Melted Crayon Art

Adjectives that I'd like to pair with this project:
quick, easy, cheap, and fun!!

Last week, I bought 3 boxes of crayons and a white canvas at Ollie's and while I sat in traffic on the way home, I peeled off the labels.  It works great to keep them on, too, I just didn't buy Crayola so these wrappers didn't look spectacular. 

Later, I lined up the crayons in the order I wanted and glued them down with a hot glue gun.  

 Next, I put down newspaper (be sure to do this, because it has the potential for spatters!) and plugged in my hairdryer.

 I found the low setting to be the most useful, since it doesn't blow air as hard (making messes) but is still warm enough to melt the crayons.

The wax dries very quickly!

Newspaper Nails

So much easier than you'd expect!

All you need is white polish (or a light shade), newspaper, and rubbing alcohol.

First, paint your nails white.  When they are almost dry, dip them into the alcohol and press the newspaper onto  your nail. (You might want to experiment with this a little - if your nails are too wet the paint will move and smudge, but if they are too dry the print won't be very dark).  Press down on it a little and then peel the paper off slowly, and you'll see that the print has been transferred to your nail.  The print won't come off your nail at this point, but add a clear topcoat to make them shine!

whoopie pies and shoo-pie flies

In the spirit of Lancaster County... I'd like to feature two favorite desserts coming from this area of the world:

Simply, it is a molasses pie.  It got its name because of the flies that need to be constantly shooed away.
So Kelly and I tried our hand at making a Shoo-fly pie.

But first...
No-Fail Pie Crust recipe that my mom uses:
Mix together:
5 c. flour
2 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
2 c. shortening


Pour into a liquid measuring cup:
1 egg
1/4 c. vinegar
Then add water until these three ingredients reach the "1 cup" line, then add this to the other ingredients.

This will make 5 pie crusts, which can be refrigerated or frozen to use later.

Roll out the dough as thin as possible, or as thick as you love it! Be sure to put a little flour down, and on your rolling pin so the dough won't stick.  I don't have a rolling pin but a glass jar, vase, bottle works well too.  

Next, fold the dough in half twice to make it easier to move from the counter to the pie dish, and then unfold it. Trim the edges or make something fancy with your fingers or a fork!

Our pie smelled wonderful while it was baking... but tasted awful! It was so rich and incredibly runny.  I'll have to try again soon... I love a good shoo-fly pie!


While I may be a temporary failure at making shoo-fly pie, there's always Whoopie Pies!! Recently there's been debate over where the Whoopie Pie originated, but it's a fact that it can be found right here in the Lanc.  Jill invited me over to make them for the square dance coming up.  I had never made them before, but I sure have eaten my share!

Lucky for me I broke a few, so those ones had to get eaten instead of wrapped!

Cheating without chemicals or fake light

Grandma Garber has been growing saffron for years.  This summer, she gave me a brown paper bag full of the bulbs, with clear instructions to plant them at the end of July or beginning of August.  Mental note to self:  August...  
I kept them in the sunroom for awhile and soon moved the bag to a shelf next to some books, and a bunch of dried herbs, teas, and seeds for next year.

Today is the 19th of November. I pulled out the bag, looking for a sweet jar to store my mint and realized that I had a bag full of beautiful purple flowers!! Tangled throughout their stems I found a piece of paper with Grandma's instructions.  Ooops!

each flower has 3 red stamens that get taken off and dried

the bag of bulbs, after I cut all the flowers off:

You can see why saffron is so expensive - it is a tedious process that produces a very small yield!

Aubergine Parmesean

Anthony pointed out one day that it seems a little ridiculous that an eggplant isn't the name for the plant, but the fruit.  It does seem a little redundant to say "Look how big that eggplant plant is growing" or "I need to plant the eggplant plant I just bought at Hostetter's".

Lucky for him, there is a word that already exists for the fruit that is now trending in the USA, thanks to Abby and myself... We have an activity in the classroom I work that we call the "Shopping Activity".  The student gets a grocery list, and he has to find the things on it and put them in his shopping cart.  The first list my kid got included aubergines (and "tinned tuna")!

Recently Anthony showed me how to make eggplant parmesean.  Considering we didn't have bread crumbs (we tried raisin brain) or parmesean cheese (substituted cheddar), this was the perfect opportunity to try out the phrase Aubergine Parmesan. Delicious, even with substitutions!

Here, Kelly and I tried making Aubergine Parmesean with real bread crumbs and parmesean cheese...

First we cut the eggplant in 1" slices (the peel can stay on or come off).

Next, we dipped each slice in an egg-milk mixture and then into breadcrumbs.

Then we cooked them in a skillet until they were brown

Finally, we added tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese and ate!

Salsa

When I went to pick up apples with Mom the other day, I also bought a half bushel of tomatoes for $4.50.    The only logical thing for a single person to do with that many tomatoes is....

MAKE SALSA!

I looked online for the first recipe, and found a good looking one at food.com.

Ingredients:

14 cups chopped roma tomatoes 

3 cups onions, chopped

1/2 cup jalapeno pepper 

1 cup green pepper, chopped

1/2 cup vinegar

1/2 cup tomato sauce

3 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 1/2 teaspoons cumin

5 tablespoons Clear Jel, that will not break down in high heat during processing. don't substitute 

5 garlic buds minced 

Directions:  Chop all vegetables and place them into a saucepan.  Add remaining ingredients, mixing clear jell with water before adding slowly to veggies. Bring to a boil. Cold pack for 10 minutes.

Read the full recipe here.


Clearly disobeying, I did not use the Clear Jel. 


For the next batch of salsa, I used the same basic recipe, but cut out the cumin and chili powder and instead added habenero hot sauce. I was slightly disappointed each time when all I ended up with was two large cans of salsa (and a little left over to eat right away).


Both batches turned out very different and so delicious!!

Money Grows on Stalks

And now, introducing David Morgan, the first guest writer on this blog.  I attended Eastern University with David and even though our lives are consistently physically distant, I am grateful for the effort that he has put into maintaining our friendship.  While we sometimes disagree, I am always challenged and inspired to think twice about everything.  I share similar concerns with him and love his honesty.  The following is especially interesting to me because of my somewhat new-found aversion to the amount of sugar in my life:


Corn is delicious. We can pop it, grill it, freeze it, can it, cream it, grind it into flour, bake it into bread, and slather it up in butter before eating it. It complements any barbeque and enables Latin/South American, Spanish, and Mexican cuisine to be AWESOME.

Corn chips are my single favorite type of chip on the market and besides their deliciousness with salsa and hummus, they enhance any sandwich. But I love them all the more for this reason: If you look on the back of a bag of Fritos (I actually prefer Trader Joe’s Corn Chip Dippers—but both are great), you will find only the following ingredients listed: whole corn, corn oil, salt. That is astounding; and in an age of processed foods, Sun Chips (which I also love) cannot even boast that kind of simplicity.

But our delicious and starchy (though not unhealthy) friend, corn is being exploited. In 1957 a man by the name of Richard Marshall (citation Wikipedia), introduced a revolutionary new artificial sweetener: high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Since its discovery, HFCS has taken its place in monopolizing and dominating the American food industry. Interestingly enough, it has amassed a serious corporate following only in America; and due to our abundance of corn, it is infinitely (hyperbole) cheaper than sugar.

I currently reside in Minsk, Belarus where all of the aforementioned treats are nowhere to be found. Minsk, despite its tight government-control over business, its anti-democratic ways, and its pain-in-the-neck visa process, is a place completely worth visiting. It is cleaner than any city in the U.S. that I have been to and it is really just a peaceful and beautiful place. It does however suffer from the colossal insufficiency of a lack of corn chips.

Minsk has done wonders for my health despite being a post-Soviet industrial city. I went from being a couch potato to running five miles a day and even ran the equivalent of a half-marathon (well actually it was 12 miles, but it is still a big achievement for me). I lost a lot of weight and was really feeling quite good about myself. That is until I went to America and lived on a college campus for two months.

Determined to battle the prevalence of HFCS in my American diet and keep the weight off, I decided I would continue to exercise regularly and drink (for the most) only water during my time State-side. It was my second week at Middlebury College and I weighed myself in the locker room at a breezy 187 pounds (something I have not known since high school). I committed to running 5 mile stretches 2-3 times a week, and then four weeks later I weighed myself again: 203 pounds.

How could it be? How could I have gained 16 pounds in a month? Granted my readjustment to college buffet-style eating may have warranted a gain of 5-ish pounds, but 16? That’s more than a stone! I exercised fairly regularly and made no radical changes in my diet, except for one: HFCS.

Though we find it in almost everything in America, the most common-place and internationally-ubiquitous-enough-to-make-a-comparison product is none other than Coca Cola. Coca-Cola in Europe (that is to say, Coca-Cola made with sugar and not HFCS) tastes differently. Our Coke leaves a nasty, sticky, residue inside and around the edge of your mouth. Coca-Cola in Minsk does no such thing, and that makes it better.

It is quite typical in America for the majority of students in the average high school class to be a little overweight. In Minsk it is quite atypical and from what I have seen, the ‘fat kid’ is extremely rare. I blame HFCS.

HFCS has no rightful place in anyone’s diet, and I believe it (and its cousin: partial hydrogenation) is the leading cause of the obesity, diabetes, heart-disease, and unwanted weight-gain epidemics in modern America. HFCS is a cancer that needs to be surgically removed from U.S. food production.

Corn is wonderful, but we need to stop exploiting her because she is cheap and easily accessible.

(This is Minsk, note the lack of HFCS).