Bringing Macy Home: Making homemade doughnuts

Why Ethiopia?

• One in six children die before their fifth birthday
• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old
• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
• The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years
• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)
• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia.
• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa
• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)
• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)
• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.
• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.
• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.
• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Making homemade doughnuts

Today we made homemade doughnuts, and OHHHH THEY WERE YUUUMMMO! To get the super-easy "semi-homemade" recipe, click HERE.
So this was my first attempt to ever make doughnuts. Okay, except for when I was five-years-old in Sunday School and my teachers would make them ALL the time. Mental picture: A dozen 5-yr-olds and a hot electric skillet full of grease, with the cord stretch across the room. (I remember that part because I vividly remember the teachers telling us "WATCH THE CORD!" about thirteen million times.) I mean WHO DOES THAT IN A ROOM FULL OF KIDS?!?! Anyway, I digress....

So after promising my kids we were going to do this when they woke up, I realized I had about a half a cup of oil. And well, that just wasn't going to cut it. So I totally improvised and used the fry-daddy. This worked out SO much better, so I am pleased that I wasn't quite as prepared as I'd hoped to have been. Oh, and I totally didn't have the small circle cookie cutters either. (I know, Slacker Mom over here) so I used the tops of two bottles of Karo syrup. Totally did the trick.
The kids REALLY enjoyed their doughnuts. I made the regular icing (oh, except I was out of vanilla extract. Okay, so the moral of this story is I should have looked over all my ingredients and supplies before I promised the kids we'd be doing this) and then totally took the easy-way-out and used Nutella as the chocolate icing. The kids LOOOOVED it. Oh, and while I was scrambling searching for the vanilla the container of sprinkles fell out of the cabinet and Hannah says "OHHH GOODY! Sprinkles on our doughnuts!". (Am I the ONLY MOM OUT THERE that hates using sprinkes with toddlers/preschoolers?!?!?!) So yes, we had sprinkles too. Here's the pics!

This girl can throw down on some food, ya'll. No wonder she's gaining weight so fast!

Hootie icing his doughnut.

(OF COURSE the messy two year old chooses chocolate.)

Houston AFTER icing the doughnut. Yes, that's icing on the wall behind him.

Hannah carefully using her sprinkles.

Aidan just digs on in.

So it was a fun activity. Took me about 20 minutes to scrub the icing off of everyone and everything, but fun nonetheless.

Hope you all have a WONDERFUL WEEKEND! We are hoping to get outside to finally try out Hannah's new Barbie Jeep and Aidan's new bike. You know...outside, instead of inside the house.