Ben's Mexican meal and other things

Remember Katie's Indian meal she cooked recently?  Well, Ben decided he would also like to serve up a delicious evening supper and decided on a Mexican banquet.  Just like Katie's it was fabulous, very moorish and certainly a meal to repeat.  For the first course he cooked fried spicy Mexican potatoes with the most gorgeous Black Bean Soft Tacos as a main.  This was such a hit, the recipe has been added to my scrapbook collection of yummy "grub to be repeated"!  Dessert was Mexican Creme Caramel - wonderful.  By the time we came to dessert we were all rather stuffed but somehow, in true family style, we managed to polish it all off.  So it seems I have a household of very good cooks (so how come it's still me that ends up at the cooker?).

Science has been the choice of learning for Ben at the moment, especially after the Science Fair in London.  He's been updating his own blog on the bicarbonate of soda crystals that he started a few weeks ago.  We are all quite impressed with this as we've tried the experiment several times before with no apparent crystals forming at all.  This time we decided to leave it on the windowsill for what must now be two or three weeks, and have watched as one jar of water evaporated, with crystals slowly forming along the wool, and now the other jar of water slowly disappearing too.  Why one jar should evaporate before the other I just don't know, but it's looking lovely, a bit like soft snow.

With a bit of help (rolling up all the newspaper tubes) Ben constructed a very sturdy cube which we hung from the light fitting in his room.  Looked fabulous until it collapsed after a bit of rough bashing (well, it would wouldn't it!).  Also, on the construction front, he's made a spaghetti and marshmallow "building" strong enough to hold objects up to quite a weight, starting with a plastic toy car and finishing with a rather sturdy PG Tips toy monkey (called Kevin). 

Although the building was made from rather brittle spag, we were surprised to find that it could hold a considerable load before actually breaking the strands.  The marshmallows would take the impact with the building just tilting and reshaping to hold the necessary weight.  It was good to eat the marshmallows afterwards, and, once cooked, the hen had the spaghetti strands - no wastage in our family!!

Finally, we've dabbled with electronics again.  However, our trusty kit gave up the ghost this morning.  It's done well for a 50p find from a car boot fair - now looking on ebay for a replacement as electronics are always great fun.