My Favorite Homemade Playdough Recipe

Anyone else in the middle of a heat wave? The forecast shows ninety degree weather for the next ten days. That means no outside play for me past 10 a.m. unless it is swimming. Since SourPatch is an outdoor guy, summer is cramping his style just a bit (Bay Area weather! Oh how I miss thee...)

While confined to the air conditioning, we decided to make some homemade playdough yesterday. Usually, this is a pretty fast process; this recipe is pretty slick and quick. Yet after Patches helped me dump and stir all the ingredients, I realized I couldn't find my food coloring. I spent at least 15 minutes flying around the house, trying to figure out where in our move I might have stashed my cake decorating supplies.

This turned out to be fortuitous, as SourPatch was completely entranced by the flour concoction. He stirred, sifted, whisked, and scooped at it with joy. In hindsight, I probably should have let him keep on keeping on and seen how long that would have entertained him. No matter. The point is, we had a great time making and playing with it!

Adapted from The Imagination Tree

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1.5 cups boiling water (I like to boil 2 cups and then measure out the 1.5 in a glass measuring cup so I know exactly how much I'm adding. A lot of water can boil away while you're rummaging for food coloring, it turns out.)
• Food coloring (add to taste? I use the Wilton Gels, so I can't tell you how many "drops" to add. If you look carefully at the pictures, you can see I decided I didn't add quite enough to the water, so I threw some more on the dough while stirring and kneading it.)

In a large mixing boil, whisk the flour, salt, cream of tartar, and oil until well combined. 

Add food coloring to boiling water, and pour 1.5 cups into the flour mixture. 

Use a large sturdy spoon to stir continually until it forms into a sticky ball. Allow the dough to cool until comfortable to touch. (Here, I often split the dough in two and add a few drops of food coloring to one of the balls of dough so I can have two colors, such as blue and green. Just a suggestion.) 

Once cool, knead the dough vigorously until all the stickiness is gone. For my last batch, this took about 3 minutes of kneading. You can add more flour at this point if the stickiness remains (I've never had this problem.)

Voila! Store it in an airtight container, and this playdough should last you 6 months! I'm pretty sure I historically keep mine even longer.

Mama's Tuna Casserole

This recipe is not trendy. It has no highfalutin vegetables like kale or rutabaga (in fact, it doesn't have any vegetables at all...) It uses that sinful ingredient that elite chefs sniff at and refuse to allow into their cupboards: cream of chicken soup.

Yet I really don't know how people survive without a recipe or two like this in their repertoire. It's quick to make, with ingredients I always have in my cupboard. Creamy, cheesy, and delicious, it's just right for those days when you feel terrible and need a quick, comforting casserole dinner. Plus, it has fish! Everyone knows we're supposed to eat fish once a week. Done!

It's also marvelously forgiving; you can increase or decrease the amounts to your pleasure (or to suit what you have in the fridge and pantry). In fact, mom never measures when she makes this. Neither do I.

Ingredients:
1 lb pasta, cooked just to al dente and drained. Rotini, macaroni, farfalle, and shells all work well.
1.5-2 10.5 oz cans cream of chicken soup
1 12 oz can of tuna packed in water, drained
1-2 cups shredded cheddar cheese + extra for sprinkling on top
Pepper to taste
1/3 cup milk
Crispy fried onions (like French's brand)

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, combine cooked pasta, cream of chicken soup, tuna, and cheese to taste. Pepper to taste (you can add salt, too, but honestly, there's already a lot of salt in the tuna, soup, and onions, amiright? I leave it as is, but feel free to add some if you're inclined!) Add milk and stir until desired texture (about 1/3 cup.) Pour into a casserole dish or 9x13 pan. Sprinkle with cheese and onions. Bake for 30-35 minutes until bubbly.

DIY Magnet Board

Delys and I are in the process of re-decorating a bedroom for her daughter, and one of the things that it lacked was a place to display favorite photographs and art projects. So I took a large, framed print that hung over her bed, removed the backing, took out the print, and threw away the glass. I carefully worked around the screw eyes and wire that we used to hang the picture so that we could use them again. (I wish I had taken a photograph of the original framed picture, but I thought about it too late.) With the same chalk paint that I bought to refinish her dresser (link), I painted the frame with two coats of paint, allowing the paint to dry thoroughly between coats, and then applied a thin coat of wax.

Then I made a quick trip to Lowes and purchased a 24 x 36" sheet of metal that I had seen in the plumbing department on a previous visit. (It cost $9.99.) Our frame is 24 x 30, so I used the print as pattern, drew on the metal with a sharpie, and then cut it to size with tin snips.

I smeared a liberal amount of E6000 glue on the back of the metal, making sure that the glue was close to all the corners and edges, and then glued it to the cardboard that had been the backing for the original print. I piled big books on the metal hoping that the weight would help everything adhere better.

After the glue was dry, I put the metal in the frame and secured it with glazing points.

And here you go!

Country Cinnamon Swirl Bread

I can't remember where I first discovered this recipe. I'm pretty sure it was during the baking frenzy of my high school days. (Remember the Barbie Cakes, anyone?) The point is, this recipe has been a staple in my repertoire for over a decade, because it's just that good and wonderfully simple to make. The secret ingredient? Buttermilk. Buttermilk makes everything it touches better, you know? Pancakes, biscuits, syrup, and bread.... mmm...

So without further ado:

Ingredients:

1/4 cup butter at room temperature

1 1/3 cups sugar, divided

1 egg

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk

1 TB cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, beat butter, 1 cup sugar, and the egg until blended. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk to the large bowl and stir until just combined. In a small bowl, combine the remaining 1/3 cup sugar and cinnamon.

Grease a 8x4x2 inch loaf pan and add 1/3rd of the batter to the bottom, smoothing it out to form the bottom layer. Sprinkle 1/3rd of the cinnamon sugar mixture on top of the batter in the pan. Repeat the layers twice. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.

Preschool Alphabet Lesson Plan: The Letter "U"

We recently studied the letter "U" in our preschool lesson and if I do say so myself, we did a mighty fine job of it.

Here are some of the things we did that worked really well:

• Talked about the letter "U" and made this craft with lots of "U" words: the big U is an underground tunnel, an up arrow, umbrella (the little "u" is the handle of the umbrella), unicorn, Uranus. While we worked on the craft, we listened to ukelele music.

• Read What a Treasure by Jane and Will Hillenbrand about a mole who digs underground and finds some seemingly ordinary objects that are treasures to the animals around him. As the mole found the underground objects (like a twig and shell and acorn), the kids drew them on their papers.

• We then pretended that we were at a University and each child picked a profession to pursue. One child wanted to be a doctor. Another chose to be a dancer. Each child had a notebook they used to draw pictures of or glue in odds and ends associated with the mini classes we did. For geography, we learned about the United States of America. For Astronomy, we talked about the planet Uranus. For Music, we taught each other our favorite dance moves and danced to "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. (See how I tied in all the "U" words. Good times.)

In the end, we had a graduation ceremony and each student received a diploma. They got to dress up in the uniforms (yes, another "U" word) associated with their professions and they played the rest of the time. I sure love my little doctors and dancers.

Bonus: Here is a fun letter 'U' video the kids enjoyed: