Geography 201

 Penpals aren’t just for kids. Take advantage of social networking and try to make at least one new relationship in the world that is not geographically close to you. 

In January of 2022, I had the pleasure of being connected to a penpal in Poland through a Youtube channel we both followed (Daily Connoisseur).  While it typically takes about a month for letters to be delivered, it has been so fun to compare notes and see how her life has unfolded.  Now that we are back from Spain, we can send my brother and sister in law letters too, although letter writing is a bit of a lost art, so we don't expect the dynamic to be as equal of an exchange.  

Plan an overseas vacation (don’t worry, you don’t have to actually go to earn your badge). Map out where you’d stay, what you’d like to see, how you’d get there. Research options like hostels, camping options, monasteries, Airbnbs, home swaps, etc.

Itinerary:  Barcelona, Spain, Jan 28, 2026-Feb 7, 2026

Objectives:  see brother + sister in law's house in Sitges suburb, celebrate FIL 80th bday (and other BIL's bday) in big masia farmhouse rental, then spend 4 days exploring downtown Barcelona.  

Lodging:  

Masia in Santa Oliva Jan 29-Feb 2.  Share of cost TBD.  Objectives-- adjust to jetlag, see BIL's house, celebrate FIL's 80th birthday.  Try spring onions (Calçotades) and jamon.  FIL picked this location and it is his big day.  The logistical challenges it presents are that it is 1 hour by car or train from downtown Barcelona which makes exploration with 7 year old attention and energy ebbs and flows less accessible.  It also sounds like quite a few celebrants from FIL's second wife's family will be in attendance so even if the space is large, it may not offer much solitude.    

Casa Gracia hostel in Eixample Feb 2- Feb 7.  $1,143 Euro. Objectives -- explore the city.  We chose this location because it is close to metro hubs and within walking distance of modernist architecture we would like to see (Casa Batlló and the block of discord).  It also has the advantage of being on the grided part of the city which is more straight-forward to navigate and BIL claims it will have slightly less noisy nightlife than other parts of downtown.  We don't typically consider hostels as a family but were finding that when we said our party was 3, many options required us to reserve 2 separate rooms.  The hostel included private rooms with up to 6 beds and a private bath.  Because they don't claim 5 star status, this proved to be pretty affordable.   

Transportation:  Flights arranged through Delta with a connection in NYC.  Jens has secured an international driver's license from AAA which we will use while staying at the Masia.  We plan to walk/uber/experiment with mass transit while in downtown Barcelona.  

Preparation:  

Flights settled by Chris

Barcelona lodging booked by Chris

AAA international driver's license and rental car reservation secured by Jens

Phone service and data plans updated to international by Jens

House/pet sitting secured by Chris

Euro cash ordered by Jens

Barcelona history/research by Chris (favorites)

• Barcelona (Robert Hughes) - Extensive history of the region and culture up to the 1992 Olympic Games hosting 
• Mission Barcelona: A Scavenger Hunt Adventure - worth packing as to gamify the sightseeing for Fallon.  

How it actually went:  

1/28:  Uber driver "Ulises" picked us up.  This seemed an auspicious way to start.  He cost only slightly more than 1 day of parking at LAX, so uber to airports is clearly the way to go.  I discover Starbucks has protein shot lattes (they aren't delicious, but drinkable).  A lady in the Starbucks line quips "I know you're not going to New York!"  "...  I am, but just the airport"  "Those sandals!  It is freezing out."  For the rest of the trip I am cognizant that I am the only person around wearing sandals, even in the land of espadrilles (none spotted).  But will still stick with these being a great "travel light" all purpose footwear option.  I also bought copies of 3 news magazines to see if any were clearly preferable and warranted an ongoing subscription.  Concluded New Yorker had the most interesting articles, but too much irrelevant "about the town" coverage for someone on the other coast, the Atlantic is still in stages of grief about the Trump administration, and the Economist still has a bit too much faith in the superiority of free markets...  Yet they don't use bylines, which seems a bit orthogonal to the objectives of the free agents in their employ.  I found myself wishing I had instead packed the Quaker magazines that I have been inundated with since sending them an honorarium.  

1/29:  Very jet lagged and we discovered in the 2.5 hour customs line that we have left Fallon's hoodie on the plane.  Feeling very grateful I packed the snow jacket which seemed like overkill because she will live on it for the rest of the trip.  We play a lot of "what time is it, Ms. Fox?" and I realize we need to expand our repertoire of games that can be played while in the confines of slowly moving lines (minimal gross motor, minimal noise, minimal fussy pieces to spill every time we inch forward).  The line does give us time to straighten out our phone plan to provide service in Spain.  My phone takes about an hour to switch over (making for a very dodgy exit from the auto rental with only a saved map to brother in law's house).  Jens's takes even longer-- maybe a couple days?  We deliver the case + of scout cookies and extra large box of cheez-its.  In later exploration of downtown bodegas, we see Cheez-its, they are available in Spain!  But no matter, we now have ample suitcase space for books and chocolate souvenirs.  We see some of brother in law's house-- mostly his sitting room-- because we are all sorts of jet lagged.  His dog is warier around rambunctious, squeaky kids than we had hoped.  We make it to the masia.  Fallon and I are the only ones that can stand upright in the low-ceilinged kitchen/galley.  But it is an impressive compound.  We think it was built in 1200ish and that it used to house visiting royalty.  We are mostly grateful for wifi with the sketchiness of our phones.  We try to find a late lunch but nothing in the town is open except a minimart.  Fallon chooses spaghetti and canned peas.  Excellent.    

1/30:  Sleeping is hard.  I discover a wealth of library books available for download on kindle and my backlog.  Work through most of 150 Strong.  Wake at 11:30.  Whole group goes to a beach town for late lunch (Casinet in San Salvador).  Grand-Dude and I go halfsies on a blessed paella which comes with a bottomless carafe of holy water (sangria?) I share with the table.  Moving on to kindle reading Milk + Honey poetry during the insomnia phase.  

1/31: Another lazy jetlag day at the masia.  I am thrilled to experiment with a real bidet.  Someone does a grocery run and I have a cold cuts flight.  It seems like it is all jamon and OK, but not worth jumping 9 time zones for.  Jens teaches me how to open email links in browser so that I can approve a girl scout cookie order, life changing!  Mostly he and Fallon are hanging out with unlimited screen time playing video games... Not exactly the ideal situation for skipping school.  

2/1:  Grand Dude's 80th birthday.  I finish Tribes Homecoming and start Henrietta Lacks.  I take a crack at running a load of laundry with some machine operating help from chatGPT and line drying it.  Jens is in charge of charring leeks for a calcotada sampler.  The grill vents right up to the second story balcony where the laundry lines are and everything smells like BBQ for the rest of the trip, but it could be worse.  The steaks he grilled were so good.  

2/2: Yes!  on the road again, seeing stuff, screening less.  The less than cordial dynamic with Fallon's fur cousin took some of the edge off being the first part of the contingent to decamp from the masia.   We stop at a little theme park, Catalunya in Miniature and get a preview of a lot of the architectural landmarks we will see next.  Fallon likes to push the buttons and get the trains to run.  I was impressed one button even starts a flare up that fire fighters rush in and douse with little water pistols.  We're able to return the rental car in the parking structure immediately under our Hostel which is great because driving in Barcelona is stressful.  They do have wide side lane affordances for buses, taxis, and bikers that I admire though.  I also like that they chop the corner edges off busier blocks which leaves more space for cars to turn and pedestrians feel less exposed.  Our hostel has 6 bunk beds!  Not exactly what I pictured based on the website, but Fallon and I love our top bunks.  We have dinner at Oassis, a restaurant right next door.  

2/3:  We breakfast at Boldu which is like a Dunkin Donuts but their guys are shaped like little men and so packed with thick cream.  I admire the hexagonal pavers on Gracia which were designed by Gaudi to go in Casa Batllo, but with production delays ended up in Casa Mila and along the walkway (also that Barcelona gives pedestrians such wide sidewalks).  Mema has heard you can buy a few souvenir pavers if you beg construction crews who are working on the street with a couple Euros.  Did not attempt this, but the Gracia design is very cool.  We pass Pedrera and admire its exterior.  We do the tour of Casa Batllo which was really well-done.  I loved that the audio tour was keyed toward waypoints within the house.  I also loved the study which felt like being inside a kintsugi broken pot repaired with gold at the seams.  I also loved the gill-shaped vents opening into a central courtyard to manage the temperature in different parts of the house.  Then we hopped a cab cross-town to meet up with the masia crew who were in Sagrada Familia.  We made good time, so Fallon pit-stopped at a McDonald's and was delighted to find they also offered packaged pineapple with the happy meals.  Sagrada Familia was also pretty impressive-- how they had used bluer tones in the stained glass on the northern side while awesome reds and oranges streamed in through the south side windows.  Fallon liked the "sudoku" grids of numbers that added to 33 no matter which row or column you added and we bought her a souvenir necklace of it.  When we had enough, we walked back toward our hostel and stopped at a chinese place with an "empanandilla" special which turned out to be dumplings.  Yum.  Barcelona doesn't really have kids menus or the typical picky eater standards (chicken nuggets/tenders, mac n cheese, pizza).  We did a lot of contingent ordering and plate swapping when it turned out what she ordered wasn't what she expected but she liked something from our entrees.  That happened in the evening when what we thought would be an approximation of fettuccini alfredo came redolent in the truffle oil we asked them not to use.  Turns out she likes spinach ravioli.  In the downtime between church and dinner, I hiked over to Amatller chocolate which was listed as a supplier on the fancy Utah-based chocolate mail order supplier I have been shopping.  I got a bunch of promising stuff to keep my cacao nightcap going-- hazelnut truffles, cava truffles, leaves of 4 different types, and a couple bars of single origin to compare to my other Ecuadors and to each other.  I also managed to ask for and purchase 2 umbrellas from a news seller on the Gracia sidewalk, which came in handy later, in this drizzly season.    

2/4: We trekked to La Nena for churros and chocolate and a packed in game of travel checkers.  We had initially set our heading for an acai place, but were disappointed it was closed.  Nena was a bit over-rated on variety and quality of churros and Fallon didn't like the churro at all, but I loved that they had play kitchen gear and board games.  I guess it makes sense (nena = grandma).  Plus the service was friendlier than reviewers led me to expect.  Since we were in Barcelona in off-season, it seemed just less of a maddening crush.  No long waits for restaurants, or tours of landmarks.  I'm not sure I could tolerate the city with tourist season in full swing.  There was a churroria down the street from our hostel that had a line wrapping around the block even in the offseason, so for a foodie, that was probably the ticket for really good churros.  Maybe next time.  After fueling up at Granny's, we continued on to the "Hibernian" (Irishman) not to be confused with the "Iberian" (Spanishman).  They specialized in used books, a favorite souvenir of mine.  I found one on Gulf of Mexico sunken treasure for Jens, 2 truly ancient ones (Kipling and Trollope) for me, and Fallon wanted Tim Ferriss's 4 Hour Work Week and a book about puppies.  We found an open and friendly acai stop (Tizana) on the way back to fill any gaps the rejected churro left in her stomach.  I finished Pollan's Food Rules during siesta time and we had underwhelming dinner at the hostel's restaurant.  The decisive point was when they asked if we wanted cheese on our nachos, and we, imagining processed cheese was something Europeans would reject at the border, were dismayed to see the nachos come back smothered in it and tasting like something terrible you would buy at a stadium.  

2/5: We stopped in Forno coffee shop/ patisserie behind Casa Batllo for breakfast and visited the White Rabbit museum that shared a block with Casa Batllo.  Fallon was attracted to it because of the oversized Caganer (pooper) statue at its entrance.  This was a fun stop.  We got to see VR videos of castellers building multi-story human towers and Saint Jordi defeating the dragon, posed in giant paper machie cappagrossos heads, and saw eggs balanced perfectly on fountain jets.  We continued on our quest to see Las Ramblas.  This was a bit of a hike for a 7 year old, so it required a break at a Lego store and then a chance to play in a massive square filled with pigeons.  One landed on my shoulder.  The rambla itself was a big disappointment-- completely ripped up on both sides for renovation with lots of construction noise and no statuesque buskers.  I did manage to pick up some calcots leek seeds to see how they'll grow in our own Mediterranean climate.  The Boquerria market was as amazing as the guides described, but Jens felt there was no fish there that would have tempted him.  We stopped in the Maritime Museum off Columbus Plaza to use the restroom, but didn't tour it.  We had spotted the cable car that cruised over the port to Mount Juic and wanted to ride it.  We took such a circuitous route to get to it though that we needed to stop and fortify ourselves with some mall food.  When we had ridden the cable car out and back, we caught a cab back to our hostel and saw bits of the old city through its windows.  We had dinner at an amazing sushi spot (Nomo Gracia) close to the hostel and I loved the novelty of a nigiri that was brie and walnut topped.  Then we retired to insomnia at the hostel and I finished Henrietta Lacks.  

2/6:  Today's project was postcards.  We let Jens sleep in and made our way to the umbrella seller who also had wracks of postcards.  We got a good start on filling them out of pancakes and cafe con leche at Mixto cafe.  Fallon liked to pen in cranes on the ones of Sagrada Familia that had edited them out.  Then it was off to the post office to explain I am learning Spanish and have a very patient clerk help me buy 12 international stamps and 2 more for the cards going to Poland and Australia.  We celebrated completing our quest at yet another acai stop (with marginal coffee) a bit further west of the intersection of Gracia and Diagonal which we had come to think of as home base.  We let Jens pick lunch and he took us far east along Diagonal to a taco shop that was pretty good and right across the street from a rival hostel.  Then after a screen time siesta interlude, we made our way back out for dinner at an Indian restaurant that managed to squeeze us in just before they got packed.  Maybe this is the difference between weeknight and Friday night crowds.  Or maybe it was that good.  Fallon ate her weight in naan and they achieved a sinus-clearing spice level that Jens approved of.  

2/7:  Travel day.  We intercepted sis in law and her hubby who had muled Grand Dude's guitar purchase through customs but didn't think they would be able to find bin space for it in the back of the plane.  I hadn't slept well the night before and was in very rough shape in terms of migraine when we almost landed but then pulled up for a second try at JFK.  I had pulled a plastic grocery bag I keep in my purse out to use for air sickness, but thankfully it didn't come to that.  We had to go through customs and collect then recheck our bags and go through TSA again.  This took almost all of the layover we had allotted so we were back on a plane to California without ever figuring out if the in-laws had made their connection.  I refused food and slept on this leg and was settled enough to not be entirely dreading the uber ride when we landed.  

So yeah, this was a fun trip.  It worked out well to have a couple days of bottomless cups of coffee and no firm travel plans at the beginning.  That said, I would have been disappointed if we had spent the whole time out in the exurbs, not getting to appreciate the architecture and food of the downtown area.  

Geography

Search thrift shops, yard sales, and craigslist for a globe if you don’t have one already. 

We have had a lot of success with inflatable beach ball globes.  They are more portable and less precious than desk décor, so you can keep a couple around and study even when you are in the pool!   

Learn some basics: continents, capitals, oceans. If you already know those, stretch yourself by adding in more obscure geographical facts. 

Download and play: Seterra.  Still working on the 150 largest countries and their capitals.  

Learn the names and locations of the Mexican and Canadian States.  

Learn the names and locations of the 20MM+ population global megacities.  

Learn about the history of cartography.

Read:  Mapmakers - John Noble Wilford

Learned that some parts of the world can have slightly different gravity and compasses can point slightly off true north depending on the mass and density of the earth they sit close to.  

Discovered that part of developing the theory of plate tectonics came from looking at striations in rock where magnetic elements switched directions because these rocks "line up" pointing toward wherever magnetic north was when the rock formed.  This helped date the rock sample and connect it to other pieces of rock which may have shifted and separated but show similar magnetic patterns.  It also helped better understand in geologic time when the magnetism of the north pole swapped places with the south pole.     

Came to appreciate that calculating longitude was more complicated than calculating latitude because you need an accurate clock as an input into the calculation.

I also realize I should have paid closer attention to trigonometry because it got humanity so far in estimating distance and altitude of places it would have been too time consuming or treacherous to travel to.  Fortunately, my daughter is on the cusp of learning trig, so I may get a second crack at it.  

Toward the end of the book as mapping technology moved toward aerial and then space photography, I started to get a sense of vertigo about how quickly mapping precision was advancing.  

Nellie Make-Do

 For this badge you will create fiber projects that use ONLY recycled fabric goods—with the exception of sewing machine or embroidery thread. Anything knitted or crocheted must be made from sweaters that have been unraveled, etc. Think “next life” in all that is fiber. Projects must be completed and photographed.

Beginner (25 hours):  2 hours

"Fallon-Ties-Day" roses (12) @ 10 mins/rose = 2 hours.  

These were Grand-Dad's old ties he shared with us since he reTired.  Fallon used a seam ripper to take out the back tab that secures the tail, measured 10" from the skinny end, and marked it with a pin.  I timed myself on the dangerous part at 10 mins each rolling them up and fixing the rolls in place with hot glue.  Hopefully hot glue falls in the exception category of embroidery thread?  We did not purchase new/extra, but tried to use up some of what we already had on hand.  Note to self: keep burn cream with the extra glue cartridges.  Then we passed these out to the 11 girls in Fallon's scout troop and one for her to keep.  

  

Her-Story: HeLa

Expert:  • Read two biographies about influential women; one featuring someone from the 1900s and the other from the 1800s. • Share five things (from each book) that you learned on The Farmgirl Connection.

Henrietta Lacks (aka HeLa) 1920-1951/Forever.  From The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

1951 - Henrietta's cervical cancer tumor was biopsied at Johns Hopkins.  These cancer cells were the first George Gey was able to grow in culture.  However, there was no protocol or precedent for informing or obtaining consent from patients to use their genetic material, raising ethical questions.  Post-HIPA, publishing health information like DNA raises privacy concerns because you might get discriminated against because of genes.  Relatives who share DNA might be singled out for study or discrimination, as was the case for Henrietta's family.  As Henrietta's cells gained notoriety, researchers tried to throw media off by claiming HeLa stood for Helen Lane, but this anonymity came at the cost because her family was not provided with any recognition of the extent of her contribution to science.  

Gey had struggled to propagate healthy cells in culture up to this point because of the Hayflick Limit which stated that cells are preprogrammed to stop replicating after 50 divisions when their telomeres become too short.  However, Henrietta's exposure to viruses like HPV (which is now linked as a cause of cancer) meant her biopsied cancer cell DNA had been overwritten by the virus in a way that removed the limit.  

The ability to grow human cells in culture allowed for a whole new field of medical testing.  These cells could be exposed to radiation, vaccines, taken into space, etc. to observe how they reacted and expedite treatment tests.  One of HeLa's early contributions was in helping Jonas Salk rapidly test a polio vaccine.  

Medical ethics had some catching up to do.  In trying to understand cancer, there was an interval where researchers were putting HeLa cultures into patients without their consent to see if and how these cells would multiply and if different morphologies of the cancer were truly distinct.  

Learning how to culture cells in a lab became a booming industry and paved the way to culture of cells for use in IVF and cloning work.   But HeLa cells were so hardy that they could also throw off some research by contaminating samples in other studies.  Fortunately, HeLa also furthered furthered research in chromosome counting and mapping which eventually allowed Stanley Gartler to identify a rare gene in HeLa (G6PD-A) in cultured cell lines which claimed to be different from HeLa.  

Tragically, it appears Henrietta's oldest daughter, Elsie was also involved in medical testing without consent.  She was institutionalized when the family was no longer able to support her epileptic condition.  The institution which took her was overcrowded, understaffed, and used patients of her profile to test pneumoencephalography, a method of taking crisp x-rays which came with side effects of seizures, vomiting, and crippling headaches lasting for two to three months after the operation.  Elsie ultimately died in their care.  

The two themes that continue to haunt me about this story are: 1.  It is possible to be "influential" as a victim or passive bystander.  Henrietta wasn't consulted about her "donation" to science, but it still had a huge impact.  2.  We should take collective responsibility for human health.  It will facilitate better quality research and we will not have these injustices of Henrietta's descendants scrambling to afford healthcare in spite of her contribution.  

Recycling

Research recycling in your area and what can and cannot be recycled, both at your recycling center and for curbside recycling, if that’s available to you.

We had a good general idea of how to recycle but we visited our residential waste handler's website and still learned a few things:

• Plastic bags and plastic film wrappers cannot be recycled 
• plastic-lined items like to-go coffee cups and juice-boxes cannot be recycled
• Cardboard boxes should be broken down and flattened
• Dirty paper (i.e. the greasy part of a pizza box or to-go containers) cannot be recycled
• Recycled items should be clean, empty and dry to facilitate sorting and to avoid contaminating the paper and cardboard in the single stream.  

We also found a recycling center in walking distance from our home that take and reimburse for California Redemption Value packaging (aluminum cans, plastic, and glass bottles) as well as larger metal items.  My daughter loves visiting here to turn in Dad's aluminum cans because they often give her a handful of candy in addition to paying for the items.  

For e-waste, we keep a look out for the semi-annual times and locations our waste handler offers drive-through e-waste disposal of batteries and electronics.

Determine what you can put into recycling instead of the garbage, and set up a recycling system for yourself. If your area doesn’t support recycling, find other ways to reuse. Do this for a week. 

We are spending the month of January focused on auditing our trash stream.  For more detail, see our updates on this post.    We are also finding ways to reduce the total volume of recycling by buying unpackaged produce at the farmer's market using our own bags and experimenting with from-scratch copy-cat recipes.  For instance, we made a DIY batch of mochi and stuffed it into packaging bound for the recycling/trash.    

Pay it Forward

 

Figure out how much money you spend per person per meal each day of the week.  Pick a day, skip your lunch or dinner meal.  Donate the money saved to your local food bank to help others struggle daily to put food on the table.  

Accounting for spend on food is tricky with our revolving pantry.  One approach I took was to look at several months of weekly grocery bills (before we started to deflect spend into local farmer's markets).  We spent about $205/week on groceries.  With 3 of us and subtracting the meals my husband eats in the office cafeteria, that represents about 50 meals.  So let's say that is about $4.10/meal.  

If we wanted a more generous figure, I looked at Mary Jane's Farm backpacker meals and see that the entrees run about $10-$14.

Next, I needed to skip a meal.  I chose to eat a large-ish breakfast on MLK day (1/19/26) and then skip lunch while my daughter and I helped assemble boxes of shelf-stable foods for people in need.  It was a lot of fun and they kept us so busy I didn't have time to feel hungry.  As an added bonus, the scale said I had kept my lean mass but had dropped 1.2 lbs of something else!  

Now, to donate the saved money to a local food bank.  We are fortunate to have several charitable organizations helping with food distribution in our area.  I had noticed long bread lines at the local middle school on walks and felt like of all the places to support, this one was truly local.  It is organized by Seva Collective.  I figure if I kept on with a one meal skip/week, that should amount to about $25/month and we can afford to round up to $26.41 to cover processing fees.    

Unprocessed Kitchen

 Pick out a guilty pleasure from the grocery store and replicate it organically at home... 

In light of my ongoing month of trash audits, I aspired to make my daughter's standard evening dessert, mochi.  

These run $1.16 - $1.33/serving and generate a lot of cardboard recycling and a plastic film cover.  They aren't organic and I don't love that they have palm oil and wish we had more control over the sugar level, "natural flavors," and things I imagine are stabilizers like guar gum.    

Since I am not the end consumer of this recipe, I compromised a little bit on the "from scratch"  objective to see if I could first entice trying the new concoction.  I used my daughter's favorite healthy-ish organic acai sorbet as the filler, a flavor that is not available in any mochi line.  Yes, it has some stabilizers and a lot of sugar added, but I figured if I got the recipe dialed in that she preferred home-made, I could branch out to banana nice-cream, and other healthier home grown options.  Also, a ball sized dollop of acai is substantially less (and less sugar) than her typical bowl-sized serving.    

We still had a few materials from a gift mochi-making kit (silicon ball mold mat, mold cutter, and baggies of rice/potato starch), so I used these to assemble 8 mochi.  I should have used a larger microwave-safe bowl than my little pyrex round 2 cup dish, the biggest challenge was overflow when I tried to stir it between blasts.  I slid the 6 best-looking ones into an old mochi box.  So far, she has finished one for dessert.  In my own taste test, I concluded that the dough freezes a little more firm with my version and I need to level up a bit on making aesthetically attractive balls, but overall, this was a great start.  

Verdict:  I could easily see myself restocking the dough inputs to whip up some batches of these in the future to "dilute" the store-bought mochi habit.  That said, this is a pretty fussy recipe for the yield and I plan to keep experimenting with other, easier prep dessert/dessert-adjacent dishes.  

Mochi

approx .5 cups ice cream/acai 

.75 cup sweet rice flour

.33 cup sugar

.75 cup water

.25 cup potato starch

Cocoa or matcha powder (optional color)

 Press 10 min thawed ice cream into molds.  Freeze 1-2 hours or overnight

Heatproof bowl sweet rice flour, sugar, optional color whisk then add water 

Cover in plastic wrap, microwave 1 min, stir, 1 min, stir, 30 sec stir

Prep surface with potato starch

Roll out dough on surface, flip, add more starch as needed

Rolling pin to ⅛” thick, cut out 8 circles with dough (my yield was 9)

Plate with plastic wrap (will need to individually wrap balls)

Chill in fridge 30 mins (clean up)

Continue your unprocessed journey and replicate two more items organically. 

#1:  "Snickers" protein bars

This idea got fixed in my head after reading a MaryJane's Farm article about copycat Halloween candy recipes.  I have generally trained myself not to routinely bring candy into the house and couldn't bring myself to make it from scratch, but I do have a guilty pleasure of reaching for a protein bar when things get hectic and they aren't that far off from being a candy bar.  On my favorite protein powder website, I saw a bar recipe I just had to try.  The other things I loved about this recipe is that I could try using Vitamix to make oat into flour and I loved that the authors included the weight of sticky things in grams because I hate to mess up all my measuring cups and would rather spatula messy things directly into the mixture bowl that is sitting on a kitchen scale.  

Again, the perfectionist in me wants to caveat that this isn't perfectly organic and it uses artificial sweeteners (stevia, thaumatin).  Plus when I divide the 25 g of protein powder across 12 servings, each one only has about 1.5 grams of protein from the powder another 8 g from peanuts, PB and oats.  So this is basically a candy bar which happens to have 10 grams of protein.  A comparable snickers looks like it would have about 1/3 that amount of protein.  Snickers also makes a 20 g "hi" protein bar, but there is no way those are easy to find on impulse in a convenience store.  Likewise, it isn't a perfect copycat to the format of bars you can throw into the glove box and forget about for months until you have a food emergency.

Verdict:  Tasty!  The chocolate coating was overly fussy and I can't see myself taking the time if I didn't already have the bain-marie going for a batch of chocolate covered bananas, berries, etc.  That said, I think I will keep experimenting with recipes (like this one) that call for a higher proportion of protein powder to see if I can find a mix that boosts the satiation power of "dessert."   

 Ingredients

For the Base:

100g/3½oz/1 cup oats

70g/2½oz/½ cup roasted peanuts

25g/¼ cup Form Chocolate Peanut Protein

Pinch of salt

60g/2oz/¼ cup smooth peanut butter  (NB:  I substituted slightly chunky chocolate-hazelnut copycat Nutella I was trying to use up) 

2 tbsp maple syrup

1 tbsp coconut oil, melted

1 tbsp plant-based milk

 

For the Middle:

80g/3oz/½ cup medjool dates, pitted weight

60ml/2oz/¼ cup plant-based milk (NB: I substituted cow milk because this didn't need to be vegan)

80g/2¾oz/1/3 cup smooth peanut butter

2 tbsp coconut oil, melted

1 tsp vanilla essence

Pinch of salt

70g/2½oz/½ cup roasted peanuts

 

For the Chocolate Coating:

112g/4oz dark chocolate, chopped or in chips

1 tsp coconut oil (NB: I used cocoa butter chips to thin because this coconut oil was the messiest ingredient (this time of year it is in solid form)).  

Extra peanuts (NB: I skipped this)

Flaky salt

Instructions

1. Line a 15-cm/6-inch square baking pan with baking parchment. Soak the dates for the filling in boiling water for 10 minutes and then drain them.  (NB: I used a pyrex loaf pan which was slightly more surface area)

2. First, make the base: add the oats and peanuts to a small blender and blitz to a fine flour-like texture. Add this into a small mixing bowl with the protein powder, peanut butter, maple syrup, melted coconut oil and plant-based milk. Stir to a sticky mixture that holds together when pressed between two fingers.

3. Pour all of the base mixture into the pan and press down firmly to make a compact layer. Chill in the fridge while you continue.

4. To make the caramel: add the soaked and drained dates, plant-based milk, peanut butter, coconut oil, vanilla essence and salt to the blender and process until really smooth. Stop to scrape down the sides as necessary.

5. Remove the baking pan from the fridge and spread the caramel all over the base. Sprinkle over the peanuts and press down lightly. Return the pan to the fridge (or freezer) for 2 hours, or until firm to touch. (NB: I put in fridge but in the future would favor the freezer to make the dipping step easier)

6. For the chocolate coating: melt together the chocolate and coconut oil in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (known as a bain-marie) or in the microwave, until glossy. (NB: I felt I needed slightly more chocolate than this to cover my bars, possibly because I had 12 vs 10)

7. When ready to coat, lift the bars out of the tin and use a sharp, warmed knife to slice the snickers bars into 10 pieces. Now, dip each one into the melted chocolate, face down, to coat the peanut and caramel middle. Allow the excess to drip off and transfer to a plate.

8. While the chocolate is still warm, sprinkle over some crushed peanuts and flaky salt, if desired. Allow to set in the fridge for 10 minutes.

9. Enjoy straight away or keep these bars in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for 1 month. Allow them to defrost before eating.

#2:  Pop-can Flaky Biscuits

Like mochi, these bookend my daughter's day as her breakfast of choice.  They are technically organic, but I don't love that each one costs $0.93, they generate 45 grams of packaging trash, and contain palm oil.  My first attempt to DIY was to use a Mary Jane's Farm buttermilk biscuit mix.  These were an improvement in only generating 18 g of trash and not using palm oil.  I also loved that this got me started using my skillet/dutch oven on the stovetop for baking projects.  I had been spooked by the MJF bakeover recipes which called for putting the skillets in an actual oven because my little micorwave/convection cannot fit large pans like that.  However, this will not be my final destination for copycat pop can biscuits.  These turned out tasty and stick-to-your-ribs savory, but were less of a laminated flaky pastry that is easy to break open and smother in chocolate hazelnut spread.  They also work out to be more expensive to source from Idaho.  That said, this was so educational, I am glad I gave it a try and believe I can track down the recipes to make similar bakeover mixes in Mary Jane's cookbook but using responsibly harvested ingredients that are sourced closer to home.