Toddler Fun - An Easy & Non Toxic Play Dough Recipe !

Play Dough is so easy to make & will give your child hours of fun !

I remember having “Play dough” as a child, which my Mum made for us. In fact, I vividly remember trying to eat the very bright pink/almost red coloured dough and quickly removing it from my mouth when I realized how salty it was !

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my sister gave me this simple and non toxic play dough recipe which she made regularly for her kids, and I have made it for my daughter ever since. It’s a really easy recipe which requires no cooking.

The first batch I made kept perfectly for over a year in an airtight plastic bag, as I put it away carefully after each use. The high salt content acts as a preservative. Despite the extreme saltiness, my daughter still eats it and I have to stop her from trying to feed it to the dogs all the time !

I usually give my daughter a plastic board, rolling pin and some pastry cutters to use with the play dough. I have also made small holes in the play dough shapes and baked them so that they harden, then threaded them on to a piece of string for her and made a “necklace”. You could also use this to make simple decorations for your Christmas tree. The possibilities are endless !

Here’s the recipe -:


Easy & Non Toxic Play Dough

2 cups white Flour
1 cup Salt
4 tbsps Cream of Tartar
2 tbsp cooking Oil
a few drops of Food Colouring
2 ½ cups boiling Water

Mix all the flour, salt and cream of tartar together in a large bowl. Then put the oil, food colouring & 1 cup of the boiling water into a jug & mix well before adding to the dry ingredients. Blend well and then add the other 1 ½ cups of boiling water & mix together to form a soft, pliable dough.

(The dough needs to be kneaded well before using it for the first time, while it is still warm.)

Store in an airtight plastic bag – it will keep for up to a year.

Our Lazy Sunday Barbecue ... & An Easy Marinade Recipe

Nothing beats the taste of meat cooked on a fire out in the open ....

On Sunday my (workaholic) husband took a break from the farm (i.e. was ‘torn away’ … ha ha) as it is a quiet time now between our planting and havesting seasons. When it is quiet like this, he usually takes Sunday’s off and I treasure these days we can spend together as family with no work interruptions.

It was an unusually hot and sunny day (considering we are entering our Winter season here) and my husband suggested that we have a barbecue - I thought that this was a great idea as it meant I could have a day off from cooking (not that I really mind it, but Sunday’s are usually my really lazy days). Well, it was not a complete break from the kitchen as I wanted to make some nice marinades and things.

First I took out a packet of pork sausages which I cut and threaded onto wooden kebab skewers with some onion, and then I basted these in a mixture of equal amounts of tomato sauce (ketchup) and Worcestershire sauce. We love cooking pork sausages on the barbecue, except they are often tricky and fall through the grill bars – so making ‘kebabs’ out of them is ideal.

My husband wanted a nice steak, and I happened to have some individually portioned Kenyan fillets so I took one of those out for him and my daughter, but left it plain. (We only eat imported Kenyan beef – I’ve mentioned before that the quality of our local Tanzanian fillet is terrible.) I rarely eat red meat and was happy to stick with chicken.

I took out a packet of chicken pieces which were skinless. I automatically remove the skin from all the chicken pieces before I portion and freeze them, but usually for a barbecue I would leave the skins on. I made a lovely lemon, thyme & garlic marinade for these which was quick and easy and even though they only had time to marinade for about an hour, they were still tender and tasty. (The recipe for that is below).

I then made some garlic rolls wrapped in foil to put on the fire, and a quick salad with lettuce, rocket, tomatoes, onions, cucumber and carrots …. and that was lunch !

My husband had one of his farm workers make us a barbecue in the workshop here a few years ago – just out of an old oil drum. It looks pretty professional, just like one you would buy in a shop …. it was all welded together and aside from a few modifications to the grill / grid (the gaps were large enough for all the meat to fall through into the fire !) it was perfect.

So, my husband cooked our meat in the garden (with all the dogs begging at his feet !) and my daughter splashed around in her paddling pool, and we ate at the dining table I have on the veranda. It was a really lovely day, and the only thing that would have made it even better, would’ve been if we’d had our extended families (parents, in laws, siblings, nieces and nephews) to join us !

Here is the easy marinade I made for the chicken pieces -:

Lemon, Thyme & Garlic Marinade for Chicken

5 Chicken Pieces (I used skinless)
Juice of 2 large lemons
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Handful of fresh Thyme, roughly chopped
2 tbsp Olive Oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and pour into a glass dish. Add the chicken pieces and turn to coat well. Leave to marinade for a couple of hours, or overnight in the fridge.

How To Get A Discounted Taxi Fare In Tanzania .....

I know the pictures are a little blurred - but he was driving quite quickly ! As with all my photo's, you can click on them to enlarge for a clearer view

On Friday we had another school run day. My husband also had to collect chemicals for the farm from our office in the city, so we went in his Landcruiser pick-up (which is not as comfortable a ride as my car !), dropped my daughter at school and continued on to the city.

On our way in to school - once we were on the main tar road – we happened to get ‘stuck’ behind this local taxi or “Dala Dala” as they are called here. (These taxi’s are almost always overloaded and it is not uncommon to see chickens or a single goat being carried in the back “boot” section aswell.)

In the remoter areas where there are not as many police road blocks (another common sight here in Tanzania), taxi drivers often squeeze as many passengers in as they can (knowing that there are no police around to stop them and make them pay a fine !) and you will often see passengers hanging on to the back or open side door of the taxi, as this chap in the photos above was !

My husband was careful to drive slowly behind this taxi as he said to me “If that guy falls off now, we’ll run him over”. At one stage, the taxi slowed down and the guy hanging on the back let go with one hand, and turned to wave and smile at us. This thrilled my daughter no end (growing up in Tanzania, she thinks that things like this are pretty normal !), and of course we were all laughing and waved back at him. I said to my husband “Goodness, that is so dangerous, why don’t we try and get the taxi to stop and he can jump on the back of our pick-up, it will be so much safer ?” But of course there was no way of doing that.

When it was finally safe to overtake the taxi, the guy once again let go with his right arm (I could see now that he was holding on to a single small black handle fixed above the back window) and waved like mad to us as we passed him, grinning and laughing as he did so. Crazy !

As I said to my husband as we overtook him, I hope that the taxi driver at least gave him a discounted fare for the trip !

(If you’d like to see another crazy photo I took last month of a guy on a bicycle catching a free ride by hanging on to the back of a truck, you can read the blog post I wrote and see that photo here.)