Tortillas

Today I went to Rose's class to teach an art/food lesson. They have been studying nutrition this week and have just done volume measurements in math. I decided to talk about how to make corn tortillas and have them stencil a design on them before baking them in the classroom and eating them fresh and warm with butter and cinnamon sugar. As you can imagine, this food share was a hit! (No pictures from their classroom, I was too busy and I think it is a little creepy to post pics of somebody else's kid.)

I would like to tell you I made my own food-based dye, but that proved problematic. I started out with some cranberries boiled and strained. That worked well twice, then a tiny seed got stuck in my spray bottle. I tried brushing or dabbing on the dye with really poor results so had to go off in some other directions....the tortilla from yesterday had been dyed in two colors then mooshed together and pressed. Fun but not feasible for 26 kids.

After some fiddling and pondering (really pondering), I remembered the spray food color I used for Liam's stenciled cookies for kindergarten. Perfect! The results are clear and bright...the color doesn't taste like anything, but the smell when you spray it is gross. Butane anyone? Oh well, the kids had fun and I can try for something less 'reddye#5' with another project in a few weeks.
I also want to credit a book as inspiration: Arts and Crafts You Can Eat by Vicki Cobb. A cool book if you can find it, a quick check online makes me think it is out of print. The copy I read came from our library. It had a lot of good things to say about the creation of art and process of crafting along with some good directions for some projects I hadn't seen 80000 times on the Internet. Speaking of which, for a good source of kids crafty projects, visit the crafty crow.

Cowboy Supper

(With fun tortillas.)
(For my husband, who has fond memories of California mission food :))

More on the tortillas tomorrow.......

Ice fishing

Today Kyle and I went ice fishing with Rose's class (and another second grade class)! The weather couldn't have been better a sunny and warm springish day. The Alaska Fish and Wildlife Service set up dozens of holes complete with poles and bait for us to use after a short class. Unfortunately no fish were hauled up, but I think they had fun anyway.

Happy Birthday Jessie!

What I am dreaming of today:

Today is my cousin Jess' birthday! After being cruelly teased by a false start to spring by mother nature, this picture is definitely what I am dreaming of right now.....wine on a summer evening to celebrate with my cuz. Sigh.

W.I.P.

Spoon test drive

Ack! I forgot to post! We ended up having a few friends/family over for dinner last night, somehow this got lost in the shuffle. We had a nice lazy day at home and Rose decided she would like to do some baking. We made some yeast bread for dinner and a lemon loaf cake for dessert! They were both very good and she had lots of fun making them!

Liam's building

A cool rendition of Liam's initials done in a build-it-yourself kit from when I was little.

New spoons

Because he was on a weekend, and I managed to break all but one of my spoons, and maybe because he *heart's* me, Kyle made me two new spoons this weekend!

A pretty good picture of the 'cool' spoon (the other one is dirty from making brinner). Notice the ergonomically-artistic split formed handle ;)

Good hair day

Today was salon day for Rose and I. A new kind of purple dye for me (a little more red than the last time, and very dark at this point.) and red (demi-permanent) for Rose. Just a trim for both of us, My hair needed the layers re-cut and the split ends off and Rose needed her grown out cut evened up. Rose loves her hair, she has been begging for an all over color like mom gets so a wash out dark one is a good compromise. :)

The Game...

So Liam bought a new game, it is from a one man software shop and has kinda lame graphics but is rather addictive. There has been much to do about it on the internet lately. It's called Minecraft.

So Leigh was wondering if I would post a funny picture of her in retaliation for the "Pink Hat" incident. I pondered that question for about 2 seconds and realized that it would be a bad idea to try and finish that war.

Here is my response



Who would mess with her?

?

Kyle told me he was going to write a blog post, so I did not. Evidently Liam's new computer game is more entertaining......better luck tomorrow. Until then, enjoy his pink hat ;)

Pizza!

What I was working on, Chris always asks for a painting for a gift so I get a good excuse to paint :)

Sorry no nommy pizza pics, I always forget and have floury hands! One of the firing in the sun for you though...such a pretty day, if we were going to cook early I would have wanted it to be outside.

Pizza Prep

We had to shovel out the front of the oven today in preparation of Chris' birthday tomorrow. Gonna have pizza and fire the oven for the first time this spring. It has been warm, 25 all day, so it should be fun! I had help from my minions and so had time for a little of this:

I will post a pic of the end result tomorrow as it is a gift ;)

Leftovers

What do you do with leftover buns?

You make Gram's bread pudding of course!

Best bread

My favorite bread book, from Fleischmann's Yeast. I'm not sure when this edition was printed, but it has some awesome recipes in it and at about $2 at a junk shop it is well worth it! The buns pictured are raised cornmeal rolls. I have made them several times and they are always good. We are taking them to David and Cindy's house for dinner tonight to go with a belated Mardi-gras dinner, red beans and rice and jambalaya. St. Patrick's day foods will just have to wait their turn :)

Awwwww

More little kid cuteness, the date on this file says October 2004.

Bad blogger

I forgot to post yesterday, so a twofer for you today :) Sleeping Rose, 16 days old.

AR's birthday, the final chapter

Supper wasn't quite ready so we began with some present time!

A present picnic for the birthday girl.

Ahhhh, raw fishies, soooo good!

Some of our yummy oriental feast: miso soup, chicken and veg stir fry, pot-sickers, Saki nibbles, and cut fruit with dip.

The sushi chef hard at work.

And finally baked Alaska for dessert, banana cake with strawberry syrup and vanilla chocolate swirl ice cream. Delicious!!

More Birthday Girl

A few picture highlights from Rose's 8th birthday:


Candle on a cookie at the pool with her friends.

Present time with her girlies.

A fun luau theme party for the birthday girl. Ranch cheese-it party mix, oranges, juice and cookies on the menu and fun swimming. After a pool party and some Subway for dinner and more celebrating with Dad....

From Mom and Dad, an iPod touch!

Present bliss :)

Birthday Girl

More tomorrow when I am not so tired :)

School birthday

Birthday treats at school, popcorn!

New toys and party prep

We had to make an Amazon.com order for the birthday Girl, and to qualify for our free shipping we needed to buy something else. So I bought myself a rice cooker! I had been thinking about it, we eat rice about once a week around here and I always manage to boil over the pot. Such a mess!! Also pictured, my supper, half green curry, half beef stir-fry, all delicious! And Liam's giant plateful, I would say he is feeling better.

Also purchased this week (locally though) was some snorkel gear. Rose had such fun borrowing her friends last time she was at the pool, I just couldn't resist. To funny!

Potential

Anniversary

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary. I'm not sure it seems that long, but the calendar doesn't lie that often. We decided to throw an impromptu dinner party for our family and cooked a prime rib with potato, bread, and salad....very tasty and better than we could get anyplace out for dinner!

Liam

Well he is feeling better, but he is in bed already and it is only 9. So still not 100%. I thought I would post some of the cool lego figures he has been building.

More sickness

Liam is the one with the stomach bug this time. Why can't we just get a few colds and be done with it?? Oh well, so what are two girls to do when the menfolk are sacked out?

Art of course! The artist hard at work, she says she is making a dappled baby horse.

A masterpiece proudly hung in the kitchen to decorate the baking cupboard!

Ahhhhhhhh...

How to recover from selling cookies with 5 brownies who all had a tootsie pop for dinner (how was that a good idea????)

Painkiller and roar. Much better :)

Stinky

Two happy and sweaty children home after the family dance at Weller.

Two sweaty feet in new shoes that fit!