LEGO bricks turned 50 today. What a cause for celebration!

This Gizmodo post features a neat timeline, although I must disagree with their dismissal of Bionicles. C-boy especially is a giant fan of Bionicles. His 5th and 6th birthdays featured a Bionicle theme - he even dressed up as a Bionicle character for Halloween. Twice!

Although I should acknowledge that his interest did eventually wane on the 3rd or 4th revision of the main characters. (”Collect all 6!” Jonski Papa used to intone, maniacally. “And again! 6 more!”) On the other hand, he bought 2 of the new models with his own money just last week. T-boy has a burgeoning interest in Bionicles, although his interest is more about playing out scenarios with the characters (it’s all about the building for C-boy - and he combines the pieces in amazingly creative ways, although recently he remade all the original sets [from memory, of course!]).

This particular piece of LEGO trivia struck me:

There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants.

because I think our house contains the LEGO allotment for at least 1000 earthlings! 2000? 10,000? And that’s if you don’t count all the little gears and locking collars and pins and such for the Bionicle models!

Hard candy isn’t hard. Of course as a material it’s hard, but it’s not hard to make.

But let me back up. In December, C-boy was doing a project on amber mining for school, while his class was studying Latvia. This was just after I made the apple cider syrup for the first time, so when we were talking about what to use as amber, I came up with the idea of hard candy. I thought about starting with apple cider again (for the color), but then thought it might be easier to start with a traditional hard candy recipe before doing too much experimentation.

I found this recipe at allrecipes.com. Since we wanted the candy to be amber colored, I decided to use dark syrup instead of light. I also used some raw sugar along with the white. I skipped the food coloring and confectioners sugar steps. I made a half-batch, since I was still thinking of it as an experiment, plus he wouldn’t need much for the project. (allrecipes has a neat feature where it will scale the measurements for you)

The end result was indeed amber colored, with a nice molasses-y taste. I used a little lemon extract for flavoring, but it was very subtle and I think it would have been better without (since I liked the dark sugar element).

C-boy ended up using amber beads in his project, so I sent some candy in labeled as “edible amber, certified bug-free!” for a special treat, on the day of the multi-cultural fair. C-boy didn’t like it much (because it tasted too much like molasses), but he said lots of other kids did.

Like I said, this is not hard to make. Boil the stuff, then keep an eye on your candy thermometer until it reaches hard crack stage.

Edible Amber Hard Candy
based on an allrecipes entry by Judith Synesael

1-3/4 cups sugar (mix of raw and white)
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup water
1 tsp lemon (or other) extract

1. In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar, corn syrup, and water. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil. Without stirring, heat to 300 to 310 degrees F (159 to 154 C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms hard, brittle threads.

2. Remove from heat and stir in extract (if using). Pour onto a greased cookie sheet. Let cool, and break into pieces. (Some recipes suggest making lines in it, to make it easier to break when cool. I’m not sure it helped, but I did a little bit of that as you can see in the photo.) Store in an airtight container. Enjoy!

This link will take you to a detail picture of the amber mine, and you can cruise through the set to see more.

For the first time since 1961 (that’s before I was born), Rice football is headed to a bowl game! With a six-game winning streak to finish regular season play, the Owls have earned a spot in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl on Friday, December 22. Cajun Rice, anyone?

[cynical aside: The Superdome sounds impressive (if you forget the Katrina aftermath), but R+L Carriers Bowl? Granted, I barely follow college football, but that sounds a bit like scraping bottom. {ouch, more bad puns!}]

If I were really ambitious, I’d search YouTube for the clip of JFK making his “Why does Rice play Texas? … And so we choose to go to the moon!” speech at Rice Stadium. Or else I’d search our meager video archive for C-boy as a 2 year old singing “Fight for Rice”. For now, a transcription must suffice:

Fight for Wice, Wice fight on, woyal sons awise,
when the blue and gway, of Wice today
comes cwashing through the skies
Stand and jeer, victory’s near,
Sammy weads the way!
On we go to CWUSH the foe
and fight foh Wice today!”

Somehow, I don’t think “stand and jeer” is what the original lyricist intended, but it always gets the biggest laugh from those of us who actually attended games and knew what it was like, especially in the 80s…

I’ve been out of my sling for nearly 2 weeks, but I still have some lifting restrictions – about 10 pounds, or not much more than a jug of milk (which is 8 lbs). The doctor specifically warned me against removing heavy turkeys from an oven, or carrying a big pot of potatoes in boiling water.

The former was going to be the biggest challenge to a traditional Thanksgiving, in large part because Jonski Papa and T-boy have been out of town since the 14th. Instead of inviting guests just to have someone to manage the turkey, we accepted an invitation to feast with friends. When I checked with C-boy and Z-boy to find out what I should offer to take, C-boy immediately exclaimed, “mashed potatoes, like Grandmother makes!” So of course I wasn’t too surprised to find this poem in his backpack at the end of the school week:

Mashed potatoes. Yum yum yum!
Ate or eat which one?
Small plate? No, I want a
Huge plate of mashed potatoes!
Eat or ate which one?
Deep down in the bowl mashed

Potatoes!
Oh so good!
The yum yum yum potatoes.
Ate or eat which one?
To eat mashed potatoes.
Oh so good!

I’m not big on mashed potatoes myself. I have too many childhood memories of being required to eat cold – and thus unpalatable! – mashed potatoes. But it’s almost a chicken-and-egg conundrum: did my potatoes get cold because I didn’t like them, or did I stop liking them after the first few times I was forced to eat them cold?

So when asked, I told our hostess that I would be in charge of mashed potatoes for C-boy’s sake, and also that I would bring the cranberry chutney that has become a tradition for Jonski Papa and I: not Mama Stamberg’s, but Madhur Jaffrey’s Garlicky Cranberry Chutney.

Garlicky Cranberry Chutney
from Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbook East/West Menus for Family and Friends (Harper & Row, 1987)

1-inch piece fresh ginger
3 cloves finely chopped garlic
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (I used a mixture of red wine and pear vinegars)
4 tablespoons sugar (I used 3 Tab raw sugar)
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

l-pound can cranberry sauce with berries

1/2 teaspoon salt (or less)
ground black pepper

Cut ginger into paper thin slices, stack them together and cut into really thin slivers.

Combine ginger, garlic, vinegar, sugar and cayenne in a small pot. Bring to a simmer, simmer on medium flame about 15 minutes or until there are about four tablespoons of liquid left.

Add can of cranberry sauce, salt and pepper. Mix and bring to a simmer. Lumps are ok. Simmer on a gentle heat for about 10 minutes.

Serve warm or cool (refrigerate to store).

That left me with the mashed potatoes. A year or three ago when I made mashed potatoes, they came out all gluey and horrid. Since I knew that some potatoes were better for boiling and some for roasting – something to do with the starch profile, I think – I worried that it might have been from using a mix of potatoes from my CSA, that I’d used the wrong type of potatoes. But after listening to (and calling in to!) Turkey Confidential from The Splendid Table, I’m now convinced it’s because I used my stick blender in an attempt to get lump free potatoes (C-boy doesn’t like lumps).

Although “like grandmother makes” does seem like a high bar, in truth her method is rather traditional, probably about the same as in my Betty Crocker cookbook. The thing is, I favor roast potatoes – less work, plus I vastly prefer the taste and texture (even when cold!). I’ve tried to get them to eat roasted ones, which Z-boy tolerates, but C-boy doesn’t (maybe because of all the seasonings I use, or the crusty bits one gets from roasting). So this past year, whenever I roasted potatoes, I’d also bake a few large ones. I taught C-boy and Z-boy how to scrape out the center, mix it with butter and salt, and voila! A mashed potato-like substance.

Because of my doctor’s prohibition against big pots of potatoes, I thought about roasting, but that’s not really what my child wanted - and it was Thanksgiving after all, the day of family traditions. Betty Crocker’s recipe calls for 2 pounds of potatoes, boiled in 1 inch of water. Seems like that would stay under my 8 to 10 pound restriction, even if I upped it to 3 pounds of potatoes to serve a crowd. Plus, I’d be cooking them last minute at our friends’ house, so I could get someone else to drain out the pot if necessary.

Both dishes turned out to be successes. All the six children had one or more servings, and actually seemed to enjoy them (although I think a few other adults stuck to the more tasty side dishes, as I did!). The kids weren’t so keen on the chutney (I probably would have despised it as a child, had my mom been able to find fresh ginger in the store!) but the four other adults all raved about it and ate multiple helpings. Everyone was full and happy – more from the offerings of the house (including a fine heritage turkey from a farm on the other side of the state), but also from our small offerings.

Jonski Papa also made the cranberry chutney at his mother’s house. His older brother wouldn’t even try it. Oh well, you’d think we’d be used to such attitudes, with the selective diners in our own house. But when it’s your big brother, at least you can tease him – with your own kids, you’re better off saying “maybe when you’re older and have more sophisticated tastes, you’ll like it,” or exclaiming “great, more for me!” while serving them a huge plate of mashed potatoes and a few slices of turkey.

On the left is C-boy on a trip to the orchard in 2001,

and on the right is a picture from 2006

Some things (like his fascination with the mechanics of the apple sorting machine) never change - they just come into sharper focus! :^)

Last Wednesday, C-boy’s class was going to (our favorite!) local apple orchard. Z-boy’s class was supposed to walk to the Farmer’s Market, where our favorite orchard has a stand (but his trip got cancelled due to thunderstorms). And T-boy and Jonski Papa had to accompany me to the Farmer’s Market, since my immobilized arm couldn’t readily manage the CSA share pickup. The three of us stopped by the Wasem corner in the market to pick up our favorite cider, some honeycrisp apples (which I discovered and loved at least 2 years before they got noticed by the paper), and plums. Then I was tempted by some vintage / heritage apples at another stand, and picked up a quart of Greenings. We also bought some ginger gold apples at yet another stand, but they seem to have passed their prime as they have gotten pretty soft.

Friday was apple baking day in C-boy’s class. I’d volunteered to help before my accident. His teacher reassured me that they could probably manage without me, or I could come and help as much as possible. So I went, and helped C-boy’s group - 5 boys in an apple pie group. With the crusts pre-made, our task was pretty simple. We had an apple peeling machine, which was used with great gusto by our team. Once we had “apple slinkies”, we broke them up by hand into our mixing bowl rather than chop them. Given their enthusiasm with the peeler, I think I’m glad none of them were wielding knives! We mixed in some cinnamon, sugar, and cornstarch, then spooned onto the crust.

There were two pie groups (for a total of 4 pies), two crisp groups (apple crisp with flour, apple crisp with oatmeal), and one muffin group. Since I didn’t get to stay for the taste off, C-boy’s teacher sent a muffin home for me to try, and it was quite tasty.

So I’m not sure if I was inspired by the apple day muffins, or the overwhelming quantity of apples in our fruit drawer, but either way, I decided to make muffins on Sunday (using 1 Greening and 1 Ginger Gold). Since our apple peeler got left at school over the weekend, I had to chop the apples for these muffins by hand. I thought I’d use some apple cider as part of the liquid, to add an extra apple punch. And once I started mixing, I realized I was low on vegetable oil, so I did the “low-fat substitution” trick of substituting some applesauce for the missing oil. The result I named:

Triple Apple Muffins

2 eggs
1 cup milk + 1/2 cup apple cider
3/4 cup vegetable oil + 1/4 cup applesauce
2 medium apples, peeled and chopped
4 cups flour (I used 1.5 c whole wheat + 1.5 c white + 1 c wheat germ)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1.5 teaspoons salt

topping: 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup chopped pecans, 1 tsp cinnamon

Tip: prepare crumble topping and apple before preheating oven.

Heat oven to 400F. Prepare 24 muffin cups (I usually use liners, but was out today so used non-stick spray).

Mix 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup chopped pecans, and 1 tsp cinnamon in small bowl and set aside.

Beat eggs; stir in milk (and cider), oil (and applesauce), and chopped apples. Stir in remaining ingredients all at once until flour is moistened (batter will be lumpy).

Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full. Put a spoonful of streusel topping on each muffin. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Immediately remove from oven.

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Cooking with one arm immobilized isn’t as hard as I’d feared, but does take a little extra time. Some containers are really hard to open. Some tasks are nearly impossible, so I hand them off - such as lifting (or pouring from) heavy pots, dumping or scraping from a lifted pan, using our garlic press, etc. Knife work is possible but requires some extra attention. There are times when I wish the counter were higher, and times when it could be lower (like when i need to hold something still for chopping with my left hand). But I’m managing!

In honor of eating seasonally, I made a special treat for back-to-school. What’s in season now? M&Ms, of course! In particular, the “Jack’s Gems” ones that are being discounted as the associated pirate movie wanes in popularity. :^)

I have an M&M cookie recipe but results were not stellar the last time I made it, so I turned elsewhere. Also, I wanted to make bar cookies since it would be quicker. I looked at the bar cookies chapter in one of my cookbooks, but didn’t find any chocolate chip bars recipes to adapt, so I turned to the back of the toll house morsels bag and adapted that.

M & M Bar Cookies

1 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
3 large eggs (mine were local! :^)
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cup M&M candies

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 15×10 inch jelly-roll pan (or if you don’t have one, combine a 9×12 cake pan with a bread loaf pan).

Beat sugar and butter in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Gradually beat flour mixture into creamed mixture. Stir in the chocolate bits. Spread into prepared pan(s).

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until top is golden brown. Cool in pan or wire rack.

Changes I made:

1. The original recipe only calls for white flour, but I didn’t have quite enough so I topped it off with wheat flour. It adds a nice touch (although at such a low percentage, it probably doesn’t improve the nutritional value much!).

2. The recipe calls for 2 cups of chocolate chips. I only put in 1 3/4 cups of Ms, but that seemed like too much, so I would try 1 1/2 next time.

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Here’s a picture of the boys on the first day of school. C-boy is entering 3rd grade, Z-boy is entering 1st, and T-boy will start going to a co-op preschool next week. And yes, they got some of these cookies in their lunchboxes today!

A few weeks ago, Z-boy turned to me in the kitchen one night and said: “Tell me the truth. Do you put on heelys and skate around the house after I go to bed?” Where this came from, I have no idea, but after assuring him I did not, he proceeded to ask “Do you have any other secrets you’re hiding from me?”

Z-boy has been obsessed with skateboarding for months now, so Jonski Papa read him the biography of a current skateboard phenom, Andy Mac. Although they’ve been visiting various skateboard parks in this part of the state this summer (Z-boy on his skateboard, C-boy on inline skates), T-boy usually stays home. He’s too little for skate parks, plus he still needs someone to hold him up while skating. So I was surprised while planning a trip to the library the other day when T-boy insisted he get a book about Andy Mac. I dutifully found the book, and let him carry it on the way home. He showed it to his dad and proudly announced “We got a book about Andy Mac!” “Oh. What does Andy Mac do?” his dad asked (expecting to hear something along the lines of “ride a skateboard”. “He drops in!” T-boy replied. The title of the book, in case you didn’t follow the link, is Dropping In With Andy Mac (’dropping in’ is the name of a particular skateboard trick).

We also got 2 picture books about skateboarding on that same trip: Cosmo Zooms and Skateboard Mom. You can probably guess the plot of the latter book from the title (if you can’t, here it is: boy gets skateboard for his birthday, mom grabs it away and rushes out the door to show her stuff). But what got me was when we finished the book and I turned to the back cover and saw: “You better ask your mom what surprises she has up her sleeve…” Deja vu! Wasn’t Z-boy doing that just the week before? Eerie.

As it turns out, the author of this book used to be on an amateur skateboard team as a kid, and has founded The International Society of Skateboarding Moms which is “about making time for play, no matter your age.” I really wish I were better about making time for play, or had a more playful spirit, but I just don’t see myself stepping on a skateboard any time soon. A scooter is okay, but that’s about as extreme as I’m willing to go for the time being!

(And no, I’m not going to tell you what surprises I have up my sleeve - at least not today!)

More great back formations from toddler minds:

At one point when C-boy was little, we branched out and added Kix to his prepared cereal repertoire. (They are, after all, kid-tested and mother-approved!) He decided that each little ball should be called a “kick”, as in “can I have one more kick?” (”kik”, perhaps?)

Ideally in our family, you change into “day clothes” before going downstairs in the morning. You definitely wear “day clothes” to go outside (exceptions: pajama shirts are allowed, especially if they are dearly beloved space-themed or otherwise cool; fleece footie pajamas have been allowed at times in winter). T-boy has decided that the singular form of “clothes” is “clo”, as in “I need a day clo shirt” or (more likely, in recent weeks) “I don’t like that clo!”

On the way home from school the other day, we saw a truck from Ductz outside a house. We also saw a Ductz employee outside the house, smoking a cigarette.

“Well that’s strange” C-boy commented. “The truck says that they make your air cleaner, but that man’s polluting the air by smoking cigarettes! And they’re polluting it by leaving the truck running.”

Maybe he needs to get a job in the Attorney General’s office, in the “false advertising claims” division.