Dried Pasta Coral Snake

Remember how I said I hadn't shared a single dried pasta craft in 11+ years of blogging? Time to change that! But what to make? When I design crafts, I try to fill gaps. The world doesn't need more tutorials for macaroni necklaces or pasta snowflakes. We don't need another explanation of how to dye pasta. We do need more realistic reptile crafts. So I decided to try to make a banded snake using a different method for coloring pasta than either dip-to-dye or brushing on acrylic paint. 

After a lot of experimentation, I came up with a pasta version of an Eastern Coral Snake. 

 

The first step was picking my pasta. I wanted my snake to have realistic curves, so elbow macaroni was out because the bends are too sharp. My next thought was rigatoni. Maybe I could cook the dried pasta, shape it with a gentle curve, then let it dry that way? We were out of rigatoni, so I used penne. In retrospect, I should have waited for rigatoni. Since penne is cut on the bias, I really struggled with gluing the pieces together without leaving gaps. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

I boiled a bunch of penne, dried it off (not carefully enough, as it turns out) and put it on parchment paper. Then I dipped a wet paintbrush into food dye and painted the middle third of some penne. I made some black and some red. You can see some of the red ones in the bottom right where the dye ran up the ridges because I hadn't dried it off sufficiently. I gently bent about half of the pieces, hoping that when I left them to dry, they'd retain a gentle bend. Answer: not really. 

I cooked more penne and bent the warm pieces into demitasse cups. I left them to dry, hoping they'd retain the bends. Success!  

I painted the curved pieces with food dye, then used yellow food dye to color the ends. Then I did my best to fit the pieces together, the diagonal edges of the penne fighting me all the way. When I found an arrangement I liked, I glued it to a piece of background paper and added the label. (I'd thought about nestling it in a bed of tomato sauce instead of using glue on paper, because until I added glue, the pasta was edible... if cold and a bit crunchy.) Since making my snake, I've thought of a bunch of things I'd do differently if I made it again. I may or may not do some future experimentation for pasta snakes. 

One more thing I want to share: in researching coral snakes, I came across this interesting article about the famous rhyme. Since I'm not in the habit of touching snakes in the wild and I don't kill snakes, it doesn't really matter to me whether the rhyme holds true 100% of the time. 

Weekend Getaway in Folsom, California

Last weekend, Steve and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. After two years of COVID interruption, we were able to go back to our tradition of dropping Trevor off with his grandparents and staying in a nearby city we don't know well and exploring it together. This year we chose Folsom and stayed at the Lake Natoma Inn.  

The Inn is located along the Lake Natoma section of the American River in Folsom's historic district. It is the perfect home base for exploring the many attractions the city has to offer. Almost everything we did is within (hilly) walking distance of the Inn. 

You can easily spend an entire day exploring just four blocks in the historic district. We started at the Folsom History Museum. It's smallish, but the two rooms of exhibits kept us informed and entertained for well over an hour. One room focuses on the history of Folsom...

  

... while the other has an awesome exhibit about the history of toys. The perimeter of the room has displays about the most popular toys for each decade, then the center of the room has places where you can play with some of those toys. 

We went sign-by-sign together and shared which toys we each had, which our siblings had, and which we played with at our grandparents' houses (because they were toys our parents or grandparents had had as kids). It was really fun to learn something new about Steve. 

Check out the 1870's vs the 1970's. 

  

The Folsom History Museum is located on Sutter Street, which is a destination in itself. On the weekends, they close the street to traffic and open it up for pedestrians to enjoy. It's packed with interesting things to see and do. It also has some incredible restaurants, but I'll get to that later. 

Folsom was the westernmost point on the Pony Express for 2/3 of its history. 

We loved The Game Getaway. Every inch of this store is filled with games to buy or to play. For $5, you can spend the entire day playing anything on their Wall of Games. They had pretty much everything. 

There's so much history in Folsom. 

We absolutely loved our time at the Pioneer Village. This outdoor museum has gold panning, blacksmiths at work, a miner's cabin, a caboose, and so much more to see and do. 

On our second day in Folsom, we tried to visit the Folsom Prison Museum...

... but it is run by volunteers and the person who was supposed to work that day didn't show up. Very disappointing. At least we could look at the outdoors exhibits. We could also look at the prison itself. I didn't expect it to be so close to the museum. This is as close as we were allowed to get.  

We walked across the beautiful Rainbow Bridge. It was part of the historic Lincoln Highway, the first coast-to-coast route in the US. When it opened in 1919, it was the fourth largest concrete arch span in the world. 

We crossed at walking speed without any livestock, so we didn't have to pay. 

The American River. 

We walked along a portion of the Johnny Cash Trail. 

I'd hoped some of the art would be in place, but not yet. We'll be back. 

We did find this themed geocache near the location where a giant guitar will eventually stand. 

We really enjoyed the Folsom Powerhouse State Historic Park. The museum is interesting and has some neat hands-on exhibits. 

Then we toured the Powerhouse itself, the brick building over my right shoulder.

Not only did we visit some really neat places in Folsom, we ate a lot of outstanding food. I highly recommend Plank, specifically their grilled caprese, which is one of the best sandwiches I've ever had. We thoroughly enjoyed the food at Out of Bounds, Seasons 916, and Reset Cafe, We wanted to try the chimney cones at Sweet Dozen Cones, but they were sold out when we went and had to settle on ordinary waffle cones for our ice cream. When we return to see the Folsom Prison Museum eventually, we'll be getting chimney cones for sure. We got donuts and cinnamon rolls one morning from BJ Cinnamon. I haven't had any other donuts or cinnamon rolls in Folsom, but I can confidently say these are the best in town even without trying the others. 

One restaurant, however, was more than just food. It was an experience we'll be talking about for years. I'd give Fourk Kitchen at least 5 stars out of 4. 

Fourk serves a formal, prix fixe, four-course meal, but in a casual, intimate environment. There is a single seating each evening with 36 guests. Simple ingredients keep the price quite reasonable. We arrived early for Happy Hour, which included popcorn and a glass of wine.

The first course was a salad with green apple, pickled fennel, walnuts, and goat cheese with a champagne vinaigrette.

Course 2 was a creamy tomato and chicken tortellini soup. It was sooooo good.

 

The main course was deconstructed Beef Wellington. Everything about it was perfect.

We finished the evening with strawberry shortcake. Yum.

The menu at Fourk changes monthly and there is no doubt that we will make a special trip up there at some point in the future. We loved everything about it. 

As it turns out, Trevor and his grandparents had their own adventure in Folsom! They saw a show at the Sutter Street Theatre and ate at Pizzeria Classico. I can't recommend them personally, but Trevor enjoyed both enough to convince me to include them here as great places to go in Folsom. 

Folsom wasn't on my radar as a vacation destination, but now that I've experienced it, I'd definitely recommend you go! 

Name Art: Triangles and Rectangles Only

Here's a fun challenge for kids. Spell your name using ONLY triangles and rectangles.  

Some letters are easier than others. Capital I was not difficult, but I struggled to make a Y that I liked. Every letter can be made with triangles, rectangles, or a combination of both. You can tackle this challenge with pencil and paper, or you can cut out triangles and rectangles and assemble them into letters and then glue to them a background paper.

I like creative challenges like this. It forces you to think in a different way, either breaking down letters into their formative parts (like I did with the Y), or looking at letters as a whole to see beyond the way they're normally assembled (like I did with the N). This is such a great way to exercise your brain and practice what it means to be creative.