Deep Fried Deliciousness

Lately the urge to attempt new and exciting things in the kitchen has become overwhelming. I got it in my head that I wanted to try my hand at home made donuts.

A quick google brought me some recipes and I read their reviews to see which one I wanted to try. I wanted something uncomplicated, with clear directions. I looked up info on frying, since I don't have a deep fryer I wanted to be sure I could do this safely.

Side note: since doing this Phil has suggested that we get a little deep fryer so I can make these without all the temperature fussing. Which sounds like a good solid theory. But...way back when I lived with a very good friend and she owned a little deep fryer and I became flat out addicted to making fries. Cutting up potatoes with the skins on, frying them until they are crispy as all get out and liberally dosing them with salt, using three-cheese ranch salad dressing for dip....omg so good.

Yeah. I do not need that kind of temptation again. One of the good things about doing it stove top is that it is kind of a pain in the ass, once in a while thing to do. If I have an easy-peasy deep fryer to work with then that could get dangerous to my waistline damn quick.

Anyway...I consulted with a friend who owns a cafe and makes incredibly good baked goods, and while she hasn't done much with this sort of baked good, she did warn me against making sure my temp didn't dip too low. If the temp is too low then the donuts would absorb too much of the oil and taste funny. Make sure I had a good thermometer.

Armed with that advice I tried my hand at making these beaver-tail style donuts
. The recipe was really easy to follow, and getting to punch down the dough after it rose was a lot of fun



Then you pull off bits of dough and roll them out flat. Usually beaver-tails are quite big, I wanted something smaller and more manageable.

Tip: very carefully lay them into the oil. Dropping causes splashing which causes burns on your fingertips



I thought I had a good thermometer but it turned out that while the one I had was awesome, it didn't go as high as I thought. I did my best to keep an eye on the temp by guessing where it was above the highest temps, but I was concerned about not letting the temp go to high (not wanting to have a kitchen fire. Again). As a result, I think I low-balled it and as a result there was a little bit of weirdness to the taste.

They were still really good. Most of them I coated in cinnamon sugar



They were very well recieved, the whole family enjoyed them.

The last bit I made up a bit of garlic butter to smear over them and topped that with shredded cheese



Those ones were awesome and I'm glad I only made a few of them since it would be super easy to over-indulge in those.

I'm looking forward to trying them again, next time I'll be able to monitor temp better since I bought a new thermometer that clips onto the side of the pot and goes up as high as I need it to.

For my next attempt I used this cake donut recipe. The dough has to be refridgerated for an hour before being fried up, so I mixed it before I went to dance class with the intention of frying it up just before watching the latest episode of True Blood with some knitters. I'm still not entirely what happened, but I suspect that I didn't have enough oil so the temp rose too quickly. The dough I dropped in immediately burned and the oil began to smoke, so the pot was immediately covered and removed from heat (then put outside because it stank).

I gave it another go, being very careful to use enough oil and monitor temp



This dough is rolled out and cut into circles. I used a little biscuit cutter since I was really just making donut holes (do they count as "holes" if you never made the donut part?)



The dough went from flat disks to puffy in the oil. They were then transferred to a pie plate with coffee filters on it to get the excess oil off. Popped them into a baggie with cinnamon sugar to coat them and ta da!



They were so good! The kids loved them! I loved them!

I plan on doing them again, but this time I'll make full sized donuts. The problem with these little bite-sized bits of goodness is that you can eat way more of them then you intended to.

My next kitchen adventures will be scones and then croissants. If you never hear about that again, you can assume it went horribly wrong.

Flutterby

Years ago I worked in Early Childhood Education and in my first or second year of teaching I attended a workshop facilitated by a fantastic teacher who ran a preschool. She was very science-oriented and so many of the things she did with her students were inspiring.

None caught my attention more than the idea of raising butterflies. I tried unsuccessfully to get my director to order some in and while each year I worked in the field I thought "I should really just do it on my own, and share it with the kids" I never got to it. When we started home schooling I re-visited the butterfly idea but again, I never got around to it.

Then a few months ago one of the parents in the home schooling group asked if anyone would be interested in going in on a set of butterfly larvae from Boreal. She received a huge positive response and I think there were a couple sets of 80 ordered. Each family got to take home 10 Painted Lady Butterfly larvae in little cups with food.

Unfortunately for the blog, the delivery date happened the same week we moved. So I didn't get to picture taking of the process until they were in the chrysalis stage. Totally missed the caterpillars, and I regret it. When they arrived they were tiny wee things, just over 1cm in length and no bigger around than fingering weight yarn. Within a week they were big fat things, about 4cm in length and thicker than most bulky weight yarns (but not so big as pencil roving).

Sadly, one of our caterpillars died before he could make a chrysalis. The kids were sort of bummed about that, but it led to a few good chats about life cycles.

The instructions told us we could put gauze or cheesecloth under the lids of the little cups for the caterpillars to attach their chrysalis to, and while most of ours did that, they then promptly fell off once they were totally encased. I taped a strip of gauze to the side of the (empty) fish tank that would be their home and carefully picked up each one and hooked it on to the gauze just like the video showed.

I was not expecting their little bums to start wiggling frantically as I moved them, a surprise that nearly had me dropping them.

Surprise wiggles aside, I did successfully get them situated in the tank and the waiting began



Because that's how life works...most of them emerged while we were out of the house. We came back from Cam's band class to discover we had 5 butterflies hanging out in the tank


The streaks of red are meconium

The instructions told us to make a sugar water solution (5 tbsps sugar to one cup water) and soak cotton balls in it, then put the cotton balls in the habitat for the butterflies to eat from. I hadn't gotten around to buying cotton balls. I thought I had plain cotton make-up pads, but couldn't find those anywhere. I did have something made of clean cotton I could use, and it worked rather well...



Heh. If you can't quite figure out what those are, picture them with a string attached.

The next morning the kids and I are hanging out eating breakfast and Grace exclaims that there are more butterflies in the tank. I do a head count and sure enough, there are two more. We blink and a third has emerged and is shaking out his/her wings. We turn our attention to the last chrysalis, and it is definitely wiggling. As we watch the butterfly's head pokes out and then whoosh! It's out! It happened so quickly I didn't have time to grab the camera. I would have loved to have gotten video of it.



On Saturday our butterflies entered what is now referred to as their "experimental college days". They discovered their mating drive and man alive did they ever act on it. We had been discussing when we were going to set them free, and decided that since they had been mating we should probably get to it sooner rather than later...we wanted them to be able to lay their eggs. Since we were going out to my parents place on Sunday for Father's day, and they have a lovely garden, we opted to release them there.



I took the screen off and we waited for them to take flight. They left in pairs mostly, except the last two. One took off and the last one had to be encouraged to move on (I took a stick and let him climb on, then transferred him into the garden. He did fly off to rest elsewhere though, so I think he's fine).

All in all, it was a great experience. I look forward to next year :)

In which we meet a Real! Live! Mermaid!

Friday June 8th was World Oceans Day so the kids and I got up early and headed over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic...free admission and all sorts of really cool exhibits.

Our first stop was the Bedford Institute of Oceanography table, where the kids got to explore rocks and sand and got to watch a webcam streaming live from the harbour, in a spot not too far from our house. The staff working the table were awesome, great with the kids and even managed to get Cam involved in the display (no mean feat, seeing as he was really into his role of "moody tween" that day. He also managed to dodge almost all of the pictures I took. One day that kid is going to look at our family albums and complain that we never got any pics of him at family things and I will pull out all the blurry shots of him running out of view).



From there we said hi to Merlin then headed into the main gallery. The big draw for us was Raina, the Halifax Mermaid. She did not disappoint.



I knew Grace would be excited, but I was pleasantly surprised at how into Gabriel was. She gave the kids a little treasure, Grace chose a sea shell and Gabriel chose a smooth green stone which he clutched in his hand the rest of the visit. He even went up later and quietly asked if she could put mermaid sparkles on his face. He was fascinated by her, and it was wonderful to see.

(Frankly, I was too. If you click through to her website you see that you can hire Raina to do birthday parties. Highly tempted to have myself a mermaid party this year.)

(And I have no idea what Cam's thoughts on the mermaid were. Again, moody tween is moody. At one point I told him if he didn't at least try to become engaged in what we were doing I would make a big deal of hugging and kissing him right there in public. He got a bit better after that, lol)

We wandered around the museum a bit, then the kids played with some dead fish



Then we headed outside where we ran into some other home schooling families. We checked out the exhibits outside, collected all sorts of pamphlets and booklets and posters and stickers, chatted with all sorts of interesting people and learned some cool things.

And got pictures with a giant lobster



All in all, a pretty great day out with my kids. The definite highlight was meeting the mermaid. I mean...it's a mermaid. A real live mermaid. Awesome.

Moving out, moving in, moving on.

We moved house last weekend.

Phil and I had grand intentions of sorting through our belongings and sending away the things we don't need. We have a lot of stuff, which is expected in a household of 7. We spent about a month slowly packing away all our things, then a week frantically packing things, then a couple days shouting "Just throw it in a box, I don't care we'll sort it out when we get there!!!" Things didn't exactly go to plan is what I'm saying.

See, just over a month ago my husband came down with mono. Which sucked, he was so sick. Bad timing, since he wasn't able to do much. Then as he mended, the twins decided now would be a super time to cut some teeth. Which meant that even with both of us home, only one of us could actually be doing anything since the other was busy holding cranky babies. Add in all the running around that's required for a family of 7, and man...time got away from us in a big bad way.

I thought back to when I was little and my parents bought our house. They shipped me off to go camping with my grandmother for a week or so. So I was off enjoying tenting, roasting marshmallows and generally enjoying the company of my Nan and other family...Mom and Dad packed, moved, unpacked etc. So I left the apt to come home to our house, set up and ready for living in.

My parents were geniuses.

Mom did take my bigger kids over night and then the twins too during the moving day, so that rocked.

Moving weekend also fell on recital weekend for Grace. So in the midst of moving I had to get her to rehearsal, and then Sunday was pretty much a write off as we attended her recital. She did fantastic, and just like every other year I teared up while watching her.

We also discovered that we have amazing supportive friends, without whom I would have been an absolute mess. I only cried once, they kept things moving forward, kept me from losing my mind. They rock.

So for the past week we've been unpacking, finding places for all the furniture and belongings, sorting through stuff to send it on it's way if we don't need it or want it. I've lost track of the number of trips to the Salvation Army drop off spots, or the number of bags and boxes of baby stuff we've sent in the direction of my brother for his wee boy. There's still a ton of things to go through, but the pile is dwindling, and that's a very good thing.

The new neighbourhood is fantastic. The kids already have friends, Grace has even already had a sleepover. There's lots of space to run around, playgrounds nearby and it's been awesome. I've made some friends too. I think we're going to be very happy here. We've gotten most of our things where they belong and it already feels like home.

The past couple weeks have been quite stressful and I tend to do one of two things when stressed...I knit or I bake. I ended up making 2 batches of chocolate chip cookies as I packed up some of our kitchen the night before we moved (I figured they'd been good for morale, lol) and the other day I cast off my Colour Affection shawl. It's soaking right now, I'll post pics of it later.

So that's us all caught up. I spent most of yesterday sleeping since it was the first day I didn't have a million and one things to do so I crashed hard. The kids have a few more activities and then they are done their extracurriculars for this school year and then all that's left is finishing up our schooling, then come on summer vacation.

It's good to be home.