School's Cookin'...and on fire?

We do a lot of cooking/baking in this household! With Megan considering being a baker she spends many hours puttering with recipes and creating delightful treats for us to try! Sometimes we like a little something different for snack time and these homemade potato chips are a favorite!

They are SO easy to make:

Potato Chips

Unfortunately after making a few batches of these in our microwave it began to smoke and cause quite a commotion in our house. So with a now malfunctioning microwave, we will not be making these for awhile!

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 potato, sliced paper thin (peel optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste (we like pepper too!)

• Directions

  Pour the vegetable oil into a plastic bag. Add the potato slices, and shake to coat.

  Coat a large dinner plate lightly with oil or cooking spray. Arrange potato slices in a single layer on the dish.

  Cook in the microwave for 3 to 5 minutes, or until lightly browned (if not browned, they will not become crisp). Times will vary depending on the power of your microwave. Remove chips from plate, and toss with salt (or other seasonings). Let cool. Repeat process with the remaining potato slices. You will not need to keep oiling the plate.

  ENJOY!!
  
  

We're working through Story of the World for history this year and the kids are really enjoying it. It's a fairly simplistic study, but it gives them the basics and has some neat projects and activities along the way. We're learning about Ancient People and Times right now and one of the yummy treats we read about was fried plantains. The kids were not too sure how they felt about this and after tasting it, I think "treat" would not be the category they would put this food item in. Even Matthew had that piece of fruit out of his mouth faster than it went in!

They all agreed a regular banana was MUCH better!

Sweet Potato and Chorizo Soup....

I think he liked it :)

Any guess what this is?

Why it's a now smoking, once on fire, vacuum bag of course! Microwave.... vacuum.... I'm seeing a pattern forming! It was all quite innocent, but a great lesson in the process. Megan was busy vacuuming the living room and decided to vacuum around the fireplace (atta girl, doing a bang up job of her service :))... well, she didn't notice that she was in fact vacuuming up red hot coals that had fallen down onto the brick. Joshua comes wandering downstairs claiming to smell something burning. It is then that we notice smoke billowing out of the vacuum! After opening the canister, we see the bag is smoldering and burning. We race the whole vacuum outside, get the bag out and douse it with baking soda and water! Much laughter began. One can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking, those crazy homeschool families and their experiments! A quick peek on the bag outside proved it had again reignited and needed a heap of snow put on it in order to cool it off enough!

Never a dull moment in the Gray's Little Schoolhouse!