Made Fresh Daily

I had two homeroom birthdays this week and when I asked the second student what kind of cake he wanted, he hesitated and asked, "Are we allowed to have ice cream cake?"

At the time, it seemed like a fine idea. "Sure," I told him, and made a note to myself to buy a Carvel cake from the grocery store.

Once, when I was a little girl, my Brownie troop took a field trip to our local Carvel store. At the time, all the gleaming stainless steel equipment seemed so so modern. We oohed in amazement when they showed us how the ice cream mix came freeze-dried in gallon cartons and aahed in astonishment when they poured it in the hopper of the soft serve machine and just added water. How incredible that in a matter of moments, it turned into the creamy and delicious concoction we all loved.

It was then they shared what I am sure was a trade secret-- the crunch between the layers of their delicious ice cream cakes was simply a sprinkling of that very same dry mix (!) At the end of the tour, they gave each of us a flying saucer and sent us on our way.

Last night, I dashed through the grocery-- after school, after writing club, after the gym, and before coming home to cook dinner-- in search of a Carvel cake. I admit I was looking forward to it; even after forty years and a significantly expanded palate, there's something indefinably tasty about that freeze dried ice cream, and I hadn't had one for a long time. I opened the freezer to gauge what size would be best for the 15 kids in my homeroom and was shocked to see the price tag.  Just the wee eight incher was twenty bucks and the next size up was thirty. I considered the precedent I was setting and quickly decided that I was definitely not prepared to spend a possible $450.00 on birthdays should this trend catch on. It was a quandary though-- I'd already promised an ice cream cake.

Back in the 70's, after that visit to Carvels, my mom started making her own ice cream cakes. She'd seen the technique, and she used a spring form pan and a hand mixer to beat slightly softened ice cream to the proper consistency before spreading it in layers. As for the crunch? She used cookies and candy crushed up in the blender. Everyone raved about those cakes.

Putting the cardboard box back into its freezer case, I stepped across the aisle. There, an entire half-gallon of ice cream was on sale for $2.50. I knew just what to do.

EPILOGUE:

My students were thrilled with the cake and quite impressed that I had made it myself. Win Win Win.

Case Closed

I have heard vague rumors about the evils of Chinese pine nuts-- something about a bitter after taste. It is enough on my radar screen that in the rare event that I purchase them (when it comes to cooking with nuts, we prefer almonds, pecans, and walnuts, in that order), I check to make sure their origin is not Chinese. An aside: I don't really think it's biased or reactionary to mistrust food from China;the export economy there has grown so quickly that it's unreasonable to expect that adequate health and safety checks are in place.

At any rate, my awareness of the problems with some pine nuts was not acute enough to prevent me from eating a salad full of them at the wedding we attended last Saturday. They tasted fine, and I cleaned my plate.

A couple days later, I had an odd experience. A big box of steaming hot fried chicken, some biscuits, and a plate of homemade lumpia was unceremoniously brought to my classroom around 3 PM with a post-it note. "From the D. family." As hard as I tried to get to the bottom of this unexpected delivery, I could not, and so I stored the food in the refrigerator until the next day.

It turned out that, since I've taught three of their sons over the last few years, they just decided to treat me to something special, and on a whim they sent me some chicken and egg rolls, which just happen to be two of my favorite things. Gratefully, I heated up a portion for my lunch, but I was still thinking about the atypicality of the gesture when I started to eat, and then, for some reason, it seemed like everything had a strange and metallic taste.

I finished my meal with a bit of an uneasy feeling, but after I survived the afternoon, I put aside any suspicions I may have had about the chicken, and promptly forgot the entire thing. At dinner, though, my food tasted off, and briefly I wondered: Is there something wrong with me? Was there something wrong with the chicken? My attention span is only so long, however, and it wasn't too long before all my concerns were lost in whatever was on TV.

When it happened again the next day, though, my focus was completely restored. To be honest,  you get to a certain age and it becomes challenging sometimes to tell if a particular sensation is just a normal ache or pain or rather a symptom of some fatal condition. The trick is to find a balance between ignoring it and googling it and freaking out.

I usually start with the Google route and work from there. This time, I started with the search terms bitter taste mouth, and at first I actually ignored all the hits that mentioned Chinese pine nuts. But they were so prominent that I couldn't skip them completely, and imagine my surprise when I read that this sensation actually starts a few days after eating the nuts and could last up to two weeks! It was only then that I remembered the salad from Saturday night.

Bummer!

But... at least my chicken wasn't poisoned, and, as far as I know, I'm not suffering any deadly disease.

Now It's Gone Too Far

The star of my last post walked in this morning with another one liner.

Me: Good morning!

Him: Pull my finger...

Thanks, I'll Be Here All Week

I have an autistic student in my homeroom this year. He goes to the life skills program for the rest of the day, but the 30 minutes we spend together in the morning is one of his few "main stream" opportunities. In homeroom, the teacher's role is to support and advocate for the students in whatever area they need it, and so for this guy, we work on social skills.

"Thanks! I'll be here all week!" was a phrase that he repeated over and over again one day recently. The other students are often unsure of how to interact with him, and they look to me in situations like that.

"That's what a comedian says," I told him. "Do you know any jokes?"

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" he said.

"To get to the other side?"

"Yeah. What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup?" he continued.

I was stumped. "I give up," I answered.

"Anybody can roast beef, but no one can pee soup," he dead panned.

All the other kids' eyes were on me, and when I laughed, they laughed, too. "Hey, that was pretty good," one girl said to our comedian, but he himself did not crack a smile.

"That joke was funny," I told him, "but do you think you should tell it in school, to your teacher?"

"No!" he grinned.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it has 'pee'. Sorry! I won't say it again."

"Okay," I replied.

"Thanks! I'll be here all week!" he answered.

Let Them Eat Cake

It has long been my practice to bring a cake for my homeroom students on their birthdays. It often seems like such a celebration goes a long way toward building both community and a personal relationship with each student.

This year, a student who was having a hard time transitioning to middle school academically was moved into my group about a month ago. Since then, I've been working with him at lunch and after school, but he's been anything but receptive to the support I'm offering. This morning, that all changed. We had our first birthday since he joined our homeroom, and that boy was loving himself some chocolate cake. All of a sudden, though, his face fell. "Oh no!" he cried. "My birthday has already passed!"

"Don't worry," I told him, "we'll give you a halfy birthday."

He smiled with genuine relief, but then frowned again. "I guess I should come up for lunch and work on my math today," he said. "I don't even know when that is."

Cultural Exchange

We went to a wedding yesterday and the groom was Iranian. In the ladies room during the reception, several of his relatives were chattering excitedly in Farsi, and the sound of their conversation made me smile. As it turns out, I have a bit of a history with the language of Iran.

A friend of mine was born in Tehran to a Persian dad and an American mom. Her family fled the country when the Shah fell, and then they settled here in the States. At seven, my friend hardly spoke a word of English, in fact the only phrases she knew she had learned from pulling the string on her Chatty Cathy doll: I want a drink of water. I'm not tired. I love you... and so on.

I had the opposite experience. At my Swiss boarding school in the late 70's there was a large group of wealthy Iranian students. Most of their families were also allied with the Shah, but we graduated before the revolution. They were a dynamic presence on campus, to say the least, and so we all learned a little Farsi: Up yours. Screw you. Your mother is... and so on.

Tea Time

It's a cold December day here and so to take the chill off the afternoon, I made us some tea. When I was about six, my best friend, Nicci, had a tea party for her birthday. We were served tiny cups of tea with plenty of milk and sugar with our cake, and with one sip of that warm, sweet, creamy goodness I was hooked.

The only problem was that my mom would only allow me to have tea when I was sick. Despite my persistent requests, anything with caffeine and three teaspoons of sugar was definitely in the special occasion category. And so it remained, until one evening when we had a babysitter, and it occurred to me to ask her for a cup of tea.

I remember that she was surprised that such a little kid would drink tea, and I was flattered by my presumed sophistication. We didn't even have a tea kettle (my parents were coffee drinkers) so she boiled the water in a sauce pan and poured it carefully over one of the Tetley tea bags that my mom kept for iced tea. At my direction, she heaped three spoons of sugar into the steaming mug, but I was unprepared for her next question. "Do you like milk or lemon?"

My mind raced. I had only had hot tea with milk, and that's how I liked it, but I loved lemon, and that sounded really good, too. "Both," I said.

She looked confused. "Really?" she asked.

"Oh yeah," I told her, "I have it like that all the time."

She shrugged and a minute later set the curdled brew in front of me with some skepticism. It looked awful and tasted worse, but I knew I had to drink it, and I did.

It was a long time before I drank hot tea again, and over the years I've tried lots of different teas in several different ways, but these days it's milk and sugar again.