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Asian Food Taste Test

November 25, 2012 in Education, Grub, Photographs, Radical Unschooling, Unschlog with 0 Comments

Apparently, food is a focus around here at the moment. A little over a week ago we were inspired to try out Nugget in a Biscuit and recently we were inspired to go on a spur of the moment Asian snack food run. The closest Asian grocery store to us that is open late is Oriental Market. We were inspired by some Smosh videos where Ian (and some times Anthony and Mari) try weird and random foods from all over the world. Each food gets tried and rated — uniquely rated I might add ;-)

We gathered up various snack foods and decided to have a very, um, scientific taste test of our very own. The following is our results from our experiment (lovingly collected and annotated by William).

Hello Kitty Marukawa Marble Gum (japan)
Elijah:  15,000,000/10     [orange flavor]
William: 8.25/10    [lemon flavor]
Mum:     9/10        [green grape]
notes: super delicious fruit smelling. really sweet. doesn’t stick to teeth makes your tongue numb(!?!)

Top Gum (Pokemon Hanging Model) (japan)
Elijah:  pokemon rules/10 [oshawott]
William: it tastes like my childhood/10 [tepig]
Mum:     4.5/10    [snivy]
notes: Topp baseball card gum. but not entirely dried out and stale. oddly enough still brittle as all hell

Pei Tien Energy 99 Sticks (pumpkin flavor) (taiwan)
Elijah:  not sure/???
William: 4/10
Mum:     7/10
notes: tastes a bit like spoiled oil to me

New York 101 Grain Rolls (taiwan)
Elijah:  9/10
William: 7/10
Mum:     6.5/10
notes: saltier than the Pei Tien, tastes less like oil

Ginbis Dream Animals Butter Flavored Biscuits (japan)
Elijah:  -40/10
William: 10.5/10
Mum:     9/10
notes: cutest most educational box ever. E: “they taste how butter smells!” solid fucking butter. Best. Cracker. Ever.

Khong Guan Assorted Biscuits (singapore)
Elijah:  10/10 (K.G.B. creamy chocolate) 9.5/10 (‘jesus oreo’) 10/10(K.G.B. Delicious biscuit)
William: 9/10 (nice) 8.75/10 (vanilla lunch) 10/10 (puff) 5/10 (K)
Mum:     7/10 (puff) meh./10 (K)
notes: Hallal. super chocolate smell from the box. conveniently each cookie is labeled in the cookie mold. Best tea time cookie assortment ever.

Hello Panda Milk Cream Biscuits (singapore)
Elijah:  1,000,000/10
William: meh./10
Mum:     meh./10
notes: I like that they aren’t very sweet. I won’t get a stomach ache from them. but they don’t have much flavor

Kasugai Fruits Mix Gummy Candy Mix (japan)
Elijah:  10/10 (apple) 10/10 (muscat)
William: 8/10 (muscat) 7/10 (grape)
Mum:     4/10 (grape) 9/10 (muscat)
notes: muscat is very delicious.

YamaMotoYama Teriyaki Nori (japan kinda; USA via Japan)
Elijah:  100/10
William: Best Snack Food Ever Made/Ever
Mum:     10/10
notes: who doesn’t like roasted and spicy nori?

Kuang Chuan Frozen Green Tea (taiwan)
Elijah:  abstained
William: 10/10
Mum:     10/10
notes: not actually frozen. its just cold. fun translation issues there. (Note from M: after watching the ad, I believe frozen is the correct word.)

Vitasoy Mango Juice Drink Box (japan)
Elijah: 9/10
William: abstained
Mum: 8/10
notes: it’s alright for a sugary box drink.

We had fun and got to eat lots of stuff! Huzzah! Have you done something similar? Have you been inspired to go raid your local Asian or ethnic grocery store? Leave me a link to your blog post or YouTube video after you have a food tasting party of your own. If you are reading this and you happen to live in or very near to Oklahoma City, OK, I suggest you visit my favourite ethnic grocery store of all time: Super Cao Nguyen (every time you refresh the link you get new pictures!) and read this blog post about them!

 

Nugget In A Biscuit

November 16, 2012 in Education, Grub, Photographs, Radical Unschooling, Unschlog with 5 Comments

Unschooling is hard to explain to some people. I have several angles that I try to come at it from, but depending on who my audience is, somehow, people (who don’t want to get it) just don’t ‘get it’. So, I think I’m going to stop trying to explain with logical arguments and just start posting about random cool things from our lives, because that’s what our life is — our life is unschooling. We’re learning all the time and having fun while we’re doing it.

I’m sure that most unschoolers are familiar with Let’s Plays found on YouTube. They range from the most foul-mouthed and unhelpful gaming videos to quite informative (complete with history lessons) and fun. Some people use fancy screen-capturing software and other people use cameras and tripods. No matter the style of the YouTube user, you’ll start to find your favourites before too long.

One of E’s (UrielFury) favourites is Toby Turner aka Tobuscus. He does Let’s Plays, sings cooky songs, and a variety of other, at times, annoying performances. One of E’s favourite songs is “Nugget in a Biscuit”, which can only be described by… well, just listen and watch:

The idea came to us, after hearing this song for weeks, that we should actually eat a nugget in a biscuit, dipped in mashed potatoes, and then dipped in barbeque sauce. I mean, why not?

Nugget in a Biscuit plate

And let me tell you, we had one happy boy today! Nugget in a Biscuit, might just be a go-to dinner added to the favourite dinners list (except that E says he just wants the vegan nuggets and bbq sauce, which is fine, because his mother will eat all. the. mashed. potatoes.).

E about to put his NIAB together

So, that was part of today in the life of an unschooling family: making a boy very happy, trying new foods, stretching out of comfort zones, singing, dancing, watching a favourite video, and living life!

And last, I’ll close out this blog post with an adaptation of Toby’s video sign-off: bless your face and if you sneezed while reading this post, bless you!

 

Wordless Wednesday 10.31.2012

 

{wordless wednesday}

link October 31, 2012 in Life, Photographs, Religiosophy with 4 Comments

process painting pt.3

October 21, 2012 in Craftiness, Media, Photographs with 2 Comments

Today was the third day of class in the Process Painting.

Last week I started this piece and I completed it this week. The pictures follow my progress.

and yeah, I misspelled repetition!

Don’t know if you can tell, but those circles around the red are gold! *Bling*

And last, my Daily Selfportrait from today. I look rather perturbed…

 

The Daily Selfportrait Project

October 14, 2012 in Life, Media, Photographs, Religiosophy with 0 Comments

cropped-IMG_0743.jpg

I started my Daily Selfportrait Project 367 days ago, according to the number of pictures in my Flickr album. I never set out with a specific goal in mind or an official end date slated. My only ‘rule’ was that I had to take at least one picture a day, every day, no matter how I felt or how I looked. Most pictures have been completely spontaneous, with a few obvious exceptions. To date, all photos have been taken with my forward-facing Apple iPad 2 camera and posted via Instagram.

The project started because my Dear Other Half (DOH) wanted more pictures of me. As the project crossed the 200 photo mark, I thought about all the directions it could go. I decided to at least keep snapping away until I had a year of daily photos so that I could make a photo book for DOH. Well, huzzah, I’ve met that mark!

Without further ado, here is the slide-show of the current 367 Daily Selfportraits of my beautiful self.

It has occurred to me that this project has changed me in several ways. Instead of waxing on about each change with philosophical dribbling, I’m just going to give you a bullet list with things arranged in no particular order:

  • I’m in front of the camera more, not just with the project, but in general.
  • I have found that I have a smile that I like.
  • I’ve learned to embrace glaring imperfections, including, but not limited to, shitty lighting, grainy pictures, close-ups of terribly dry skin.
  • My self-confidence has surely risen :)
  • Sexy is not an adjective I would have used to have described myself with any bit of seriousness before I started the project. However, now it is one of the first adjectives I might be inclined to seriously use.
  • I hate referring to the project as, ‘the project’… I roll my eyes every time I type or say ‘the project’.
  • Hey bro, filters are annoyingly the shit. I absolutely hate filters, but LOVE using them. I believe that only one or two of my pictures is sans a filter.

And there you go! Once the book is all ready (probably not until December), you can can purchase one for yourself… If looking at a year’s worth of pictures of me is your kind of thing ;)

Will I continue with the project? It’s kind of addictive, self-gratifying, and has become a kind of ritual for me. I’m not sure how long I plan to keep taking daily pictures, but I don’t see a end to the project in the near future.

…

So I walk like I’m on a mission cuz that’s the way I groove.
I got more and more to do, I got less and less to prove.
It took me too long to realize that I don’t take good pictures
Cuz I have the kind of beauty that moves.
~ Ani DiFranco

 

Process Painting pt.2

October 14, 2012 in Craftiness, Media, Photographs with 0 Comments

So, today was my second class in the Process Painting series from True North Arts by Gabrielle Smith.

We did an exercise where the five of us all started a painting and then every five minutes, we’d stop working on the painting in front of us and move to the next painting to the left. We did this until we were back around to the painting that we started with and then could finish it or start working on something else.

Here is what my painting ended up looking like.

Here is my Daily Selfportrait from today. In the background is my unfinished process painting piece from today — hopefully, I’ll have it finished next week.

 
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