Photo Friday #44

PURPLE PUPPET GOES TO MOROCCO  |  TRAVELS WITH KID

Here's Purple Puppet (yup, that's his name) on day 1 of our 28 day trip to Morocco. We are waiting for the subway to our hometown airport. Look at him. Exhausted already.

After a good night's sleep, and a little breakfast in Casablanca, he's feeling much better.

His favourite parts of travelling with Spud? Keeping him company on trains, planes and buses. Sometimes he even got to go out and see the sites.

But most of the time he was found keeping guard of our luggage. And he never complained.

Well. Almost never. Sometimes he just had a little freakout.

You would expect no less from such a wildly furry, purple creature, really.

Check out other posts about our travels in Morocco.

Thanks to Delicious Baby for hosting Photo Friday each week. Share your travel pics there too or check out some other travel posts from some very talented, travel-savvy participants.

Makes Me Happy: Percolating Camping Coffee

Find Your Own Treasures Hunt

OUTDOOR / CAMPING ACTIVITY TO DO WITH THE KIDS

Before setting off on our last camping trip we made up a list of things for Spud to find while we wandered around the beach and on the trails. We tried to keep a lot of the items listed open to (his) interpretation. He often asked for clarification but I would remind him that there was no right answer, that it was up to him to decide if the found item met the criteria. He pretty quickly got used to the idea and came up with his own, adorable, justifications for choosing particular items. So fun, for everyone.

Back at camp he asked me to take a picture of his findings so I asked him to make up a composition for the camera.

Camping Shower

So, everyone should have a super power, right? My Hubs said recently, at our last outdoorsy expedition, that his super power is camping. I couldn't argue with him as I was, at that very moment, having the shower of my life in that blue and green wonder of his shown above on the right. I can't get into all the technical bits of his genius (and I've yet convinced him to make up an instructable) so this ode to our camping shower is more from a very appreciative user's perspective than a "how to".

First you start with the shower floor. The genius part of this is that it fits on the floor of the back of our car, hardly taking up any room at all. (Also note that the shower-super-hero is in between kite boarding bouts here, which explains the unusual outfit ... sort of).

And when you fold up the floor, it encases this ... the magic copper coil that goes into the fire and heats the shower water.

But first, you must put up the shower curtain, which he does so with clever combinations of twine and found sticks.

The fabric is sewn from some of my Vancouver 2010 fabric. He sewed pockets into the bottom of the curtain to hold large stone; this holds the curtain steady. Important: No embarrassing exposures in gusty conditions!

Then there are a lot of magical things that happen that I will never understand mostly because I don't need to.

I can tell you that the pump runs on a battery (I think?) which is also hooked up to a portable solar panel (I believe?). Below is a shot of Hubs testing the temperature. That part is low tech.

And there you have it. Arguably the best outdoor shower in the world. And the best Hubs.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Cherry Chocolate cookies with vanilla ice cream. I love you summer.

(Note: while these were rather large, they are definitely looking WAY more mammoth in this photo! Some kind of optical illusion of greatness).

Team Scavenger Hunt

OUTDOOR / CAMPING ACTIVITIES TO DO WITH THE KIDS

METHOD:

1. Make a whacky list of things for which to hunt! Include things that encourage imaginative thinking.

2. Split up into teams, each armed with the master list and a camera

3. Later, around the campfire, share your findings with the other teams

Tub Fun: N'ice Cubes II

I first posted about this activity 3 years ago and guess what? It's still fun!

First I secretly raided some bits from the bottom of the toy chest that wouldn't be harmed by some water and the freezer (e.g. marble, die, plastic animals). Then I plunked each item in an ice cube tray and added water. I got all rainbow on it this time. Last time I added food colouring which is also an option (but heed my warning on previous post).

One by one Spud excavates treasures and saves animals. Which keeps him busy while soaks. So everyone is happy.

Photo Friday #43

ESSAOUIRA, MOROCCO  |  TRAVELS WITH KID

Essaouira — a seaside, walled, and windy little town that was definite highlight of our recent Moroccan adventure. It's so windy that it's a kite boarding haven. And Hubs took full advantage.

There's Hubs heading to the water with his board under arm and kite in the sky. So brave. Or crazy. We'll discuss this later.

Being from a seaside city ourselves we are very use to the presence of gulls. But Essaouira definitely has more gulls than we've ever seen before. This is our rooftop top patio at our riad.

They really are at every turn.

This might look like one of those situations where the gulls show up, say, when the fishers come in at the end of the day or something — but no — you could take this shot at anytime of day, any day of the week and it will always be fluttering with busy gull activity. Can you believe we spent a week here and did not get pooped on? Seriously. None of us. Not once.

 

So being a seaside town, naturally fish is on the menu. Here are some fishing boats and you can see the old ramparts that surround the city here.

Whatever is freshly grown nearby makes an appearance on carts throughout the medina. Unfortunately, since you can't peel or scrub them, strawberries were on our "no" list of food. A shame.

We definitely ate our share of fish (and of course oranges and dates too) but crepes made an appearance once in awhile — just one of the legacies the French left behind. Merci.

Awww. The boys making a heart. We heart you Essaouira.

Check out other posts about our travels in Morocco.

Thanks to Delicious Baby for hosting Photo Friday each week. Share your travel pics there too or check out some other travel posts from some very talented, travel-savvy participants.

The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook

Look what Spud found in the library: The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook! I think he's hoping to bake something truly magical like chocolate frogs that hop and jump but in the meantime he chose Dark Chocolate Truffles as his first recipe. And they are good. But we really don't need these in our house! I hope I can send these super rich magical blobs of tastiness off with Hubs to his work tomorrow.

Cherry Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

This is an old favourite recipe that probably came from epicurious originally via my dear friend, KR. It's been years since I've made these but Spud's upcoming Grade 1 picnic seemed like a great excuse to bust out this recipe again. Last year I brought veggies to the year-end picnic and I would have again but someone already volunteered ... so ... cookies it was. 

Spud and I worked together as a team and had a communication mishap with the measurements. He's still learning fractions and got confused with what 1/2 was ... I have trouble doubling fractions at the best of times ... long story short, we ended up having to triple the recipe! I know! What do you do with all that cookie dough?!

Put it in the freezer, that's what.

INGREDIENTS
1 C. all purpose flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1/2 C. plus 2 T. unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 C. sugar
1/2 C. brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
1 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. orange extract
1 C. old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 C. semisweet chocolate chips
1 C. dried tart cherries

Preheat to 325° F.

Sift flour, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and brown sugar in large bowl until well blended. Mix in egg and both extracts. Beat in flour mixture. Mix in oats, then chocolate chips and cherries.

Bake until cookies are golden, about 15 to 18 minutes.

Happy Fathers' Day

We know how lucky we are to have you.

Homemade Ketchup

So, according to this source, store bought ketchup has more sugar in it than ice cream. Which is probably why my kid loves it so much. I can't say I've ever even looked at the ingredients list on ketchup; it's probably one of those things you just don't want to know. But this recipe for making your own ketchup in the slow cooker just looked so easy I had to try it. You'll see near the end I added a couple of steps which make it bit more complicated but I think makes it more kid-friendly at the same time.

So, last night I threw these ingredients in the slow cooker and let it simmer all night on low.

INGREDIENTS
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
3 lbs. tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 small can tomato paste
1 C. packed brown sugar
1/2 C. white wine vinegar
1 t. salt
1/4 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. paprika

This is what we woke up to ...

Then I gave it a long whirl in the blender. I wanted to make this as Spud-friendly as possible so I added two more steps next. First I strained the blended mixture through a course strainer to get rid of seeds and bits of skin. I didn't want to use our finest strainer because I was afraid it would make it too runny with not enough ketchup-like texture.

Finally, I simmered it on the stove, without a lid, to thicken it up a bit more, for about 30 minutes.

I left out enough to last us a couple of weeks and put the rest in the freezer.

I'm very happy with the result. The true test will be tonight when we have hot dogs for dinner.

Fathers' Day Card Colouring Sheets

YOU'RE KIND OF A BIG DEAL AROUND HERE, DADDY.

TO THE VERY BEST DADDY IN THE WORLD.

Download the pdf of both these cards here, then print, colour, use red crop marks to trim, and then fold. Oh, and leave a comment if you would ... it'd be nice to hear from you.