Worst Cooks in America

Every night for the past few weeks, The Boy and I have been watching Alton Brown on the Food Network. (This was not my choice as he sort of creeps me out, but I usually hog the T.V. for background noise in the early evening and so I don't begrudge it...too much ;) He's sort of growing on me though. I'm becoming better at ignoring his uppity way of explaining things and I've stopped rolling my eyes (for the most part) when The Boy goes, "Yup!" (as in; he already knew that) and "Ohhhhh!" (as in, he didn't know that yet.)

But what I'm really enjoying are the commercials for "Worst Cooks in America." I would win this show. Hands down.

As I'm not much of a foodie, I never really learned the craft of cooking. My parents both cooked, though very differently. When my mum cooked, I wanted to be the one that had to clean up. This was because when she cooked, she made yummy food AND cleaned as she went. I always wanted my brother to have the nights my dad cooked, because he made awesome food and usually left quite a mess. This is really my way of explaining that I wasn't in the kitchen much while the food was being made. I just never had the desire to learn...and so I never did.

When I moved out on my own, I was very happy to eat the same thing most of the time. I don't remember what I ate for those first few months I lived on my own and so I guess it really didn't matter much. I was good at Annie's Mac and Cheese, omelets, cereal, ice cream (which other people don't count as a meal, but I sure do) and steak. I do remember that I didn't really have to clean the oven in my first apartment when I moved out, because I could count the number of times it had been used on one hand.

It was at this point that I thought about learning to cook other things, not really because I wanted to, but more because I just thought I should. I tried to learn from my dad, but when I asked him how me made something or how much of a particular ingredient he added, he would just shrug his shoulders and say "Enough." For someone who needs all the details and lots of practice before she goes all freestyle, this was very frustrating and I sort of gave up.

My first Thanksgiving on my own is a great example of how little I knew about cooking by the age of 23. I was here in La Pasa and didn't really know anyone except my close girlfriend from Bennington, who left town for the holiday. I hadn't even met The Boy yet. I decided that it was silly to buy a turkey for myself and thought that a small chicken would do the trick. I can't remember if it was because I wasn't making much money, (I was an E.A. that year) because I didn't want to learn any more than one thing at once or because I just FORGOT to buy anything else but the chicken for dinner.

On Thanksgiving, I called home and got directions from my dad about how to clean my chicken, how long it should go in the oven for and at what temperature. The most frightening part of the process for me was definitely going to be deciding when it was done. This was how my dad described it; "Just wait until you can twist the drumstick just enough (there was that word again) and have the rest of the carcass (my dad likes that word, its used with love) stay still.

This description posed many problems for me. Because I had never cooked a chicken before, I had no idea what "just enough" felt like. What if I couldn't get the drumstick to twist? What if I let it cook too long and it got too twisty? What if I thought it twisty enough, got it out of the oven, cut it open and it wasn't done? What if because of all the times I've opened the oven to check to see if the drumstick was twisty, the oven lost too much heat and the chicken NEVER got twisty?

I followed my dad's instructions very carefully and got the chicken in the oven. It was the first time I used that oven. (Though to be fair, I had only moved into the apartment a month and a half before.) I sat down to wait. I can't remember the number of times I called home after checking to see if the drumstick was twisty and not being sure if there was the proper amount of twistyness. Over three hours after the drumstick was "supposed" to be twisty enough, I took the chicken out in defeat. I cut it open and discovered it was not cooked thoroughly. After this failure, my dad suggested buying an oven thermometer. I soon discovered the oven was about 70 degrees cooler than the temperature you asked it to be. That's the last time I cooked chicken.

A few months later, I ventured into the kitchen again. I have no idea where I came up with the idea for the recipe, but it was a very basic beef stir fry with rice. After working with the recipe six or seven times, I thought it was pretty good and would make it once or twice a week. It was soon after this that I met The Boy. I offered to cook for him for one of our first dates.

I spent a lot of time at the grocery store picking just the right beef and vegetables. I went to my favorite wine shop and picked out just the right bottle of doesn't-say-anything-about-tasting-oak-barrels-on-the-label red wine to go with it. The Boy came over and I made a big deal about being all up in the kitchen and getting everything together just so. I served the dinner, we sat down to eat and the dish had absolutely NO favor. I don't know what happened, but it just didn't taste like anything at all.

I wasn't mortified until the first time The Boy made dinner for me. It was perfection. A five course, wine matched bit of perfection. To this day he swears he loved that meal I made for him. It is however, hard to believe when I've been eating homemade stocks, home cured bacon, stuffed porkchops, fried pears in sugar, steak salads and chicken thigh, leeks and celery braised in champagne and served over home made polenta or something just as wonderful for the last two and a half years.

That is why I would win "Worst Cooks in America." Hands down.

Inspiring Article about Teaching!

I loved reading this article. Enjoy!

Multiplication Tables

I'm not a teacher that is a fan of having kids memorize things in general. However, I feel differently when it comes to multiplication tables. They are the one thing that I think kids just need to memorize.

I think they should know the 2's through the 12's (because the zero's and one's are easy) and the 15's and the 20's through to 12 (because in my own life I use the 15's and 20's a lot and wish they were as beaten into my brain as the others.) I use the 15's and 20's as extra credit for the kids who learn the 2's through the 12's. Whenever I begin the process with classes, they balk at the number of facts they need to learn, but actually, there's so many turn around facts that in the end it's always about two thirds less than they think it is.

My classes use flash cards and they take home half sheets of paper corresponding the to the table they need to learn to help them practice at night. Every day at the beginning of math time, they take a quiz corresponding to the table they are working on. It's a laminated one by six inch sheet with mix facts and they have a minute to complete it with a dry erase marker. (The laminating idea was Sophie's and totally saved me paper and time!) This encourages the kids to stop counting on their fingers. They learn quickly that if they count on their fingers, they run out of time. I keep track of their progress on a big sheet that is hung on the wall of my classroom.

The homework part was the hardest to make a good routine out of. I found this fantastic website. Here you can get already made worksheets to give to the kids for homework. The site is mostly about math but covers everything from geometry to dollars and cents notation. I've used it with third to sixth grade to great success. It's easy for me to print stuff out, make copies and put them in a filing cabinet for easy access.

This year I've been really impressed with my both my third grade and fourth grade class in that they want to pass their tables. That hasn't always been the case as most of my previous classes have looked at them as a chore.

Here's a picture of the charts in my classroom (of course you can't see names or anything!) and the little quizzes and homework sheets.

The Never Ending Search for...

Writing Implements in my classroom.

I don't remember much about the routines of my elementary school days. I know that in middle and high school we were meant to bring our own supplies. I don't remember any routine being as difficult or frustrating as it can be to find a pencil in my classroom.

Alma De La Rosa serves a predominately low income population and we are school wide Title 1 due to our high free and reduced lunch numbers. One of the tenets of the school is that kids don't have to have any of their own supplies. We provide everything from winter coats to backpacks to breakfast to pencils to uniforms for all our students in need. To provide all this we depend on the community around us. The church that adopted our school for Thanksgiving and Christmas can always be counted on if we know of a particular family in great need or we need a set of uniforms. The city runs school supply drives that we often reap the benefits of.

And the pencils. Back to the pencils. The pencils are the bane of my existence. The kids can't keep track of them. There have been weeks I've started with 100 of them and ended with less than ten. It's like the children eat them. (hmmmm yummy) I've tried so many different things to keep enough of these yellow buggers in my classroom and sharpened.

I've tried giving all the kids a box with two sharpened pencils, a big eraser, two cap erasers, a box of crayons, a small box of colored pencils, a pair of scissors, a book mark and a glue stick. On top of the two sharpened pencils, I also filled a cup on my desk of sharpened pencils and when kids needed a sharpened one, all they had to do was bring their old one to my desk and trade it for a sharp one. The boxes were soon taken apart, stuff strewn all throughout their desks instead of neatly arranged in their boxes. The pencils began disappearing and so my sharpened pencil cup pencils dwindled, even as I tried to keep up with the sharpening of them everyday.

There also was a time that I allowed the kids to use the electric pencil sharpener that I had. We went through two in three months time. We couldn't use those hand crank ones because we didn't have any walls to attach them to.

I tried giving each kid a pencil with his or her name on it and collecting it at the end of each half day so that the kid would have it for the next day. There were numerous problems with this plan; the name would rub off the pencil which would provoke children into fighting over the pencil with more eraser at the top, the kids would take forever to get their pencils from the cup, the kids would wait to get their pencils until I was in the middle of teaching the lesson, the kids would lose them before I could collect them and so on and so forth.

Then I tried sharpening pencils as they needed it, that was a terrible plan, a week of complete awfulness.

Then I decided that I was done with the pencil sharpener, it was on its way out anyway, refusing to make a point on a pencil, it's gears slowing and the whrrrring sound becoming more and more ragged. I went to Target (I know, I know, not really much better than Walmart, but I'm working on it!) and shelled out 20 bucks for some mechanical pencils, hoping that something with a little more permanence would help. This the end of the second week and it's going well. It can still be frustrating at times, but so far it's proven better. I've gone through a bunch of them, a bunch of them have been broken and I'm going to keep needing lead but all and all, best week for writing implements yet!

Avatar

I've heard people say that Avatar was just a 247 million dollar re-make of Fern Gully:

I've heard still others (namely The Boy) describe it as "dances with wolves in space."

I however thought it was an amazing bit of movie making. Honestly, perhaps the best movie I've seen since Star Wars (and every other Harrison Ford movie of course!)

My brother and went to see it while I was home in MA. He offered to drive me all the way to Albany, NY to see it in 3D like he had. But 3D has never worked for me and I have no idea why. I remember being a little kid in Disney world with my family and everyone else was ohhhing and ahhhing at Honey I Shrunk the Kids...but all saw were wibbly lines and normal images. Those red and blue glasses did nothing for me. I thought maybe when I grew up it would be different. The Boy took me to a 3D movie two years ago and I went with an open mind. Still...wibbly lines and fuzziness while everyone else was ohhing and ahhhing.

And so I was thankful when 3D wasn't even an option at the Berkshire Mall. (Oh the Berkshires...for once I was thankful you are so behind the times in the entertainment business.) My brother relented and went with me anyway. I loved it. Loved it.

Then I came back to NM and The Boy hadn't seen it yet and neither had my girlfriend who was visiting from France with her Frenchman and so I went to see it again. La Pasa is a little more with the times entertainment wise and we saw the 3D version. I figured since I had already seen it, it didn't matter if it was wibbly and fuzzy. 3D imagery evolved since that last movie I tried to see though. Now the lenses are POLARIZED and I saw the 3D stuff. For the first time I got to do the ooohhhing and ahhhhing.

Some people saw that the story was predictable and mushy. I say that most movies are predictable and mushy. The classics are predictable and mushy; think Romeo and Juliet, Bridges of Madison County, (Hi Dodo!) Ten Things I Hate About You (just another version of Taming of the Shrew, which was certainly predictable) and Love Actually. (Like how my classics are in ascending order of release date?!)

I will admit that some of dialogue was lame. The entirety of Michelle Rodrigquez's character was awfully lame. But then again, the great movies have a lot of lame dialogue. Star Wars is full of lame dialogue ("But I was going to go into Toshi-Station to pick up some power converters") but dialogue wasn't the focus. Dialogue and story line wasn't the focus of Avatar either.

I loved it. That's all I really wanted to say.