Play Clay

Watching the boys play with twelve different colors of Play Doh the other day got me thinking.  What type of hippie parent AM I if I can't manage to make this stuff from scratch? went the thought.  And yes, it was closely followed by both don't eat that! and if you mix all those colors together you're not going to like...oh well. 


I tried to make play clay (or salt dough, or whatever you want to call it - it's not REALLY Play Doh if it doesn't have that smell, you know) once for Trevor when he was about Jake's age.  It didn't go so well - first it was too sticky and then about five minutes later it was too dry and we ended up throwing it out.  But I'm older and wiser now, am I not...?  Plus, it was raining today and there was really nothing else to do.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour.  Yes, that white whole wheat flour that's been sitting in a ziplock bag in the cabinet since you bought it six months ago thinking you could use it for pancakes and your family would never even notice the difference will work just fine, which is a nice bonus to making play clay.
• 2 cups warm water
• 1 cup salt
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil (canola is fine, or whatever you have in the house)
• 1 Tbsp cream of tartar (don't leave it out, otherwise first it'll be too sticky and then about five minutes later it'll be too dry.  Hello, a-ha moment.)
• Some type of colors (more on this in a minute)
• A couple drops of essential oil or tea tree oil (it won't make it smell like Play Doh, but it'll cut the white whole wheat flour smell a bit and make it more interesting.  Plus, both the baby and the dog may be less likely to taste it if it smells like tea tree.  A bite or two won't hurt either of them, but it does apparently have enough salt in it that it can cause the dog some problems if she eats too much of it.)

Easy cleanup with this - you can mix it together right in the pot.  A large saucepan works well - the big bottom surface area makes it get done faster and more evenly.  Mix together the flour, water, salt, oil, and cream of tartar over low heat.  It will look like library paste.  Stir it with a wooden spoon and after a few minutes it will start to clump together.  Keep stirring until it's totally pulled away from the sides of the pot (5-7 minutes or so) and when you press your finger into it, your finger comes away clean.  Take it off the heat and dump it onto a clean counter top.  Split it into two, three, or four balls, depending on how many colors you want.

Jake wanted pink and orange this afternoon.  I had natural colors and paprika and pomegranate juice in the house, so I figured this might be possible.  It wasn't - we ended up with one ball of sort of grayish blueish purple and one ball of sort of goldish mustardy yellow.  Even if you don't ever cook with them, buy a set of conventional colors for the play clay - your toddler will love how bright they are and your 3rd grader won't roll his eyes at his weird hippie mom who's SO uptight about artificial colors that she won't even put them in PLAY DOH, for Pete's sake.  Put a few drops of each color in the middle of each ball and knead it on the counter until it's smooth and the color is distributed evenly.  Add a couple drops of tea tree or other oil, if you like.

This will keep nicely in ziplock bags, but not for a terribly long time.  Which is okay, since half the fun is making the stuff anyway.  And you do have that whole bag of white whole wheat flour to use up...

Chicken Pot Pie

With the somewhat unhappy defeat of Prop 19 in California this week (otherwise known as the Proposition to Legalize Recreational Marijuana Use, or the I'm-Hungry-and-I-Don't-Know-Why Proposition), I figure the time has come to tell the story about the chicken pot pie.

When Trevor was about three years old, one of his favorite people in the world was our friend Tara.  She was over one night and he was cooking her a pretend dinner on the pretend stove in his room.  I was eavesdropping, because listening to a three year old pretend cook is one of the cutest things on the planet.

What are you cooking? she asked.

Chicken pot pie was the immediate response.

Awwww...I thought.  How cute is that?  Not only is he pretend cooking, but he's pretend cooking something I cook!  I listened harder.

What do you put in your chicken pot pie? was the next question from Tara.

Chicken, said Trevor.  There was a short pause.  And pot.


Needless to say, my recipe differs just a bit from his - I use either thyme or rosemary.

There are a lot of things I'm happy to make from scratch - cookies, scones, pancakes.  Spaghetti sauce, chili, soup.  Chicken pot pie is not one of these things.  I cheat unabashedly when making it, and it somehow manages to be delicious anyway.  Even though I made it up, it always somehow reminds me of something you'd find in a Betty Crocker cookbook from 1962, right next to the tip about how you should reapply your lipstick just before your husband gets home because he's had a hard day.

It does require a little advance planning - namely, buying a package of boneless skinless chicken breasts (about a pound and a quarter, but you can easily go a little either way), dumping them in a pot of water and boiling them gently until they start to fall apart (usually about 30-40 minutes).  Sometime during this process you're probably going to have to skim off the foamy stuff and add more water, but otherwise they pretty much cook themselves.  Once they're cooked, pull them out of the water, shred them, and set them aside (in the fridge, unless you're continuing with the recipe right away).

Ingredients:

• Shredded cooked chicken breast (see above)
• Chopped onion, carrot and celery (if you live near a Trader Joe's, this is easier.  Buy a package of mirepoix and it's done for you)
• Butter (How much?  Some.  Half a tablespoon, maybe?)
• Frozen chopped broccoli, thawed.  About half a bag if your family likes broccoli, about a quarter of a bag if they don't (even if they hate it, it's pretty much camouflaged by everything else.  Unless they completely and passionately despise it, in which case, leave it out and use thawed frozen peas instead)
• 3 cans (or a little less - sometimes about two and three quarters will do it) of Campbell's Healthy Request cream of chicken soup (you can use regular Campbell's cream of chicken if you must, but the pie will be too rich to eat as much of it as you'll want to.  And you can use the reduced fat if you REALLY must, but the Healthy Request is pretty low in fat without tasting like melting plastic like the reduced fat does)
• One pre-made pie crust, thawed if frozen.  Trader Joe's makes a great one that's not all full of artificial crap, but a Pillsbury crust will do in a pinch.
• Black pepper and either thyme or rosemary (not pot) to taste.  Grind or mortar-and-pestle the thyme or rosemary before you add it so it's not so long and woodsy.

Melt the butter over medium or medium low heat and add the onion, carrot and celery.  Saute until the onions are translucent and the other veggies have softened a bit (if you don't saute them long enough, the carrots will still be crunchy when it's done...and it's better if they aren't).  Add the broccoli, the chicken, and the soup.  Stir until heated through and add spices.  Be sure you taste it - you may find it needs a little salt.  Once you've got it to your liking, pour it into a pie plate (give your kids tastes of any that won't fit in the pie plate and call it chicken pot pie guts - they will happily come eat it), cover it with the crust, flute the edges and cut a couple of vent holes in the top.  Bake (on a foil lined cookie sheet for less mess - it WILL go over at some point) at 350 for about 30 minutes, or until the crust starts to turn golden brown and the filling is bubbly.

Great with a green salad and French bread (but really - isn't everything?) and brownies for dessert.  Of course.