National Strawberry Shortcake Day is celebrated June 14th annually. The origins of this day is unclear. This is one of my favorite desserts, so I don't need to know how this day came into existence. I'm just glad it is another opportunity for me to indulge! This year is the first year in a long time that we did not grow any strawberries. My parents have strawberries, but there is a farm that is closer to our home than my parents' house. When we first moved into our house, we

Right before Memorial Day weekend, our boys completed preschool. This August, they will attend kindergarten. Although we want them to relax and have fun this summer, we also want to keep them intellectually engaged. As an educator for the past ten years, I am familiar with notebooking, whether that is a reader's notebook, writer's notebook, science notebook, etc. We decided to have our boys keep a garden notebook. We wanted them to have the opportunity to continue to work

Over the past few years, we have made jams and jellies usng pectin and lots of sugar. Although the end product had a great taste and we were able to process the jam or jelly using the water bath canning method, we were looking for another way to make jam without so much sugar/sweetner or pectin. We decided to use chia seeds. I quite frequently use chia seeds in my green smoothies, but my husband didn't like the idea of whole seeds being in the jam, so we used ground chia s