Our local pantries don't take fresh produce. And I'm guessing most people using pantries would find winter radishes and celeriac difficult to deal with. I have unloaded as much as I could on friends though. They took all of the "good stuff" like brussels sprouts and spaghetti squash.

I was thinking something like this. I have made cabbage bread rolls before that were pretty good. Adding some sort of protein and maybe cheese would make them heartier. Should freeze well too. Yes, the 100 new pounds are likely to be the same items. Luckily, it is the last share of the year!

Oh! Good idea! I'm going to do that and fry up a head of cabbage with caraway and serve with friend eggs on top for dinner tonight.

Would you include the "classes taken prior to 9th grade" in the GPA?

My Dd is in WTMA Biology this year and it has been nowhere near 15-20 hours per week. I'd say 10 on the heaviest weeks and as little as 5 on the lighter weeks. The labs are usually the biggest contributor to the heavy weeks. My dd is usually a slower worker in general. However, there is a different teacher this year so that may not be typical. My understanding is that the regular teacher will be back next year.

Ten weeks is plenty of time, especially since you are not starting from zero. I run a half every year that has a much shorter training time (due to weather) and it has never been a problem. I also suggest Hal Higdon. I find that first half every year is very doable, even though I usually only get up to 10 mile long runs during training. I second the advice to check weather. I really don't like to run in anything above 65 degrees and am perfectly happy to run in all but the very coldest weather so I choose races on the early and late ends of the season.

I have a winter CSA share. Due to travel, I have very large quantities of some vegetables that I need to make into something very soon as I have 100 more pounds coming in a week! Help me with some ideas. Things that can be frozen would be especially welcome. I would love to double or triple recipes to stock the freezer. We are vegetarian. We love cheese. Cabbage: I have 10 heads of cabbage with more coming in a week. I have made enough sauerkraut to last us many months. I have also recently made cabbage rolls, cabbage soup, coleslaw, and stir-fried cabbage-and-red-beans. If I serve any of these things again soon my family is going to revolt. Any ideas? A casserole-type dish would be nice. Celeriac: I have 8 of these. They are less pressing than the cabbage as they take up less room in the fridge. But any dent I can make would be great. So far, I have used most as filling for pasties and roasted up in a mix of other root veggies. They make a nice addition to many soups (in place of celery) so that is another way I am whittling them down. Other ideas? Beets: I cannot even get far enough into the fridge to assess how many of these we have, but I know it is a daunting amount. I also roast these up in a veggie mix and have recently made borscht and shredded them into a slaw-type salad. I also have a bunch fermented. Any other ideas? Winter Radishes: These are the worst. They are the rare food that my family does not like. I have fermented a bunch of them, which everyone likes, but I have enough to last longer than they will likely keep. I have thrown them in the roast veggie mix and tried to sneak them into quiche and soups, but the family is getting savvy and starting to pick apart their food to try to evict them. Any magic ideas that make these foul things not taste to foul?

We have always loosely followed the public school calendar as all of dd's friends are in school and many of her activities follow that calendar. We do not take off for snow days or random public school off days but I am open to negotiation if something really fun or cool is happening on one of those days. Dd has two outsourced classes that come close to the public school calendar as well so it just makes sense to loosely stick to that.

I hope this does not become me as I age. I do find it a huge hassle to leave my house and I have a lot of anxiety about leaving the house and pets when we do travel. It does not help that we have a long history of terrible things happening to our home/pets during past trips (deaths, flooding, furnace failures, escapes, etc....). At this point in our lives, we travel frequently and I can "get over" my issues to make that happen but I know most people's issues get more pronounced and more difficult to "get over" as they get older. That said, our extended family rarely visits and it is on us to travel to them even though in most cases it means our whole family traveling great distances by car vs. a single person flying to us. And, we can comfortably accommodate overnight guests whereas most of the people we visit necessitate an expensive hotel stay for us. We are the ones who moved away - is the rationality given to us by our family, which is somewhat fair. Of the grandparents, one is simply too old to deal with plane travel to get here. Navigating our major hub is intimidating and physically taxing for her and just getting to her airport from her home requires an expensive taxi service or her attempting to navigate complicated freeways that she really should not be on. The other grandparent is savvy and spry enough to travel by plane but has dogs that are difficult to kennel. Even as a non-dog person, I can see her point with this particular set of dogs. The end result is that we simply don't see each other as much as everyone would like. Our mid-career, in-the-trenches parenting time makes it difficult to get the time to travel to them, especially since we have to add two full days of driving to the time away. Add the cost of hotel and the danger of driving in winter weather to the mix. We are in a constant battle between what we can do and what our family feels we should be doing. It is actually the biggest source of conflict in our extended families. History also shows that about 1/5 of our planned trips get cancelled or delayed last minute because of blizzard conditions that make driving difficult or impossible. People understand but it just adds fuel to the fire when we are declining yet another birthday/anniversary/wedding/baptism invitation....."But you haven't visited in six months!" Never mind that we tried to a month earlier but ended up stranded somewhere between here and there due to weather. We still had to take that time off of work. We still had to pay the house/pet sitters. We still incurred the expense of lodging, gas, and food. It still had the same impact on our bottom line and is a factor in when we can travel next. It is very frustrating that others don't see our reasons for declining some visits as legitimate. So I try to keep that in mind when evaluating others' reasons for declining to visit us.

The is no such thing as too much pesto! That is one ingredient you can for sure just guess then taste. I also really like a little brown on my broccoli. Sounds like you had a yummy meal. I did NOT use a recipe for dinner tonight and it was not great. I tried to wing it with a creamy potato soup trying to use up some excess milk and some of the cubic yard of potatoes my CSA person dropped off. Meh. Not sure what I did wrong but I'm guessing some pesto and red chili flakes would make it much better. Luckily, my family will eat just about anything.

Chili flakes are usually called "crushed red pepper" on the bottle. They should be in any grocery store, even the smallest. You could substitute with a dash of cayenne (NOT a whole teaspoon!) but I would not use chili powder as that has other spices that might not go well with the rest of the recipe.

And you can't check luggage. And you have to wear uncomfortable clothing. And they STILL cost something, sometimes a lot. We stopped using them. Our relative that works for the airlines cannot give his away anymore....no one will take them. In the olden days when flights were not consistently overbooked and they were truly free, they were a great thing.

It is specific for buddy passes.

Yes to this. Do check the dress code. It can be very specific. We have flown on the buddy passes and have always dressed nicely but did not read the fine print one time and dh was rejected because he was not wearing a shirt with a collar. He was wearing a nice sweater with a polo type shirt under and the polo collar was not considered the correct kind of "collar." We had to buy a dress shirt at one of the airport stores before attempting to board a later flight. This was the second leg of our trip so we apparently ran into a picky gate agent because he was allowed to board the first leg. I would say the plan is risky but not impossible if he is attempting to get on a flight with many daily options. People's plans change, connecting flights are cancelled/delayed, etc..... If he is flexible and that is his only option, I say go for it!

Drawers of some type work well for us. Everyone in my family is into several winter sports so we have ridiculous amounts of gear. Like 10 pairs of glove/mitts per person, 10 hats, rechargeable hand warmers, leg warmers, etc..... And no closets! So, we have an old chest of drawers with a large drawer for each family member. It is nice looking so sits in our living room near the front door. There is still clutter because the gear often has to dry before it can be put away but at least there is a way to put it away and segregate everyone's stuff to make the hunt for specific items as easy as possible. If I could put it in a closet, I would put a drying rack on top of it. I have tried to train my family to put their wet stuff in the laundry room to dry, but that requires 10 steps and so it usually all ends up on the floor next to the dresser. We have hooks for coats/snowpants but those are pretty overloaded. Once a week or so, I go through and remove the lesser used coats and put them on hooks in individual bedrooms. They usually all migrate down again within a week. Boots and ski boots are the biggest challenge. Our front door opens directly into the living room. We have a big boot porch so I can contain the boot clutter out of sight, but we do have to bring in the pair we will be using next to pre-warm/dry them, so there are always two pairs of boots (one winter, one ski) per person sitting on a rug in my living room. Sigh.

My 9th grade dd only has 6 subjects (5 core and 1 elective) and that is almost too much. She had lobbied for more when we were planning and I am really glad we decided against it.

Journeyman is a favorite here. They also make a killer gin.

If anyone currently has a child in Lukeion AP Latin, could you please PM me?

My 6'6" friend drives a Focus and finds it comfortable....somehow. No one can sit behind him but that does not sound like it would be an issue for the OP.

Dh often comes in on the 1am flight so his re-entry into family life is usually a hectic morning when he hasn't gotten enough sleep. And he is not a morning person. This is probably why it is usually so rough. On the rare trip that he gets the mid-afternoon flight (we only have two), things go much smoother.

That's a good point. And really the crux of the OP. Is the slower journey through AoPS going to be of more benefit to a potential STEM student than getting through calc 1 while still in high school. Because dd likes AoPS and has already developed a greater understanding of basic math skills than many of my freshmen engineering students, I think I have the answer even if it means her transcript might not look "ideal" should she indeed pursue a STEM path.

I bookmarked this....just in case!

Thanks for responding and the link. 1. That is a difficult question to answer. I have actually worked on past assessment cycles at my university and we have some data on retention rates and GPA but it is more difficult to figure out pre-college math background. Some come from schools that do not even offer calculus so they may start in pre-calc or calc 1 (based on test scores). Others who took calc in high school might choose to retake it, even if they got a 5 on the AP exam. It is all over the place. I have lots of anecdotal info, but that is somewhat useless, obviously. I suspect the math department would have much more comprehensive data on this. 2 and 3. After reading the linked thread, I think I am still in the same spot. We will know more as dd approaches the end of her high school years. She may decide not to pursue a STEM career at all. But even if she does, I think it is more important to decide the math progression based on taking the time needed for solid understanding. My "ideal" plan, which includes finishing geometry in one year, was to have dd do intermediate algebra in 10th grade, pre-calc in 11th (at home AoPS style if she does not go to the semester school or one semester DE if she does), and DE calculus in 12th. The plan being to ease her into college with an in-person DE calc class at the STEM university I work for with the rest of her course load lowered to allow time to transition into college math. Now that we are making slower-than-expected progress in geometry, which I think I need to consider will also happen in intermediate algebra, it appears pre-calc might be as far as she can get if she does indeed attend the semester school (losing a semester of math time). One option that would also be open to us would be for her to take DE pre-calc in fall of her 12th grade year and DE calc 1 in the spring. I do have to check with the university to see if they even allow DE pre-calc. They may not. ETA - We are not so worried about highly-selective schools. We have easy access to our local university at half price (as employees) and while selective, it is not selective enough that no calc in high school would be a barrier to admission, especially since dd will have a DE track record there. I struggle with not "setting our bar higher," but frankly, that rat race is not one we are interested in pursuing. Dd might very well decide she wants to attend a different school and we would not discourage her from pursuing that, but we are likely not going to be chasing down the super elite schools. Our local university is already very attractive to dd because it is quite competitive in the sport she lives and breathes so I would be pretty surprised if she showed great interest in another school.

I hear you! I often don't even know where dh is. I get the trips and locations mixed up. There is also some sort of rule that we get huge amounts of snow when dh is gone. Once we got 48 inches. I couldn't find anyone willing to plow out the drive for any amount of money nor could I find a willing taxi to hire so had to resort to snowshoeing to work. There is nothing quite like standing in front of a lecture hall of students looking like a defeated, sweaty, rat. I have shoveled the roof with a baby monitor in my pocket. The furnace especially enjoys crapping out when he is gone. These things never happen when he is in town. One thing that we struggle with is adjusting to when he IS here. During high season, dh is gone far more than when he is here. We all look forward to being together then always seem to be a little blindsided when we find it difficult.

I used the Chang text for my engineering chemistry classes.....a million years ago.