the kids are safe from having fun, too, it looks like, from reading the box.

i have some measuring implements, but mostly i cook by it’s green enough now, so that must be enough parsley and it smells like bread, time to take it out of the oven. i did once turn out something that even the dogs refused to eat, but so far nobody has actually died.

the worst part is when something works out and all your friends want the recipe. i’ve got a friend whose recipe for bread pudding i begged for for ages. she eventually told me she’d stopped giving it out because nobody could follow it: put stale bread in a big bowl, add just enough milk so that it isn’t mushy, then add enough cinnamon so that it’s beige… a woman after my own heart.

I think you’re right about the 3gm for most people.

I have a electronic food scale which is as accurate as the drug scale I had when I was in law enforcement, and it allows you to zero out a container. I bought it and Euro measuring cups because I had several recipes I picked up in Germany that did work when just converted to the English system, especially when the spices were measured by weight, not volume.

Hell, I’d settle for a Dairy Queen. The last one in the area closed a couple of years ago, and Baskin and Robbins is the only game in town.

The soft drinks are different down here, the Coke is better, but the others are dreck.

The current chemistry sets are so child safe as to be worthless. The child is certainly safe from learning anything.

sodium atomic wt = 23, sodium bicarbonate molecular wt = 84
7000mg of nahco3 would just put you at the daily limit for sodium [is it still 3000mg? i could be confused]

my scale could qualify as a museum piece. possibly it was confused about that 4.5g. and i wasn’t very careful about zeroing it, as there were kittens helping me with the project.

the only two things i miss about the northeast: ice cream stands on the side of every road and ginger beer in every grocery store. i’ve also developed a real liking for crystallized ginger. ginger ale now seems so… spineless.

when my brother and i were deemed old enough, our grandmother gave us dad’s chemistry set that he’d had as a kid [can’t buy that stuff for your kid these days]. we whiled away many a delightfully stinky [and messy] saturday afternoon.

Actually I use baking soda most often to treat fireant bites, as I rarely have stomach problems that an occasional ginger ale can treat.

Ha! I emptied the entire school, although with only 52 people in my graduating class that wasn’t hard. Considering the intermediate step you have to wonder how they discovered that you could make fragrances that way.

Yep, if you what to catch a kid’s attention there’s nothing like loud noises, fires, smoke, and bad odors.

we synthesized and um, rapidly desynthesized, a nice little pile of nitrogen triiodide in my high school. evacuated half the building, police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and purple smoke everywhere. no children were left behind though. i was failing chemistry up to that point [very boring stuff]. straight As afterwards.

i did consider mentioning this little incident in your post below, as it inspired not only me, but several of my classmates, to go into science, medicine, or engineering in college. it really does pay to try to channel kids’ stupidity and exuberance into constructive endeavors, rather than just throw one’s hands up in the air and have them arrested. that’s what no child left behind really means.

Everyone’s a critic, so it would have been a closer equivalent to say 14 grams in 200 milliliters of water since room temperature saturation is 7.8 grams/100 milliliters. I had Chemistry in 1963, and you don’t need more than a half cup anyway.

Hey, I cleared out my high school making esters when the hood ventilation failed.

…except the words should end up on their foreheads instead on on their hands…