Great Grandma Angela's Spaghetti Sauce

For Christmas, my sister Kim passed this recipe along to me!  I'm so glad to have it!  I can just imagine my Great Grandma Angela standing in her kitchen on the levee...

Great Grandma Angela's Spaghetti Sauce

1 1/2 tsp oregano
2 tsp sweet basil
3 dashes of pepper
2 bay leaves
3-4 dashes garlic salt
28 oz peeled tomatoes
1# Italian sausage
1# meatballs
1#bracciola
2 6 oz cans tomato paste
14.5 oz can pear shaped tomatoes

Brown all the meat in a 4 qt sauce pan.  Chop the tomatoes, you want them coarsely chopped.  Add them to the browned meat.  Add one can of water to each can of tomato paste.  Add herbs and stir.  Simmer at least one half hour, stirring often.  Freezes well.

**Here are some changes I made:  I used .75# bracciola,  .5# bulk meatball meat, and 1# Italian sausage.  It was still really meaty.  Next time I'm going to add a 28 oz can pureed tomatoes, and increase the spices accordingly.  The sauce is a little meaty for my palate***

This sauce is so good!  It made enough for our family of 4 to make a pan of baked ziti for dinner, put a pan of baked ziti in the freezer for the future, two freezer bags full of sauce (3 cups each), and another smaller freezer bag (2 cups).

Just for fun, here are the kids on our walk to Cosetta's (the Italian market where we bought our supplies)

Farm School - Raptors

This was our final Farm School class for a while (we need to crack down and finish our academics.  Only 6 weeks of school left before the BIG standardized test and Summer vacation.  Hooray!).

Millie is very interested in raptors, and knows quite a bit about them.  We've read numerous books and visited the raptor center, so to keep this class interesting we had to do something new. 

We started out reading a passage from The Handbook Of Nature Study.

We made bird feeders out of toilet paper tubes, peanut butter, and seeds.  Of course this part of class didn't have anything to do with raptors (neither does the next activity), but it was still fun.  The kids got to see birds attempt to eat seeds off these slightly awkward feeders.  The birds had to hang upside down from the branch! 

We went on a nature walk look for bird nests.  We saw the nests of a Baltimore Oriole (which is a different design than we'd ever seen before.  It hangs down from the tree) and Crow.  I found (on the ground, don't worry!  I didn't take someones home)  a nest that we think belonged to a finch of some sort. 

Next we hopped into the car and drove by two eagles nests!  This picture doesn't do it justice.  Grandpa has nice binoculars, so we were able to see the eagle, up close and personal!  So cool. 

Before we left, Grandpa and Millie started working on an American Kestrel house.  They didn't finish before we left, but were able to finish it the next day when Millie went down to the farm (again!). 

And, last but not least, here's Elise sitting in a tree chair.  :)