Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local
A description of Scattergories came up in a parenting book I was reading the other day, and I recalled how much I love that game.
Above all when acquaintances allow my admittedly ample alliterative adjectives. If you’ve never played, play goes by rolling an alphabet-sided die, and then coming up with answers to categories that begin with that letter before the timer beeps. The more alliterative words, the more points — as long as everyone else agrees the utilization is appropriate and not overdone. I am gleefully guilty of often being ridiculous, simply because I can.
The gift of vocabulary verbosity can come in handy other times, too. My column’s theoretical alphabet die has rolled U this week, and the difficulty of culinary u-sage came as a surprise to me. I expected to be limited on my options for letters like J and Q; while the upcoming V and Z won’t have a big selection of options, at least we know there’s vanilla and zucchini.
But what is there for U? I didn’t go through all my cookbooks’ indices, but the armful of ones I did check had literally nothing listed for the absent 21st letter. The only thing I thought of was uni, which is the edible part (the reproductive organs) of sea urchins — I’ve never had this upscale luxury and never expect to, nor do I anticipate ever seeing it at my local Dillons.
Speaking of upscale, that’s when I started to wonder if I needed to employ my adjectival skills and get to U by just modifying other foods with words like upscale, unripe, underbaked. It would have worked, because no one but myself is making me alphabetize like this, but it seemed a little underhanded. Ugandan or Uruguayan food was on the proverbial table, as was ugali (thick white cornmeal we ate a lot in Kenya).
I was still pondering these things as I cleared off the counter in preparation for making slime with Benson. It was Saturday, a few days post-Christmas/Ohio vacation as well as blustery and pre-blizzardy, and the kid needed a low-key yet entertaining activity. I had found a big container of cornstarch when putting some stuff away downstairs, and Benson helped make it by carefully pouring the water into the mixing bowl. Even stirring it together begins the strange fun of this non-Newtonian fluid that seems to break the laws of science: its viscosity changes as pressure changes, its behavior particularly mysterious to a three-year-old. Hard touches make it almost solid; a gentle touch turns it into quicksand.
Also known as oobleck, this simple craft fascinates even me, although I don’t love the feeling of the cornstarch. Benson, however, was utterly absorbed in it (fortunately not physically, although that’s also probably technically debatable since his hands were fully covered). I’m not sure we’ve had a quieter hour in…the last year? And I mean 2024, not the few days of 2025. He played and played and played. We made a few different colors, and he lived in his own happy messy world with just some plastic animals, little cups, a strainer. It was unnerving and magical.
I’m sure it’ll never go that well again, but that recipe was certainly a winner.
Particularly since I remembered the value of umlauts and oobleck’s potential alternate spelling as übleck. U r welcome.
Unpalatable Übleck
This recipe is not unedible, since it’s cornstarch and water, but I would not recommend ingesting any quantity as far as flavor goes. My kids both tasted it of course, but their opinions are not always valid. It’s unconventional to share a recipe not intended for consumption, but not unpleasant in this case. I hope it affords your kids/grandkids (or yourself, I don’t judge) some fun this wintery week!
Prep tips: the mess can look a little terrifying, but it cleans up very easily with just a little water and soap. It’s not recommended to go down the drain in large quantities, but you can let it dry in a bowl/on a baking tray and toss it in the trash when it’s powdery — or add water and play with it again like Benson insisted we do.
2 cups cornstarch
1 cup water
a few drops of food coloring
Add cornstarch to a large bowl, and stir in water. Divide if desired, adding coloring. Play! Stick your hands in it, drizzle it on a tray to “paint,” submerge animal figures in it, etc.
