Homemade Playdough

Now that Liam is capable of playing with toys without putting them in his mouth I thought I'd whip him up a quick batch of playdough. The recipe (which I found online) was excellent and extremely simple and did not call for cream of tartar, so I thought I'd share it.

In a medium saucepan whisk together
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1/4 cup of salt.

Over low heat, add
1/2 cup water.
Whisk until the mixture is smooth.

Then, whisk in
3 tsp. white vinegar
2 Tbsp. olive oil.


Swap your whisk for a rubber spatula and stir the mixture until it reaches the consistency of playdough. This step should only take a minute or two. Remove the saucepan from the heat.

The dough will be warm to the touch for a bit, but once it's cool enough to handle you can knead in the food coloring.

Paradise Lost: A Reflection

Is this what Adam looked like when he was banished from Eden?

I'm re-reading Milton's great epic at a very interesting time in my life and finding my new experiences bringing something unexpected to the table. I'm very briefly covering the work in my Western Humanities II class, treating three major themes in roughly two hours and forty-five minutes: the Fall, theodicy, and salvation. Needless to say it's an incredible undertaking--cramming so much into so little--but at least my students seem receptive and up for the challenge.

Last Thursday we covered the Fall.

The interestingly unexpected experience greeting me at the door? I'm also beginning to notice Liam using a term very closely resembling "NO" in tone and delivery. It's early enough that he'll still use it while playfully babbling in his crib, trying to master the syllable and experiment with the force, but I can sense impending disobedience and I'm confronted with the challenge of responding to it. And I'm feeling a bit like God probably did when he saw the Devil flying toward His newly created world with the intention of tricking Man into deliberate disobedience: panicked, yet resolved. It's the apex of conflict in a film whose ending is known.

My boy is going to start exercising his will against mine.

I've come to the conclusion that the story of the Fall is universal, whether you believe in the doctrine of Original Sin or not. It's the story of a relationship that holds between creator and created, parent and child, the one that grows by growing apart, and the love that, sometimes painfully, binds each generation together. For Milton, it's a story about freedom and consequences. And love and forgiveness. It's a story about how hard it can be to be a parent, how to love so freely and yet to such great depths all while knowing that at least once, your child will break your heart. All this nothing more than a simple consequence of our freedom.

I never could have come to this in high school, but I'm glad David Lyons suggested I read it.