There are patterns in the world, and beautiful secrets in hidden places…
Pie!
Again!
Wednesday’s contribution – a bacon/potato/onion pie
and a strawberry/apple pie.
We used the recipe for the pastry, but the fillings were a bit more freeform…
The strawberry was supposed to have fresh ginger in it, but we didn’t have any. I forgot to add rosewater, as well. Still very nice. 🙂
Exquisite Corpse
Well… that’s a title to catch the attention! 😉
“Exquisite Corpse” is the name of a game played by the Surrealists in the 1920s (although it has similarities to earlier parlour games). Each person in turn adds to something that has been written or drawn, but that they are not able to see – the previous person only provides enough clues on the visible paper for the next to continue.
Much hilarity ensues…
We’ve had a few goes at drawing the exquisite corpse, and it’s been fun. Today we tried writing. Still fun. It can be difficult to read it out loud after (giggling can get in the way). We played fairly fast, which is probably reflected in the story. Here’s our effort…
Try to figure out who wrote what! 🙂
Nobody knows what happened, on that dark, cold day in September. The wind was howling, the leaves were dropping, and Gerald trudged on, neither noticing nor caring what was happening in the street. Gerald did not know how things could get worse…
He had a sister who was so likeable that his friends deserted him to go and play with her. She played in the sun with a friend whose face was that of a rose and she was a laser shooting dog-bot with a tail made of marshmallows and happiness who blasted him to the end of time and space. While there he saved the world from space alien lizard people who wanted to scuff the leaves with his shoes. He thought it might rain. It was always raining!
How could this happen? Why? One minute the plan was proceeding smoothly, the next it had fallen in a heap. Perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a lion-tamer. Why care about the collapse of a childhood dream? Because it is so unbelievably dreadful and you should care very much if your childhood dream collapses around you, yes you must care about these things if they suddenly happen.
What do you think? “I think you have a very large bottom.”
He then proceeded to use his large bottom to expel gas and fly back to Earth. After crash landing in the middle of a park (with some curious stares) he decided to learn to deep sea dive instead. After all, it was the sense of adventure he was after. His mother had suggested teaching beading and jewellery making classes at the local college, as he was quite proficient in the art, but that didn’t quite seem to fill the void in his heart. He sighed, as something suddenly fell from the sky and landed on her head. She cried out in pain and sank to her knees and saw an apple and a pear.
She pondered for a while then she went for the chicken and ate it whole.
And the world was saved from aliens and chickens alike.
Still Learning
I finished two diplomas yesterday.
That sounds a bit more impressive than it really is… I was using a free learning site, so each diploma was fairly short. They were both interesting, though, and helped to clarify some things for me. I used an Irish education site called Alison.com (Yes, you can learn to speak Irish, if you so wish…). I chose a Diploma in Educational Philosophy and a Diploma in Teaching Skills for Educators. The format is a series of slides with the information, with assessment quizzes throughout, and a final assessment at the end. You have to achieve 80% or more to pass.
The study is absolutely free. The certificate has to be paid for. I wasn’t too fussed about that – the diplomas probably wouldn’t be valid here, and you can download a learner report to show that you’ve studied and passed. It’s not the first port of call if you need documentation, but it’s great if you just want to learn something new. I’ve signed up for a short course on Aesop’s fables – it’s aimed at school level, so I’ll go through it with the boys.
It’s a good preparation for going back in to full time study. I’ll be signing up again to complete my previous studies, although I’ll be focusing on Western Herbalism rather than Naturopathy, and I’ll be with a different college.
It’s been a good year so far! 🙂
Back To Baking
Wednesday again! Pizza day today…
We made up a very quick and easy dough.
We were a bit worried about the dough being able to rise, but it wasn’t overly cold today.
Each of the boys had their own dough to prepare. The recipe said to roll it out, so one of the pizzas was rolled and shaped into a circle. It turned out thin and crispy.
I used to make this recipe fairly often, but I didn’t have a rolling pin – I would just stretch and shape it with my hands. The other pizza was shaped like this – it was a bit thicker and more springy.
Ready to go in the oven 🙂
The sauce on the base is roasted tomato and bacon (pasta sauce, I think). They were topped with steak fried with garlic, bacon, onion and ricotta.
Yum! 🙂
Clanger Pie
Baking day again!
We decided to make a pie today, but couldn’t decide which one to do. A few days ago, we watched an episode of River Cottage, where they made a Bedfordshire dish called a “Clanger”. It’s a bit like a pasty (or “elongated suet crust dumpling”…) but with a different filling at each end. The original pasty had savoury at one end and sweet at the other – a meal in one package… We were making a savoury meal, but why not use the same concept for a pie?
So was born the Clanger Pie! 😉
Waiting to be covered – one side cheese and onion pie, one side “shepherd’s” pie (although nothing to do with a shepherd, since it’s beef and bacon…)
Covered with pastry one side, potato the other, with an egg wash.
Cooked!
…and ready to eat! 🙂
Time For Science!
…or science for time?
We’re moving through the timeline for history studies – last term was pre- to the beginnings of ancient history. This term we’re continuing on to the end of the classical era.
As part of our studies I’ve been using a book called “Ancient Science”, and today we looked at ancient ways of telling the time – a sundial (Egypt) and a water clock (Greece)
We followed the instructions in the book, and found that our sundials were reading backwards… it seems obvious to me now, but I had forgotten to factor in that we are in the Southern Hemisphere. The book was printed in the Northern Hemisphere, but we needed to turn everything upside-down! 🙂
Added to that was the fact that we hadn’t used the right angle for the triangle in the middle (the gnomon or style) that corresponded with our geographical latitude. For our house, the angle should be 27.4*. Having just looked over the pdf from Queensland University of Technology, I realise that we made another mistake – we rewrote the hours on the base of the sundial, while still pointing the base of the gnomen North. We should have pointed it South…
Our other problem was using a cheap, wonky compass. The above photo was slightly out – it should have shown the time as round about 11.30am.
Here they are, corrected.
Our second project was the water clock, called “clepsydra” (literally “water-thief”) by the Greeks. It works on the principle that water flows at a regular rate, and uses marks on a receptacle that show the water flow for regular intervals (our book said to mark out each minute; we marked each 30 seconds). We had some issues with the water flow with this, as we followed the (misleading) illustration in the book. It showed the hole used as being slightly above the base, but probably would have worked better being at the base…
Here’s the (sorry-blurry 🙂 ) results…
A fun day today – and a good opportunity to learn from mistakes!
Rising To The Occasion
Bread again today!
We made focaccia – quicker than the bread we made a couple of weeks ago, so we were able to have it with lunch…
We’ve been having trouble with it rising, since the temperature has been a bit cooler lately. Today was warmer anyway, and we put the dough out in the sun, under a teatowel. We used cheese, onion and rosemary for the topping. Here’s the result 🙂
Lazy Loaf
Baking again today! 🙂
We decided to do some more bread, but chose Nigella Lawson’s Lazy Loaf recipe. It’s a sort of non-sweet fruit loaf, and meant to be mixed and then just left in the oven at varying temperatures…
Yum!!
Here’s the basic recipe –
Lazy Loaf
200g muesli (we didn’t have any, so just combined rolled oats with sultanas)
325g wholewheat bread flour
1 sachet (6g) instant yeast
1 tsp salt (we use Himalayan)
250ml milk
250ml water
Mix dry ingredients, then mix in wet ingredients. It will look like a thick porridge.
Pour into greased loaf tin.
Place into a cold oven, then turn on to 110*C. Leave for 45 minutes. Then turn up to 180*C, leave for one hour. Tip out and tap base of loaf – if it sounds hollow, it’s cooked. If not, put in the oven for about 10 minutes more. Cool on a rack.
Eat warm with lots of butter 🙂
We had some issues with our oven, and didn’t have a loaf tin (we used a steep-sided casserole dish), so our loaf took longer than it should have. Still worth cooking!
Bread And Biscuits
We’ve been baking this week! Wednesday we did a simple bread recipe – we’ve been watching one of the River Cottage series and decided to try it…
The dough after the first proving – the boys each did their own loaf.
Waiting to go in the oven…
Yum! 🙂
Lovely hot from the oven, with butter (and maybe a little bit of honey)
Since tomorrow is Anzac Day, we made Anzac biscuits today, to a basic recipe from “The Commonsense Cookery Book”. We sampled some today, but left the rest for tomorrow..
1000 Fields of Roses 