Just for kids

STORIES BY RITA FEUTL
ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRUCE ROBERTSON

Homework Helpers

Your teacher has asked you to find out how much bread the average Canadian eats. You’ve got two choices. Stake out the corner bakery for a month, or log on to agriculture.technomuses.ca. The Canada Agriculture Museum site will tell you we eat 3 kg of bread a month—about the weight of an average newborn baby!

Need more agricultural homework help? Check these out:

www.afac.ab.ca/
www.eggs.ab.ca
www.schoolnet.ca (type "agriculture" into the blackboard on the left)

Also, click onto growingalberta.com—and go to the kids section.  You’ll find lots of good information and heaps of fun.

Fun Facts

Ask your friends if they know that:

• Hard cooked eggs spin smoothly, but the insides of an uncooked egg slosh around when you try to spin them and they wobble.
  
• Beef cattle outnumber people in Alberta. There are 5,310,000 cattle and calves, compared to just over 3 million Albertans.
  
• The honey industry is busy, producing not just honey, but beeswax for candles and polishes; pollen for diet supplements; ingredients for cosmetics, lip balms; and skin creams and lotions.
  
• When potatoes were first brought to Europe from Peru, people thought they were poisonous and refused to eat them. After Germany’s King Frederick William realized potatoes were healthy and delicious, he announced that if peasants didn’t plant and eat them, he’d order their noses chopped off.
  
• A typical western Canadian farmer grows enough wheat to make 3 million loaves of bread every year.

Cookie Capers

These Chocolate Oat Chippers are a sweet idea for lunch bag desserts.  Tell your mom that the oatmeal in these cookies makes them healthy!

You’ll need:

1                                An adult’s permission
125 mL  (1/2 cup)  butter
250 mL  (1 cup)     packed brown sugar
1                               egg (large)
2 mL  (1/2 tsp)       vanilla
250 mL  (1 cup)     flour
250 mL  (1 cup)     rolled oats
2 mL  (1/2 tsp)       baking soda
250 mL  (1 cup)     chocolate chips (semi sweet)

You’ll also need:

A large bowl, measuring spoons, measuring cups, mixing spoon, electric mixer, cookie sheets, oven mitts, wire rack, spatula and waxed paper.

Turn the oven on to 350°F.  Put the butter into the bowl.  Add the brown sugar, egg and vanilla flavouring. Beat on medium speed until smooth.

Add the rest of the ingredients. Stir with the spoon until all the flour is mixed in.  Take rounded tablespoons of the dough and drop on the cookie sheets, two inches (five cm) apart.  This will allow room for the cookies to spread.  Bake on the centre rack in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

Use the oven mitts to remove the cookie sheets to the wire rack.  Let stand two minutes.  Remove the cookies to the waxed paper on the counter. Cool completely.  Store the cookies in a container with a lid with waxed paper between the layers.  Makes about three dozen cookies.

PS – You don’t need to grease the cookie sheets—the butter in the batter will do the job!