What is essence?

Tonight Bianca was watching Suzy's World. It is quite an entertaining DVD with all sorts of natural experiments like what happens when you do baking and you don't add some ingredients and so on and how jelly beans are made and so on. Terence thinks it is pretty funny and he would sit there laughing at her antics. So in the one episode she made several muffins - one with all the ingredients, one with no oil, one with no baking soda, one with no egg and so on and then she discusses why it is important that you need to have all the ingredients. So when she was adding the ingredients at one point she said "add the vanilla essence" and Bianca asked "what is essence?" (Hmm, over to you Terence...). At the end of the episode, Bianca learned that cooking is a science and you have to get the process right!

Earlier today it was resting time and we were all having a nap (aah, nothing like an afternoon nap on a Saturday afternoon). At one point I realised Bianca wasn't resting anymore and she went downstairs chatting to Jody. I called her back to her room and asked her why she wasn't resting when we told her to, her answer "my head wasn't screwed on quite right".