I've followed Top Chef since its inaugural season way back in ought six. As reality shows go, it's very entertaining, probably because it is within an area of interest for me. Not only do I enjoy cooking and eating, but I've also worked as a cook, so a hectic professional kitchen takes me back to those days. One thing that is remarkable about the show is that the contestants are never allowed to use recipes. Sometimes that aspect is lost in the competition, but it's key to the show's concept.
When you work as a cook for someone else, you're supposed to follow the recipes they give you. It's weird to cook stuff you don't even like, and it can be tedious, too, but if it's not good, it's not your fault, because it's not your job to be creative. That's the chef's responsibility.
I used to say one should always follow the recipe as written once before making changes, but I've been disappointed too many times for that to be my mantra any longer. These days, I myself rarely use recipes, except when baking. When I want to add new dishes to our favorites, I generally either make something up using whatever we have on hand, re-create something we liked eating out, or read a recipe for the basic concept and ingredients and then go off on my own.
That approach works out for me, perhaps a little too well. Lately I think I may have damaged my ability to follow a recipe. Twice in the last week, I have tried to cook from a recipe and each time I have left out a key ingredient. First it was the leavening in some pumpkin bread and tonight it was the lentils in a mushroom and lentil pot pie. Oops. Both times I lost my way in the recipe when I started to ad lib in the middle: a little rosemary here, a few raisins there, you know. I think the problem was commitment: maybe I should either go with the recipe or not. (Or maybe I'm just getting old.)
I'm happy to report that crisis was averted in both cases. The results were not only edible, but tasty, too. Even so, had I submitted them for the consideration of the judges on Top Chef, I just might have been told to pack my knives and go.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem
Sometimes I think I'm a good team leader and sometimes I don't. The job is an example of one of those kind of important things they often ask teachers to do without really providing any training or support. In addition to my already demanding full time job, twelve years ago I volunteered to manage a team of adults for a stipend. Oh, at first I really wanted the leadership role in our school, but for the last few years I've kept it mostly because nobody else will take it from me.
It's hard work to coordinate a team of eight adults, and the learning curve on this for me has been a downward arc-- I've gone from thinking I was doing a great job to questioning my effectiveness. This year, the teachers on my team seem over-worked, over-whelmed, and under-appreciated, and I'm wondering what my role is in both the problem and the solution. I always tell the kids that it's a good thing when you start to know what you don't know, and lately, I'm right there with them.
It's hard work to coordinate a team of eight adults, and the learning curve on this for me has been a downward arc-- I've gone from thinking I was doing a great job to questioning my effectiveness. This year, the teachers on my team seem over-worked, over-whelmed, and under-appreciated, and I'm wondering what my role is in both the problem and the solution. I always tell the kids that it's a good thing when you start to know what you don't know, and lately, I'm right there with them.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Seeds of Change
The convergence of the beginning of my winter CSA and putting our garden to bed for the winter (the final clean-up day is Saturday) has got me in a bit of a reflective mood. Tonight for dinner I cooked the very last of the veggies that will come from our plot this season, some eggplant of all things. Who knew that this most Mediterranean of vegetables would survive into November? Probably the pepper plants that were still producing until last week.
My CSA, too, had some peppers and eggplants along with the first of the winter greens. I had all my fingers and toes crossed that they would include a few peachy mama peppers in the delivery box, but I was disappointed. They are the same shape and size of habaneros, with all of the flavor but none of the heat. I am enthralled by them, mostly because they are so good, but also because there is nothing else like them, and I have never found them anywhere else.
Last summer we got bags and bags of them, and as happy as I was, I know that some of my fellow shareholders complained, and so our farmer adjusted the crop. This year we received exactly two small peppers in early September, which is why I was hoping that they might find their way into the early boxes of our winter share. No such luck tonight.
I'm not the same passive consumer I once was, though. Now I am a woman with a garden, and so I set aside the immediate gratification of cooking with those two little peppers, and instead I dried them for seeds. If all goes well? Next year I won't be dependent on anyone for my peachy mamas, except of course the sun and the rain.
My CSA, too, had some peppers and eggplants along with the first of the winter greens. I had all my fingers and toes crossed that they would include a few peachy mama peppers in the delivery box, but I was disappointed. They are the same shape and size of habaneros, with all of the flavor but none of the heat. I am enthralled by them, mostly because they are so good, but also because there is nothing else like them, and I have never found them anywhere else.
Last summer we got bags and bags of them, and as happy as I was, I know that some of my fellow shareholders complained, and so our farmer adjusted the crop. This year we received exactly two small peppers in early September, which is why I was hoping that they might find their way into the early boxes of our winter share. No such luck tonight.
I'm not the same passive consumer I once was, though. Now I am a woman with a garden, and so I set aside the immediate gratification of cooking with those two little peppers, and instead I dried them for seeds. If all goes well? Next year I won't be dependent on anyone for my peachy mamas, except of course the sun and the rain.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Grammar for the 22nd Century
Yes, I had my professional learning community meeting today. Before I went, I thought that this post might be serving up a little crow to its author, because I actually found the assigned reading to be relevant and of use to my teaching. When I got there, I found that I was in the minority again, though, because nobody else liked what the chapter had to offer. Sigh.
We did have a lively conversation on teaching homophones. Once again, I played the devil's advocate (it was hard not to when one of the other teachers cited page 666 in the language text book) and asked how we can make the differences in those words relevant to the students, especially when mistaking them so rarely impacts meaning. If someone uses the wrong there, their, or they're, it's not hard to figure out what they were trying to say, it just happens to be incorrect.
At one point, I proposed my own grammar: let's standardize spellings for words that sound alike (and get rid of apostrophes while we're at it-- at least for contractions). Can't we agree to make it "thair" in every case?
We have plenty of words in our language that are spelled the same but have different meanings, for example fluke, lead, and bank. Sure, thair confusing in thair own way, but such a change might mean that thair would be fewer mistakes. And think of all the instructional time that we could reclaim, tew.
We did have a lively conversation on teaching homophones. Once again, I played the devil's advocate (it was hard not to when one of the other teachers cited page 666 in the language text book) and asked how we can make the differences in those words relevant to the students, especially when mistaking them so rarely impacts meaning. If someone uses the wrong there, their, or they're, it's not hard to figure out what they were trying to say, it just happens to be incorrect.
At one point, I proposed my own grammar: let's standardize spellings for words that sound alike (and get rid of apostrophes while we're at it-- at least for contractions). Can't we agree to make it "thair" in every case?
We have plenty of words in our language that are spelled the same but have different meanings, for example fluke, lead, and bank. Sure, thair confusing in thair own way, but such a change might mean that thair would be fewer mistakes. And think of all the instructional time that we could reclaim, tew.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Petty Tyrants
I voted this evening on my way home from school. All the races and initiatives on my ballot were pretty much foregone, but it's the principle, right? It was close to 6 PM by the time I got to the poll and the line was kind of long. As I waited I wondered about this voter turnout-- are a lot of people like me, or are we going to wake up to a shocker in the morning? In the end, I figured that since politics is our hometown industry, most folks were just supporting the company. We'll see.
Waiting in line rarely brings out the best in people, even those of us with pure hearts and an idealistic agenda. In such a situation smart phones make the time go faster for me, and I was e-mailing my sister when I heard the ring of someone else's iPhone back in the line. "NO PHONES!" declared one of the election officials. "Silence your phone immediately, sir!" The phone kept ringing, and I resisted the temptation to turn around and stare at the drama unfolding behind me. I did, however, put my phone in my pocket.
Another election official walked past me to provide back up. "Sir! If you can't silence your phone, then please turn it off," he demanded.
There was a smirk of sarcasm in the voice of the violator. "Sorry... I didn't know if I was allowed to touch my phone or not," he said.
"Sir, please--" the official warned, but he stopped there, and I assumed that the guy had put his phone away.
Ten minutes later, I made it to the front of the line and voted. Yay, democracy!
Waiting in line rarely brings out the best in people, even those of us with pure hearts and an idealistic agenda. In such a situation smart phones make the time go faster for me, and I was e-mailing my sister when I heard the ring of someone else's iPhone back in the line. "NO PHONES!" declared one of the election officials. "Silence your phone immediately, sir!" The phone kept ringing, and I resisted the temptation to turn around and stare at the drama unfolding behind me. I did, however, put my phone in my pocket.
Another election official walked past me to provide back up. "Sir! If you can't silence your phone, then please turn it off," he demanded.
There was a smirk of sarcasm in the voice of the violator. "Sorry... I didn't know if I was allowed to touch my phone or not," he said.
"Sir, please--" the official warned, but he stopped there, and I assumed that the guy had put his phone away.
Ten minutes later, I made it to the front of the line and voted. Yay, democracy!
Monday, November 1, 2010
A for Anything
Today was the last day of the first quarter, and I had one of those classic student-teacher moments. This particular student has a 71 in my class, and she approached me to find out what she could do to bring it up to an A. I advised her to enjoy her day off tomorrow and come back on Wednesday ready to work hard and turn everything in; after all, there are three more quarters.
Oh, how we are wed to those letters, though. Everyone wants an A; everyone is thrilled to get one. But what do they really represent? When I look back at all the reading and writing my students and I have done together over the last eight weeks there is simply no way to capture their progress accurately in a single letter. And yet we still do. It's as if nothing matters but the numbers game at the end, and even at sixth grade, the kids know it, too.
When I was in graduate school one of my professors was a well-known Shakespeare scholar. I took both his course on the tragedies and histories and the one on the comedies. At mid-term he told the same joke both times:
An attractive young woman is failing one of her college classes. She comes to the professor during office hours and purposefully shuts the door. "I'll do anything to pass," she tells him provocatively.
"Anything?" he asks her with some doubt.
"Anything," she assures him with a wink.
"Then study, damn it!"
At the time? I thought the joke was sort of funny. Now? I totally get it.
Oh, how we are wed to those letters, though. Everyone wants an A; everyone is thrilled to get one. But what do they really represent? When I look back at all the reading and writing my students and I have done together over the last eight weeks there is simply no way to capture their progress accurately in a single letter. And yet we still do. It's as if nothing matters but the numbers game at the end, and even at sixth grade, the kids know it, too.
When I was in graduate school one of my professors was a well-known Shakespeare scholar. I took both his course on the tragedies and histories and the one on the comedies. At mid-term he told the same joke both times:
An attractive young woman is failing one of her college classes. She comes to the professor during office hours and purposefully shuts the door. "I'll do anything to pass," she tells him provocatively.
"Anything?" he asks her with some doubt.
"Anything," she assures him with a wink.
"Then study, damn it!"
At the time? I thought the joke was sort of funny. Now? I totally get it.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Kitchen Mishaps
Our kitchen is not very big at all, but it is well-equipped, to say the least. Earlier this summer a neighbor openly mocked me for the number of whisks we own, but I shrugged it off. There's nothing that makes cooking faster, easier, and more satisfying than having the right tool for the job. That is not to say that every gadget is a must-have item; that is not true at all. I don't own an apple peeler, a french fry cutter, or a tomato mill, because they don't really make the job faster for me. Besides my affection for whisks, I also love microplane graters, ceramic knives, and those citrus juicers that you open, put half the fruit in, and squeeze closed. Those tools are so amazing that I actually get a little thrill when I know I need to use them, perhaps because I still remember a time before they were part of my arsenal.
Probably the most underrated tool I own is the humble bench knife. That small rectangle of metal with a handle has gotten me out of some pretty big jams-- it both scrapes and scrapes clean. Take tonight for example. I was preheating a skillet on the stove when I decided it was too small for the job (I have a good selection of cookware, too), so I switched it for a larger pan. The original skillet slipped from the potholder and landed on the scatter rug where it melted the synthetic fibers into a dark ring before I could retrieve it. Never mind the rug-- the skillet had a layer of melted nylon on the bottom. Without a second thought, I ran it under hot water, pulled out my bench knife, and scraped the stuff completely away- crisis averted.
Oh yeah, and the whisks came in handy today, too. I totally forgot to add the leavening to the pumpkin bread I was baking and only realized it about 10 minutes after it was in the oven. What's the worst that can happen? I thought, and using the smallest of my whisk collection, I took the dense loaf out and stirred the baking powder in, careful not to disturb the sides which had already set. That thing rose like a rocket and turned out just fine, thanks to that tiny little whisk. I only wish my neighbor had been here to see it.
Probably the most underrated tool I own is the humble bench knife. That small rectangle of metal with a handle has gotten me out of some pretty big jams-- it both scrapes and scrapes clean. Take tonight for example. I was preheating a skillet on the stove when I decided it was too small for the job (I have a good selection of cookware, too), so I switched it for a larger pan. The original skillet slipped from the potholder and landed on the scatter rug where it melted the synthetic fibers into a dark ring before I could retrieve it. Never mind the rug-- the skillet had a layer of melted nylon on the bottom. Without a second thought, I ran it under hot water, pulled out my bench knife, and scraped the stuff completely away- crisis averted.
Oh yeah, and the whisks came in handy today, too. I totally forgot to add the leavening to the pumpkin bread I was baking and only realized it about 10 minutes after it was in the oven. What's the worst that can happen? I thought, and using the smallest of my whisk collection, I took the dense loaf out and stirred the baking powder in, careful not to disturb the sides which had already set. That thing rose like a rocket and turned out just fine, thanks to that tiny little whisk. I only wish my neighbor had been here to see it.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)