Lately, I have been focusing on some basic cooking with Q. I posted about Q and her little sister KD in a recent post on my food blog on making Challah. We also did the whole homemade strawberry jam making post (with upcoming blueberry post). We have gotten a lot of good feedback from these series so I am continuing to shoot our basic skills work.

Today is a series of rather static non-action shots of how to make butter. I was testing a new light set up and it was geared more toward product photography than editorial type of shots.

We started with organic sweet jersey cream. Its really worth the money to go with this more expensive product because you get a wholesome, flavorful, and colorful butter in the end.

Why does it matter if the animals pastured on greens instead of cereals from a bag?

The chlorophyls and other colored plant constituents (phytochemicals like beta carotenes) are partially carried over into the milk and thus cream. Commercially produced milk from huge dairies does not have these phytochemicals and thus butter made from this sort of milk must have food coloring added. The breed of dairy cow also determines butter color, Jersey (which we used here), tends to have a more yellow butter color.

Wikipedia entry for butter

Back to “The Making of Butter” (Imagine a majestic announcer voice like from Monty Python)

Ingredients:

COLD Heavy Cream

(try not to get the homogenized type, the fat droplets have been hyperfractured and may be a bit more difficult to coalesce into butter)

Salt, to taste (at the end, do not add to the cream)

Hardware:

A large plastic soda bottle that has been thoroughly washed

(If you need to, rinse with alcohol or a light chlorine solution and then rinse with water – A LOT. I figured the carbonic acid in the soda (VERY LOW pH) would have kept anything nasty from growing in the seltzer bottle I used)

One COLD clean glass marble

COLD stainless steel bowl

COLD stainless steel or plastic fine sieve

COLD spatula

Xacto knife

Directions:

Make certain that your bowl and sieve are washed and in the fridge cooling.

Assemble your cream whipping supplies: cream, soda bottle, and marble.

Put the marble and cream inside of the soda bottle.

Now I handed the bottle to Q and had her shake the bottle. First it will be what you expect, sloshing cream and a marble rattling about.

Then the solution changes as the fat droplets begin to come out of solution and the marble rattling sound goes away (must be coated with fat). This may happen quickly (like in 5 minutes for us) or longer (perhaps 15 minutes, depends on the size of you container. The bigger container with more shake room the faster the process is.)

Continue shaking until the sound of the rattling marble comes back. Now the fat has come together in a nice big ball in the soda bottle and you are done with shaking. This might be quick or take 15 – 30 minutes. If its taking a while put the bottle in the fridge to chill after about 20 minutes, you do not want the fat to melt.

Once done, have the child rest, maybe some juice would help. Q did her shaking quite vigorously so she needed liquids, hugs, and some time out from the whole butter thing. That was ok, the butter needed to rest in the fridge.

Put the bottle in the refrigerator so that it can get a nice chill back.

Have your bowl and sieve ready.

Pour buttermilk out the top of the bottle and then cut it open around the middle. (Dont let you child do this, blood is not a recommended ingredient in butter) Let the ball of butter drop into the sieve and use a cold spatula to scrape down butter on the walls of the bottle.

Save the buttermilk for other uses.

Rinse out the bowl with cold water and then put the butter in the bowl.

Massage the butter with the spatula by pushing it against the side of the bowl repeatedly. You will see more buttermilk come out of the butter, rise with cold water.

Continue until no buttermilk comes out. (The buttermilk, if left in, will make the butter go rancid).

Add some salt and mix in. You will want to do this until a taste test tells you it is salty enough for you.

Store the butter in a container that excludes air (oxygen will form free radicals with the fat – goes rancid).

Enjoy on some fresh bread!

(This is actually a shot with store bought butter but I could not resist )

Technorati taggage:
butter, homemade, handcraft, food, culinary, cooking, handcrafted, fat, lipid, phytochemical, chrlorophyl, bread, cream, jersey, organic, heavy cream, cold.

Lately, I have been focusing on some basic cooking with Q. I posted about Q and her little sister KD in a recent post on my food blog on making Challah. We also did the whole homemade strawberry jam making post (with upcoming blueberry post). We have gotten a lot of good feedback from these series so I am continuing to shoot our basic skills work.

Today is a series of rather static non-action shots of how to make butter. I was testing a new light set up and it was geared more toward product photography than editorial type of shots.

We started with organic sweet jersey cream. Its really worth the money to go with this more expensive product because you get a wholesome, flavorful, and colorful butter in the end.

Why does it matter if the animals pastured on greens instead of cereals from a bag?

The chlorophyls and other colored plant constituents (phytochemicals like beta carotenes) are partially carried over into the milk and thus cream. Commercially produced milk from huge dairies does not have these phytochemicals and thus butter made from this sort of milk must have food coloring added. The breed of dairy cow also determines butter color, Jersey (which we used here), tends to have a more yellow butter color.

Wikipedia entry for butter

Back to “The Making of Butter” (Imagine a majestic announcer voice like from Monty Python)

Ingredients:

COLD Heavy Cream

(try not to get the homogenized type, the fat droplets have been hyperfractured and may be a bit more difficult to coalesce into butter)

Salt, to taste (at the end, do not add to the cream)

Hardware:

A large plastic soda bottle that has been thoroughly washed

(If you need to, rinse with alcohol or a light chlorine solution and then rinse with water – A LOT. I figured the carbonic acid in the soda (VERY LOW pH) would have kept anything nasty from growing in the seltzer bottle I used)

One COLD clean glass marble

COLD stainless steel bowl

COLD stainless steel or plastic fine sieve

COLD spatula

Xacto knife

Directions:

Make certain that your bowl and sieve are washed and in the fridge cooling.

Assemble your cream whipping supplies: cream, soda bottle, and marble.

Put the marble and cream inside of the soda bottle.

Now I handed the bottle to Q and had her shake the bottle. First it will be what you expect, sloshing cream and a marble rattling about.

Then the solution changes as the fat droplets begin to come out of solution and the marble rattling sound goes away (must be coated with fat). This may happen quickly (like in 5 minutes for us) or longer (perhaps 15 minutes, depends on the size of you container. The bigger container with more shake room the faster the process is.)

Continue shaking until the sound of the rattling marble comes back. Now the fat has come together in a nice big ball in the soda bottle and you are done with shaking. This might be quick or take 15 – 30 minutes. If its taking a while put the bottle in the fridge to chill after about 20 minutes, you do not want the fat to melt.

Once done, have the child rest, maybe some juice would help. Q did her shaking quite vigorously so she needed liquids, hugs, and some time out from the whole butter thing. That was ok, the butter needed to rest in the fridge.

Put the bottle in the refrigerator so that it can get a nice chill back.

Have your bowl and sieve ready.

Pour buttermilk out the top of the bottle and then cut it open around the middle. (Dont let you child do this, blood is not a recommended ingredient in butter) Let the ball of butter drop into the sieve and use a cold spatula to scrape down butter on the walls of the bottle.

Save the buttermilk for other uses.

Rinse out the bowl with cold water and then put the butter in the bowl.

Massage the butter with the spatula by pushing it against the side of the bowl repeatedly. You will see more buttermilk come out of the butter, rise with cold water.

Continue until no buttermilk comes out. (The buttermilk, if left in, will make the butter go rancid).

Add some salt and mix in. You will want to do this until a taste test tells you it is salty enough for you.

Store the butter in a container that excludes air (oxygen will form free radicals with the fat – goes rancid).

Enjoy on some fresh bread!

(This is actually a shot with store bought butter but I could not resist )

Technorati taggage:
butter, homemade, handcraft, food, culinary, cooking, handcrafted, fat, lipid, phytochemical, chrlorophyl, bread, cream, jersey, organic, heavy cream, cold.

Q disappeared into her room yesterday and things were very quiet for a while. Such quiet is a nice change and if she were still an only child I would have checked to see what was happening up there. But she is not the only kid anymore and so she was left to her quiet devices! Just about every time this happens she comes back downstairs with some marvelous thing that she put together. Today I share what she brought us: an exploration in geometrical space.

We are calling it a skewed cube. We were thinking it might be called by some other more difficult to pronounced word like a trapezoidehedron or, who knows, a multidimensional transinfinite cube from some other reality. *winks*

To learn more about cubes and for patterns of interesting ones visit this Wolfram MathWorld page on cubes.

You could also use this Wolfram MathWorld polygon online classroom to explore this shape.

Mostly, this skewed cube was a chance for Q to use her hands to create a shape and the space around the shape and understand the restrictions necessary to form a particular shape. What I mean by that is that she had to adjust the sides and add various additional supports (extra cross bars and the purple clay) to stabilize the shape.

She could also see that some sides, due to the length of side members (sticks) would simply never form a flat face.

We could have talked about this but her doing it in a tactile way teaches lessons that even adults may not be able to articulate.

I remember as a small child holding and rotating a puzzle piece for a long time (maybe 30 minutes, that’s a long time for a 5 year old) and intuiting chirality.

From the Wikipedia Chirality page:

“Chirality (Greek handedness, derived from the word stem χειρ~, ch[e]ir~ – hand~) is an asymmetry property important in several branches of science. An object or a system is called chiral if it differs from its mirror image. Such objects then come in two forms, which are mirror images of each other, and these pairs of mirror image objects are called enantiomorphs (Greek opposite forms) or, when referring to molecules, enantiomers. A non-chiral object is called achiral (sometimes also amphichiral).”

From the Wikipedia Chemistry Chirality page:

“A molecule is chiral when it cannot be superimposed on its mirror image (see diagram) with the two mirror image forms referred to as enantiomers. A mixture of equal amounts of the two enantiomers is said to be a racemic mixture. Chirality is of interest because of its application to stereochemistry in inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry and biochemistry. The study of chirality falls in the domain of stereochemistry.”

Puzzle pieces are lovely little lessons in chirality because you are forced to deal with chirality as you assemble the puzzle. I did not get a name for the handedness of shapes until undergrad organic chemistry when I learned about the chirality of molecules and how very important the orientation of shapes are to the molecular interplay between various species of reactants. This is especially true in biochemistry. An example is invert sugar. Some inverted sugars are not usable (metabolized) by the body because the chirality of the sugar doesn’t fit into the enzymes that make the sugar useful to the body.

As I sat in that organic chemistry class I had no problem with understanding chirality because I sat and marveled over a puzzle piece as a tiny child.

Teachable moments wash over our children constantly. Without the chaos and cacophony of an over-crowded class room, my child was able to explore geometry in a way that is likely deeply integrated into her understanding of the world.

Q disappeared into her room yesterday and things were very quiet for a while. Such quiet is a nice change and if she were still an only child I would have checked to see what was happening up there. But she is not the only kid anymore and so she was left to her quiet devices! Just about every time this happens she comes back downstairs with some marvelous thing that she put together. Today I share what she brought us: an exploration in geometrical space.

We are calling it a skewed cube. We were thinking it might be called by some other more difficult to pronounced word like a trapezoidehedron or, who knows, a multidimensional transinfinite cube from some other reality. *winks*

To learn more about cubes and for patterns of interesting ones visit this Wolfram MathWorld page on cubes.

You could also use this Wolfram MathWorld polygon online classroom to explore this shape.

Mostly, this skewed cube was a chance for Q to use her hands to create a shape and the space around the shape and understand the restrictions necessary to form a particular shape. What I mean by that is that she had to adjust the sides and add various additional supports (extra cross bars and the purple clay) to stabilize the shape.

She could also see that some sides, due to the length of side members (sticks) would simply never form a flat face.

We could have talked about this but her doing it in a tactile way teaches lessons that even adults may not be able to articulate.

I remember as a small child holding and rotating a puzzle piece for a long time (maybe 30 minutes, that’s a long time for a 5 year old) and intuiting chirality.

From the Wikipedia Chirality page:

“Chirality (Greek handedness, derived from the word stem χειρ~, ch[e]ir~ – hand~) is an asymmetry property important in several branches of science. An object or a system is called chiral if it differs from its mirror image. Such objects then come in two forms, which are mirror images of each other, and these pairs of mirror image objects are called enantiomorphs (Greek opposite forms) or, when referring to molecules, enantiomers. A non-chiral object is called achiral (sometimes also amphichiral).”

From the Wikipedia Chemistry Chirality page:

“A molecule is chiral when it cannot be superimposed on its mirror image (see diagram) with the two mirror image forms referred to as enantiomers. A mixture of equal amounts of the two enantiomers is said to be a racemic mixture. Chirality is of interest because of its application to stereochemistry in inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry and biochemistry. The study of chirality falls in the domain of stereochemistry.”

Puzzle pieces are lovely little lessons in chirality because you are forced to deal with chirality as you assemble the puzzle. I did not get a name for the handedness of shapes until undergrad organic chemistry when I learned about the chirality of molecules and how very important the orientation of shapes are to the molecular interplay between various species of reactants. This is especially true in biochemistry. An example is invert sugar. Some inverted sugars are not usable (metabolized) by the body because the chirality of the sugar doesn’t fit into the enzymes that make the sugar useful to the body.

As I sat in that organic chemistry class I had no problem with understanding chirality because I sat and marveled over a puzzle piece as a tiny child.

Teachable moments wash over our children constantly. Without the chaos and cacophony of an over-crowded class room, my child was able to explore geometry in a way that is likely deeply integrated into her understanding of the world.

Today we have the inaugural edition of Q’s homeschool podcast! Click the icon below and check it out!

In this podcast, she mentions the various links listed below.

Latin-English dictionary

www.neopets.com

Computer project blog entry

Computer Project Flickr slideshow

Music Credits: The music that was used in today’s podcast came from the DJ Fuss album “f.u.s.s. about broken glass” and particularly the single “Newspaper” (artist said: New single with great russian lyrics and unusual music). The download site is at this link.

Thanks for visiting and listening! Do drop a note in the comments to let us know what you think.

Today we have the inaugural edition of Q’s homeschool podcast! Click the icon below and check it out!

In this podcast, she mentions the various links listed below.

Latin-English dictionary

www.neopets.com

Computer project blog entry

Computer Project Flickr slideshow

Music Credits: The music that was used in today’s podcast came from the DJ Fuss album “f.u.s.s. about broken glass” and particularly the single “Newspaper” (artist said: New single with great russian lyrics and unusual music). The download site is at this link.

Thanks for visiting and listening! Do drop a note in the comments to let us know what you think.

I HATE the loud noises of CPUs, especially when they are in our living room. After YEARS of asking for a change, the husband and Q set to work on moving the CPUs into the basement.

They cleaned out part of the basement (major bonus!) and then set up some shelves. The CPUs were moved down along with the router.

They drilled a hole between the office area upstairs and the basement area downstairs. Extension cabling was threaded down and connected to a USB and hotwire combo hub for management of data input from the upstairs office area.

Here is a shot of the router and cable modem

Here is a shot of the upstairs office area, free of CPUs

Here are two shots of the hub

Back end

We are ready now for the arrival of KD’s desk and we will be setting her up with her own newly constructed CPU (with Q’s help) and a wall mounted flat screen display. Cant wait! She is ready for her computer lessons, will be starting her on Gcompris.

Gcompris is an interesting and free early education software program created by the French Government.

Their site says:

GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.

- computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, …
- algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image, …
- science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, electric simulation …
- geography: place the country on the map
- games: chess, memory, connect 4, oware, sudoku …
- reading: reading practice
- other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing, …

Currently GCompris offers in excess of 80 activities and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, that means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it and, most importantly, share it with children everywhere.

I will share pics of that set up when we have it set up!

A sneak preview of the desk we got, to which the keyboard and mouse will be tethered.

I HATE the loud noises of CPUs, especially when they are in our living room. After YEARS of asking for a change, the husband and Q set to work on moving the CPUs into the basement.

They cleaned out part of the basement (major bonus!) and then set up some shelves. The CPUs were moved down along with the router.

They drilled a hole between the office area upstairs and the basement area downstairs. Extension cabling was threaded down and connected to a USB and hotwire combo hub for management of data input from the upstairs office area.

Here is a shot of the router and cable modem

Here is a shot of the upstairs office area, free of CPUs

Here are two shots of the hub

Back end

We are ready now for the arrival of KD’s desk and we will be setting her up with her own newly constructed CPU (with Q’s help) and a wall mounted flat screen display. Cant wait! She is ready for her computer lessons, will be starting her on Gcompris.

Gcompris is an interesting and free early education software program created by the French Government.

Their site says:

GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.

- computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, …
- algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image, …
- science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, electric simulation …
- geography: place the country on the map
- games: chess, memory, connect 4, oware, sudoku …
- reading: reading practice
- other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing, …

Currently GCompris offers in excess of 80 activities and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, that means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it and, most importantly, share it with children everywhere.

I will share pics of that set up when we have it set up!

A sneak preview of the desk we got, to which the keyboard and mouse will be tethered.