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Presto Pesto

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I made pesto tonight.  I’m always watching people do it on television, and it looks so fun. You need: olive oil, garlic, fresh basil, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts.

Behold: Thy Ingredients!

I toasted the pine nuts.  I’d never tasted them before, and they’re kind of weird.  Like a nut made of gin.

Gin nuts, gin nuts, whatcha gonna do?

 

Throw everything into the blender.  I could have used my food processor, but that would involve finding it, then cleaning it.  The blender’s handier.

Get in there, cheese.

Buzz it up and you’re done!  It has a powerful lot of flavor, I tell you whut.  I’m not sure if I like it yet.  Tomorrow I’m going to put it on some fish, and also pasta.  We’ll see!  How ’bout that for being adventurous!

Looks gross, tastes strange.

A Spa Moment

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I hate how my hands get in the winter. Dry and scaly.  I’ve made lotion bars, which are helpful, but they don’t solve the fact that I scratch at my fingertips and have yucky spots.  Beth gave me a hand scrub from Mary Kay which I highly recommend for everyday exfoliation, but you have to try this!

  • Take about a tablespoon of sugar.
  • Mix in about a half tablespoon of cooking oil.  (I like light olive oil, but whatever you have is fine.)
  • Stir it up, rub into your hands (without water) for a minute or so.  Rinse with very warm water – awesome!

Who knew?

(By the way, I’d show my own hands, but I have self-image problems.  They’re all veiny and weird.  No sugar’s going to help that.)

A Crucial Step

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(In response to Brad’s comment – “Not dead!” I had to open the center this morning, so there was no time to post.)

On occasion I make chocolate chip cookies.  I’m not really a cookie person, so this is the only kind I ever make.  I memorized the recipe in college, and once during a geography test I had no idea what the answer was to one of the questions, so I wrote down the recipe.  (My professor was not amused.  Hmmph.) 

It’s the basic Nestle recipe with a few changes – Criso instead of butter, twice as much vanilla, and a little less flour.  The other important step is to chill (freezing is even better!) the dough.  Last night we had company coming over – Kristi and Jerome Leckband and their sweet daughter Joanna – and I needed something snacky to have around.  Time was short, so I thought I’d use nature’s freezer.

Crunchy leaves and snow - the real secret ingredients.

(Don’t worry, Annette.  I covered the bowl after I took the picture.  Nobody wants squirrel fur in their cookies.)

Dares

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I’ve been thinking about the lists people sometimes make of “Things to do before I die”. Well, being a completely lazy person, I’m thinking that YOU should make that list for me. So whaddaya think? Any reasonable requests?

Hmmm...

Gooda wark Danialsan

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We have three “Access periods” each week, because good middle schools have things like that. It’s in all the literature. Our access groups are students selected at random from 6th-8th grade. Once you have someone in your access group they stay with you until they enter high school. We don’t know what happens to them after that. So we’re pretty much stuck with the kids that we get unless you can convince another teacher to trade with you.

I have the best access group. It was a little experiment in self-fulfilling prophesy. When we first started doing these groups I told mine that they were the best access group. We fed off the fact that we happened to win the first inter-access group contest, and now they are the easiest group of middle students to work with ever. The 8th graders make the 7th graders tow the line and 6th graders are all terrified of me.

Wax on... Wax off...

This week we’re talking about bullying, and to introduce it we showed The Karate Kid to the rugrats*. It works well for an introduction, and when we first did this 2 years ago I made up a Karate Kid “talking points” cheat sheet for our teachers to use to lead the discussions. It’s an interesting movie to use, because it’s got the swears, drinking, smoking, fighting and racism in it, but it’s incorporated in a way that makes it easy to turn each one of those into a useful discussion. I think next time we show it I’ll include all of the swears in my introduction so the students aren’t shocked when they hear them in the movie.

We tried something new this time. We took a long sheet of paper from the art teacher and combined the two 12×12 screens into one huge 12×24 screen and showed it in letterbox. It worked surprisingly well.

*I said “rugrats” because I knew Annette would jump all over me in the comments if I said “kids”.

Cool Scoop

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My Mom and Dad bought this for me last spring.  It took me a while to get around to using it, since I’m not a big ice cream eater.  (I usually just scoop a spoonful out of the carton and eat it then.)  This thing is AMAZING!  It scoops like a dream in the closed position, then when you open it – instant falling into the bowl.  I highly recommend it.  The brand name is Good Cook.

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