What was in our CSA this week

So for our first CSA pick up (yesterday) we got a smattering of stuff that I will have to do some research on to figure out how to use.  The lettuce mix and spinach are straight forward, and the ground beef is Peter's to have fun with. 

Our CSA share this week:

• Lettuce mix
• Spinach bunch
• Swiss Chard bunch
• Scallions
• Rhubarb 
• Sage
• Cilantro
• Strawberries
• Eggs
• 1lb. Ground Beef

Summer 2013 Goal: Learn How/New things to cook (With the First Amanda Baking Story)

I have always enjoyed being in the kitchen and making foodie things although I have not always created edible wonders of culinary awesomeness.  When I was in sixth grade we were doing Christmas at my grandparents for what seemed like weeks because Pappy was having open heart surgery.  The day of the surgery, my brother (in fifth grade at the time) and I were left at the house.  I thought it would be swell if we made cookies for when the rest of the crew got home.  We had made Christmas cookies (a whole other crazy story) with my cuckoo class at Central, and so I was practically a master, of course.  Sometimes I have been under the misconception that I have a photographic memory (not the case at all!) when really I am quite forgetful.  I was positive that we used wax paper to line the cookie sheets for baking.  I also had no concept of how much of what to mix in to my cookie dough; seriously, I was just going, "little bit of this and a little bit of that."  Grandma Rose can bake like this; Amanda Rose CANNOT!  I have learned that recipe cards and the internet are my friend.

Being 1995 however, with no internet to save me from the error of my ways, I enlisted the help of my brother to create what looked like zombie cookies in the end (for real, I think if you ate them
they would turn you into the undead-they were terrifying).  Everything melted and became some kind of hardening goo like concoction; it was a hella-mess.  I was quite aware that these couldn't be eaten by the more senior members of my family; I also decided they couldn't be seen for fear of mockery (the Richardson clan has been known to retain crazy joke stories like this for generations).  I didn't want them to go into the garbage because, duh, people would see them and be like, "hey, what is the toxic sludge that is leaking radioactivity into the kitchen?"  So I did what any sensible older sister with inedible food product would do-get the younger brother to eat them.  My 28 year old self is looking at my twelve year old self going, "yes, you did that to poor Tom, you awful, ridiculous sister!" Well, he made it through about two bites before abandoning that plan and helping me to bag them up and hide them under things in the trash

Well, despite our super stealth hiding skills, our cooking debacle was still found out by the senior family members.  A couple things I learned from the experience: 1) Tom is a picky eater but a team player, thank goodness for having such a great brother (who else would eat zombie cookies to save their sister from family shame).  He did tell my family later that I tried to make him eat the cookies, but in all fairness, I deserved that (it still makes me laugh so much).  1a)  Of the people who will eat pretty much anything in the whole world, I now know I went with the wrong sibling; yes, Sarah, if I had to do it all over again knowing what I know now, I would probably try to get you to eat the cookies and not Tom. 2) if you line cookie sheets with wax paper, you may cause a house fire-this was the most alarming detail for my parents/grandparents which in hindsight, yes makes total sense.  That business will catch fire if heated up too much and thank the Lord I did not add one more stressor on what was already a rough week for my family.  3) Recipes (and the internet-what did we do in the 90s without it and/or cell phones) are my friend; I am not an artist in the kitchen and I do not understand the chemistry of ingredients to do the "little bit of this/that" method of cooking.  I am more mathematician and formulaic; I need the plan, the list and the steps in front of me to make foodie awesomeness work. 

I have improved in my domestic abilities, and this summer I am trying to push myself even further in my understanding of kitchen creations.  We have subscribed to a farm share with a co-op of growers in the local area.  Every week we receive a small share of vegetables as well as some eggs, ground beef, and chicken.  My hope is to learn some new tricks and develop some new tastes for home.  I am a creature of habit; I could eat spaghetti with creamy sauce and broccoli all the time.  This summer I want to be pushed outside of my usual eating box and try some new things (not meat, Mom, sorry).  Plus, supporting local farmers who create fresh, not antibiotic loaded, genetically-modified products is always a good endeavor.           

Ipod Quote of the Day

"People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously.  This is how character is built."

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Goals of Summer 2013 (part one)

The very first bunny square

So one of my goals was to blog more often this summer than I have managed to commit myself to in the recent past.  I want to work on having something to say on events/happenings, big or small, in my own life or out in the rest of the Earthal-sphere.  I want to develop on crafting my own writing style; I felt good about blogging/writing in college but quickly got out of the habit here in the real world.

 I know it takes discipline which is probably the overarching goal of the summer, discipline.  Not just wanting to do all things, but carefully discerning the most valuable projects to invest my time/effort.  I am chronically a bite-off-more-than-I-can-chew kind of person.  I will take on many goals and usually near the end I feel as though I am half-assing my way through them.  Take the baby quilt from last summer (status-near completion).  The first steps of going through the quilt (getting/cutting fabric, creating pattern, stitching squares, pinning quilt together) went really quickly; if I had kept at it, it could have been done for Mom to take with her to Hawaii for Sebastian and Sarah (not that they will need this winter quilt on the tropical island of Oahu!).  I am just now finished stitching the squares to the quilt, getting the backing on, and last night I got the silky border pinned to the edging.  I think I have maybe a weeks worth of work left if I hammered down and had nothing else to do. 

Starting to come together

From October (?) More like a quilt

However, having nothing else to do is not the case; next week I am running the show with Junior Silver Cornets.  It will go fine.  I have shirts for the kids squared away and we have enough kids for a pretty decent sized, well balanced band.  I need to get a food list together and recruit some helpers to be kid watchers, mentor players, and game referees.  The program will take some of my time and energy, but I am committed to it being a fun/positive and enjoyable experience for the kids and a great learning experience for me.

Side work for slower afternoons

Since I am still employed up on the hill serving the masses that crave Italian cuisine, I have decided to make another goal of maintaining a positive attitude about my place of employment throughout the summer.  It is a restaurant, and if I have learned anything after six (yes, six) years with this restaurant, it is that I am really in charge of whether I have a good shift or not.  It is my attitude that determines how I perceive what happens and how receptive I am to the people/events around me.  I always make it a point to be professional and pleasant with my customers; this is basic server survival 101-be nice to the people paying you.  It's not just about the money, though; I want my customers to have a wonderful dining experience and anything I can do to make that happen, I will.  Trust me, I have faced managerial and chef wrath trying to guarantee a great meal for my customers.  Nine times out of ten my customers are wonderful, funny, and appreciative of my service.  I have a few horrible customer stories.  But I have also had some great people come into my life that I would not know if it weren't for this job.  The picture with the brown box is from 2011 Christmas time.  A group of ladies came in to do a secret Santa exchange.  They were sweet and humorous and remembered my name (I don't have/wear a name tag and I am notorious for forgetting names two seconds after hearing them so I consider name remembering a great skill).  They chilled watching the snow for a while and I refilled their coffee a bunch (as a coffee drinker, I will bring the pot around every few minutes because I know having an empty cup causes great irks within me); they heard about my aspirational teaching goals and they told me some of their histories.  When they left they left the brown box on the tip tray.  It was a neon orange wrist watch that has a colorful flashing feature that goes seizure crazy with a button push.  I was near tears; seriously, how sweet!  I have sometimes felt like a nobody to my customers (comes with the territory, along with the paranoia that your customers think you have no brains-don't prove them wrong out of spite-just have confidence that you are the wonderful person you know yourself to be); but these ladies took time to care about me.  It isn't about the gift or getting a tip-it's about caring for the people that come into your life, no matter how long they are there.  A final note on this long side story: these women came in again for their Christmas gift exchange in 2012 and although I was not there to serve them, I came in during their sit and chat time and they had asked about me, so I stopped over to say hi and wish them a Merry Christmas (seriously, those gals are the bees-knees!).  My goal this summer is to enjoy my working time in the front as well as the back of the house.  I know it gets tense; I know we all get sour or have things going on that color our day in a foul way.  I want to work on the ability to keep my demeanor professional and positive.  I am going to be there a chunk of time this summer, I should get to enjoy it!

I didn't get through all of my goals for the summer.  Actually there are many more, but this post is long enough for the moment.  It will be part one.  I know; I can keep you all on the edge of your seat!    

First day of summer!

Yay! (Or something to that effect) for the end of another school year.  Yesterday marked the end of my sixth year of teaching.  It felt more cohesive and settled than prior years, but again I walked away from the building wondering if I would be back again in the fall.  This is the plight of a substitute.  The ultimate goal is to be placed full time.  This year was closer than years prior-half time with quite a bit of sub work in the mornings.  It was the perfect set up to help me reach my goal of both establishing myself professionally at Cranberry, but it also let me have the morning time/flexibility to train for the marathon in May.  

 

Academically, I feel I came away from the year having gained a ton of knowledge about myself as a teacher, how to work with my strengths and build up my capabilities, and information about how education (specifically the area of reading/writing) is changing.  I truly think guided reading, with the focus on small group intense collaboration of four or five students with a teacher, is a positive shift in the practice of reading instruction.  I want to write more on this after I have done some decompressing from the school year. 

Not to get my hopes up too high, but I was given verbal assurance that when the grant I am paid with is passed in the state budget, I will receive word that my position will be kept for 2013/2014.  With that I can breathe just a tad easier.  Seriously, this is so much more than the end of the previous years of teaching where I scour school district websites everyday hoping to have more than just day to day subbing work come September.  I will be keeping my fingers and toes crossed in the hopes for my career to only move forward from this point.  My coworker (same position as mine) and I did not have classrooms to clean up or major paperwork/progress reports to file for the end of the year, but we did mark our desks, in the hopes that we will be back come the fall! 

In the meantime, summer!  I look forward to being on here, hopefully more often.  I have the time to work on disciplining myself into getting some things, writing included, more habitual than they have been.  I am a planner, so that is probably next on my summer to do list (seriously, I plan to plan).  For today, Peter and I got through our first unstructured weekday okay.  Barbara is home so we had a late morning brunch.  I ran (really poorly for some odd reason-mentally just trying to be race ready for tomorrow's half marathon) and then walked Big who was told by the vet that he could afford to shed a bit of weight.  I am not completely without work; tonight I will be making sure our regular customers get their fried fish while trying to get them to order more appetizers and a sangria (seriously, people, your meal is $10-splurge on some potato skins!). Hooray for summer!  
      

Quote It Up!

“I tell our runners to divide the race into thirds. Run the first part with your head, the middle part with your personality, and the last part with your heart.” – Mike Fanelli

If It Ain't Broke

The Shoe for now

So I have been doing some shopping for my next pair and it seems as though I will probably just stick to the ones that got me through 26.2 plus the other 500+ miles I've covered in 2013 so far.  Sticking with what works.