The Edible Solar System

I am studying the Solar System, and my Mom and I just finished reading this book.  I liked and I recommend it.  At the end of the book, there is an idea for making a model of the Solar System out of food.  Since my Daddy was home on Friday, he and I made the model in two rooms of our house.  We weren't able to include the three outermost dwarf planets because they wouldn't fit in our house!  And we couldn't include Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun, because even using our scale of centimeters instead of meters, it would have been out of our neighborhood.

Here is a picture of the Solar System model that would fit in our house.  Following are close up pictures of the food we used for each planet to represent the relative size of the planets to each other.  I also included the distance of each planet from our Sun using our food model scale and actual distance.  

 Here are three things I learned by doing this project:
1.  Our Sun is by far the biggest object in our Solar System.
2.  The inner rock planets are very small in comparison to the outer gas planets.
3.  The Solar System is huge.  There is a lot of space between each planet.

I've really liked learning about Space.  I am thinking of becoming an astronaut so that I can engineer a new career field of mining for natural resources from the Asteroid Belt and Titan.

Signing Off,
*Evalynn* and Mom

Boston Brown Bread and Butter

My Mom and I are reading about what is was like to live in Colonial Times.  In this book that we are reading we found a recipe for Boston Brown Bread and churned butter.  I was curious to know what bread might have tasted like back in the 1700s, so we decided to make it.  

 We had to go shopping for Rye flour, which was hard to find!  I did not like the way the molasses smelled - it smelled like a dead skunk!  I'm glad we have other ways to sweeten our food now.  I'm also glad we have an electric oven and dishwasher.


















I had an assistant.  He's kind of cute.

Here's the bread dough - stinky bread dough - ready to go in the oven.

 While the bread was cooking, I made butter.  I poured heavy cream into a lidded container and shook, shook, shook.

When my arms were tired of shaking, my assistant and I rolled the container back and forth.  Then, when we tired of that, we gave it to my Mom!  With her superhuman MOM powers, she finished it up.












We all sat down to try some Colonial delights.

I was hoping the bread didn't taste as bad as it smelled.  I didn't want to take a bite, but my Mom told me I had to in order for the time I spent making the bread to count as school time.

Here I go . . .

The bread was not my favorite, but my Mom, Dad, and neighbors loved it!

By doing this project I learned that I am glad I live in a world with electricity and many food choices.

Signing Off,
*Evalynn* and Mom