Olympic Thrills and Homemade Paste

Another late night. Kevin and I decided to watch the men's triathalon in full, and were we ever glad we did. Simon Whitfield won gold for Canada in this event in Sidney, but that seems like awhile ago now (I still remember watching the replay of his win, sitting on our tiny green Ikea couch in our miniature cat-hair-infested apartment near the Danforth in Toronto; pre-children). Our commentators had built up Simon as a medal hopeful for these games, but I tend to take these Canadian medal hopeful predictions with a big grain of salt. ("If she performs a personal best here, she's got an outside chance at a medal, Ron.")
We saw the race from beginning to end. According to the commentators, Simon has really improved on his swim since winning the gold in 2000; after winning gold, do you really need to improve on anything? In the bike race, there was a huge pack, but fortunately no crashes, and no one really got away. It's the running race where Simon excels, and every step of the way, he stayed with the leader pack. The male commentator kept counting him out, doubting him: "I don't like the way Simon's running right now. His shoulders look stiff. He's falling behind here. He can't let these leaders get away from him or his race is over." Et cetera. And every time Simon would push on and there he'd be--up with the pack again. The pack gradually dropped people till it was only four. "Oh no, not fourth," Kevin said (we've seen a few great performances that ended in Canadian fourths). With a kilometre left, Simon fell off the pace and it looked completely impossible. And then--there he was again, and pushing into his sprint, past all of them and into the lead! Kevin and I were on our feet trying to run the race for him. He was overtaken by a big young German in the last 50 metres, but crossed the line in second, and looked like he couldn't have taken another step. It was sure hard to get to sleep after that. Midnight, and baby CJ had another rough night. But totally worth it.

Just as I was writing this, I got to watch Alexandre Despatie win silver in diving. AND a daring 21-year-old Canadian trampolinist win silver. AND an unknown, unexpected Canadian hurdler win bronze: Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (sp?). Okay, so the medals are exciting. I'll admit it. But why? And why claim these athletes as my own? Somebody's done a thesis on this, I expect.

Yesterday I made paste for an art project. Thought I'd include the recipe here. I haven't let the kids use glue for ages because inevitably the bottle gets emptied in one crazy "project," like "Glue Lake on Blue Construction Paper." This homemade paste is supposed to last forever. I'm keeping it in the fridge. I didn't have the oil of cloves (what is that??) the original recipe called for.

Paste for Children's Play (from MCC's More-With-Less Cookbook):
Combine in a double boiler: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 4 cups water. That's it. Stir and cook till thickened, then stir in 1 tbs alum to preserve.
Mine came out lumpy, but there were some distractions while preparing it, the main one being I was trying to make paste for an art project that was already in full swing, so impatience was a factor. It worked, though. Things got stuck together.

Labels: , ,