Thursday, December 17, 2009

Look out Martha, here comes Jen!!

Martha Stewart has nothing on me! Adorable Quinn and I made some adorable play dough and put it in these adorable little buckets and passed them out to all the adorable little children in the neighborhood.


Isn't this just ADORABLE??!!!




History in the Kitchen...sort of.

We have moved past the Revolutionary War (how much of that can you really cram down a 10 year old's brain) and taken a giant leap to Lewis and Clark. I was hoping this would be more interesting to a boy. There's adventure, fighting, white water rafting, Indian encounters, etc. etc. etc.
We started out with a very cool video from National Geographic that was a reenactment of Lewis and Clark's journey. Not sure what Liam thought of it, but I loved it! As a mom I kept picturing myself traveling the country side with an infant, just like Sacajawea. Really, women today couldn't do it. We would have a gigantic diaper bag filled with butt cream, diapers, assorted plastic toys and teething rings. And we would be concerned about where we could plug in the butt wipe warmer. Sacajawea travelled though rain, snow, ice, treacherous mountain climbs, dangerous river crossings....all with a baby!!! She is my new hero.

Liam also read a book titled The Captain's Dog by Roland Smith. This was a book written through the eyes of Lewis' dog, Seaman (snicker snicker). I think he secretly liked the book but would never admit it. Instead he debated that he shouldn't be forced to read books he wasn't interested in. This is when I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. This boy has a very rude awakening when he gets into high school. I had flashbacks of The Grapes of Wrath in 11th grade. What torture!

On to the fun stuff. Liam and I read a list of possible items Lewis and Clark would have taken on their journey. They didn't pack much food but instead focused on taking things to document their progress. They took plenty of paper, journals, maps, etc. They did, however, try and pack some dried fruits. They knew it would be very helpful since fresh fruit would be hard to find.
I'm not sure what brand of dehydrator they used. I bet they had one of those big Excalibur types with 9 trays. They were so lucky. All I have is my small, 4 tray dehydrator. We are really roughing it around here.


Here's the glop we made by simply cooking down some apples (actually a LOT of apples) and then running them through my handy dandy fruit strainer on my stand mixer. That device is the bomb!

I must say that I don't think I will EVER do this again. Not only did we use a lot of apples, but it had to dry for quite some time. AND...This is all I managed to wrap up for future consumption before the kids gobbled it all up. I am now convinced we would have starved if we were on that Corps of Discovery team. And I would still be looking for a massage therapist after carrying that darn baby over a mountain.