Tender Sapling

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Monthly Archives: June 2013


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Sunshine Award – Not Just a Chain Letter (?)

sunshine-award

We’re delighted (and frankly quite surprised) to accept our first blog award – the Sunshine Award – from the inspiring Leanna at All Done Monkey! Thanks so much, Leanna!

The Sunshine Award is given to those who write positive and inspiring articles and bring some sunshine into the life of others. It’s an honor to be included in this group!

Like any blogging award this one has its own rules and requirements.

But before we get to those, here’s a little behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Tender Sapling blog team’s discussions about this award in the spirit of keeping it real:

May 22 (In car bursting with three boys, two tired parents, snacks to get us through a 14-hour car trip, and lots of stowaway stuffed animals nestled between bags packed for a crazy wonderful trip to Chicago, Emily glances at Facebook.)

Emily: “Wow! Honey, did you see this? Leanna nominated the blog for the Sunshine Award!”

Scott: “What’s that?”

Emily: “It’s one of those blogger awards. It’s for being uplifting and positive! Wow, how sweet is that? Leanna knows like a million bloggers and she included our blog on her list. That’s amazing!”

Scott: “That Sunshine thing still doesn’t mean anything to me.”

(Lightening flashes and thunder interrupts our conversation as we enter a massive thunderstorm in silence, all attention on road safety.) Continue reading →


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Migrate to Mongolia: A Tender Sapling Travelers Cultural Adventure – Part 3 (Food)

This post is part of the Tender Sapling Travelers Series and Part 3 of a 3-part installment on Mongolia. See Part 1 here (book recommendations and learning about the ger) and Part 2 here (prayer wheels, including a step-by-step craft).

I usually love researching and selecting which native food to prepare for our monthly Culture Club homeschool cooperative potluck. However, Mongolia had me stumped.

The traditional nomadic diet is so opposite to what we eat, it presented a few challenges:

1) Where would I get the ingredients or cooking tools, such as the abdominal cavity of a marmot, inside which I would cook chunks of mutton over heated stones if making “Boodog?”

2) If I could get all the supplies and pull off a traditional dish, which typically involves no seasoning and is usually heavy on the animal fat to help Mongolians survive their cold winters, would my kids or any of the 30 other children at our potluck try more than a bite of it?

3) Given that there are several vegetarians in our coop and that our potluck dishes sit out at room temperature for some time, I prefer to select vegetarian dishes from each month’s country. Mongolian food is so heavily meat-based! It’s summarized by Wikipedia as a diet consisting primarily of “dairy products, meat, and animal fat.”

Then I remembered: Continue reading →