remedial eating

for me, for you

Our skies have been blue, it's Spring break around these parts, and everyone's back in the pink (thank you, kindly, for all your well wishes!)  So, I'm unplugging this week, to spend time with my peeps.  We'll be soaking up the sun, whenever it shines.  Exploring our world.  Getting a good black line of grime under our nails. 

No words, then, or recipes this week.  But I'd hate to leave you empty-bellied and empty-handed.  So a little something, for those with little ones.  You've seen dough-filled fingers before around here, but there's no dough that sees more action in our home than that dough, down there.  It's simple stuff, standard cooked playdough, straight out of our dear old co-op's 2003 newsletter.  I must have made 200 pounds by now. 

It always sounds a little silly, to me, to say "I make my own playdough!"  I'm not really that self-sufficient; stitching buttons still ruffles my every last feather.  But homemade playdough, oh, have you tried it?  It's something else.  The texture's lovely, silky and pliable, and fresh out of the pan, the warmth is unbeatable.  It's open-ended and all-ages and all-natural and all that jazz.  It's also cheap, and fast, and dead-simple, but none of that's the main thing. 

The main thing is, homemade playdough's happy.  It's happy because you can do no wrong.  There's never that sad moment when your miserly bits of yellow-tub turquoise and fuscia squoosh irredeemably into streaky brown.  There's always enough to go around.  And if it rains, because it is Spring after all, it's like mud you can invite indoors to play.

We'll be back to this space in a week.  Until then, may Spring keep springing, in your little corner.
 
Cooked Playdough
With thanks to the Lake Forest Park Co-Op

I often double this recipe, for a truly impressive mound.  When we do add color, we color it all the same, for that lovely, endless, no-worries quality.

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tsp. cream of tartar
2 Tablespoons oil
1 cup water

optional: a few drops food coloring, glitter

Mix first 4 ingredients in a pan.  Add water and mix well.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 3 – 5 minutes.  Dough will become difficult to stir and form a “clump”.  Remove from stove and knead for several minutes.  If you choose to add food coloring or glitter, do so now, during the kneading process.  Play dough will keep for months stored in a covered plastic container or plastic sandwich bag.

oobleck out of chaos (june bugs: 4)

 Recipe for June Bugs :: 4 of 5

Somewhere between blanketing my counters in a cookie's wildest dreams and digging the last crusty bits from the baking cupboard's back corners, it occurs to me to wonder:  What do normal people do for fun during a fortnight of sick-kid-quarantine?  

Me, I clean.  Not widely (never widely), but deeply.  A drawer, a patch of floor, the cabinet that hasn't once, in four months, closed properly.  The just-right assortment of flour bins and sugar jars which fit seamlessly, gracefully, into my old kitchen is now all-wrong.  My C&H and unbleached white are suddenly all knees and elbows, jutting out at strange angles, like teenagers at high tea. 

So compromises are made on both sides.  The ingredients are taught to contain themselves a bit, two brown sugars blended, baking powders de-duped.  The environment is edited heavily, expiration dates read and respected, obscure ingredients ordered to make themselves useful or scarce.  By lunch, everything is back in, including a double batch of breathing room.  Even a click! as I close the cupboard door.  Two entire square feet of order out of cabin fever chaos.

Save one bright, shiny exception.  To and fro, from counter to trash can and back again, I've granted this one stubborn can clemency more times than I can count.  Though a single reason for keeping it eludes me.  It's just one of those artifacts that once again throws you under the speeding train of all those huge, soul-searching decisions a cross-country move begets.  House: rent or buy?  Timing: mid-year or mid-summer?  Bird's Custard Powder: keep or toss? 

Maybe I'm too environmentally sensitive, some tiny green fairy holding my hand, whispering the three R's in my ear as I fail to chuck it yet again.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for a cute can.  (Hint: I have a few lackluster books with drop-dead covers, too.)  Either way, I know I'm no more likely to use the Tablespoon of Bird's called for in some never-baked Nigella biscuit than I am to stir the contents into a custard that contains no eggs, no milk, no soul.  So I prepare for a final compromise -- lose the powder, keep the can -- muttering "cornstarch does not a custard make!"  Until I remember what cornstarch does make. 

Oobleck.

  

Vaguely egg-yolk-orange oobleck, if it was originally a custard-wannabe, but magnificent, bizzare, inexplicable oobleck just the same.  If you don't have kids, you should probably borrow a few, just to justify a batch.  Pick it up, and it drizzles from your fingers.  Squeeze it, and it clumps into clay-like lumps.  It oozes and freezes, drips and hardens, completely changing states under pressure.  Oobleck defies everything I know about liquids, solids, and chemistry in general.  Which, admittedly, isn't much.  It also makes Henry say in hushed tones, "You must be MAGIC!", which is rather a lot, considering my grouchy state of late.   

Some of the best recipes are those that can be committed to memory, and 2 parts cornstarch: 1 part water is a ratio I can remember under any circumstances, even these.  We dabble in our oobleck's swamp-slimy glory all afternoon, diluting it, drying it out, adjusting the proportions this way and that.  Oobleck is like that: easy, generous, flexible. 

As I often am, and will be again soon, just as soon as the pressure's off and I can change states completely.  In the meantime, I get to use my cornstarch and keep my can, too.  And a little extra order, besides.