as dusting the house, cleaning out the fireplace, or cleaning the baseboards).

-- Hang laundry 2 days per week. We do laundry 4-5 days a week, here. Hanging most of it to dry. Their help will give me a bit more time to do other chores.

My kids are really great, and I'm not at all complaining about them. They do offer to help out around the house, and they have such sweet attitudes about everything. But I do think that even great kids forget that there is a lot of work to be done around the house every day, and need a little nudge.

It's really not a lot that I'm asking of them. They'll still have plenty of time to have fun and enjoy their time off. But I did feel that I needed to establish this at the beginning of break.

So, what does this all mean for me? Well, I don't feel like the only one who never gets a vacation. I have several days away from the kitchen per week, meaning I can recharge, and am more likely to go ahead with time-consuming menu items, like the fresh pasta that I made for dinner on Wednesday. And I have time to work on Christmas gifts, decorating, baking, and the fun Christmas stuff. It means that my time is freed up a bit, to do more frugal activities around the house. In this way, my daughters' help will save us some money. And it means that I can feel good about my kids learning how to tackle various responsibilities.

Christmas break is 3  1/2 weeks long. Ask me at the end of 3 weeks how this all worked out! LOL!

How about you? Have you found some methods for training kids (younger or older) to help with household chores?