You have been warned.
fail. Fail. FAIL!
Disgusting, magnificently awful fail.
I read a blog post about a mother who had the best time making play dough with her kids. Then they happily played with it for hours! Hey! I haven't made play dough in ages! I bet the kids would love that!
Hmmm - lets do a flour mix (buckwheat, starch and xanthan gum) and the cheap sea salt. That will probably work best.
Um - not so much. Way too sticky even if the color works through well.
A bit discouraged.
Weeeeeeell - lets try just buckwheat. No starch or xanthan gum.
Nope. It takes color a bit better but it's still way too sticky and rubbery.
A lot bit discouraged and now starting to get mad.
Look up a recipe for gluten-free play dough.
Almost exactly what I first tried, just without the xanthan gum. Might as well try it.
No. Just . . . no. Not as sticky but as you can see, the color would not work through at all. Is it like play dough? No. Not even close. Try to stretch it out and it just snaps back into shape. Texture: rubber, clammy, sticky.
Un-moldable play dough also meant that my prematurely anticipated 'me' time was not going to happen.
What a waste. What a complete waste.
Well - perhaps not a complete waste. You see it had been so long that neither kid knew what I was trying to create and just enjoyed what happened. I think I could take a few notes from their book.
So since I was sad, mad and depressed I decided we needed a treat. So I bundled the kids up and we drove across town to buy special gluten-free pretzels because chocolate dipped (ok, smothered) pretzels sounded like just the thing. And wouldn't you know - the store didn't have any more and wouldn't for a week. Perfect. So I told Emma that we could get something that was the same price. What did she choose? A block of uber-processed soy fake mozzarella cheese. Yep - that cost the same as a bag of pretzels. Oh yeah - it's meh. Just ok. It isn't cheese.
So what was a girl to do?
Thank goodness there were some leftover from last night.
*sigh*
Sometimes I forget that I can't make everything gluten-free.
12 comments:
K, what I posted was dumb, so trying again:
That would be so frustrating! I hate days like that, except usually my stuff is usually intended to be edible. Anyway, just a while back a local mom posted a gf recipe for play dough that she found. http://www.westsidemoms.org/forums/index.php/topic,5127.0.html
If you want to try one more time...
(let me know if the link doesn't work for ya, I can e-mail it) Good luck, hope it turns out sometime. I also agree-we could learn a lot from our kids!
Just when you think you fail - your children remind you of your successes! Great job on everything, Maria. You're creative, intelligent, and you certainly succeed in many things! :o)
Yeah, I'm having a pity party too. Mine is about my seeming inability to play in tune with my orchestra. I ALWAYS seem to be the pitch problem! And I think my sister in law now hates me. Oh well.
Basically, I'm with you sister!
Good luck on the playdough.
I also wanted to chime in here and say that I thought the stripes of color in your "failed" playdough were cool. And you had some good colors too. I am only starting to think that failure is only a concept in our own minds based on what we plan, how we execute an idea, and the result. Failing only means that the result did not match the plan. How we interpret that is entirely up to us...unless of course we're musicians who are taught to believe there is only correct and then everything else is wrong. Like my life. Like my control of pitch on bassoon. Like my effort to be considerate and elegant and articulate. As much as we can, I think we need to let others deal with it if they are disappointed in something we did. We need to reframe our ideals and goals to include a variety of results in the follow through.
And the colors and stripes rocked. Emma and Daniel told me so.
So there.
KC
Okay, so when I saw the blobs of playdoh, all I could think was that bottom green one looked like brains. Yup, who says you couldn't start teaching your kids anatomy right now? LOL
But in the end, you learned the most important lesson. Chocolate solves all of the worst problems. It's true.
mmmm... brownies....
It's so funny because while you were describing the 'fails', I was thinking "She made goop! So cool!" lol
I found a recipe that might work. Since we're wheat free now I may try it myself.
http://celiacdisease.about.com/od/raisingaglutenfreechild/r/PlayDough.htm
-C
Trish - I can't get to you link because I can't join that forum.
Carolyn - actually, that recipe was my 3rd attempt and produced the balls of goop that wouldn't take any color. Bummer!
I just wanted to let you know that the unsigned anonymous comment was from me. It was an oversight that I forgot to include my name. But then I made the very next comment too. Just wanted to also let you know that what may have been failure in your eyes was something new and different and exciting for Em and D. Also a reminder that not everything we perceive as failure really is. Sometimes it is a serendipitous event (I seem to be using that word alot lately), it's just to help guide us to the right answer. Keep it up! And remember that weirdly-colored goop can be a really great weapon. Or hair accessory, though I don't recommend that one.
KC
Oh, honey, do I feel your pain! While we don't have the gluten issues in my house (we have nuts and milk issues instead :P ), I so know how frusterating it can be to want to provide your child with some normalacy and failing miserably at it. That's ok though, the kiddos usually think things are great anyway.
Thank goodness a little chocolate goes a long way, huh.
ps-I'm liberty and stephanie's little sister. In case you didn't know :)
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