Hello sailing fans! With Chloe’s birthday party the day after her actual birthday due to scheduling, I borrowed a Force 5 from a friend I took her sailing for her first time on her 13th birthday!
Here I am taking the boat out for a shake-down cruise.
The Willamette Sailing Club was out in force.
Here she is, the birthday girl!
Out on the water.
That’s it for photos as I declined to risk my phone going in the drink. Perhaps more next time!
Live action! I didn’t want to drop my phone in the lake, so there’s no photographic evidence of us out in the middle of the big lake. Yes, Chloe had her life preserver on for that.
So our latest adventure started with a STEM kit from the Multnomah County Libraries. We used the kit and instructions to turn a lemon into a battery that can light up an LED! How cool is that?
It’s good to have a couple clues about how electricity works. Turning a lemon into a battery is not terribly practical, but is fun to do as an experiment. So, what’s next?
Chloe wanted to make baked potatoes, so I paired that with lamb shoulder chops and the process of cooking was so simple I didn’t get any photos of it, but…
As you can see, we dug into some fine eats, even though we made some mistakes aka “learning opportunities” along the way.
What happens when you eat your lamb with your fingers?
I had the stove turned up too high at first, which created a lot of smoke we had to vent with open windows, so the kid got cold!
Most every year I vow to make fastnachts (a Pennsylvania Dutch treat), then it ends up not happening. This year with Chloe being interested in cooking, I promised we’d make them. Due to scheduling issues, we missed the traditional date. Oh well, we don’t observe Lent anyway. Here’s the recipe we used. (Here’s a PDF you can download)
The biggest difference between a fastnacht and the donuts you’re familiar with is fastnachts are made with potatoes, giving them a different texture and flavor. Here’s Chloe making a funny face while working on the tater.
That’s Day One. Once the dough is mixed, it sits overnight to let the yeast go to work.
Day Two: We split the dough across two bowls, and it rose to the top of each! Here’s Chloe digging in. We think we left the dough a bit too sticky, next time we’ll add more flour.
Chloe shows us how it’s done.
Time to fry!
And they came out good! Pretty much like I remember. Since you can’t get Turkey Syrup off the shelf in Portland, here I’m using regular molasses. The basic idea is you slice them like a bagel and put something sweet on the yummy thing. Honey works, even maple syrup.
We got about 30 fastnachts out of this batch. We put powdered sugar on some. Chloe’s going a step further by bringing them to share with her class at school. I’m sending her off with a couple printouts of PA Dutch Hex signs and a few factoids about the Pennsylvania side of her family. I just got her after-action report. The fastnachts were well received, no leftovers!
