I can bring home the bacon...

I feel like Supermom today. In the morning we went shopping with the stroller. Then, while Nutmeg was eating lunch, I got a call that a network news crew was coming to my house to interview me. I put her down for her nap and spent half an hour feverishly tidying up, putting in contacts and throwing on some presentable clothes. There wasn't time to do much about my hideous hair. Oh well, they spent a lot of time shooting the documents my story was based on, so maybe they won't even show my head. The segment is supposed to air Wed. night. If you want to know what nework, you'll have to email me.

By the time Nutmeg woke from her two-hour nap, the crew had come in, set up lights, camera and sound, did an interview complete with redos for 3 camera angles, and split. The baby had no idea there had even been anyone here. I'm living a secret double life! I have no idea what would have happened had Nutmeg woken up.

Then Nutmeg and I made our best batch of carrot muffins ever. We've been fiddling with a recipe I found online (attributed to Gourmet) for months, and here is the perfect healthy version:

2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup honey (or possibly less)
2 cups shredded carrots
1/2 cup raisins
3 eggs
3/4 cups corn oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 granny smith apple, shredded

preheat oven for 350. put flour, soda, cinnamon and salt in bowl. stir. add carrots and raisins and toss. in another bowl, mix eggs, honey, oil and vanilla. add apple. combine wet and dry. bake in muffin tin for 20 minutes.

We made playdough!

We used a recipe from "The Toddler's Busy Book," which I got for Christmas. An plus to making your own play-dough is that making it is actually a fun activity for the toddler. A minus is the large mess left in our kitchen afterward, but then, what's another mess in this house? It actually wasn't that hard to sweep up a bunch of flour.

Compared to commercial play-do, this batch is not quite as stiff. So when I made a little dog or something, then tried to move it to the other side of the table, it often fell apart. It also seems a bit messier than commercial play-dough, leaving more little crumbs or smudges on the table when you're done. They wiped right off with a damp cloth, though. It does smell better than commercial play-dough. I know it's supposed to be cheaper to make your own, but I have no idea what the price comparison is. On Amazon, you can buy 20 oz. of different-colored PlayDoh for $6. We probably made about 20 ounces of one color, I guess.

The marbled color you see is because Nutmeg wanted to add orange food coloring after the dough was already cooked. Sadly, after I played with the dough with another 2-year-old while babysitting last night, the orange blended in and the whole thing became an olive drab color.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup water
1 tbs. vegetable oil
1/2 cup salt
1 tbs. cream of tartar
food coloring
1 cup flour (i ended up using at least twice this much)

Combine water, oil, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring in a saucepan and heat until warm. Remove from heat and add flour. Stir, then knead until smooth. The cream of tartar makes this dough last 6 months or longer, so resist the temptation to omit this ingredient if you don't have it on hand. Store this dough in an airtight container or a Ziploc freezer bag.

(recipe is copyrighted by Trish Kuffner)

Next time we'll try a different kind. The book has oatmeal playdought, uncooked playdough, peanut butter playdough, salt playdough, kool-aid playdough, as well as a bunch of kinds of clay.