Over Christmas break we joined Shae’s family for a jaunt to Pennsylvania. I think it was part family reunion, part celebrating her sisters graduation from a masters degree program. Anyhoo, below are some pictures from the trip with a heavy emphasis on Frugal Boy.
I wanted to do something a little more memorable than Chinese takeout for Shae’s birthday, so for this long weekend, I packed up the car and we did a little road trip to two of my favorite childhood state parks in Indiana, Turkey Run and Shades. The two state parks are situated in West Central Indiana near the Illinois border. They both operate in the Eastern timezone.
Given that it was a holiday weekend, the park campgrounds were full, but I was able to make a reservation a week ahead of time for a primitive campsite at Rockville Lake Park. RLP is a private campground just 15 minutes south of Turkey Run and about 5 minutes east of the town of Rockville.
We arrived a bit before dinner on Friday night and decided to set up camp before looking for food. Who really wants to be a camp cook after a day of work and driving multiple hours.
I made Frugal Boy help pack the car, so he was excited to see those packed items come out and be used.
It didn’t take long for him to become a camping expert and start doling out advice on how best to secure the tent.
With camp secured, we drove into town and ate at a mom and pop restaurant. I had forgotten to stop at an ATM and only had $28 in cash in my wallet. Shae never carries cash and relies on the A(ndrew)TM whenever she needs it. I was a bit worried when we sat down at the cash only restaurant, but then remembered how cheap food is in rural Indiana. At $7 or $8 for an entree with two sides, we weren’t exactly pressured to eat miserly. Now I know how my middle brother, who spent a decade on the east coast, feels whenever I am bitching about the cost of staples.
The campground did not have an easily accessible supply of potable water so we stopped at a grocery store and bought a few jugs of water along with an evening treat.
A 4 pack of Smores drumstick ice cream cones was cheaper than buying a bundle of wood and having a campfire. You’re not supposed to transport fire wood because of all the critters that can hitch a ride and invade a new ecosystem and you are also not supposed to collect down branches and twigs in the campground because it depletes nutrients from the forest (my ecologist sister can correct me in the comments).
We turned in early that night because we were dog gone tired.
I woke up in the morning to an empty tent. Sometime in the night we acquired a couple of new neighbors. My stomach was growling, so I set to work making breakfast.
We had packed a cooler with half a dozen eggs, cheese, and an assortment of snack food. For car camping, I love the incredibly simple and rock solid single burner propane stove that I bought a decade ago at Wally World.
You have to buy the propane tanks separately, but they seem to last forever. The stove is strong enough to boil a few cups of water, so you can make quite a variety of foods on it. I had to take a picture of this particular propane tank because my parents gave it to us when they cleaned out an outbuilding. I remember these old tanks from my childhood, but they still work!
Shae had taken Frugal Boy down to the lake to go play.
When they came back, breakfast was ready!
I knew that Turkey Run was going to be popular on a Saturday, so we made tracks and got their early. The suspension bridge over Sugar Creek is always a favorite spot. A few kayakers and canoes drifted by below us while we crossed.
Inside, the spirit of adventure tugged at us to move forward.
Frugal Boy found a hiking stick
that he promptly lost, but talked about the rest of the day.
We found a cave (more like an overhang).
We hiked through streams
and climbed up ladders.
By lunch time, we had covered about 5 miles of trails, Frugal Boy was carried for some of that, but we made him walk even when he didn’t want to.
At lunch a bee landed on my hand. Frugal Boy asked what it was and I explained that it was a bee and it could hurt me. If I stayed still it would leave me alone and leave. We watched as it flew off and around and landed on Frugal Boy’s hand. My lesson apparently went in one ear and out the other because he tried to squish it. Maybe he is a first hand experience learner.
After lunch, we did one last trail. It was nearly empty and tucked away behind some cabins, but I thought it was one of the best trails we did that day.
When we left around 2pm all of the parking lots were full and the line of cars waiting to get into the park stretched out onto the highway. Just like the Shedd Aquarium, it pays to be there early.
We took a nap back at camp, and walked around the grounds. It was interesting people watching. Most of them were glampers, or people that were glamping (glamorous camping). We saw many satellite dishes, ginormous RVs, and flat screen tvs.
I made dinner on my trusty single burner camp stove.
I’m still trying to figure out what chain of events happened that made me the de facto camp chef. Some where history went wrong.
Frugal Boy has been doing very well with using the potty, but he still has some things to learn, like how to pee standing up. He got a primer on this camping trip and his only words were Awesome! and Again!
In the morning, we broke down camp quickly and left RLP so we could get to the canoe outfitters in time for their first run of the day. The outfitters was a well oiled machine that was processing hundreds of people. For $22 we had a three hour canoe ride down Sugar Creek. I could only surmise that the only way the outfitter made money was by sheer volume.
We got a different view of the suspension bridge that we crossed the day before.
We took one grainy selfie before we reached the pullout spot, a red covered bridge.
There is something like 48 covered bridges in this part of Indiana. I have never done it, but there is a covered bridge festival if that is something that interests you.
Back at the outfitters, we took one last picture of Frugal Boy and the canoe. He was really excited and wanted to go again.
From there we drove up to Shades State Park. The difference was night and day. Shades didn’t charge an entrance fee, even though it was listed. The parking lot was half empty at noon, compared to overflowing. The trails were sparsely populated. We ate lunch and hiked two more trails before declaring ourselves completely tuckered out. Frugal Boy loved the tricky ravine hiking and slept the entire car ride home.
If you are looking for a fun place to hike in Western Indiana, then I would recommend Shades or Turkey Run. There are some fun trails.
Life has been busy and I haven’t found a lot of time to write, so I will be keeping it short today.
Frugal Boy has slowly been collecting his summer reading bag goodies. Shae and I have been working on his walking endurance. He is so cute when he finishes a walk and is beaming with pride. “I did it!”
I gave him the coupon for a free pineapple-on-a-stick, explained what it was for, and he dutifully held onto it for the half a mile walk to the store.
Success!
On Saturday, we continued on our family tradition of visiting the Shedd aquarium while expecting. The last time Shae and I visited was three years ago.
It was a different experience with a toddler in tow. He wasn’t terribly interested in many of the exhibits because he wanted to play with the information tablets that littered the exhibit halls. I know the administrators meant well, but given the choice of screen time vs viewing exotic fish in the flesh, a small child is probably going to pick the screen. Sometimes an old school paper card is the better option.
Some of the exhibits were hands on, including the starfish and stingrays.
In an attempt to keep the outing frugal, we packed a lunch and had an amazing view of the beluga whales. The whales were quite camera friendly and seemed willing to stop and pose for groups of people.
By the time we left around 1:30, the line was way out the door. You can easily skip the long line by buying your tickets online. It is the same price and you can go straight to the information desk for admission instead of waiting for an hour plus.
Love it or hate it, every parent eventually has to potty train their kids. We are currently on attempt #2 with Frugal Boy. For the first attempt, we read a book written by a professional trainer (parents pay her money to deal with it). The author encouraged parents to target the 20-30 month old window because the child is old enough to be capable, but young enough not to dig his/her heels in completely and be obstinate. We thought that Frugal Boy might have been ready at 20 months so we gave it a go. And the going kept going for two months before we finally admitted defeat. You can’t say we didn’t try!
Now that we are finished globe trotting for the time being, we decided it was time to give it another go. This time, we made some changes to our plan of attack. Mainly, we were going to bribe the heck out of Frugal Boy. The book author discourages bribing, but we tried her way and it didn’t work for us. We went to Dollar Tree and picked up $3 worth of incentives.
The first $1 was spent on a two pack of a “Count to 100” poster. This serves as our progress tracker slash game board. The next $1 was spent on a booklet of stickers. The last $1 was spent on prizes in the form of Paw Patrol temporary tattoos.
Each successful use of the potty earns 1 sticker to be placed on the chart/game board. A #2 is worth 2 stickers (hehehe). We arbitrarily draw red circles around some of the numbers and when Frugal Boy reaches one of those special numbers he gets a Paw Patrol tattoo.
He LOVES Paw Patrol and can name each one and its tagline. The pink dog is named Sky (or Skye? I don’t know the spelling). What matters is that he is motivated.
The tattoos wear off in a day or two, so he has to keep up with the program in order to keep his pals with him.
We are on day 4 and he is already up to 31 stickers (plus a handful at the babysitters). More importantly, he is self initiating! Woohoo. The book talked about the four steps of progress.
Eight months ago he was mostly at 1 and 2. Today he is at 3 and 4. I have yet to meet a kid that takes off their diaper and goes straight to potty trained on their own volition. It takes practice, nudging from parents, and time.
I like to think that our new program is to credit for his recent success. We modeled it after video games. There is a mechanic in games were beginner players are rewarded for doing simple, easy tasks. These early, ‘low hanging’, payoffs encourage the player to keep going. The payoffs get farther and farther apart and require more work. A good write up of all the psychological traps used in a ‘simple’ game such as Candy Crush can be found here.
This past Christmas, Shae and I got the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker attachment as a gift from her parents. The set consists of a freezer bowl, a churning paddle, some plastic connector bits, and an instructions manual.
In the world of homemade ice cream, there are three methods.
This is the tried and true coffee can way of making ice cream. You pour your cream mixture into a small can, seal it up, then place that small can inside a bigger can packed with ice and salt. After sealing the bigger can, you (or better yet, your kids) roll the can back and forth across the kitchen floor for 30 minutes until the inside can freezes.
There are more sophisticated setups for salt & ice but they all work the same. A nice write up on this if you want to try it at home is available here.
In this method, instead of using ice and salt, you pre-freeze a special mixing bowl that contains blue-ice in the side walls. These big mixing bowls act like cooler packs that you throw in the freezer before going on a picnic or taking your lunch to work. The KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker utilizes one of these bowls. The advantage is that you don’t have to bother with crushing up ice and adding in salt. The disadvantage is that you need to freeze the bowl overnight in order to get it cold enough to make ice cream.
At the very highest end of home ice cream makers are kitchen gadgets that have built in compressors. These units just plug into the wall and the built in compressor makes the mixing area cold enough to make ice cream. The advantage is that you don’t have to pre-freeze a bulky bowl. The disadvantage is price. Compressor styled ice cream makers range anywhere from $200-600. Assuming that ingredients are free and you only buy high end $5/quart ice cream. It would take between 40-120 quarts of ice cream to pay off one of these machines. As you’ll see further down, ingredients for high quality ice cream are anything but free.
We followed one of the KitchenAid recipes back in January when we broke in the gizmo. I don’t think we had our freezer cold enough, because there were a lot of large ice crystals that formed. This time around, we were better prepared and set our freezer down to the coldest setting. The faster your ice cream mixture freezes, the smaller the ice crystals will be. The name of the game becomes, get your cream mixture as close to freezing as possible before starting the churning process.
This time around, we followed this rocky road recipe with some modifications. We substituted whipping cream in place of the heavy cream and we changed light cream with 2% milk.
With our mixing bowl frozen and the cream mixture thoroughly chilled, we were able to start the churning process.
Frugal Boy wanted to pour his milk into the bowl as well. I am not sure if he understood that ice cream comes from dairy, or if he would have just as happily poured in a cup of water. Either way, I am happy that we can teach him how different foods are made so that he can understand what it is that he is eating and what had to happen in order to make that possible.
When using the KitchenAid, you have to start the mixing paddle before you pour the mixture in otherwise it will freeze to the sides instantly.
The paddle is designed to start slipping when the ice cream gets thicker. This helps to protect the mixers motor from burning out. At the end of mixing, throw in any add-ons. For rocky road, that would include mini marshmallows and chunks of pecan.
At this stage, the ice cream will have the consistency of soft serve. You’ll want to ‘ripen’ it by putting the ice cream in the freezer. Remember that the faster the ice cream freezes, the less ice crystals it will have and the smoother the consistency will be. We used a shallow plastic tub and that seemed to work quite well.
Yummy. When properly made, like this batch was, you end up with a really high quality creamy silky smooth ice cream that tastes just like the expensive brands at the supermarket. The key to a great consistency is to keep everything as cold as possible. Chill the mixture at the bottom and back of your refrigerator. Some people even pop it into the freezer for a few minutes before starting the churning. You really want it to freeze quickly.
Making ice cream at home is not going to save you money over buying it at the store. So don’t buy into a system with that delusion. Even if you use the coffee can method instead of a fancy machine, the fact remains that the raw ingredients are pricey. A pint of whipping cream will set you back about $2.50. Add in a 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk and you are already at $3.50. Throw in 25¢ of regular milk (a cup or two) and just the base of the ice cream is at $3.75 for 2 quarts. Mix-ins such as pecans rapidly drive up the price.
Shae is the queen at making yogurt. It is a fairly simple process with one ingredient, milk. Aldi has been selling milk for under $1/gallon. I think the last time we went it was 94¢. One gallon of milk will make half a gallon (two quarts) of strained, thick, greek yogurt. Most frozen yogurt recipes are pretty simple: yogurt, sugar, a flavoring such as vanilla extract. Sugar is about 21¢ per cup and that is more than enough for two quarts of greek yogurt. Vanilla extract is also about 21¢ per tablespoon. That brings the raw ingredient cost of vanilla froyo to around $1.36 for two quarts.
Have you made ice cream before? What recipes should we try out?