The Science Chef Makes Popcorn Balls

He's a scientist. He's a chef. He loves to do science experiments and he loves to cook. I decided that I should get him a book that connects science and cooking, so we got a copy of The Science Chef. The first experiment he chose to do was to make popcorn balls.

He says:

I have one major problem with this book. It always says to use margarine instead of"butter" or "margarine or butter". One of the most annoying recipes was for strawberry butter. It said here is a recipe for strawberry butter that doesn't even use butter. It uses margarine! In another place it says, they substitute applesauce for margarine and oil,, but then they use margarine! That is just plain idiotic.

The first recipe I chose to make was popcorn balls. I chose this because I like popcorn balls. You need to use an edible adhesive.

The science behind popcorn popping is this: Popcorn kernels pop, after they've been dried, because of a small droplet of water inside the kernel. It turns into steam and it cracks the hard outer shell with explosive force resulting in fluffy popcorn. This also explains the dud kernels. No matter how much you heat them they just won't pop. This isn't a problem with your popping strategy, but simply that the water droplet has evaporated, and/or because the outer shell has already cracked. You can show this by hitting an un-popped kernel hard with a hammer to crack the shell. Then, if you try to pop that, it won't pop.

The first thing I did was pop 10 cups of popcorn.

Then what I needed to do was melt a half cup of butter (or "margarine")in a pan over medium heat. Once the butter was melted I added 11.5 ounces of marshmallows and turned the heat to low.

Ingredients: popcorn, butter, honey, marshmallows (little sister "helper" optional)

When the marshmallows were melted I added 1/4 cup of honey and waited for it to melt in. After that happened I took it off the heat and let it cool for five minutes. Then I poured this on the popcorn and tossed the popcorn to get it well coated. Next I moistened my hands with water and started forming the balls which I put on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper. Finally, I let them cool in the refrigerator for one hour.

rolling the popcorn balls

The marshmallows were stale the first time and so they didn't melt properly. They ended up turning into a big pile of silly-putty-like goo. So, I threw that away and waited a couple of hours for my mom to take my baby sister (She insists she is not a baby) to soccer practice and on the way home she would pick up some marshmallows (non-stale ones). When she got home I  continued with the recipe and made some popcorn balls. I rolled them up, let them cool, and put them in a bag.

I learned that I should not give any popcorn balls to my baby sister because she only ate half of it and the other half got thrown away. The next day, I told my mom not to let her have one, but she gave it to her any way. There was another one thrown into the trash!

Origami

 Today I have a guest post from my 11 year old son. He is homeschooled and in the 7th grade. He has been working on origami for fun (and I'm counting it as art).

Origami is the art of Japanese paper folding. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of origami. I’ve created birds, mushrooms, dragon, cicadas, tables, and many more things. I learned a lot of these from the website origami-instructions.com. The rest of it I came up with myself.

Butterfly

There are many names for different kinds of folds. A few are the: accordion fold; petal fold; and inverse-reverse fold. These basic folds help you read instructions so that it can just say, “do a petal fold”, instead of saying, “fold side AB to center. Repeat on other side. Fold point E downwards. Crease well. Unfold. Carefully pull point F upwards. Crease extra flaps to center.” Much simpler, right?

Bird Base

There are also many “bases”. These are common positions in origami, given names. These include: The fish base; the boat base; the frog base; and the bird base. It makes it much simpler, so instead of showing all of the folds it can just say, “Start with an origami bird base.”

This is a dragon. It was my hardest fold, and my first attempt at it, so it did not come out perfect, but it still came out okay.

I fold a lot of origami for people including: my sister; kids at Sunday school; and people at the doctor’s office. The kids at Sunday school even want me to give them a lesson! I left birds perched on the doctor’s office counter. Here is me with my perching bird: 

                                           
Origami is a very fun activity to do and learn.

Salmon Run Field Trip!

We just finished a science unit on watersheds. Our stop at Taylor Creek in South Lake Tahoe was a perfect stop to see a watershed first hand, and see all of the Kokanee Salmon. Our timing was perfect as the creek was full of salmon heading upstream to spawn. Much to the boys' delight there were several who had completed their journey and died. I'm pretty sure the dead salmon were even more impressive than the live ones.



It was a beautiful walk through the different parts of the watershed, including lots of aspen groves.



The river was thick with salmon!
We learned all about the life cycle of the salmon, but really it was just fun to look at all of the fish. It was exciting to see them swim through the shallow water and jump up little waterfalls.



Baby was very excited to see all of the fish.



The stream profile chamber lets you get a look under water.

If you are in South Lake Tahoe in the early Fall this is definitely a must see!

Hike to Manuel Peak

We continued our exploration of the Arnold Rim Trail. Our goal on this hike was Falls Overlook. Unfortunately we had a hard time finding our way through the maze of trails. Fortunately we still got in a great hike. We ended up on Manuel Peak.



The view up here is AMAZING! You can see far into the distance in every direction. Here is the view to the west. You can see out to the central valley and even see the Coast Range on a clear day.



When you look to the east you can see the snow covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada range.



Mommy, dog and baby enjoy the view and take a break.



Peanut liked the view. She also liked sitting here and tried to eat some grass.

A springtime hike along the trails and through the trees!

What a beautiful day to get out for a Spring hike! We had a nice trek along the trails and through the trees. All of our little tadpoles love to be outside and are always ready for adventure. Today we took Papa to Cougar Rock for the first time.

The little Peanut loves being outside and is thrilled to ride in the back pack!


A short break near the beginning of the hike.


If there is mud, Scootch will find it, and get covered in it, or in this case, get stuck in it.



Scootch climbs on Cougar Rock.



Curly enjoys the view at the summit.



Mommy and Peanut take a little snack break at the top.




Papa and Peanut enjoy the hike and the view at the top!