Kitchen capers

Having left our naked egg in a glass of water with green food colouring overnight, we broke the membranes today to see whether our information was correct that the colouring would have moved through the membrane into the egg itself. As you can it is was! The colour was strongest on the membrance, then the outer albumen, which was very watery but the yolk had not been coloured as far as we could see.

We finally got around to using our red cabbage indicator today. As previously mentioned, we bought some distilled (de-ionised) water and boiled the chopped up outer leaves and stalk for about 10 minutes.

Then strained the water off to use as an indicator.

We tested (from left to right) bicarbonate of soda, lemon juice, malt vinegar and washing up liquid

The results (the middle one is our control), it was quite tricky to see the colour the liquid had changed to, so we put a bit of each on some kitchen roll.

We haven't as yet really talked much about what these results mean, because both K & M were both so keen to make some 'Marvellous Medicines' with these lovely coloured liquids plus anything else they could get their hands on! During the Dahlean obsession this was a favourite activity, but they haven't asked to do it for over a year. They're allowed access to pretty much everything (except real medicines, like George), but only a little of anything one ingredient and they must use a clean spoon when necessary. Other than this I encourage them to keep a list of everything that goes in. In the past they've put only edible things in and tried it, but mostly there's at least some liquid soap which rules out tasting.

Their Marvellous Medicines are, they tell me, medicine for Alfred, the red bottomed baboon, about whom they've recently started making stories up. He is from Russia, where he used to live in the tree tops, but now lives in a room in our house.