Creative-Mommy

Well we started our homeschooling year today. I was awakened at 7:30 by a little girl who was super excited to get started on school- namely she wanted to make caramel apples for a snack. One of my goals this year is to involve my girls more in cooking, to instill that love of cooking and to teach them the lessons that are inherent in food preparation: patience, measuring skills, reading a recipe etc...

Since we are starting our year off with A, the snacks we will be making all feature something that starts with the letter A. Two of these I will post on today are Alligator Swamp Water and Caramel Apples. Caramel apples are not usually a major production, except that the girls and I made our own caramel. The recipe is super-easy and very tasty and unlike other caramel recipes this one uses ingredients that are already in your cupboard. I call it 1 Cup Caramels.

One Cup Caramels
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1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 cup Karo syrup
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
dash salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all ingredients except vanilla in a sturdy saucepan. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally until soft ball stage is reached. On my candy thermometer, to set properly I cook it to 245 degrees F, but the soft ball test, of dropping candy into cold water also is an accurate test. Remove from heat. Add vanilla. If making caramel apples, dip apples in hot caramel. If not, pour caramel into a greased 8x11 or 9x13 pan. Cool completely. I had some large leaf shaped sprinkles from last year and after the apples had sat for a few moments, I let Rachel press leaves onto the caramel for pretty fall apples.


Alligator Swamp Water
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Mint chocolate chip ice cream
2 liter bottle of ginger ale, sprite, 7 up or Dr Pepper
Chocolate ice cream topping

Put 1-2 scoops of ice cream in a clear glass. Add soda until foam reaches the top of the glass. Let sit a moment until the ice cream colors the soda. Top floating ice cream with chocolate syrup. Serve immediately.

We will see how well it works, but we made a home for some worms. Of course, due to the place we live, worms are few and far between. How I miss the days of being able to pop into Wal-Mart for a styrofoam cup of nightcrawlers. By a happy accident, last spring we discovered that the local park is a verital heaven for earthworms. Rather than dig up my backyard, which may or may not have enough worms for our worm home, I took the girls along with a small kids shovel and a cool-whip container to the park. The place we dig for worms is technically in the sandbox, but is where the sandbox meets the dirt. In five minutes and in a hole the size of a piece of notebook paper, they found probably 45 worms.

There was an older gentleman at the park with his granddaughter and his dog. He came over and asked what we were doing. When I explained that I homeschooled and it was for a science project, he got a touch huffy. Then, when his granddaughter asked if she could have a worm, he replied that they had plenty of worms at their house and did not need to take worms from the park. I guess he didn't approve of me letting the girls take park worms. LOL. It's not like they will meet a gruesome end. I plan on letting them go in the beneficial insect garden Rachel, Julia and I planted yesterday.

Anyway, funny park guy aside, what we did is took a 2-liter soda bottle and cut the neck and lid off of it. I ran some tape around the top to keep anyone from getting cut on the sharp plastic. I then filled the container with nice, rich dirt and added the worms. They were looking a little limp from their ride from the park so I popped the whole show in the fridge. We will see. Anyway, you wrap a sheet of black construction paper around the bottle to make it dark and drop a paper bag on top like a lid. In theory, in a day or two I should be able to remove the papers and the girls can see the way worms tunnel. I will let you know how it works.