Family Meal Plan: Nixie's After School Lemon Pound Cakes+Yummy Yogurt Glaze+Sweet Apple Slaw+Lemon Shakes

Luscious Lemon Apple Yogurt Pound Cakes

Happy & Healthy Cooking,

Fun-Da-Mentals Kitchen Skills

• adjust :

  to change seasonings or consistency to one's taste or to alter portion sizes.

• blend :

  to stir together two or more ingredients until just combined; blending is a gentler process than mixing.

• chop :

  to cut something into small, rough pieces using a blade.

• drizzle :

  to trickle a thin stream of a liquid ingredient, like icing or sauce, over food.

• knife skills :

  Bear Claw (growl), Pinch, Plank, and Bridge (look out for trolls). 

• measure :

  to calculate the specific amount of an ingredient required using a measuring tool (like measuring cups or spoons).

• pour :

  to cause liquid, granules, or powder to stream from one container into another.

• toss :

  to lightly lift and drop food items together or coat food items with flour, or a sauce or dressing, as in a salad.

• wet vs dry :

  to mix wet and dry ingredients separately before combining them: dry ingredients are flours, leavening agents, salt, and spices; wet ingredients are those that dissolve or can be dissolved (sugar, eggs, butter, oils, honey, vanilla, milk, and juices).

• whisk :

  to beat or stir ingredients vigorously with a fork or whisk to mix, blend, or incorporate air.

• zest :

  to scrape off the outer colored part of a citrus fruit's rind (skin or peel) using a metal tool with small sharp blades, such as a zester, microplane, or the small holes of a grater (avoid the "pith," the white, spongy lining of the rind that can be bitter).

History of Pound Cake!

• When created in the 1700s, pound cake was made with one pound of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, and this simple convention made it easy to remember the recipe when many people could not read. However, a cake made of one pound of each ingredient would have been quite large, serving multiple families. So, as the years went by, the portions of the ingredients were adjusted to make a smaller, lighter cake. However, the name of the cake stuck. 
• A variation on pound cake in the 1800s used cornmeal to replace some of the flour and was called "Indian Pound Cake."
• In France, they call pound cake "quatre-quarts," meaning "four quarters," because each of the four quarters of the cake weighs the same. The French sometimes use beaten egg whites in place of whole eggs, creating a lighter batter. They may also add chocolate or lemon juice for flavor.

Let's learn about England!

• England is ruled by a Monarch, a Prime Minister, and a Parliament. Windsor Castle is the oldest royal castle in the world that is still being used by the royal family.
• England is on the island of Great Britain, along with Wales and Scotland. It is also part of the United Kingdom, which consists of those three countries and Northern Ireland. 
• Did you know that there's no place in the UK that is more than 70 miles from the sea?! 
• Stonehenge is a construction of immense stones that the early inhabitants of what's now Wiltshire, England, began building around 3100 BCE. The final sections were completed around 1600 BCE. Scientists are still not sure how or why they built it. One theory for its purpose is an astronomical observatory. It is very popular with tourists.
• Other popular tourist spots in England include the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and Parliament (Palace of Westminster), the Roman Baths and the city of Bath, and the Lake District.  
• London, the capital city, wasn't always called that. In the past, its name was Londonium.
• England took part in the briefest war in history. They fought Zanzibar in 1896, and Zanzibar surrendered after just 38 minutes!
• There have been several influential English authors, but perhaps the most well-known is William Shakespeare, who wrote classics such as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet.
• English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.
• The British really like their sandwiches—they eat almost 11.5 billion a year!

What's It Like to Be a Kid in England?

• Most schools in England require students to wear a school uniform. 
• Sports kids play include football (soccer), cricket, rugby, tennis, netball (similar to basketball), and rounders (similar to baseball). They also play video games, watch the telly, and ride bikes or skateboards.
• Boxing Day is a unique holiday kids celebrate in England the day after Christmas, December 26. The official public holiday is the first weekday after Christmas if Boxing Day falls on a weekend. When the English created the holiday, it was the day to share the contents of alms boxes with the poor. Today, it is mostly a day off from school and work, although some small gifts may be given out to family and employees, or collected to give to the poor.
• English kids may have different names for everyday items also found in the United States. For example, a kid will call his mom "mum." Their backyard is a "garden." A big truck is called a "lorry," and the trunk of a car is a "boot." Biscuits in the US are closest to the British "scones," and cookies in England are "biscuits." A TV is usually called a "telly." Bags of chips are referred to as bags of "crisps." French fries, like those from a fast-food hamburger place, might be called "fries," but if they are thicker, like the ones typically served with batter-fried fish, they're called "chips" (fish and chips). Finally, kids call the fish sticks they might have for lunch "fish fingers.