Everything in Moderation

Cook Cook Cook...

Life has been terribly busy lately, and I haven't been cooking very much. But the few things that I have had time to cook lately have been rather adventurous!

Zach and I rarely eat shrimp... I used to make a very rich (and delicious) shrimp pasta that was full of butter, oil and garlic. Now I have made a revamped version of this dish...






Oooohh.... Israeli Cous Cous with shrimp, mushrooms and grape tomatoes. No butter, No oil. Unbelievably good, less than 350 calories per serving. BOOYA!

Instead of using any butter or oil I sauteed the shrimp and mushrooms in Butter flavored PAM spray. I added lots of garlic powder, salt, and pepper for flavor, and a good chunk of low fat grated Parmesan cheese. yum yum yum.


On the other end of the healthy spectrum we have: party food. Some friends of ours had quite the big hurray a few weekends ago as their last party in their fratty apartment. I, per usual, was not planning on showing up to this even empty handed. So Zach and I showed up, with beer and snacks in tow! I made... drum roll.... home made SOFT PRETZELS. Oh my goodness. How amazing. They were just so delicious. Slightly difficult to make- but absolutely scrumptious and extremely cheap!! Some of the pretzels were a little on the ugly side- the old ladies at Auntie Ann's make making that signature pretzel shape look far more easy than it is! These were not low calorie- low fat - low carb or low anything- just a wonderful party snack. I most certainly plan to make these again!



Let me know if you want recipes!

There once was a little pup named MURPHY!

WE GOT A DOG, WE GOT A DOG, PRAISE THE LORD, WE GOT A DOG.

After years of pinning at every little pooch we see dolled up in designer sweaters with matching booties being pranced around the city, Zach and I are finally proud DOG OWNERS!

Oh what an adventure it has been!


The process started a few months ago when I (in a moment of extreme wanting) googled "dog adoption" and came across adoptapet.com. The website is kind of like a facebook for pets that need adoption, including a picture and short description. I looked through profiles for weeks, even sending initial emails on some, but not following through. Until the week after my birthday, when we came across a very special little pup. The description was for a small beagle-chihuahua mix 12 week old puppy currently in foster care in Tennessee. He already had his shots, but wasn't big enough to be fixed yet and had the cutest little face! Zach and I acted fast! We filled out an online application and a few days later had a phone interview with someone from the company and with the little pup's foster mom. After a few questions and a quick paypal transaction we were the proud owners of a little dog! The next issue was getting him to us.

The adoption agency uses a pet delivery service (how funnny is that!) that would bring us our little puppy from Tennessee to a town about an hour outside of the city on the last friday of April. But since they were driving the entire way and making other stops, he wouldn't be getting in until about 1 or 2 AM Friday night. What a conundrum! We decided to rent a car for the night, go out to dinner (and drive 2 hours to the nearest walmart ) before driving up to the pup deliver location.

Around 11:30 pm we received a call saying that the van o' pups was about 2 hours away from the delivery point, so we headed out! We were to meet the van in EAST parking lot of Exit 14 off some highway a little over an hour north of the city. We drove up there, we got off of the exit saw the NORTH parking lot, the WEST parking lot and the SOUTH parking lot- but the EAST parking lot was no where to be found! Zach and I drove around for a little thinking that we were crazy in our attempts to find the missing lot- but to no avail. We finally chose one of the other lots to wait in. We waited and waited inspecting every car that drove past. Finally, at about 1:30 AM on April 30th 2011, a large, white van drove into the parking lot and pulled up next to us. We got out of the car and walked over. A large woman asked us what dog was ours while a scruffy man went in to the back of the truck then opened the side door and produced a small dog. The woman handed us a manilla envelope with some papers in it and told us to have a good night. We walked away, pup in hand, and got into our car as the big white van disappeared into the night. Although this interaction was the closest thing that Zach or I had ever experienced to a late night drug buy, we left he parking lot with a little puppy all of own! This is the first picture we have of him. He looks so small and scared with his ears back!
The past two weeks have been full of many adorable moments, a lot a little accidents, attempting to get him to walk on a leash, a few visits the the vet, a first visit to a dog park, a lot of snuggles, a little barking, one shower (murphy did not like that) and a lot of fun. One of our first discoveries was that he is definitely not part chihuahua. We, and the vet, think that he is some sort of beagle -lab mix. Right now he is 17 weeks old and weighs about 18 lbs. Originally we thought he was going to be about 20-25 lbs fully grown but it's actually going to be closer to 50 lbs! So no little annoying yappy citty dog for us, we have ourselves a full sized pup! Although this limits up with regards to travel (can't have a 50lb dog on the subway or train!) we are still so excited to have him!

Zach has been working very hard to train the little guy, he's pretty good with sit already! And we start puppy classes tomorrow! He is still a little shy when we are at the park, but he is much more comfortable with us and is showing us his personality! Here are some wonderful pictures of our little pup:

Look at that smirk!









Murph is a nap connoisseur...












He also enjoys lounging on the couch.









Murph is already an excellent fetcher. Particularly with Mr. Squirrel, or Mr. Beaver.









Look at those eyes...

2011 GOAL

This year I decided to make a real New Year's resolution: Read at least 50 books.

So far, I've been a reading machine! Here is a list of the books I've read so far and my rating out of 10. I'm rating on how much I personally enjoyed reading each book, not how well it was written or the content, just how much I liked it!

1. This is Where I Leave You. - 7
   
2. Sarah - 8
   
3. Politics - 3
4. Pretty Little Mistakes - 3
   
5. Ender's Game - 8
6. The Sparrow - 9.5
   
7. Kissing in Manhattan - 6
8. An Invisible Sign for Me - 4
   
9. Squirrel Seeking Chipmunk - 9
   
10. Names my Sister's Call Me - 8
    
11. Water for Elephants - 7.5
    
12. Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest - 10
    
13. The Imperfectionists - 6
    
14. I am the Cheese - 7
    
15. Stone Virgin - 7
    
16. Choke - 7
    
17. Walks with Men - 5
    
18. A Father's Words - 7
    
19. The Brightest Ring of Angels Around Heaven - 6
    
20. True Colors - 9
    
21. Something Borrowed - 9
22. Her Fearful Symmetry - 7.5
23. Cat's Cradle - 8
24. The Things We do for Love - 6
25. ZERO - 8
26. Good In Bed - 9
27. The Reliable Wife - 7
    
28. Something Blue -8
29. Not Another Bad Date - 8
30. The Solitude of Prime Numbers - 8
31. Commencement - 9
32. Fire Fly Lane Girls - 9
33. The Sunflower - 6
34. In Her Shoes - 9
    
35. Half Broke Horses - 8
36. The Handmaidens Tale - 9
    
37. Drinking Closer to Home - 9
38. The Dive from Clausen's Pier-9
39. The Empress of the World -7
    
40. Bound -3
41. My Meloncholy Whores - 5
42. St Patrick's Day Murder-7
43. My F-ing Birthday-7
44. Ghost - 6
45. Tabitha at Midnight-3
46. Tell All-5
47. The Cinderella Deal - 9
    
48. P.S. Your Cat is Dead -8
49. Rush - 9
50. I'm Not Myself These Days - 7
    

I DID IT! :)

Spring is Here!

Spring is slowly start to inch its way into New York City. With it comes three types of days:

1. Super rainy, thunder storms
2. Grayish blah days
   
3. The random BEAUTIFUL day that makes everyone want to go outside!

These three different types of days are the only ones that exist in april and may and they make going to work difficult and kids going to school damn near impossible. If it's a rainy day- you just want to stay in bed, but the kids definitely stay in bed- or come in at least an hour late. If it's a blah-gray day then the day sucks any smiles or happiness form the room and the students are like little zombies in their desks. And finally, if it is a beautiful sunny day with 72 amazing degrees of heat, every second indoors is painful and the number of empty seats in classes after lunch grows dramatically. These three types of days are making it very difficult for me to (a) get my ass motivated to be a good teacher and (b) get my kids to learn!

The Algebra Regents (New York's state-wide exams that all high-schoolers must pass to graduate) are 7 weeks away. That is an utterly terrifying thought. In a mere seven weeks I need to finish the algebra curriculum and some how review enough so that my students are able to pass the exam.

The exam is weighted drastically, so much that in order to 'pass' a student only needs to answer half (15) of the multiple choice questions correctly. Yet, there are a hand full of students who struggle severely as they prepare to take the exam for the third or fourth time.

The school I work at treats the exams differently than most schools. Our philosophy is to 'get the exams out of the way asap so that as upperclassmen, students can take more interesting, less straight forward classes' I agree with this mentality, most of the time. The tricky thing is that the students still need to take the tests (some schools are exempt) and really do need to know the material to gain access and be successful in a college or university. Moreover, if a student finishes his or her science regents early, then they can take a class like "Forensics" where they solve a murder mystery using science (each quarter a teacher is killed!) or "Special Effects Science" where they study the chemistry behind special effects stuff used in movies. But, if a student finishes his math regents early he just takes more advanced math as we do not yet have any math electives offered at my school. I would love to teach a math elective on Algebraic Proof, or The History of Math, or maybe Diet Home Economics (heavy on the real life econ, light on the cookies and sewing).

Although I find myself wanting to teach more interesting classes in the math department I feel as if I should most certainly not be complaining. I have such a large amount of freedom at my school in what and how I teach! I listen to horror stories from other MfA fellows and feel bad for them. I am so very lucky to be at my school. The students are great, the administration and support is great and I love what and how I teach. I would never want to leave or do anything else in new york city. (I suppose if they put an elevator into the building- it would be the best school in the world!)

On the topic of teaching, I have started to teach Sex Ed to a small group of 9th grade girls. So far it's going really well, but we only just begun a few weeks ago... more to come.

Mmmm... Dinner

Here is a little game called 'how many pots can we use at once'

We got a new pan as a house warming present from my dad. It's beautiful! Very heave and just asking to be used. We made some salmon on it, it wasn't terribly successful, but it was still delicious. We have since used it to make some extremely yummy panini sandwiches!







We also made some Israeli Cous Cous with sauteed mushrooms and onions and fresh tomatoes in seasoned garlic olive oil and some ooey, gooey, cheesey, bubbly garlic toast. Yum!

Zach and Sarah go to the Zoo

Zach and I love the zoo. We've been to many zoos together, each time collecting a pressed penny with some adorable animal on it. We have quite the collection.

Two weekends ago, when march weather was being nice to us, we went on an adventure! The adventures started off with a walk through Prospect Park and led us to the Prospect Park Zoo! It was larger than the Central Park Zoo, but smaller than the Bronx Zoo- and it was cheap! We were there for about 2-3 hours and saw all that it had to offer.

Our first stop was at the Barn- we saw turtles, llamas (they may have been alpachas), sheep, goats, ponies and a cow. We bought some animal food from a vending machine and were able to feed them too!

Next on our list were the sea-lions. We timed our trip well and were able to watch them perform! They are quite the little swimmers!

Did you know that sea lions have ears and seals do not?!

who woulda thought...

Who woulda thought that low-calorie food could be so delicious! As I've mentioned we've started to cook and eat much healthier! We have 3 'diet' cookbooks that have great recopies all under 500 calories. So far it's going great! I have found that the recipes are for food we love, and aren't difficult to make at all! The issue with staying below the calorie mark isn't finding yummy low calorie items, it's serving size.

interesting facts about servings:

1 serving of fish or chicken is about the size of a deck of cards.

1 serving of pasta should fit in the palm of your hand

1 serving of fruit or veggies is a baseball

1 serving of cheese is a domino

1 serving of bread is ... haha who are we kidding?! eating bread!?


Think about it, the last time you were having a healthy meal of broiled chicken and steamed veggies, did you eat 1/3 of a chicken breast? Did you only have less than a handfull of veggies?? Actual servings sizes are TINY.

Although we having been making very yummy, low calorie food, most of the times I eat about 1.25 servings. Which isn't too bad considering we are making meals that have about 300 calories in one serving.



To the right is a Chicken Caprese Salad. We used 1 serving of broiled chicken, 1/2 large tomato, 2.5 slices of low-fat, part skim, fresh mozzarella, chopped basil on top of romaine lettuce with a calorie free (YUP ZERO CALORIES!) balsamic vinaigrette. Yumm Yumm Yumm- total: about 270 calories.

Something to think about...

I found this little shpeel while wandering around the internet... Definately puts the argument into perspective:

Are you sick of high paid teachers?

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – baby sit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage. That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school.

That would be $19.50 a day (7:45to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here!

There sure is! The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student –a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) Then they even have to pay taxes on that buck-fourty-two!

WHAT A DEAL….

Pi Day- every math nerd's favorite day of the year!

My first Pi Day as a math teacher has come and gone. And oh what a day it was! As my overly nerdy, math-dork, bubbly self, I became the 'pi day committee' at my school and organized quite the event!

For those of you who do not know Pi Day is always March 14th (3 -14) for the amazing mathematical number that is π = 3.1415926535... And the joke to the right plays on the fact that π is not a rational number and i is not a real number. In my opinion, it's the most classic math joke and I love it.

Many schools do a digits of Pi memorization contest. Considering π has infinitely many digits the opportunity for kids to compete to memorize the most is endless! I took our pi day celebration to the next level! Not only did we do a digits contest, but we also did a pi- joke or comic contest. And to top it all off I organized a fundraiser to raise money for St. Jude's Cancer Research Hospital's Math-a-thon. Students could buy tickets for $1 from their advisory, they wrote their names on the tickets and entered them into a pool. The two advisories that raised the most money won a pizza party and the students who bought tickets were entered into a drawing to win the opportunity to PIE A TEACHER IN THE FACE! :)




We had about 150 students (half of the student body) show up to the celebration, which was after school on March 14th. About 15 students participated in the memorization contest- the winner had over 100 digits memorized! Wowzers! And the winning joke is above... pretty funny huh?! The winner of the digit contest won a large pie, the top 3 along with the writer of the joke won a medium pie and anyone who memorized at least 15 digits won a little pie. We ended up having a lot of the mini pies left over (maybe because I made a million of them!) and we raffled them off at the end. Yummm... Pie....


Our students ended up raising over $320 and pie-ing all 13 teachers who participated in the face with whip cream pies! We even pied the principal! I made an iSchool smock and brought in a shower cap to protest ourselves, but it was to no avail, the whip cream got EVERYWHERE. The two pictures below are of me getting pied in the face by one of my students, Kevin...




















I had whip cream in my ears, in my hair and even after rinsing off at school, when I got home Zach kissed me on the check and told me i tasted sweet! Overall it was extremely fun and successful!!

Rather Overdue...

Apparently it has been over two months since I last posted anything. I had no idea that I'd been so neglectful. Things are going very well. The second semester of school is over and I'm counting down the days until mid-winter recess which means a wonderful week off of school.

But going back to where I left off, christmas has come and gone. Zachary and I hosted our first christmas this year. Complete with live a tree, turkey and gravy, presents and stockings too, and a whole lot of family in our little brooklyn apartment. Christmas vacation started off with the arrival of my family; my dad, brother and sister. We went on a light tour of the city, which we lasted a grand total of 1 stop for a 'photo op' to turn into a 'drink op'. We quickly ditched the tour and found our selves focused on an entirely different holiday entirely; Halloween! We went to Jeckyl and Hyde's for dinner- a themed restaurant filled with decapitated heads, wearwolf specimens and an over all creepy vibe that my little brother thoroughly enjoyed (obviously). After a fun first day in the city (and a very early plane ride from ohio), the day ended with Daddy and Sam falling dead asleep on the train.



The next day was christmas eve and started with a trip to The Met. Colleen of course was in her element rushing around the decked halls chirping tid bits of information. Sam followed in her foot steps when we entered the mythological statue section of the museum. I knew that Sam was interested in Mythology and had a few books on the topic, but I did not know that he was so informed and able to recall the names and stories of each mythological figure trapped in marble on display. I was rather impressed. After a quick stop in times square (for a needed trip to toys r us, which lasted all of 3 minutes before we were over whelmed by the last minute shoppers) we headed back to Brooklyn.


Sam was enjoying our Xbox, but mostly using large alien vehicles to run over colleen's character. Needless to say, Sam is now a Halo professional. Zach made a yummy Christmas Eve dinner- seared flank steak with a red wine shallot reduction, roasted potatoes and green beans with mushrooms and onions. It was excellent. We opened up our regular one christmas eve present and all donned our new pajamas. We watched the Polar Express while enjoying some Hot Chocolate when the song called for it and went to bed excited for the morning.










Christmas was wonderful! We opened all of our presents in the morning and zach made his families christmas eggs. We went to the movies in the afternoon (tron- terrible movie) and hurried home so I could start the turkey!





It was a small bird- only 12 lbs but it turned out perfect. I was terrified that I would over cook it, or that it would be dry. I thawed it with love, brined it with a little salt and rubbed and caressed the turkey with butter before putting it into the oven. A few hours later the little red button/thermometer had not yet popped, but I was getting nervous... it should have been done by then! I was so worried about my bird i sat on the floor of my kitchen (with my beverage of course) and watched through the window of my oven, waiting for the button to pop! And soon enough, it did! It looked good, it was golden brown and the veggies were nice and soft, but I was still terrified that it was going to be dry and I was going to ruin christmas. But I was wrong! Some how, on my first try, I made the most amazing, glorious turkey the world has ever seen. Even my father, a turkey snob, was impressed and commented on its greatness. We served the turkey with mashed potatoes, gravy and carrots. For my first attempt at a turkey I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome!


The next day we ventured into the city for pizza and went to Sam's dream store - Evolution. A store completely devoted to all things gross. Sam got a allosaurus finger and fell in love with it. We trekked back to brooklyn in what was becoming the crazy new york snow storm. We got snowed in and what was supposed to be a peter luger's steak dinner turned into us ordering chinese delivery and having a die hard marathon with all 5 of us (and sam's dino finger) snuggling on the couch.

The snow storm ended up pushing dad and sam's travel plans back a day, but a few head aches and a 4am gypsy cab ride later they found themselves on a plane back to Ohio. Colleen stayed the rest of the week through new years, on which we both got dolled up in red. Overall and A+ holiday.








I went on a creative adventure on one of the walls in our apartment with the help of Ikea's super cheap frames and Kodak's online print center. The large fraame into the city after work and we took a shuttle from Port Authority over to Jersey to go to some giant ass japanese market. me in the middle has pictures from kenyon, and the ones around the outside are pictures of zach and my families and friends from home. There are also a few of us when we were little (zach and his brothers were adorable little blond babies!)










Changing topics to Zach and I's most adventurous cooking extravaganza yet. For christmas, Zach got me a 'make your own sushi at home' kit from Barnes and Noble and I got him a nice dark blue porcelain sushi set complete with little soy sauce plates and chop sticks! On a rainy friday afternoon he cIt was ridiculous, we went from being in a large parking lot right across the hudson to feeling as if we were in the middle of tokyo- yikes. We bought a variety of ingredients and took a few minutes to walk up the 'home isle' of this asian market to snicker at all of the strange asian items. We then ventured back to brookyn (a trip that took us over ninety minutes) to begin our sushi making spectacular!




It began with us preparing the rice, a rather difficult feat! "use this much water, don't stir it, fold it, don't open the lid, listen for boiling bubbles ,spend 45 minutes making the damn rice, add this special seasoning, spend $12 on a bottle you will use 2 drops of, etc etc etc..." When it was finally done we had the rice, the fish, the seaweed, the tobiko, the spicy mayonaise, the yummy eel sauce, the avocado, the cucumber (for zach, I hate the stuff), and our super special saran wrapped bamboo sushi roller things. Home made sushi: attempt 1 was a go.





We started with simple rolls- a california for myself and a tuna avocado for zach, that were mildly successful. We were both using too much rice to start and zach was having trouble rolling it up. We then tried things a bit more complicated, experimenting with the tobiko and the mayo. We tried to use different types of fish and less rice. We made right side in rolls and inside out rolls. I made one with the avocado on the outside of the roll (not recommended for amateurs) but it wasn't nearly as pretty as i wanted.




About an hour and a half after we began cooking the rice we had a giant platter full of sushi- far too much for the two of us! We sat down on our fantastic red couch and dove in! It was our first try- we expected it to be edible, but not so great. But we were wrong! It was actually pretty good! The first few rolls that we made were way too ricey, but the ones that we made towards the end were delicious! It was an extremely fun and delicious at home date and I think that anyone who likes going out for sushi should definitely try to do it at home!


School is going very well. Some of the students are becoming harder to deal with considering the whole 'i'm a scared little freshmen and I will do what you tell me to' thing is wearing off. Some of the boys are getting tougher and the attitude on some of the girls is alarming at times. But overall I am so thankful to be at such a wonderful school. When I talk to my MfA friends and they tell me their woes from the schools that they teach at, I sympathetically nod along while I'm thanking god that I was so lucky to be hired at my school. Pi Day is coming up next month, I'm trying to figure out how we are going to celebrate... I have a few ideas- it's going to be exciting!!!

Also, we have a little friend staying with us for a few weeks! Charlie is making his Brooklyn debut!