We spent
the last week of homeschool preschool focusing on Africa. We read about it,
colored an Africa coloring sheet, wrote a story about Africa in his journal. We
looked it up in our children’s atlas and on our globe, learned about the
children in different parts of Africa using Children Just Like Me, watched several African stories played out
in Scholastic’s Storybook Treasures: Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears.
We learned
the Spanish words for water, city, village, lion, and elephant. We danced in
our living room to West African drum music, and Mommy even remembered a few
authentic West African dance moves thanks to a week-long workshop she took back
in her dancing days. We wrote letters to our sponsor children in Uganda and
Rwanda, and then got excited when we found aletter from Ayingeneye in our mailbox later that day.
We read
picture books with great African stories in them… Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, The Fisherman and his Wife, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, Wangari’s Peace Trees. We read a great spiritual tie-in book I found through Sonlight’s
preschool curriculum package, Storiesfrom Africa. We read several non-fiction books and in one of them, Exploring Countries: South Africa, we
read the briefest little blurb about melktert. (Think “milk tart”)
“The
country is also famous for a sweet dessert called melktert. It is a pastry with
a filling made from milk, flour, sugar, and eggs.”
I looked
at the picture and I read the description and I thought, egg custard! When I was a kid, my mom used to make a dessert called
egg custard. It was basically melktert. I quickly sent her a text message to
ask for her recipe, and a few days later, my kids and I were in the kitchen
making our own little version of melktert.
I cut
Mom’s recipe in half (and then cut the sugar in half after that), and made it
dairy-free for my kids’ sake. I also skipped the crust since I never really
liked it as a kid and just scooped the custard part out of it any ways.
Pre-heat oven to 350F
Whisk together ½ tsp vanilla // ½
tsp nutmeg // ½ tsp cinnamon // ½ can “evaporated milk” (I made mine dairy free
using these
directions and had perfect results) // ¼ cup
“milk” (I used hemp milk) // ¼ cup sugar // 1 tbsp coconut oil // 3 eggs
Bake 30-40 minutes depending on how
deep your baking dish is. Test with a butter knife before setting to cool
I
pre-measured the ingredients and let the kids all pour them in and help whisk.
All three of them wore bright smiles and aprons hand-made by my grandma and
cousin. Everybody got to pour. Everybody got to whisk. Their faces were so
happy.
It was a
beautiful reminder that this is the stuff life is made of. These are the
memories we create for ourselves and, maybe, for our children.
I don’t
remember making egg custard with my mom, though I’m sure I did. Probably more
than once. But I do remember her
serving it. I do remember her making it without the pie crust from time to
time. I do remember burning the roof of my mouth on it because I was too eager
to taste it.
My kids
don’t see all that I do behind the scenes. They never will.
I am in
the thick of it now, with three children under five and no nearby family to speak
of. I am probably more harried than my own mom was most of the time and even
still, it’s hard to see all that she did behind the scenes.
When I am
folding laundry, I am usually just folding laundry. I might be thinking about
the other tasks on my plate, or what I need to do to prep for dinner, or
deciding which laundry chores I am going to give my children today. Sometimes
it’s late at night and I’m folding laundry with Ryan while we watch a movie or
talk about our days and our dreams… but I rarely stand there folding laundry
and thinking about the fact that my own mother did laundry every day too, so
that I would always have clean clothes to wear to school.
My
children will not grow up to remember how much I did for them. That’s just
motherhood. It’s a sacrifice in many ways. The work we do as mothers will
probably never be fully appreciated
(though it’ll always be worth it). But still, we’re making memories.
They won’t
remember me sweating in the kitchen, five months pregnant with my fourth child
at the end of July, a tiny window A/C unit and a fan both positioned on me to
only kinda make up for the 93 degree temps outside combined with the oven set
at 450 degrees to make their dinner. But they will remember that I insisted on
meals at the table as a family and that sometimes, when I was finished long
before they were, I sat at the table and read them a story while they ate.
They won’t
remember me sweeping under the kitchen table several times a day to keep ants
away, but they will remember some of those meals I served. Just like my mom’s
tuna salad is better than anyone else’s (including mine when I follow her exact
recipe), they will remember certain dishes being served with love. They will
want whatever soup I gave them every time they’re sick, or maybe they will
always want chili on Thanksgiving even when they grow up to marry spouses who
have a traditional Thanksgiving feast, or maybe they will forever think a huge
breakfast should be made on their weekends so there are good, healthy
breakfasts already ready for them during the week.
They’ll
remember the family vacations and the camping trips and the day hikes, even if
they don’t remember all the work I did to prepare for them.
They’ll
remember the songs I sing and the stories we read and the games we play and the
way I make time for them when they’re sad, even if they don’t remember how late
I had to stay awake to catch up afterwards.
They won’t
remember the careful system I’ve put together to rotate through hand-me-downs
efficiently or what I use to clean their bathtub or that I started my mornings
with motherhood-focused devotionals to get my mind and heart focused on the way
I want to mother them… but still, we’re making memories.
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Thanks so much for your comments! I always read them, don't always have time to answer quickly. Sorry about that!