Happy Birthday Brittni

I hope your birthday is a good one, purple balloons and all!
(When she left for school today, her car had mysteriously been filled with purple balloons.)

Road Trippin'

I knew the only vacation I could maybe afford this year would be a road trip. The older girls had no interest in a road trip anywhere and Cayla wasn't too interested in any of my suggestions. Then one night lying in her bed with her she told me she didn't want to finish her last chapter of her last Little House book, because then they would be over, and she would really love to go visit Laura's House someday.......and thus was born the idea for our road trip. When I looked up Laura's House I discovered that on the way we would be passing Winter Quarters and Liberty jail, and that Nauvoo was only five hours Northeast. Since I have never been any of those places but have always wanted to go, Cayla and I decided we would go for it. I have also discovered between Laura's and Nauvoo is Hannibal, the birthplace of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and the many landmarks he writes about in Tom Sawyer, so that has become another stop in our travels. The cool thing about Laura's House is that it is the house she and Almanzo lived in and where she wrote all her books. Since she was already famous from her books when she died, the house has been preserved just as she left it, with everything she owned still in it. It is in Mansfield, MO, which has a population of about 1900, and thus not much in the way of lodging. I did, however, discover a place where you can rent little cabins, which are right in view of Laura's house, and when I called, I discovered the owners are from Utah, and their children all still live here. It is a small world.

We are going to be on the road a lot, more driving then I have done in a while, but I can't wait to just get away. We can hook up the Nintendo in the car and Cayla can play video games and watch movies along the way.

I'm thinking for Father's day there will probably be some GPS sales going on and I might grab one if I can find a good deal. If anyone has any experience with any brands of those, good or bad, I could use some advice. I was playing with some in Target yesterday and found the Tomtom brand the most user friendly and am leaning that way, after also looking up some reviews on the internet. We are leaving the Saturday after Father's day, so hopefully the sales will start early.

Math Bee Results

Cayla did really well today. She made it further than she has before. On the round she went out on, so did everyone else except for 4 kids, two from 5th grade and two from 6th grade. I've always left after she got out so I've never heard what kinds of problems they are given in the later rounds. Gee whiz, are these kids good. I could get some of them, but most of the time, I gave up halfway through. When they string 6 or 7 problems together with double digits and random adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, it is way too taxing for my old brain.

My Little Math Whiz

It is Mental Math Bee time at school and for the 3rd year in a row Cayla has qualified to participate on the school level. They only take the top 4 from each grade, 3rd through 6th grade. There is nothing that makes me more nervous than watching her in the mental math bee. I can handle watching my kids do anything else with only mild nerves, but the math bee sends me into total anxiety. The big event is Friday and I will post how she does then.

Well, wouldn't ya know....

............the kids at school liked the jerky better than the ginger cakes. They were begging Cayla for more jerky the rest of the day, and not one asked for another ginger cake.

And with that done, no more school projects for this school year. Yippee!

Jerky...maybe...maybe not.

Since there isn't much going on at our house, I just thought I would post about our latest adventure/misadventure.

Cayla is studying the Civil War at school and had to do a report with a project, so she chose Civil War food and we decided to make some beef jerky (portable and easy to store) and ginger cakes (given to the injured by nurses as a comfort food).

Now, we could have just bought jerky at the store as kids have in years past (Cayla learned from the teacher after announcing our plans), but I thought it needed to be more "authentic." I got recipes and instructions off the internet, purchased a 5 pound roast (not something I feel I can generally afford to feed to my family), and 5 or 6 bottles of various ingredients that use the entire bottle. We sliced beef, mixed marinade, and put it all in the fridge to marinate for a couple of days.

Saturday was the much anticipated day of jerky drying. We bought extra cooling racks that stack so we could dry as much jerky as possible. Now, on the internet if you look up methods for drying in an electric oven you will find umpteen hundred different combinations from 200 degrees for 2 hours to 165 degrees for 6-7 hours. The one from the recipe we used also said the jerky, when done, should not be able to bend, but should be able to be pulled apart easily, though not snap. So, I went with 200 degrees and decided to cook it until this "test of doneness" was reached. After 2 hours, I tried a piece. It tasted yummy but could still be bent. At 3 hours, still bendable...4 hours still bendable....5 hours no longer bendable but more resembling charcoal than beef jerky. In retrosepct I wished I had pulled it out after 2 hours, but then you also have to worry about it being cooked enough that no one will get food poisening from it.

Fortunately, we couldn't do all our meat at once so we had hopes of more success with the second batch and decided that 3 hours would probably be perfect. After 3 hours, it was still bendable, still slightly damp with marinade, but looking very much like charcoal so we pulled it out. It seemed rather overdone despite the fact it still had damp marinade on it and at this point we didn't know if we had anything worthy of sending to school; however, the second batch was more promising. We decided to put a piece of bread (I read this could soften it up) with it in a bag and see what happened by Sunday night. By Sunday night, although still slightly sticky, it was much more palatable, quite good even, if you got a good piece, so we decided to send it to school and let the kids decide if they want to try it or not.

Jerky is definitely something you would have to perfect over time, getting the thickness of the slices just right, the temperature, and the drying time. However, with the cost involved, I don't think it's really practical. It is definitely not something I would ever suggest doing as a one-time project.

On a brighter note, the ginger cakes turned out scrumptious.