The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

My last book was The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain.  This book was another classic, so with the old way of speaking sometimes it could be hard to understand. Like the book that wrote about before, 20,000 leagues under the sea, I didn't really follow the whole book, because it was so confusing. But I would that this was easier to read than 20,000 leagues under the sea. This book was "okay".

This book starts off in Hartford, Connecticut in 1889. Where a man, (It doesn't say his name) who's father is a blacksmith and his uncle is a horse doctor, so he is both. But when he meets his match, another blacksmith, Hercules, hits him on the side of the head and he wakes up in King Arthur's Court.

Then while everyone wants to execute him (burn him alive), because no one knows where he came from, but before his execution, he remembered that an eclipse happens right when his execution is. So he acts like he is some kind of magician and acted like he has blown out the sun like a candle. After that the King made him royalty.

Once he becomes royalty, the King and his people send him out on a journey to the Ogre's castle and many other adventures on the way. The rest you will have to read on your own.

This book took about a month, because it was not very interesting (well  not to me). I think I am done with classics, because I just get to confused. It was "okay", but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. 
I rate this book: **1/2 (2 and a half stars).

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

I am just starting to read a new book called "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". It is about this kid or teenager or ever they called them back in the 1800's. He is a black smith and a horse doctor, Because his Dad is a black smith and his uncle is a horse doctor.

Then when he meets his match, another blacksmith, Hercules,  comes and hits on the side of the head with a crow bar. When he woke up he found himself in King Arthur's Court, but when Merlin wants to burn him alive. He uses the eclipse to act like he has great powers and becomes royalty.

That's how far I got so when I am done I will write more. 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: the Ugly Truth

           This book takes place two and a half weeks after Dog Days (the fourth diary of a wimpy kid book). It begins with Greg starting a new school year. Greg is in Middle school just like me. As Greg starts the new school year he is desperate to make new friend as he lost his best friend (Rowley) in summer. His two best options are Christopher and Tyson. Christopher is only a good summer friend, because he's a mosquito magnet, leaving Greg bite free. The other option is Tyson, but he pulls his pants down all the way when he uses the urinal and I don't think anyone can get over that. Most of the book Greg struggles to find friends he can relate to and Rowley is barely in the story. Which seems weird to me, because he has always been such a main character.

             The story then talks about Greg taking on more responsibility at home because his Mom is taking classes and isn't home as much. While she is gone, Greg, Rodrick (Greg's older Brother), Manny (Greg's little brother), and Greg's Dad have to do all chores themselves . They have a ton more responsibility, which I can kind of relate to, because once I came to middle school and Academy 21, I have a ton more responsibility. Instead of just handing in homework I have to set times where I have to read, work on math, and my projects. I have to set goals and plan my day and week based on those goals. So far been different and a little difficult to get used to, just like it was tough for Greg, but I can feel like I can do it and I enjoy it. 

              Overall of all the diary of a wimpy kid, follows a boy through middle school and all the challenges and changes that go along with it.

              I would tell you the whole book, but I don't to ruin the whole book for you. All-in-all it was a good book, extremely easy (I bet a 1st grader could read it). If you like to read or even don't like to read (like me) you will still like this. I recommend this book to everyone.   

What keeps ice cream soft even though it's frozen

            The reason ice cream is smooth and creamy. When you make ice cream the main ingredient to make ice cream creamy is milk and the aired whipped cream. The milk makes it creamy, because when Joey made the chocolate a lot of people said  it was to hard and wasn't creamy enough and the main reason was, because there wasn't enough milk. Also the little pinch of salt helps the ice cream from being completely solid and can't even get a spoon full out of it.
            Also the reason ice cream has it's smooth texture is, because in 1899 an Italian created the homogenizer. At first people just to mix it by hand, but the homogenizer is like any other machine we have now a days it was a easier way to mix it, because back that was a big invention. That is why ice cream is smooth and creamy.

The Math behind our ice cream project

           When we started our survey we were just bring in an ice cream in everyday for 4 days. We decide to to just take a yes or no answer right after they tried it. Then we would tally it up about how many people liked it, but that would be so basic. Then we decided to go more in detail.
            Joey & I made everyone choose from a scale from 1 to 10.  1 being the worst and 10 being the best. I choose a 10 point scale, because it familiar to everyone. Then instead of everyone just telling me what they thought of it write when they tried it I told them to email me what they thought, but I guess some people don't read there email and just told me when they tried it. I couldn't remember all the scores, so I ended up walking around and asking people what they thought.
                There were 28 kids and 5 Teachers/Advisors and 33 people in all. Only 28 people tried the Matcha, 30 people tried the Gelato, 32 people tried the French Vanilla, and all 33 people tried the chocolate. The Matcha was very low scoring with only 3.07 and most people gave it a 1, but the only that brought it up was a 10, 7, and a couple of 5's . If you are wondering I rounded it to the nearest hundredth. The Coffee Gelato scored decent with a 6.93 and most people voted a 10 which is surprising, but for the gelato some people loved it and some people hated it. There were no people in the middle. The chocolate was rated a little better than the coffee gelato with 7.81. The main score was 9, but some two's, four's, and six's brought the score down. The WINNER was French vanilla with 9.68 not going lower than an 8. Almost everyone gave it a 10. This project went great and the odds weren't what I expected it to be.

Matcha Green Tea Recipe

 Our first ice cream was Matcha green tea ice cream. When we told everyone about it almost everyone said " Uhhhh! That sound nasty." or "sounds interesting." The main ingredients was green tea powder and the first thing we did was mix that with hot water. To tell you the truth, it looked like diarrhea and smelled really bad. The rest of it was like making regular ice cream, but then we put the green tea powder in there and did it smell bad. When we were done it didn't really have a very strong smell, so I decided to taste it. I thought it was okay, but then the after taste came and I knew I would never eat that ice cream again.


Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 egg yolks
• 5 Tbsp sugar
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 Tbsp matcha green tea powder
• 3 Tbsp hot water

Preparation:

Mix hot water and green tea powder together in a bowl and set aside. Lightly whisk egg yolks in a pan. Add sugar in the pan and mix well. Gradually add milk in the pan and mix well. Put the pan on low heat and heat the mixture, stirring constantly. When the mixture is thickened, remove the pan from the heat. Soak the bottom of the pan in ice water and cool the mixture. Add green tea in the egg mixture and mix well, cooling in ice water. Add whipped heavy cream in the mixture and stir gently. Pour the mixture in an ice cream maker and freeze, following instructions of the ice cream maker. Or, pour the mixture in a container and freeze, stirring the ice cream a few times.

French Vanilla Recipe

When Joey & I made I had never tried French Vanilla, so I was expecting it to be just like regular vanilla. When got to Joey's house I saw the vanilla bean and it looked like beef jerky! I thought it would be an actual bean. Instead of just putting the bean in the pan, we had to cut it open and then scape off all the seeds inside. It was like tar, it was so sticky. Other than that it was pretty easy. Just mix everything in with the beans. After we were done, it tasted like vanilla but stronger and better. It was one of the best ice cream I had ever tasted!!  
 Ingredients

• 8 large eggs yolks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cups cold milk
• Pinch of fine salt
• 1 vanilla bean

Directions

In a medium bowl, lightly whisk together the yolks and half of the sugar.
In a non-reactive saucepan combine the cream, 1 cup of the milk, the remaining sugar, and the salt.
Split the vanilla bean in half, lengthwise, to expose the tar-like seeds inside the pod. Scrape the seeds loose with a knife; add the bean and the seeds to the cream mixture.
Heat the cream over medium-high heat until just at a boil. Remove from the heat. Gradually pour the hot liquid into the yolks, while whisking constantly. Return the cream-egg mixture to the saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring the mixture constantly, with a wooden spoon in a figure-8 motion, until thickened, about 10 minutes. When the ice cream mixture is properly cooked it should coat the back of a spoon, be satiny thick, and be free of any bubbles on the surface. (If you taste the ice cream base it should have a slight egg-y taste.) When thickened, pour in the reserved milk to prevent the mixture from overcooking. Strain into a medium bowl.
Fill another bowl with ice. Set the bowl of ice cream base in the ice and stir until thoroughly chilled. Freeze the base in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer's instructions. (Take care not to over churn the ice cream or it will get a grainy texture.) Transfer the ice cream to the freezer to set up for at least 1 hour. Serve.

Ice Cream

We decided to do our project on ice cream, because topic can move many different directions. Our project included almost all subject include history, science, writing, and much more. Another reason we choose this project because we thought it would be fun to make and learn about ice cream.
The highlight of our project was the ice cream survey. We brought in each flavor and served it at second & third period each day. Before we conducted our experiment, we thought  that the chocolate flavor would be the favorite of the class because looking at the recipe, it  had the most sugar of all the flavors. Another reason we thought chocolate was the fact that everybody has tried this flavor before. 
We Matcha first because was most usual when we didn't think people would like is ice cream very much, and the data shows that we were correct. The gelato was next and making was a little bit tougher. Joey liked it, but I did not and some people liked it, but some didn't. The next flavor was French Vanilla, it was by far tough one to make out of all the flavors, but labor pay off. Everyone loved it and no one rated it lower than an 8. Finally, the last flavor we made was chocolate. We wiped out in about 20 minutes. Mostly everyone liked it rating it decently, but to our surprise it was rated lower than the French Vanilla.
How we rated each flavor was we asked everybody to rate it from 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. After all the ratings came in we averaged the score on each flavor to compare it to other flavors. The Matcha Green Tea ranked around 3, the coffee gelato ranked around 7, the chocolate ranked around 8, and the WINNER is the French Vanilla which almost got a perfect 10. We think the reason why matcha was last was that nobody we tested like taste of tea, so the unique taste the ice cream had was disgusting to almost all of the students we tested. We think that the coffee gelato scored a decent was because many people liked the coffee flavor, but not everybody has a taste for coffee yet, so it limited it's score. The chocolate didn't rank first we think, because didn't have enough milk to make it creamy enough. French Vanilla was the favorite, because it had a combo of sugar and milk enhance the French Vanilla taste.  
At the end of our we learned surprising new things. We didn't know that French Vanilla is the favorite of the class. We also learned many other things that we put on our poster and time line. Hopefully you enjoyed our project!!! :)

20,000 leagues under the sea

The year is 1860, a giant crew set out across the sea when they are attack which leaves 3 survivors who find themselves trapped on Captain Nemo's ship "the Nautilus". Trapped on a trip around the world.

This book was about a high school level book. With its old fashion ways of writing. Some part easy to understand and some parts didn't make sense at all.