Santa

Merry Christmas!

Mr. Conductor

Having spent Millions and Billions of dollars on Thomas the Tank Engine trains, tracks, pajamas, blankets, shirts, face clothes, books, videos, underwear, coats and shoes, it did not come as a surprise that the vehicle Liam chose to study this term was trains.

On Thursday they held their first term fair, where the kids get to showcase their work.  Liam told visitors all about trains, how they run, the parts of trains and showed off his art work.

Now they move on from theme and start working on their annual plays.  They will go back to theme in January, but will study a new area under this years umbrella theme "The World of Work".  I can't wait to see what topic they choose.

Kitchen Science

Meet Scientist Liam

Tonight he performed extraordinary experiments:

His notes:

Conclusions: when you add dish soap, food colouring disperses best in milk, fastest in Sprite and has interesting results in oil.  

Pizzelles, fire and the smoke detector

Every year for Christmas my Mom and Grandma would make Pizzelles.  I don't know where they got the original recipe or their presses, but they have been making them for longer then I have been alive.  Eventually my Grandmother started using an electric press, which made TWO cookies at a time.  When I was young, I would help my Mom make them in the fireplace.  Since a recipe makes 4 dozen + cookies and you can only cook them one at a time, it made for a whole day, very hot affair.   Several years ago my Mom found a press and gave it to me for Christmas.  Sadly, life always seems too busy to spend the day making cookies, so I have only used it once or twice.

Well this weekend I decided that we needed Pizzelles!  They have always been my favorite cookie and now are Liam's too.  And while you can buy them pre-made at some specialty Italian markets, they just aren't as good.  So I oiled up the press, mixed the dough and got going:

all photos were taken with Liam's DSI since my camera batteries were dead.

It's almost guaranteed that you will have at least one fire while making Pizzelles on the stove top.  After all there is one cup of oil in the dough.  But thanks to Firemom's many fire prevention posts, I was prepared.  I knew where the fire extinguisher was and I knew that my smoke detectors had fresh batteries.  I do however regret the fresh batteries (Just kidding Firemom!).  The actual "fires" were really just small flames... easily blown out and did not require the fire extinguisher.  But suddenly and with out warning, the smoke detectors started going off!  And really... I've made toast that has produced more smoke.  Even with the doors and windows open, I couldn't get the smoke detectors to stop beeping! Eventually I found a step stool and was able to silence both of them.

In the end it was worth it.  We ended up with 4 dozen cookies wrapped up to be frozen and I'm pretty sure Liam and I ate at least a dozen during the making.  And best of all?  He proclaimed MY cookies even better than his Grandma's because, and I quote "he could taste a bit of extra love in them"

Awww! If that doesn't encourage me to make them more often, I don't know what will.

Food, food and more food

For more then a year now we have been planning a cooking day with our friends Sandy and Jason.  We would split the cost of groceries, split the chopping and stirring and then split the end results.  We thought we would make some pasta sauce, a stew, maybe a curry - all things that could be frozen and heated up for a quick meal after work.

Well yesterday we finally got together and did it.  Here's what we ended up with:

• 10 hours
• 4 people
• $120.00
• 9 dishes that made:
• 32 meals &
• 5 desserts
• 0 injuries
• way too many dirty dishes!

click on the picture to see the labels

Sandy and Jason brought over their nifty vacuum sealing system.  Hilary was a little hesitant to put liquids into bags, but it really did work!

It was a long and tiring day, but households have lots of food in the freezer and we're all game to do it again in a few months.

Vampire Brains

Halloween may be over, but the fun continues.  Hilary made us Vampire Brains for dessert last night.

What $581.88 looks like