A menu to impress one's mother

I'd say it also impressed my future in-laws, but, as they said to my mother, they've always had good food at my house. My mom is the one who, despite all reports to the contrary, refused to believe that my cooking skills had improved since middle school. Of course, this was one I couldn't win either way, as her comments on the improvement of my cooking skills echoed of kindergarten teacherly judgment and really rankled (though, prior to beginning to teach, my mom did apologize for the fact that she would inevitably talk to us in her teacher voice).

In any case, here was the menu last Sunday:

• Caramelized spicy peanuts
  
• Garlic brandy shrimp
• Caramelized onion and leek tart
• Pasta with butter, Parmesan cheese, and pepper
• Salad

R's mom was kind enough to bring dessert, a chocolate cake (with little chocolate chunks) frosted with whipped cream and festooned with raspberries.

The meal was a smashing success. I really can't recommend the shrimp recipe highly enough. Simple, fast, and completely delicious. Everyone loved it. R was quite jealous that I got to eat what little was left over, so you can tell this recipe will be made again in the near future.

The tart (inspired by this recipe) was good, but I think it could have been better. I caramelized the onions and leeks, spread them on a sheet of puff pasty, grated a little cheese on them, then baked (no fennel seeds for us, thank you). The sides of the pasty wound up puffing up, but the onion-covered parts did not. Next time, I think I'll bake the pastry on its own for a bit before adding the onions, just to give it a little more volume. Still, quite a successful evening.

Digital story ideas

My next task for my technology class is to try out podcasting. In class we had the option of using iMovie for this activity, however some of us prefer to talk to ourselves in the privacy of our own homes. For those of you who, like myself, are not Mac people, Audacity also works pretty well for this purpose and is, conveniently, free.

Our assignment is to talk about our digital story ideas, the culmination of which will be appearing on TeacherTube later next month for your viewing pleasure. Here is what I have so far.

In a final aside, I never realized how much cool stuff is available for free on iTunes. The iTunes U section of the store is full of edifying podcasts and I have completely fallen in love with it. I spent my workout today listening to a lecture/interview about Islam and the West from Open University and have downloaded a whole series of podcasts to brush up on my Spanish.

Recipe Review: Saffron White Chocolate Truffles

Alternately titled "The time I found out my kitchen scale can't measure fractions of grams."

Seeing as my mom has come for a visit this weekend, I've been trying out all sorts of new recipes (as well as pulling out the old favorites) so that I can finally convince the woman that I know how to cook. Apparently she needed to see it to believe it.

Anyway, I decided to try out these interesting looking truffles in honor of her visit. Fortunately I had gotten a large jar of saffron at CostCo for a very reasonable price a few years back, as otherwise this recipe would be quite expensive. As I was trying to measure out the necessary half gram of saffron (don't let that comma fool you), I found out that my scale can't measure a half gram of anything. How inconvenient! So, I would up using a large pinch of saffron. I also managed to screw up the order of the recipe by throwing everything in the saucepan instead of just heating the cream and other ingredients and then adding them to a separate bowl of chocolate, which resulted in a longer cooling time and a softer texture. In the end, though, it was the taste that did this recipe in for me. Maybe I put in too much saffron, maybe the saffron should have been ground instead of left as threads, or maybe it is just that I'm not the biggest fan of white chocolate, but I didn't really care for them (this being said, I'm still looking forward to trying the same woman's recipe for maya gold truffles).

They are, however, very tasty in muffin form. Inspired by these Cadbury Creme Egg muffins, I decided to make some saffron white chocolate truffle muffins of my own. I added a little bit of melted truffle to the batter and then placed chunks of truffle in the uncooked muffins, but I think it would still be pretty tasty if you only added melted truffle to the batter.

Saffron White Chocolate Truffle Oatmeal Muffins
Oatmeal muffin recipe adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book

• 1 1/3 c flour
• 3/4 c rolled oats
• 1/3 c sugar
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/4 t salt
• 1 beaten egg
• 3/4 c milk
• 1/4 c cooking oil
• saffron white chocolate truffles

1. Preheat oven to 400* F. Grease twelve muffin cups or use paper baking cups. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

3. In another bowl combine egg, milk, and cooking oil. Add liquid ingredients all at once to dry ingredients and stir until moist. Melt a truffle or two in the microwave and mix resulting liquid into muffins.

4. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Place marble-sized piece of truffle into each muffin cup. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden and a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Cool muffins on a wire rack and serve warm.

Abusing my blog for fun and academic credit

Summer classes started today, and one part of the technology class I am taking is a requirement to blog. For those of us who already have blogs, we've been given the option of just using our pre-existing blogs. So, for your reading pleasure, here is my first course assignment.

EDS 204 Blog Response #1: Tell us about a classroom event this year that has an impact on your professional growth and/or vision.

Given that I knew since the beginning of the year that I didn't really want to teach as a career (and tend to dwell on the negative stories), I think I'm going to share a couple of positive stories.

The Tuesday of the last week of school, I decided to get a couple of last minute pictures to serve as "artifacts" to show that I was fulfilling the California Teaching Performance Expectations (TPEs). For TPE 2, Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction, I decided to stage a photo of me talking to students. After snapping the photo, the student operating the camera exclaimed, "Damn, Miss A, you've got a big butt!" I gave her an odd look, at which point in time she started backtracking. "No, no. It's a good thing. I've got a big butt too!" As my class had been writing goodbye messages to me on the whiteboard, she followed up that comment by writing "I [heart] Miss A's big butt" on the blackboard.

I suppose this whole incident can simply be explained as a youthful attempt to extract one's foot from one's mouth, and in the process wedging it in deeper, but I've got an alternate (though unlikely) pet theory. My thought is perhaps the embrace of hip hop culture is actually doing some good in the body image circuit.



My other story is more of the heartwarming sort. One of my sixth grade advisory students received a number of awards at our end of the year ceremony. When we had adjourned out back to feast on watermelon, I went over to congratulate her. Our conversation went something like this:

Teacher A: Wow, that's quite a haul you've got there.

Student: Yeah.

Teacher A: How many did you get?

Student: I stopped counting after five, [leans closer] but I think I got eight.

Teacher A: Very nice.

Student: I guess hard work sure does pay off.

Teacher A: That it does.

Don't you just want to adopt her? She's awesome. All the teachers are betting she'll be valedictorian. I suppose there are a few good ones out there, after all.

Recipe Reviews: This weekend's endeavors

Dinner last night was a nice little meatball number that I served with rice and a salad. Tasty, but I don't know if they'll make it into the permanent rotation. (Speaking of rice, have you tried Free Rice? You just match words to their meanings, but the game adjusts to your vocabulary level, making it a nice brain work out.)

As a last-minute Father's Day gift, I wound up making some caramelized spicy peanuts this morning for my dad and grandpa. This was after making a batch of caramelized spicy sunflower seeds and finding them completely irresistible. They're not hard to make and watching the sugar transform in a flash from liquid to sandy solid and then caramelize is really cool. Now that I know how to give nuts crunchy sugar coating, I'm enthralled by the possibilities of what else I could dust them with afterwards. Chocolate? Bacon salt? Ginger powder? The possibilities are endless.