This post is a little late coming out, but a week and a half ago we had our last day of school for this year!  Since we are homeschooling, we weren’t going to have a graduation, but I still wanted to do something special.

I grew up homeschooled and I remember my Mom doing special celebrations and meals for us and I remember how much that meant.  I don’t think we ever did anything special for the last day of school, though… although we didn’t need to.  Just being the last day before a glorious summer of no school was enough for us!

I do remember, though, we needed some motivation for the first day of school!  The first of each year my Mom would serve us a BIG bowl of ice cream for lunch!  It was SO looked forward to and such a treat!  Remembering how important that was for us, I wanted to do something like that in our home too!

I’m not quite sure how it came about… but we decided to have ‘Dessert for Dinner’.  I think Tonchi was super excited about starting school since it was his first year so we didn’t need any incentive for the first day… at least not this year, but he wanted something to look forward to towards the end, so ‘Dessert for Dinner’ it was!

All year this has been a topic of conversation, what we were going to have, if there was going to be chocolate, how much they would be allowed to have, if there would be any leftovers and the list could go on.  Finally the day came!

On the menu was apple crisp with chocolate ripple ice cream and meat candy.  I knew we were going to need some sort of meat to fill them up and we all LOVE meat candy and with it’s title I figured it would fit with our menu plan!

 

The Apple Crisp was simple and delish!  It wasn’t quite paleo, but it was definitely refined sugar free, egg free, dairy free and gluten (but not grain) free.   Since it was relatively healthy we certainly allowed seconds!  I haven’t posted the recipe here, but you can view it in Tuesday’s post!

The ice cream really turned out well!  We used a recipe from [amazon_link id=”1936608871″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Eat Like a Dinosaur[/amazon_link] by Paleo Parents and it was delish!  It called for almond milk and coconut milk, but I used all coconut milk because I wanted the added fat.  I also had to freeze it longer than it said for it to be firm enough to scoop, but it was certainly a hit and much creamier than any other paleo ice cream I’ve made.  This recipe is not posted due to the fact that it was in their cookbook and they prefer not to have their recipes posted online.

And last but certainly not least is the meat candy!

Meat Candy:

½ lb ground sausage
1 lb bacon
30ish dried dates

I’m not sure where this recipe came from either, but it sure is amazing!  Take a dried date and cut it in half, then put raw ground sausage between the two pieces (I’d say about 1 tsp of sausage) and then wrap it with a piece of bacon and slide a toothpick through to hold it all together.  Then bake for about 45 minutes at 350 or until the meat is cooked all the way through.  I’d say these are a little piece of heaven and they were demolished!

It was a warm evening and beautiful outside so we enjoyed it on the patio under the new gazebo my hubby so graciously surprised me with for my birthday!  It was a great evening and a very special celebration for the end of the school year!  And the start of our summer has arrived!

Do you have any special celebrations around the start or finish of school?  As usual I’d love to hear!