President's Day ~ A Year of Homeschooled Holidays

Last year we celebrated Valentine's Day. Last February was our first holiday party for homeschooling, though we had celebrated Christmas and Easter together before. It was totally fun! We decided to celebrate different holidays this year for each month, so for February we picked President's Day.

Originally, the February holiday was simply in honor of our first president, George Washington. His birthday fell in February. A next great, desired-to-be-honored president was Lincoln; his birthday also fell in February. For many years, both holidays were observed. It was only in the past fifty years or so that this changed, and now many states celebrate President's Day only. Some celebrate only Washington, some only Lincoln, some both, and some all presidents. We chose to celebrate Washington and Lincoln, two of our greatest presidents.

For the 'learning' portion, we prepared the kids ahead of time reading about and studying Washington and Lincoln, and by having them memorize a song about our presidents from Washington to Obama. On the actual day of the party, we had them sing the song, and took a little 'quiz' about the presidents we were honoring.

One of my favorite ways to learn about holidays, cultures and traditions is through food. :) I hosted the party, so I made lunch. I tried to think of something basic for an air of authenticity, but I wanted to have fun as well. So I chose a tried-and-true chicken fricassee recipe, which I referred to as "Mama Lincoln's Southern Chicken Fricassee with Dumplings". I made a punch of berry herbal tea, lemonade, seltzer water and a teensy bit of raspberry flavoring syrup and called it "Boston Tea Party Punch".



For side dishes, I offered fat pretzel sticks and carrot sticks and referred to them as "Lincoln Logs" in honor of President Lincoln's famous log cabin. We also made a version of 'bumps on a log'. Celery was filled with strawberry cream cheese and then topped with blueberries. This was to represent General Washington's famous crossing of the river Delaware: Celery for boats, blueberries to represent the Continental Army.



And finally, for dessert, I made George Washington Brownies: Dark chocolate brownies with canned pie cherries (to represent the legend of the cherry tree) topped with toasted marshmallows and powdered sugar (to represent the powdered wigs popular at the time including his presidential wig). It was quite good!



Speaking of powdered wigs, my friend S brought a craft to make them! It was a very sticky and fun craft. Ginger did about half of hers, and then I happily and excitedly took over helped her finish.





When we sang the song of the Presidents, some of the kids elected to wear theirs. :)



It was a very fun and informative day!

I couldn't find one online, but here is the chicken fricassee recipe. It's from a 1971 Betty Crocker's All-Time Favorites cookbook. It's one of my favorites, and one of the first recipes I learned to make when I was a child. I made this for dinner for my family from about the age of 11 on!

Chicken Fricassee with Dumplings
4 1/2-5 pound stewing chicken, cut up (in this case, I used boneless skinless chicken breasts. If you do this, you MUST decrease the cooking time! I let them stew about an hour before adding the dumplings and they were a little overdone, but trust your thermometer rather than my guesstimate)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt (It sounds like a lot, but it's for the chicken breading, so two teaspoons don't end up in your meal anyways)
2 teaspoons paprika
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Shortening or salad oil
1 cup water
3 Tablespoons flour (I used leftover flour mixture from above; it makes a more flavorful gravy. Totally not necessary though)
Milk
Dumpling recipe (below)

Wash the chicken and pat dry. Mix 1 cup flour, the salt, paprika and pepper; coat chicken with the flour mixture (I use a gallon-size ziploc bag for this). Heat a thin layer of shortening in a large skillet or Dutch oven (I often make this in an electric skillet) and brown chicken over medium heat. Drain off fat and reserve (If you use boneless, skinless chicken breasts you will likely not have much fat to reserve. I used butter instead, later).

Add water to the skillet. Cover and simmer until the chicken is fork-tender, 2 1/2- 3 1/2 hours, adding more water if necessary (again, if you are using chicken breasts, please adjust time). Remove the chicken and keep warm while making the gravy. Pour the liquid from the skillet and reserve.

To make the gravy, heat 3 Tablespoons of the reserved fat in the skillet (butter, in my case). Blend in 3 Tablespoons of flour. Cook over low heat, stirring until the mixture is smooth and bubbly. Remove from heat. Add enough milk to the reserved liquid to measure 3 cups and pour into the skillet. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir one minute.

Return chicken to gravy in the skillet. Prepare dough for dumplings and drop by spoonfuls onto hot chicken. Cook uncovered 10 minutes, then cover and cook 20 minutes longer. 6-8 servings.

Dumplings:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons shortening
3/4 cup milk

Measure flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Cut in shortening thoroughly with a pastry blender until mixture looks like meal. Stir in the milk.