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Thursday, 13 August 2009
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Update of sorts
I was on facebook talking about the car cookies and so had to repost my 2 year old blog entry about when I did them. But to kind of give everyone over here an update..well, nothing new is happening. The kids are getting bigger and older and I'm getting older and ..well...I'm getting older.
So, here are some pictures from the last month or so...
Caroline posing nicely...she's almost 8!!!!
Matthew likes to suck on his toes...He'll be 3 in Dec. This will be a great picture to pull out when he brings a girl to visit. :o)
Out watching trains. So, what do you do while waiting for a train? play with the bicycle stand.
More naked Matthew. Yes, he really enjoys naked time. (and no, we are not ALL naked, just him-usually after a bath) He saw this picture on the computer and he said "I want more pictures of Matthew naked."
Caroline, pouting. She's almost 8 going on 14...
So that's a quickie update for now..I'll try and get back over here, but if your on facebook..we'll that's where I am most of the time... -
3:00The cookies are in the "oven". They went in at 3:00 exactly at 163 degrees farenheit. I didn't take the temp of the dough (if this were a true experiment I would have becasue I'm sure that makes a difference) but thinking about that, I opted for cookie mix so the ingredients were all room temp except the one egg. The cookie tray is aluminum and I used aluminum foil which was 73 degrees farenheit before going out into the car and the probe registered the tray at 122 after about 5 seconds in the car.
So, thus far, what does it tell us? 1. It's HOT outside! 2. It's even HOTTER inside the car! 3. Sometimes I can be a real geek when it comes to science.
I was thinking about putting a tray in hubby's car. My car is white with a light grey interior. Hubby's car is black with a black interior.
I'm planning on checking the cookies at 3:30. I'll post pictures after the entire experiment is done. I did buy two packages of cookies. Caroline is SO excited about cooking them in the car, but moreso because she gets to have cookies! So I bought an extra package in case these don't work.3:304:30"oven" temp says 165, but then hubby tells me that would not be accurate becasue I placed the probe ON the tray and should have placed it so it hung in the air so I could tell what the temp was in the air of the "oven". So I moved it to hang from the rearview mirror. The temp did fall, but only to 158 and then rose quickly to 160 after I got out of the car and shut the door. The smell however is DIVINE!!!..I got the choloate peanut butter chip kind (didn't contain milk and didn't call for added milk or butter-just oil, egg, and water). So, the next check will be at 4:00-the sun is directly shining into the windshield.4:00Cookies didn't look done yet, but they had spread out and looked slightly melted. "oven" temp had gone down quite a bit to 145.
Okay, little one is sooooo anxious for the cookies that I have decided to pull them now. She's on the verge of tears thinking that I'm not going to let her have any of them. After all, an hour and a half is alifetime, expecially for cookies. So, the "oven" temp still holding at 145. Cookies looked slightly drier on top/ Get them inside and the pan was HOT. The cookies too sfot to do anything with yet, so they cool for a little bit. Finally, I was able to remove one and well, not quite done. So I heat up the real oven and bake for 10 minutes at 400 and that was all it needed.
At this time, we put in batch two, this time on a dark cookie sheet. Since we had some cookies now to tide over little one, these could stay in the "oven" longer. And boy did they.
5:30
Checked on the cookies, "oven" temp up to 150. They have spread out some, but still look wet.
7:30
Okay, I feel asleep and forgot about the cookies. Since my oven probe/timer was being used out at the car, I didn't have a timer in the house to remind me to check up on them. So, when I woke and got dinner, I remembered the cookies. Ran outside and the "oven" temp is down to 105. The light was just starting to fade. The pan was quite got and they looked slightly dry. But like the others, they were still a little too gooey to be called done. So in the real oven for 10 minutes at 400 and voila, perfect cookies.
Conclusion
I think it is possible to actually bake cookies on the dashboard, but the temps have to be right and the amount of time has to be right. I suspect it would take approx 3 hours to bake them properly with quite a bit of cool down time. I also suspect that the outside temp does need to be higher then 90 degrees. Today the temp was right at 91 and the inside car tmp never made it past 160. If I had done the cookies back when we were in the 100 and higher temps, I think it would have worked out great.
But it was fun, and we got 2 dozen cookies out of it with minimal heating of the real kitchen. It gave way to a nice little educational talk with Caroline about heat waves, energy, light, convection, differnces between surface temps and air temps, conduction of heat in metal. Not that she knows all there is to know about these things-she is 4.5 years old, but at least it was an introduction and she did tell Grandmom that the sun's energy baked cookies in the car. So, she understood some.
All in all, not a bad experiment. The next time we have 100 degree weather, I'm going to try again.
I'll post pictures after I get them downloaded from the camera AND fix the pixel size size so Xanga will accept them. There are alot of pictures. -
This is the cookie mix we used.
All nicely laid out on the tray.
3:00
On the dashboard in direct sun.
I was going to try and take pictures of the temp gauge each time, but I couldn't get the camera to focus on it through the window, so I had to get inthe car to take the picture. This was the starting temp, but the door has been open now for about 10ish minutes. It started out reading at 165 (temp of actual dashboard-I had the probe laying on the dash).
3:00
View of cookies from outside.
3:30
Noticable change. The cookies have flattened out some and melted more.
4:00
Slightly more spreading.
4:30
More spreading and the tops were just starting to look a little dry, but we had to pull these early becasue of anxious child.
Batch two in at 4:30
This is on a drk cookie sheet. For some weird reason I forgot totally to take any more pictures after this one, but they progressed the same as the others.
The following pictures are of Caroline after eating about 10 or so of these cookies. I had given her 2 and left the rest on the cookie sheet on top of the stove to cool. I then went and took a nap and well, she went back and forth back and forth. When I came downstairs, half the pan was gone! So, these are pictures of Caroline hopped up on sugar. Oh, she buttoned her shirt herself.
Management regrest that because of eager little hands, there are not enough cookies to be shipped. Maybe next summer I can do a batch per day.
Monday, 18 May 2009
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Oh my achin legs!
okay, so it's been about a year since last I picked up my foil and lunged. I'm happy to say that I didn't forget all of it. Kind of like riding the proverbial bike. I'm rusty and went back to some of my original bad habits, but all in all, not too bad...but by the time i got home..my legs were aching....badly.
Sat on the couch for a little bit--bad idea....my legs were so stiff I was wondering if I would be able to make it upstairs. Cobbled up the stairs..took some ibuprofen...I hope this means I'm just in bad shape and the muscles just need to "re-learn". or does it mean I'm getting too old? I hope not...how old is too old??hmmm
Well, tomorrow is going to be interesting....
Sunday, 17 May 2009
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Birthday bash
Yes, yesterday was my birthday.
Did lunch at a Japanese resturant (if i had remembered to take my camera there would be pictures here).
Then went and saw the new Star Trek Movie (if I had had my camera-pictures would be here). It was FANTASTIC!!!!
Then went bowling with the family and two college friends (had camera-forgot to take pictures which would have been posted here). I'm really bad at bowling..REALLY bad..BUT, for about 3 frames I did really well. 2 strikes and a spare. The rest of the time, I was lucky to get 1 or 2. But what was so funny about those three frames was, that was when M decided to be really fussy, and I had to hold him during my turn. So, I grabbed the ball with one hand, had M in the other hand and threw the ball..and did wonderfully!! After the 2 strikes and spare, I tried holding him again, but he was catching on that I didn't mind holding him while bowling and he decided that he was okay enough to sit and watch while eating his chicken. So, my best score was around 68...stop laughing.
Then went to Best Buy and used a hefty gift card I recieved and got Boom Blocks for the Wii and Twilight the movie.
Came home and played Boom Blocks with C for about 2 or so hours and then watched Twilight 1.5 times.
And that is what I did on the day I turned a year older....
vlntchr
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- Member Since: 8/17/2004
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