Bean there, done that

Another day, another harvest.

Lettuce eat

Sometimes it IS easy being green.

Backyard self sufficiency

The frogs are pretty excited about this whole backyard farming business.

Who knew that food came from gardens?

Having mastered wheat/beer, wheat/weetbix, wheat/ puffed wheat and, of course, wheat/ flour/bread, the frogs find there is also joy in simple crops.

 Tomato. 

And basil.

Frog wonders if they will go together....

A grain of sense (9)

But you can't eat flour.

Well, not uncooked. It's yucky.

Frog decides to make a little flat bread.

A few drops of water.  A little salt.  A bit of kneading and.... voila.

 Dough.

The dough rests.

  Before being rolled out as thin as possible.

And after dancing quickly in a hot pan, Frog has his flat bread.

Never eat anything bigger than your head? Hah!

Bite by bite, the bread is consumed.

Frog feels a little full.

But proud.  Oh so proud.

From this:

To this:

Cool, huh?

A grain of sense (8)

The milled whole wheat flour...

Is then sieved, leaving behind the bran and a few other bits of wheat germ

(so that's what they make wheatbix out of)

Leaving lovely fine unbleached flour as the result.

A grain of sense (7)

Our Farmer Frog decides to opt for a little "modern" technology in the quest to turn wheat into flour.

Mortar and pestle.

Still stone ground.  Just a little easier to manipulate.

A grain of sense (6)

Of course there's one other thing you can make with wheat.

Flour.

The grain must be milled. 

Traditionally stones were used to grind the grain.

Frog finds first one stone...

..and then another.

But it's hard work and the results are not promising.

A grain of sense (5)

And as well as puffed wheat and beer, let's not forget breakfast cereals.

A grain of sense (4)

What else can you do with wheat?

Ah yes.

Beer.

Lovely, lovely wheat beer.

A grain of sense (3)

The winnowing is over. 

The grain awaits.

What will it become?

How about....

Puffed wheat?

Like popcorn.  Only a lot, lot smaller.

Return of the Iron Frog

Hurrah!

The challenger is back.

Back from hospital.

Back to Canberra from Sydney.

Almost back to school.

And back in the game.

You may recall (although it was some time ago) that the Chifley/Waramanga contingent combined forces in the Iron Frog Sushi challenge.

This was how they prepared, plated up and scored.

The result was a creditable 13.5 out of 20.

The Hawker team also prepared their Sushi in honour of a birthday (yay Mia).

And it looked like this.

Clearly an excellent product.

With gorgeous presentation - right down to the soy sauce fish.

Tragic, then, that they risk disqualification for failure to include a frog in any of the photographic evidence of the challenge.

What will the judges verdict be?

A grain of sense (2)

Just picking the wheat is not enough though.  Much more work is required to make it palatable for human frog consumption.

Farmer frog first threshes the ears of wheat.

And then sorts the wheat (or grain) from the chaff.

A grain of sense

The paleolithic diet may be all the rage at the moment, but smart frogs know that sooner or later grains will come back in to fashion.

Our farming frogs have been out harvesting wheat in the back yard from the field.

In fact, you could say they are all ears.

You light up my life

Look.

A cute little frog.

But wait.

It's waving its arm.

And it's eyes are lighting up.

Half frog, Half Torch.

Brilliant.

Police frogs

Turns out I'm not the only one who has noticed the devilish behaviour of toads and the need for law enforcement when it comes to dealing with these most dastardly amphibians.

Frog cops needs cars in order to enter into hot hop pursuit.

This one is a beauty.

Fat frogs

We've heard about the world's smallest frog (recently discovered on a forest floor in PNG) but now let's go to the other end of the scale.

Introducing.....

The Coleman Frog.

42 pounds?

That's over 19 kg in the new money.

You can read the story here or here.

Was his death an accident?  You be the judge.

Master of disguise

Sock puppets.  Master of disguises.

50% sunflower (with rabbit ears)

25% chook

And 100% frog.

Yes, I know that doesn't add up.

I'm good at Frogs not maths. 

When good sockpuppets go bad (2)

This business of socks eating Frogs is getting out of hand.

Lord Voldemort (the sock puppet) appears to have eaten Neville's Toad. 

When good sockpuppets go bad

Look, Frogsock is poking its tongue out. 

Or... wait! Frogsock! Drop it.  

Spit it out, now!

Good thing Frogs don't mind getting wet. 

Frog on your head. Again.

... sock puppets may be the new big thing, but there's an old song that goes "Everything old is new again". 

Socks and Frogs: a winning combination.

Sock with Frogs. On head.  

Frog-headed sock meets a new frog.

Frogsock and Frog get up close and personal.