Eat Your U.S. History Homework {Review}


Have you ever eaten your homework with Ann McCallum Books? They are so fun! I had never used them before until I had the pleasure of reviewing Eat Your U.S. History Homework: Recipes for Revolutionary Minds in our homeschool during our studies of the American Revolution.




Eat Your U.S. History Homework contains:
  • Introduction to get you excited about making edible connections to American history, including a timeline of major events 
  • Kitchen Tip - tricks of the trade, including a tip that the recipes have been modernized
  • 6 Revolutionary Minded recipes 
  • History Review

The Revolutionary Minded recipes are from six major events:
  • The Pilgrims at Plymouth, 1620
  • The Thirteen Original Colonies, 1607-1776
  • The French and Indian War, 1754-1763
  • Slaves and the Southern Plantation, 1619-1863
  • The American Revolution, 1775-1783
  • The Declaration of Independence, 1776

I reviewed this with Malachi, grade 5, and Eliana, grade 3. Since we were already up to the American Revolution, we started with the second recipe and completed 4 of the 5 remaining recipes. (We are saving the recipe for Slaves and the Southern Plantation for when we get closer to the Civil War.)

Colonial Cherry-Berry Grunt

This recipe begins with a story on the early days of the thirteen original colonies and how learning to thrive wasn't a piece of cake. In fact, there was a lot of grunting and groaning. Get the tie in to the recipe name? The grunt is now what we would call a cobbler, but it gets its name from the sound of the fruit as it bubbles on the stove.


After heating cherry pie filling on the stove, we added berries and then spooned topping dough over the warm filling and let it cook on the stovetop. 

The last instruction reads "And since it's not the 1600s, serve with ice cream if you like!" So, that is what we did using another recipe from the book. 

Independence Ice Cream 

The first ice cream shop opened up in New York City around the same time that American declared its independence. Who knew?! 





The kids had so much fun making the ice cream in a bag that they made this several times on their own. And we served it over our Colonial Cherry-Berry Grunt, of course!


Lost Bread

This was a tasty recipe that the French enjoyed called pain perdu, which means "lost bread." The English called it French toast! :) It was named for its main ingredient: stale bread. 



The kids caught on that it was French toast, so we ended up calling them French toast sticks and served them with maple syrup as suggested.

Eliana also made the Revolutionary Honey Jumble Cookies all by herself to share with homeschool friends.

What We Thought

Eat Your U.S. History Homework is a colorful book with fun recipes that are easy to follow and appealling to kids. I loved the history tidbits included throughout the book that make history interesting and fun.

Since the recipes are "modernized to fit our current lifestyles," we had to unmodernized some of the recipes to fit ours. For example, I could not find cherry pie filling without corn syrup or red dye, so I had to make cherry pie filling from scratch using frozen cherries. The modernization certainly makes the recipes easier and more fun for the kids, and in our case were easy to adapt. So while not completely authentic or made from scratch, they are certainly kid friendly and reminiscent of the Revolutionary time period.

The recipes were tasty and some, according to the kids, tasted more "old fashioned" than others. I think of all the recipes, the Independence Ice Cream will probably be made again and again. The others were great for bringing the Revolutionary time period alive and making school fun.

I was curious about the other books in this series so I checked out the Eat Your Science Homework and Eat Your Math Homework books - both look great and while I'm not a math person, I could become one to do the recipes in that one! If you want to learn more, go check out my Crew mates reviews of Ann McCallum books. Click below to see which ones and what they thought of them.

Ann McCallum Books Review

Crew Disclaimer

6 comments

  1. What a fun book and great review! My kids love to cook, and this would be a great history lesson\culinary lesson!!

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  2. How fun, my oldest two would love to cook their way through school. We'll have to get these to take with us!

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  3. This kind of schooling is making me hungry :)

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  4. My kids really enjoyed cooking through History and they are hoping to try the ice cream recipe soon. Great pictures!

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  5. This looks SO fun! Cooking together is always my kids' favorite homeschool type of project :) I'll have to take a look at these!

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  6. I love your photos! It looks like a lot of fun AND learning. I'm so glad you enjoyed the book!

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