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Get the scoop on the world’s wackiest ice cream flavours PAGE 3 Want to know how to make ice cream at home? PAGE 4 Meet the world’s toughest 10-year-old PAGE 5 It’s illegal to set a mousetrap in California without a hunting license? Are you serious? PAGE 6
Brain
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, MAY 13, 2012
Hi light
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Brain
Everybody loves ice cream! But did you ever wonder who invented it? No one knows for sure. Read on to get the scoop on the history and mystery of this scrumptious dessert. While there has been no actual proof, it has been said that a kind of ice cream was invented in China around 200 BC when a milk and rice mixture was frozen by packing it into snow. When Nero became emperor of Rome, he threw a huge feast and for dessert he served a one-of-a-kind treat: sweet snow! To make it, Nero’s slaves had to run up the mountains, gather snow and then sprint back to the kitchen before it melted. The cooks then flavoured the snow with fruit and honey. The guests were happy but I don’t think the poor slaves and cooks were screaming for ice cream! In the 10th century, the Arabs created a new dessert by adding sugary syrups to snow which they called Sherbet. Sound familiar? Think of it as the first gola ganda or slush. But icy desserts in the desert! Where did they find snow in all that heat? While several mountains in the Sahara do receive snow on a regular basis, it is possible to make ice in the desert. All one has to do is to dig a shallow hole, line it with straw and place a small pan with a thin layer of water in it. It’s not magic, but physics! When the water evaporates it also takes with it all the heat, leaving the pan cold. Isn’t science exciting! In the Persian Empire, people would pour grape-juice concentrate over snow in a bowl, and eat this as a treat, especially when the weather was hot. In 400 BC, the Persians went further and invented a special chilled food, made of rose water and vermicelli, which was served to royalty during summers. The ice was mixed with saffron, fruits, and various other flavours. It soon became popular in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but here it was more of a drink than an ice cream. Can you guess what it is? The Persians called their creation faloodeh and we call our drink falooda! In the sixteenth century, the Mughal emperors used have relays of horsemen to bring ice all the way from the Hindu Kush to Delhi, just so they could have ice cream. So much hard work for ice cream! Since store ice was expensive and hard, ice cream was mainly a treat for the rich and the royal but in the German engineer Carl von Linde developed refrigeration. By the 1930s, fridges became a common 1870s, Germa appliance and ice cream started becoming a regular in most homes. kitchen applian That’s all we have for the history of ice cream but we’ll leave you with another great fact. Do you know who invented the ice cream cone? Well during the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904, an ice cream of plates to serve the ice cream on. Lucky for him Ernest Hamwi, an immigrant from vendor ran out o Syria was selling thin, waffle-shaped cakes right next to him. The quick thinking Hamwi quickly shaped his cakes into cones that could hold ice cream and the cone was invented!
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, MAY 13, 2012
Hi light
ICE CREAM THAT MAKES YOU SCREAM Ice cream is great! So many wonderful flavours vanilla, chocolate, mint, strawberry, mango, sausage, cheese, squid, shark fin and silk... What! Here are some truly terrifying ice cream flavours from around the world that will send shivers down your spine.
IN TERROR!
Octopus
Crab notThough every-
Want to tantalise your taste buds with a tentacle? If so, Octopus Ice Cream is the solution. You don’t even need eight hands to eat it
Squid ink As black as well... ink, this oddball flavour is described as salty, metallic and fishy all at the same time!
body’s favourite ice cream flavour, this is a dish worth sinking your claws into.
Cactus Haggis (Sheep Intestines) The Scots love to eat Haggis — which are basically sheep intestines — so naturally they made ice cream out of it. Complete with mixed sheep guts!
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Whale
A tasty treat that will prick the hearts of ice cream lovers everywhere.
Whale has long been a delicacy among the Japanese. Contrary to what you might think, it’s actually quite popular. Just not with the Whales.
Garlic Fried Eggplant That’s baingan for us desis! Eggplant is a mainstay of the Japanese diet, appearing regularly on such dishes as pizza and in sandwiches. Becoming an ice cream flavour was merely a matter of time.
Yummy! With this garlic-flavoured Dracula ice cream you can stay cool and keep vampires away all at the same time.
Pit Viper
Spinach Now you can eat your veggies and ice cream at the same time! Your mom and Popeye the sailor man will be delighted!
The pit viper is one of the most dangerous poisonous snakes in Japan. An excellent ingredient for an ice cream...if you survive the first bite!
Illustration: Jamal Khursheed Design: Samra Aamir
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, MAY 13, 2012
Activity Corner
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Homemade ice cream in a bag : d e d e e n s e i l Supp
Milk can become homemade ice cream in five minutes by using a bag! This creamy treat is just the summertime delight you kids need.
How to make it:
Step 1
• 1 tablespoon sugar • 1/2 cup milk • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract • 6 tablespoons rock salt • 1 pint-size plastic food storage bag (Ziploc) • 1 gallon-size plastic food storage bag • Ice cubes
Fill the large bag half full of ice, and add the rock salt. Seal the bag.
Put milk, vanilla extract and sugar into the small bag, and seal it.
Step 3
Place the small bag inside the large one, and seal it again carefully.
Shake until the mixture is ice cream, which takes about 5 minutes.
Step 5
Step 2 Step 4
Wipe off the top of the small bag and then open it carefully. Enjoy!
Tips: Half a cup of milk will make about one scoop of ice cream, so double the recipe if you want more. But don’t increase the proportions more than that — a large amount might be too big for kids to pick-up because the ice itself is heavy.
Tornado in a bottle With this fun science experiment you can make your own mini tornado that’s a lot safer than one you might see on TV!
Instructions: 1. Fill the plastic bottle with water until it reaches around three quarters full. 2. Add a few drops of dish washing liquid. 3. Sprinkle in a few pinches of glitter (this will make your tornado easier to see).
s e i l p Sup d: e d e ne
4. Put the cap on tightly. 5. Turn the bottle upside down and hold it by the neck. Quickly spin the bottle in a circular motion for a few seconds, stop and look inside to see if you can see a mini tornado forming in the water. You might need to try it a few times before you get it working properly.
What’s happening? Spinning the bottle in a circular motion creates a water vortex that looks like a mini tornado. The water is rapidly spinning around the centre of the vortex due to centripetal force (an inward force directing an object or fluid such as water towards the center of its circular path).
• Water • A clear plastic bottle with a cap (that won’t leak) • Glitter • Dish washing liquid
Remember kids, always get permission i from f your parents b before f you start. IIt’s ’ always l a good idea to have a helper nearby.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, MAY 13, 2012
World wide weird Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny from across the globe!
It’s a croc-eatdog world
A 15-foot crocodile whose diet comprises of only pet dogs has been hauled out of a river in Australia, according to reports. The rogue croc was trapped at Daly River community, some 139 miles south of Darwin, where it was terrorising residents and animals, the Northern Territory News said. Community police officer Mark Casey told the newspaper his office had nine reports of dogs being taken by a crocodile, believed to be the animal caught, in a month. “Crocs are an ever-present danger but you don’t see them,” he said. “They can sit for days on end on the other side of the river and watch you go fishing off the same log or rock — that’s how they hunt … Next thing you know, bang, the dog’s gone,” he added. As the saltwater crocodile drew ever closer to the settlement of 500 people, also snatching wallabies, a decision was made to catch it. While the pet-eating beast was caught, Casey said there were two more big crocs and a small one still on the loose in the area. SOURCE: AFP
Behold! The ccardboard bo man A comic-loving car repair man has spentt more than a year building a life-size replica of the Iron Man costume. Mark Pearson followed in the footsteps ps of Marvel superhero Tony Stark by making the suit in his own home. The 44-year-old spent 14 months constructting the suit from 400 sheets of cardboard covered in fibreglass after starting ng on a helmet and getting carried away. Mark said: “I don’t know why I did it … I guess it was just a moment of madness. I decided on making the helmet then I said d to my partner — I’m going to make the full suit. She said to me ‘you’re 44, what are you doing making a model of a man from m comic books?’ Mark’s long-suffering partner Karen Hopkins, 44, didn’t share his passion at first. She said: “I thought he was crackers rs when he first said he was going to build the full suit. I just couldn’t understand it. I have moaned a lot about it but seeing the reaction it got was great, even if I did have to sacrifice the use of my front room for more than a year.” The suit also includes flashing lights in the eyes, hands and chest, but unfortunately for 5feet 6inches Mark, the suit doesn’t fit him. He had to rope in friend Darren Higgins to spend half an hour donning the armour ahead of its unveiling at his local cinema in Bradford, West Yorkshire. SOURCE: THESUN.CO.UK
Polly wants to go home! If you fear losing a pet dog or cat, just write your home address on paper and attach it to its collar but if your pet is a parrot, just teach him your house address. A pet parakeet was returned to its owner after the lost bird told police its home address near Tokyo. The male bird had escaped from its owner’s home in the city of Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, and remained at large before perching on the shoulder of a guest staying in a nearby hotel. Handed over to local police, the bird did not speak for two days until it realised it was in safe hands and blurted out the names of the city and district where its owner’s house was located, said a spokesman for the police station. It then produced the home’s block and street number as a trio of astonished police officers listened to the now talkative bird. The bird’s owner, a 64-year-old woman, once lost another parakeet after it flew away and was determined to prevent a repeat so she decided to teach the address to this parakeet after she bought it at a pet shop two years ago. The bird’s name was found to be Piko-chan as it said, ‘You’re pretty, Piko-chan’”. SOURCE: AFP
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Boy! He’s a tough one While most of his friends enjoy playing cricket, tenyear-old Manpreet Singh loves nothing more than sitting back and having a coconut cracked on his forehead with a baseball bat. That doesn’t mean you leave your bat and ball and try this stunt at home. Not all of us possess the same superhuman strength as Manpreet who also laughs in the face of a terrifying stunt which could leave him blind as fluorescent light tubes are smashed across his chest, sending shards of glass flying into his eyes. es. Manpreet could uld well be the toughghest boy his age after becoming the world’s youngest master ter of an obscure Indian martial art called Gatka. He is a member off a Sikh martial arts group which performss extreme stuntss including being run over by cars rs and training with swords and spiked maces. After rushing home from school each day, Manpreet practices his martial art with dedication — although he does still find some time to play cricket and cycle. Manpreet’s uncle, Kamaljeet Singh, is the leader of the Bir Khalsa Sikh Martial Arts Group in the Punjabi city of Amritsar. Mr Singh says he is happy to let the children play with daggers and swords as he claims it is not dangerous if they are properly trained. As for Manpreet, he says his coconut-smashing feat is by far his favourite. SOURCE: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, MAY 13, 2012
Did you know?
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s n i g i r O d r Wo If you’re thinking that the word ‘blackmail’ has something to do with a post office or mailing letters inside black envelopes then let me tell you that you’ve got it all wrong. Don’t go by the literal meaning of the word as it can be quite misleading. ‘Mai’ here is the old English word for tax or rent and ‘black’ is used in its sense of dirty, bitter or wicked. The word comes from the 16th century during the time of border wars between England and Scotland. Outlaw chiefs forced poor farmers to pay them money or else they would get attacked. Since the farmers were poor, they paid in ‘black mail,’ that is vegetables, meat, or copper as opposed to ‘white mail,’ which was silver. These days the word is used for the act of extorting money from people by threatening to reveal damaging information about them.
Crazy laws! In Salt Lake County, Utah, it’s illegal to walk down the street carrying a violin in a paper bag. In San Francisco, it’s illegal to pile horse manure more than six feet high on a street corner.
Cool facts It takes 12 lbs of milk to make just one gallon of ice cream. It takes an average of 50 licks to polish off a single-scoop ice cream cone.
In California it is illegal for a vehicle without a driver to exceed 60 miles per hour.
The slowest fish is the Sea Horse, which moves along at about 0.01 mph (0.016 km/h).
In Tennessee, you are breaking the law if you drive while sleeping.
Cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down.
In New York, the penalty for jumping off a building is: Death.
A tarantula spider can survive for more than two years without food.
In Danville, Pennsylvania, all fire hydrants must be checked one hour before all fires.
Jellyfish evaporate in the sun. They’re 98% water.
In California it is illegal to set a mouse trap without a hunting license.
Before they’re even born, sand tiger sharks eat their twin brothers and sisters!
In Athens, Greece, a driver’s license can be taken away if the driver is thought to be either “poorly dressed” or “unbathed”.
There are no ants in Iceland, Greenland, and Antarctica.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, MAY 13, 2012
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Fun & games
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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, MAY 13, 2012
Help the mom and kids find their way through the maze to find ice cream cones for the kids
SOURCE: CHELL-INSTRUMENTS.CO.UK
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Umair Jamal
Lahore Grammar School