Kid art

The kids have been having a good time with artsy craftsy things. After going through a roll or so of regular tape I got a stack of multi-colored masking tape from the teacher store. It's been a huge hit. We have had spider webs, jungle vines, cage bars, traps, finish lines for races, and snow flakes hanging from the ceiling. It's been a lot of fun but has turned our living room into a bit of an obstacle course.

The next thing was the dot dot art. This is a favorite of Baby girl. You can use the Do A Dot bottles or Bingo bottles like these. The paint is very watery so regular paper warps. The preschool teachers make cut outs from coffee filters. This works much better.

On a recent trip to the library Buddy boy saw a poster for the King Tut exhibit at the de Young museum in SF. He decided he wanted to make a mummy and a mummy case. So we did. We checked out the museum web site to see what we needed to do. Then we used very a very unauthentic Kleenex box for the sarcophagus and a toilet paper tube, tennis ball, and TP for the mummy, with plenty of tape of course. He even colored the face yellow after we looked at pictures from the museum exibit. He asked me to draw the "striped snake hat".

After making the mummy we read Bill and Pete. A cute story about a croc and his toothbrush bird and their trip to the museum in Cairo.

So much fun. You never know what they will come up with next.

My favorite pie

On Thanksgiving pumpkin pie is the undisputed king of desserts. For as much as I love it I also love my grandmother's mincemeat pie. Each year she would serve pumpkin and mincemeat pies, and sometimes a plum pudding, and maybe even a cookie or two. In more recent years my mom continued making the pies including the mincemeat for me and my Aunt Karen. The mincemeat pie is served topped with "Dip" and whipped cream. (The Dip is also the sauce for the Yam'n apples.)

So just in case you needed a little more cooking to do for Thanksgiving this week. Here are a couple of my favorites straight from Grandma A's table.

Recipes:

Mincemeat pie filling

2 Tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate
1 cup diced pears
1 1/2 large apples, diced
2 cups raisins
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch cloves

Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes, until apples and pears are cooked, but not overly soft.
Place filling in a raw crust with a raw crust on top and bake at 350 until lightly browned.

Notes: This is actually 1/8 of the recipe my Mom and Grandma used and is about the right amount for a small pie. Large batches of filling can be bottled and saved for later. I like using it on oatmeal in the morning.
The filling can also be used to make filled sugar cookies. Cut sugar cookie dough into circles. Place a spoonful of filling in the center. Fold over and seal edges.

Dip

1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt

Bring to boil until thickened.

Yam'n apples

I isn't yams and apples. It's Yam'n apples with Yam'n as an adjective to apples. Not a pie, but just in case you were wondering.

Peel and cut apples and yams into approximately 1 inch pieces. Boil separately until tender. Drain, combine, and top with Dip. Bake.

Notes: I'm not sure why you need to bake it since it is all cooked and already hot. It probably helps blend the flavors. The traditional family recipe is to boil the yams but I might try it with roasted yams instead.

Enjoy!

recipes

With the whole foodie craze, recipes can get rather long and complicated. Here is a list of recipes where each one is only a few lines long. While some of the ingredients are things I just don't use (broccoli rabe anyone?). Many sound delicous for fall dinners, not just Thanksgiving day.

image from NY Times

Simple Beauty

I've been reading a biography of Johannes Kepler (Kepler's Witch by James A Conner). I am about 1/3 of the way through since it it a little slow going and I have read a couple of other things in between. But today I read something that I think was worth stopping to think about.

Kepler was trying to discover the unifying order of things in the universe, the theory of everything. A contemporary of Galileo, he stuggled with the same issues. He could see that the earth-centered universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy was overly complicated. To many exceptions had to be developed in order to explain what he observed in the sky. He believed that the way the universe worked and ordered itself was a window in to the mind of God. Because of this he believed that what we find beautiful we will also find to be true.

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful - these are the deep properties of Platos's Ideas, and the yardstick by which Kepler measured the universe. - James A. Conner

When James Watson and Frances Crick were searching for the structure of DNA they knew they were on the right track because it was beautifully simple. It had to be the right one. It was.

The simple, the true, and the beautiful. In truth we find beauty, and in true beauty, simplicity.

More leaves...

From the New York Times and Christoph Niemann. A very fun series. Check here for more punny leaves.

Love the leaves

I love fall and especially fall leaves. Around here the color changes are a lot more subtle. So much stays green or actually turns green, instead of the other way around, that I really look for the signs and colors of the season. I took these photos one morning on a walk. These trees are pretty common around here, but they are interesting in the fall because the colors can range from orange, to red, to nearly purple depending on the tree. My favorite thing is to see the light through the leaves. They light up like stained glass.

See the sea at Seymour

We took a morning trip with Grammie to the Seymour Center at the UCSC Long Marine Lab. They have a great little aquarium with educational displays and a touching tank where you can touch sea stars, brittle stars, and a sea cucumber. The sea cucumber is pretty wierd. It doesn't really feel like anything, you can barely feel a soft bag of water. The kids liked looking, but were a little hesitant to touch for some reason.

If you go on the docent led tour you can to to the research area and see the dolphins playing and if you look carefully you can see the elephant seal, the real one, not the life size bronze sculptures out front. They also tell you all about balleen and show you real pieces of balleen as you look at the real whale skeleton outside the building. It is a great kid friendly place and just the right size for my kid's attention span. If you go, check to see when school groups are coming so that you can plan around them.

Happy Halloween

This one I drew instead of starting with a photo. Still fun. I like the laughing Jack-0-lantern.

Taffy

Buddy boy wanted to make candy, so we did. As a teenager I used to make vinegar taffy. (and not share it with my brothers) It was delicious, so I get the recipe from my mom and tried it again. It is a pulled taffy so you can use my ingredients and follow any of the pulled taffy recipe directions online. There are many.

Grandma A's Vinegar Taffy

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup white vinegar

3 tablespoons butter

1 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

General directions:

Cook ingredients, sugar through water, to hard ball or soft crack stage depending on your desired product. Add extracts. Pour only buttered work surface. Allow to cool. When it is cool enough to touch pull until light in color and glossy.

a what?

BB: Mom, I want to make a jelly ball spitting spider.
Me: Um, OK. What do you need?
BB: paper, tape, glue, pipe, rubber bands, scissors...

OK I thought. We'll see what happens. I expected something with legs like the spider he made in preschool but he had his own ideas. He had a definite plan and did it all himself. With a few minor modifications of the rubber band placement it actually spits "jelly balls". His jelly balls even go splat.