I MacGyvered Some Fries Tonight

I thought french fries would be good to accompany supper tonight, so I fired up the oven to about 425 and went to the freezer to pull out the....oh, cr@p! We were out of fries and I didn't want to go to the store for just a bag of frozen fries.

However, I did have several potatoes on hand. And a knife...erg! The one I wanted was in the dishwasher which was barely into the wash cycle.

I pulled an apple corer out of a drawer. It's one of those doohickeys that not only cores the apple, but slices it into wedges at the same time. I found that it also works well on potatoes, with the core being (bonus!) a cylinder of potato. It was much faster than slicing those potatoes into wedges.

Next step - putting the wedges into the baking pan and brushing them with oil. Except I didn't know where the little basting brush was. 

Not a problem! I put the wedges into a zippered plastic storage bag, along with a little grapeseed oil (because that was what we had), closed the bag and shook the heck out of it for about 10 seconds. Voila! Evenly coated potato wedges!

Now I poured them onto the baking pan, sprinkled the wedges with seasoning, popped them in the oven and half an hour later we had the best fried (well... baked) potato wedges we've had in a long time.

Maybe I should write this down, in case I want to do it again.

Oh, wait!  
I just did!

It's Hot so We Built an Air Conditioner

   With several days of 100+ temperatures so far, and with summer usually getting hotter in July and August, getting into the car to go somewhere is uncomfortable for the first several minutes until the air conditioner cools things down to something resembling a bearable temperature.  Today, we created an air conditioner out of a Styrofoam cooler, a battery-powered fan, and frozen ice packs.
   I had read about this here: Lifehacker AC DIY and decided it was time to give it a shot.  We already had some Styrofoam coolers around the house because we've had things shipped to us that needed to stay cold, which solved the problem of finding a suitable container.  Also, we have the reusable ice packs that came with the coolers, although for test purposes we used frozen peas.  I'm the only one who likes peas, and the main reason we keep frozen peas on hand is because they make nice moldable ice packs for injuries (I have kids, plus I'm a guy - injuries are pretty much unavoidable).  We have some plug-in-to-wall fans, too, but I wanted this to be portable, so I bought a battery-powered fan and some batteries.
   So for less than $15, I was ready to create.  With my trusty pocket knife, and humming the theme song to "MacGyver," I cut a hole in the lid of the ice chest just big enough for the front of the fan to fit in, facing downward (i.e., inside).  Another hole in the side of the chest, towards the top, provided the outlet.
   I pulled two packets of frozen peas out of the freezer, set them in the bottom of the chest, put the lid on, sat the fan on top and switched the fan on to blow down onto the peas.  The resulting cold air bounced back up and came out the outlet hole.  Success!
   I have a plastic bottle of water in the freezer now, in addition to the reusable ice packs, so we'll have plenty of frozen things to use when we need to cool down the interior of the car a bit in the sweltering summer sun.

What Would MacGyver Do?

   Have you ever had a MacGyver moment, where you are in a situation and make use of things on hand to solve a problem?

   I have.  One time was last summer.  My youngest had never been stung by a bee, so we weren't sure if he was allergic to bee stings.  The inevitable happened one day - he came running into the house holding one hand with the other, saying that he got stung by a bee on his finger.

   He has a few food allergies, so we have an Epipen for emergencies.  Trouble is, I couldn't remember where it was.  So while my daughter was helping get the stinger out, I went into the kitchen and started thinking of old remedies I'd heard about.  My first thought was baking soda and water in a paste, but since the sting was near a finger tip, I wasn't sure it would stay on too well.
   Then I remembered when I used to carry After Bite with me in my backpack.  That was great for soothing mosquito bites.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure we didn't have any.  However...the gears in my head started clicking...the active ingredient is ammonia, and I knew where the ammonia was.  I grabbed a cotton ball and the jug of ammonia and told my kid to stop wiggling.
   "Is this gonna hurt?" he asked as I opened the jug and soaked the cotton ball with ammonia.
   "It won't bother me," I said with a smile. 
   "Not funny, Dad!"
   "No," I said, "it won't hurt.  Probably.  Not much anyway, if it does."
   The ammonia took the pain away.  I kept an eye on him for a bit, to see if he started swelling up or anything, and finally remembering where the Epipen was, just in case.
   We found out that he's not allergic to bee stings.  Actually, an hour later, he forgot which finger had been stung (they got the stinger out fast, so there was very little swelling).
   All was well, and the kids thought I had done a MacGyver-ish thing.  Very cool.