Making Goop

Thanks to the HUGE snow storm in Atlanta (an unheard of 6 inches of snow in my yard... WAY to much for this Florida girl!!!) I've been house-bound with my three kids since Monday. Desperate times call for desperate measures.... so I decided to make a "green goop" recipe that was in my son's superhero coloring book.


Recipe:
2 cups salt
2/3 cup water
1 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup cold water

Directions:
Mix 2 cups salt and 2/3 cup water; heat for 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat, quickly add mixture of 1 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cup cold water. Stir quickly and add green food coloring. Return mix to the heat if it is too "goopy."

TIPS:
Mix the cornstarch and cold water BEFORE you add it to the heated salt mix.  I didn't do this (and didn't notice the phrasing in the directions) and the mix was unbearably difficult to stir with the wooden spoon.

I thought the mix would be more slime-like, but it actually looked like sandy cookie dough, and wasn't very wet at all.

Don't eat the goopy mixture, it won't taste good, and frankly it doesn't smell too good either. Sadly, the kids decided they wanted to play with their new play-doh sets from Christmas, so my creation was placed in a plastic container.

Sunflowers

I've been writing a lot about Sunflowers- my FAVORITE flower- lately.  I just can't get enough of the happy yellowish orange bloom, the quirkiness of which it follows the sun, and the seemingly impossible spindly yet strong stalk. Click HERE and HERE and HERE for info about how and when to harvest sunflower seeds for roasting, and then click HERE for how to soak and roast the seeds yourself. YUM-O!

And if you're even MORE interested in sunflowers, and check out THIS article which discusses how the adorable plants track the sun.