Cooking

Some examples: (1)We play pi shuffleboard. I draw 3 big circles on the floor, inside of each other and the kids use rolls of masking tape as pucks. They toss and/or slide circles of tape [identifying marks on side] to see who gets closest to center. Players each have 3 circles of tape that they slide to remove others from center. The winner then challenges the next 3 players until we declare Pi shuffleboard winner.(2)For our Pi Day, my school asked all the faculty members if they would be interested in being “pi’d” and their name was put on a plastic jug. Students would place money in their jug throughout the week and the teacher/faculty member with the most money got pi’d at an all school assembly. We raised a total of about $400! We donated all the proceeds to multiple charities. more »

Margaret Cullison writes: My mother used few shortcuts when preparing food because she preferred the "real thing" to convenience foods that became more readily available in the mid-1940s. The popularity of canned soups was well established by that time. Quick dishes that relied for flavor on canned mushroom soup or dehydrated onion soup were much in favor after World War II but not by Mom. She may have fixed condensed tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches on a busy day for us kids. But I doubt she ever served such a meal to Dad, her champion and companion in their adventures in good eating.   more »

Julia Sneden wrote: Anyone who has ever hand-scrubbed a damask napkin across a washboard, rinsed it, set it in the sun to bleach, hung it on the line to dry, dampened it before ironing, and then ironed and folded it and placed it back in the drawer, is not about to take on the task more often than necessary. Unless there had been an utter disaster like a spill of grape juice, or an emergency napkin thrown on spilled gravy to keep it from flowing over the edge of the table, or an uncle who had had a bit too much Scotch and thoughtlessly blew his nose on the best double damask, we refolded our napkins at meal's end and placed them neatly in napkin rings that were clearly ours, each one different from anyone else's.   more »

Margaret Cullison writes: Other than my two grandmothers, we didn’t have any relatives living nearby. Most of my parents’ families had moved away from Iowa. This was not the norm in our small town of Danish and German families whose gatherings ran to thirty or forty family members. It made me feel slightly deprived not to enjoy the closeness of a large family like my friends did. But my parents had developed a circle of friends with whom we got together for family dinners. more »