- Gordon Lightfoot, If you could read my mind, Cotton Jenny Canadian, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - that event just had its 45th anniversary on November 10 - Bryan Adams, Summer of '69 Canadian, I had a wicked crush on him as a teen 😉 - Kim Mitchell, Patio Lanterns Canadian - Trooper, Boys in the Bright, White Sports Car Canadian - Rush, Canadian, iconic Canadian rock band, one of the only rock bands I know of to record a song in 5/4 time - Chris De Burgh, Lady in Red, A Spaceman Came Travelling I know he's not American but wasn't sure if he was a Brit or Canadian (just looked it up - he's Irish!) - Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah Canadian, another Canadian legend - Celine Dion - Titanic theme Canadian I recognize her talent but she was never a favourite of mine - Tom Cochrane, Life is a Highway (he's the original, NOT Rascal Flats) Canadian Now that song is stuck in my head 😉 - Dire Straits, Money for Nothing, Walk of Life Brit - Doug and the Slugs, Too Bad, Making it work Brit? (Dang! Canadian) - Barenaked Ladies, If I had a million dollars Canadian - Chilliwack Canadian - Tragically Hip, Canadian The Hip! RIP Gord Downie - Sarah McLaughlin, In the arms of a stranger Canadian Isn't it "In the Arms of the Angel"? - Jan Arden Canadian - Bay City Rollers, Saturday Night Aussie, aren't they? (Dang - Scots) - Huey Lewis and the News American - Glass Tiger, Man in Motion (about a Canadian wheelchair athlete, Rick Hanson, travelling the world to raise awareness and money) Canadian - Michael Buble, jazz, crooner Canadian Listening to his Christmas stuff right now. 🙂 - Neil Young, stuff with Eagles born Canadian but did a lot of stuff out of the States (the Eagles were American, right?) - Joni Mitchell, Canadian, a beautiful Canadian gem of a singer-songwriter 🙂 - The Guess Who Canadian From Winnipeg! - Leona Boyd, classical guitarist Admitting... I don't know If she's Canadian, then I'll have to be pelted with poutine for not knowing that... (She was born a Brit and moved to Canada when she was 8. Hmmm... Yeah - I probably still deserve to be pelted with poutine. ;))

Great Big Sea! I LOVE Great Big Sea!

Don't forget about Corey Hart, Alannah Myles, Alanis Morrissette, Shania Twain... 😉

Canadian here so it's probably cheating if I answer. 😉 Heard of and listened to all of them! Was a teenager during the 80s. 🙂

Rural Canada here (Northwestern Ontario). We have Xplornet - when we got it, it was either that or dial-up. It's gotten lots better over the years but it still isn't going to stream Netflix or anything like that without stopping to "catch up" every once in awhile. We also have a cell internet connection through the local cell phone provider (TBayTel). It's faster than the satellite but seems less stable, i.e. will drop out more often than the satellite. I can stream Amazon Prime on the cell one and can also stream it on Xplornet but it sometimes does stop to "catch up". If you have more than one person trying to stream, Xplornet is probably not going to work.

If she's determined to go ahead with chemistry, I'd suggest that she look at these programs: https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/041173/Chemistry-Power-Basic-Single.html? Walsh Power Basics is probably her best bet. It's not free and it's not online but it's geared towards students who struggle with typical high school level material. She should check with her local homeschool regulations, though, to make sure it meets the definition of a high school level course. https://fascinatingeducation.com/try-fascinating-chemistry-2/ http://www.friendlychemistry.com/ https://books.kolbe.org/products/john-charlesworths-introduction-to-chemistry

@Not_a_Number and @regentrude - you both might be interested in the "atoms first" approach: https://preparatorychemistry.com/Bishop_Atoms_First.htm as opposed to the "chemistry first" approach: https://preparatorychemistry.com/Bishop_Chemistry_First.htm The Chang General Chemistry textbook is more of a "chemistry first" approach. I think there is still a bit of "trust me - we'll talk about why later" even in the "atoms first" approach but much less so. 🙂

Sorry for derailing your post, @Momto4inSoCal!

I think @regentrude and I have discussed this before - there is no logical, simple "starting point" in chemistry like there is in physics. 🙂 If you start with what would seem to be the "beginning", the structure of the atom, you actually need to get into quantum mechanics right away to understand all of those anomalous ions (I promise they do have explanations ;)) and QM isn't exactly a good starting point - it tends to scare students off rather quickly. 😉 I always feel there needs to be a bit of "have faith in me as your chem teacher - I promise this will make sense in a few weeks" when teaching high school or introductory chem. 😄 I keep thinking I should develop a method to teach chem the way regentrude is suggesting but every time I try, I run into some of that "we'll circle back around to this later" stuff. I'm not sure that method is completely possible. 😉

Love, love, love!! 😄

Do you know what she means by "weak in math"? Pretty much any chem course that would be considered high school level will require students to have Alg 1 under their belts and be able to solve word problems using fairly simple algebraic manipulation of formulas. I think this is the Conceptual Chemistry that klmama is referring to: https://www.conceptualacademy.com/textbook/conceptual-chemistry I've not taught that curriculum but it's my understanding that it will still contain some math. If a student is doing a chemistry course with no math in it, I think I would call that middle school chemistry and not high school chemistry. I know other folks may not agree with me on that but as a long-time high school chem teacher and college chem instructor, that's my thoughts. 🙂

Thanks for the links to the exams, lewelma! My course doesn't go into spectroscopy (it's more just introducing naming/structure/properties/reactions and a bit of mechanisms and synthesis) but I've often thought about offering another course that delves deeper into mechanisms and synthesis and spectroscopy. I remember running GC-mass spec and IR and NMR in uni and analyzing the print-outs. It was actual print-outs in those days. 😉 That's another idea I had for an advanced high school org chem half-course - polymers. We could look at the structures, types, kinetics - so much fun stuff to cover! 🙂

Agreed - having one's first exposure to chemistry be freshman chem at university would be... stressful. And I wish I could guide you and show you the beauty and wonder of chemistry, @regentrude - I promise it's not as bad as you remember! 🙂

That's interesting to hear, lewelma! When I created my Org Chem/Biochem intro course for my dd and then decided to offer it to homeschoolers, I wasn't sure if it was something that would appeal to lots of high school students or if it was something that people would see the value of. It's nice to hear that admissions departments see early (high school) exposure to those subjects as valuable. 🙂

I found this - it might be helpful: https://www.lovelypuppies.online/ideas/vizslas-get-along-with-cats/ It gives you a step by step plan. I like plans. They make me happy. 🙂 I also have dogs and cats but am more of a cat person than a dog person. I also have horses. Just remember - dogs and horses are domesticated. Cats are... not. No matter what anyone tells you. Cats would like us to believe they are domesticated - it's all a facade. 😜 This is one of our Great Pyrs with one of our outdoor barn cats. They are best friends.

That's so very true, isn't it? Because lots of us grew up in places where we didn't have to do that kind of back-breaking work to get food on the table, we tend to romanticize it. I'm guilty of that myself. My father was born in Leignitz (now Legnica, Poland) and his family was expelled from the city by the Soviets at the end of WWII. His mother was a young single mother with two young boys and they traveled with his grandfather to Minden, Germany. It was an unpleasant journey and when they got to Minden, they lived for years in old army barracks that had no running water and shared outdoor sanitary facilities for the whole block. After his family moved to Canada when he was 16, they struggled to make ends meet and he never understood the Canadian love/romanticization of camping. He couldn't understand why anyone would think that sleeping "in the rough" outdoors and on the ground was fun. To him, that was something you did out of absolute necessity because that's the only choice you had. It's a very different way of looking at things. 🙂 Back to cooking... I think toasting spices and toasting nuts before using them are two of the easiest and best ways to really elevate the taste of foods. If anyone wants to try toasting shelled nuts, just put them on a cookie sheet (single layer) in the oven at 350F until they start to smell toasted - maybe 10 minutes or so? You have to watch them carefully - they can go from not toasted to burnt very quickly. Pecans and almonds are my favourite nuts to toast but you can toast any nut. You can then use them in cooking and baking - or just eat them. 😉 I make a dill almond chicken salad with wild rice where I use toasted almonds - YUM. 🙂

I think you might be right. I listened to it again and it has a hollow-type of sound to it that really old, dry wood would give. Fired clay wouldn't sound that hollow and would have a "clinky-er" sound to it, if that makes sense. https://youtu.be/ZuWKwWW9nbk?t=100 I don't speak/understand Spanish (I'm Canadian - we learn French in school :)) but you can see at the point in the video I linked just above that he's doing what you mentioned earlier - grinding without the gentle crushing first. Even when he starts grinding the salt (which would normally sort of "shoot out" everywhere in a smoother-textured mortar), he can just start grinding. Yes! This link talks about how to cure your molcajete: https://www.rachellaudan.com/2013/07/using-and-choosing-a-mexican-mortar-and-pestle.html

@Tap - if you're going to buy a molcajete, here's a good guide to knowing if you've got a good, authentic one or a cheap cement one: https://www.mexico1492.com/blogs/noticias/how-do-i-know-my-molcajete-is-a-real-deal You can't always go by colour - "black is good, grey is bad" isn't always true as there are natural colour variations in the types of basalt. The link there gives some good tips. I think I love rocks more than cooking. 😉 But I do like chemistry best and since rocks and cooking are both highly related to chemistry, I'm fascinated by it all!

Yeah - the basalt is going to be better at "gripping" things. (The molcajete should be made of basalt. Some of the cheaper ones are pressed concrete with basalt chips embedded.) If you look at basalt under a microscope: https://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~oesis/micro/Igneous/index.html#img=basalt1-ppl_pm15-17.jpg And compare it to granite under a microscope: https://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~oesis/micro/Igneous/index.html#img=granite-ppl_pm18-22.jpg The basalt has a much finer grain and so will give a grippy-er, rougher texture. And definitely different mortar/pestles for different jobs. Here the same grandmother is crushing garlic in what I think must be a fired clay set - it doesn't sound like rock when I hear the pestle hitting the mortar: https://youtu.be/mXjp0-nos50?t=415 @Tap - you've had tons of great suggestions. If you're going to get a mortar/pestle set, I'd go with the suggestion by @Dreamergal to also get a small cast iron skillet to toast spices.

Bill - here's a grandmother using a mortar and pestle very similar to yours to grind black peppercorns: Based on my geology lab courses, I'd say it's unpolished granite, as well. I live in the Canadian Shield - I'm surrounded by ancient granite. You get to know the look of it. 🙂 I have been in love with these grandmother cooking videos ever since I found one months back when I was trying to find examples of someone cutting food against their thumb and found the video of the grandmother using a boti (which you kindly identified for me :)). You also mentioned a version of a boti used for desiccating coconut and the video you shared above of the grandmother making coconut sambal has her using it at the beginning. The videos are just so calming and the food looks amazing. They make me want to get my ingredients as close to the source as I can. 🙂

Et voilà - crock pot cupcakes courtesy of "Moms With Crockpots"! https://momswithcrockpots.com/crockpot-peanut-butter-cup-cake/ But I'm confused... How is this a cupcake? Isn't it just a cake? Baked in a crockpot? And what's the difference between cupcakes and muffins anyway? 😉 😜 (Wasn't there arguments about cupcakes vs. muffins on that thread, too, or am I remembering a different thread?)

Well done!! Tell her that Mrs. S says congratulations!! 🙂

I keep meaning to put aside some time to fix up/update these threads and I never seem to get to it! So sorry about that! I'll take out the LabPaq references right away. Edit: Just realized the LabPaq reference isn't in a post of mine. If you tag the author, MamaSprout, you could probably get them to remove the reference.

Hi all! 🙂 I know - I disappeared. Things have been crazy. Books have been read (but I haven't kept track and so don't have an updated list - will try to do that soon). House/farm were cared for. Gardens were planted, harvested, and now need to be cleaned out since we had our first hard frost last night. Child was home from university for almost 6 months but went back on Monday. She's 5 hours away. In a city where COVID cases are climbing. I can do this. Breathe. I just wanted to say that the fact that this thread was here each week and I could pop in and read a bit whenever I had a moment made me happy. Thank you for continuing to talk about and share books. 🙂

@AsgardCA - what province are you in? You're welcome to PM me if you don't feel comfortable stating that on the public forum. 🙂 I graduated my daughter from our homeschool in Ontario in 2018 and she did not go the GED route. Because I knew she was headed for university and then post-graduate studies, a GED would have been seen as odd. She did, however, take the SAT and had 6 AP exams scores on her transcript as well as scores from the Royal Conservatory of Music (she's a piano performance major). Universities in Ontario don't require the student to have any kind of "official" high school diploma or equivalency test. Colleges in Ontario, though, are a whole different ballgame. If your student is looking at a college trade program or an apprenticeship, then a GED might be the better route. I've never heard of a university in Ontario requiring a high school diploma or GED diploma but I have heard of colleges requiring one or the other. Not all colleges, though, so your best bet is to contact some colleges in your province where you think your student might be interested in going and talk to their registrar's office. Ask what their requirements are for homeschooled students and see what they say. You're welcome to PM me if you'd like!