Chinese New Year Special: Best of … Snakes

Chinese New Year is this Sunday, February 10, 2013

THE YEAR OF THE SNAKE

So, here it is….

The Lunchbox Season’s

BEST OF…SNAKES!
and a Chinese New Year Feast

 
Snake Sock Puppets
DIY Snake Puppets made from socks, googley eyes and ribbon.

 
Python Masks
A free printable python mask with additional DIY/Instructions.

 

Necktie Bean Bag Snakes
Transform a dollar-store necktie into a bean-bag snake – a great shoulder companion!

 
Snake Skip-Counting Game
Free printable sheets and instructions for a snake-shaped skip-counting game.
Use chocolate coins, poker chips or other tokens and get started on all of the fun!

 
Serpent Mobiles
DIY serpent mobile with free printable template.
Hang these from your lights or from the ceiling as your Chinese New Year decor!

Snake Stick Puppets
Snakes on dowels. Easy DIY.

Snakewiches
Easy to make snake sammies!

   
Chinese New Year Feast
Have a fabulous Chinese New Year Feast!
Recipes for Pork Potstickers, General Tso’s Chicken, and Kung Pao Shrimp.
And a cute cupcake dragon/snake as your dessert inspiration!

Enjoy!
Kung Hei Fat Choi!
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MARCH breAK! 2012: Frogwiches! Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies with Vanilla or Citrus Cream

Gallagher’s Favourite “Frogwiches”:
 
Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies with Vanilla or Citrus Cream

 Today’s the Last Day of our Illustrate-Your-Own-Book project for MARCH breAK!, and it’s time, once again, to make a treat drawn from our book, A Study in Emerald. In Chapter Six of our seven chapter tale, snake-detective Gallagher feasts on “Frog Sandwich Cookies” as he triumphs over his recent arrest of a suspect in the “Wolfe Tone Mystery.”  Today, we’ll be reading the last chapter and acting out the whole story with our freshly made Sock Puppets, our Necktie Bean-Bag Snakes, and our Snake Stick Puppets.  So, of course, we needed to make these Frogwiches to give our puppet theatre production an authentic feel!

This recipe produces a very thin, crispy sandwich cookie. By using the butter/shortening blend for the cream filling, you achieve something like an Oreo filling. In fact, the whole cookie tastes like a Spicy Ginger Oreo!  The butter-only option will be more like a buttercream icing, but it won’t store as long in a tin.  We like both the vanilla and the citrus (especially the lime!) options for this cookie!

Ginger Sandwich Cookies with Vanilla or Citrus Cream

Ingredients

Cookies
2 c flour
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp cinnamon (we like “Ceylon” in this recipe)
.25 tsp ground cloves
1.5 tsp baking soda
.5 tsp salt
3/4 cup + 1 tbs butter
.5 c brown sugar
.5 c granulated sugar  
.25 c molasses
1 egg
1 tbs vanilla
.25 c icing sugar for dusting

Sandwich Cream
__4 tbs butter AND
4 tbs shortening (vegan, non-hydrogenated)__
OR
__6 tbs butter__
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1-2 tbs milk or cream if required

1 tbs vanilla
green food colouring (optional)
OR
2 tbs lime, lemon or orange juice
2 tsp zest (optional)
green, yellow or orange food colouring (optional)

Method

Cookies
With a whisk, combine flour, spices, soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
Beat the butter and sugars in a mixer until fluffy.
Slowly incorporate the molasses into the fluff.
Add the egg and the vanilla until just combined.
Add the bowl of dry ingredients slowly.
When the dough appears combined, use a spatula to form it into a ball.
Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1-2 hours.
Dough may also be rolled into a long wax or parchment paper log and refrigerated for at least 4-6 hours.

Heat the oven to 350 F.
Roll the dough into 1 inch balls with your hands

Flatten onto a parchment lined pan. (Leave a lot of space! Don’t exceed a dozen per pan! These cookies spread!)
Or, slice the log of dough into 1/8 in slices and place on parchment with liberal spacing.
Bake for just about 10 minutes.
IMMEDIATELY after removing cookies from pan, use (frog) cookie cutter to make a print in the cookie without completely slicing through.

Cool cookies on racks and make the icing.

Icing
Mix butter and shortening until soft.
Add icing sugar.
Add optional vanilla or citrus.
Add optional food colouring.
If icing hasn’t formed, add milk or cream 1 tsp at a time to mixer.

Assembly
Place some icing sugar in a tea strainer or in a spoon.
For HALF of the cookies: Place the cookie cutter back on the top of the indentation you made wtih the it previously.
Tap the sides of the tea strainer or gently shake your spoon to spread the icing sugar over top of the cookie.

Use a butter knife or an icing spreader to spread a dollop of icing on the bottom/flat portion of the other HALF of the cookies.

Place the sugar-dusted cookies on top of the iced ones to create the sandwiches.
 
Ribbit! Ribbit!
________________________
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MARCH breAK! 2012: Snake Sock Puppets

Today, we finished reading and illustrating our book,  A Study in Emerald. To celebrate, we munched on Frogwiches (homemade gingerbread sandwich cookies), and we made sock puppets of all the major characters in our story. When the kids were done, we got out the old doorway puppet theatre I made way back before Bea was born, and they put on a puppet production of the story!  I’ve posted a Gallery of pictures just below, and a DIY/How-to for the puppets at the bottom of the page. 

 Snake Sock Puppet Gallery

Sir Lochrann Holmes and Seann McUaitson

Detectives Gallagher and Na’Sraide

Siobhan/Cailloan and Haggerty

The Pythons: Strangerson and Drebber

Wiggins, the snake-urchin and Mrs. Houghston, the landlady

Mrs. Limerick and her son, David

Irene Adder
 
The Nest
(Seann Clancy was not availble for a photo today.)

Our Puppet Theatre from 2003 is still in use!
 
The puppets in action!
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DIY Snake Sock Puppets

Supplies

Socks
Googly Eyes
Ribbon
Hot Glue and Gun
A large, old wooden or metal spoon

Method
Choose a pairs of googly eyes, and a few inches of ribbon into a forked tongue for each puppet.

Wiggle the sock down over a large old spoon.

Glue eyes just below the seam at the foot of the sock.
 
Flip spoon around so that you can’t see the eyes/seam of the sock.
Glue about 1 inch of the ribbon down, pattern side down down the centre towards the tip.

Let cool for a moment before removing the puppet from spoon.
 
Play!

________________________
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MARCH breAK! 2012: A Study in Emerald, Day 4, Story & Illustrations

We’re on day four of our five day Illustrate-Your-Own Book  project. The kids have been trying different artistic techniques each day to create illustrations for the story I wrote for them, The Adventures of Sir Lóchrann Holmes: A Study in Emerald.  Today, after we made our Python Masks, we read chapter six (of seven) out loud to Blaise, who was home for the day.  Since I had to leave for an appointment, he took charge of the illustrations. Now, he’s actually an artist, so today’s explorations of  MIXED MEDIA proved to be the kids’ best efforts to date!!!  Illustrations to follow today’s plot summary, as usual. 

Summary: A Study in Emerald, Chapter Six, “Tobias Gallagher Shows What He Can Do” 
McUaitson discusses the contents of his scrapbook: news coverage of the crime. The serpent papers, the television news, and the online community were in a frenzy about the “Wolfe Tone Mystery.” First and foremost, they wonder about the presence of a Python in Ireland. Then, they increase the tension by revealing that the murdered Python, Drebber, had a secretary named Strangerson who may yet be on the loose in Dublin. The two pythons stayed at the boarding house of a Mrs. Limerick, near the docklands.   Next, Holmes then receives a visit by a whole knot of street snake urchins who inform him that they haven’t yet found the serpent he is looking for.  Just as the urchins disperse to go back to their spying, Gallagher arrives, claiming that he has arrested the murderer, young David Limerick, and laughing at his colleague Na’Sraide, who has gone off after Strangerson. Gallagher reports that during his visit to Mrs. Limerick’s boarding house, Mrs. Limerick’s daughter, Cailloan, convinces her mother to “Tell the truth” to him.  Mrs. Limerick confesses that the afternoon before the murder, her son David chased Drebber out of the house with a Shillelagh after he found an inebriated Drebber assaulting his mother in the coiling room.  The young Limerick’s alibi for the time of the murder is a lie, Gallagher claims. Just as Gallagher is wrapping up the conversation about his prisoner, Na’Sraide enters with news that he has just found the other python, Strangerson, dead in a rooming house near the ferry dock.     

Illustrations

Tobes:

Tobes shows David Limerick wielding his Shillelagh.
Oil Pastel, watercolour, and ink transfer.

One of the Barrow Street Snake Urchins
Watercolour (painted over a tape image of a snake),
Oil Pastel (to fill in snake), and paper collage (buildings).

McUaitson’s scrapbook of media coverage of the mystery.
Paper and oil pastel.

Tobes and Papa:

Sargeant Gallagher eats a frog sanwich cookie and explains the mystery.
Dyed Paper, Construction Paper, crayon, watercolour, and oil pastel.

Bea:

Holmes pays a street urchin for his troubles.
Watercolour, crayon, and oil pastel.

McUaitson reading his scrapbook of case memoribilia.
Watercolour, oil pastel, crayon, and ink.

Warrior Python inflicting damage.
Watercolour

 
“Snakesung” brand television, tuned to the “Fork-Tongue Channel,” where the anchor reports a murder, with and inset video of the crime scene over at Wolfe Tone Stret.
Collage, crayon, oil pastel, watercolour.

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The Lunchbox Season : Summer of Funner : In Defense of Burning