A Midwest Girl's Guide To Life

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Cookbook List

I'm working to put together a linked list of my cookbooks. This will be a work in progress. It's too big to undertake in one setting. (Ok so for the first time I'm considering that my husband may have a minor point.) I do want to mention that many (well, maybe not many, but some) of these were gifts!

This is my current cookbook list:

~~The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays~~ - blog 7/25 - lasagne, brownies, ice cream
The Complete Cook's Country TV Show Cookbook
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl
The Pioneer Woman cooks: Food from my Frontier
The Busy Family Cookbook
How to Cook Everything
Ruhlman's Twenty
Eating Well 500 Calorie Dinners
Weeknight Fresh & Fast - Williams Sonoma - blog 7/28 ratatouille- style veggies

Pasta with Ratatouille-Style Vegetables

We love ratatouille and so now that I'm working through my cookbooks, I searched for a good ratatouille recipe. I found my Weeknight Fresh and Fast book published by Williams-Sonoma. This recipe combines traditional elements of ratatouille; tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini with pasta. Sounded like a match to me! We loved it - too much pasta in mine and we'll add an additional can of tomatoes next time. I'm making chocolate zucchini bread tomorrow to use up the rest of my zucchini. How do you make use of summer vegetables?

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Summer Cooking

It seems that all great ideas I've come across have refused to come to fruition including my big plan to make use of my plethora of cookbooks this summer. I had this plan to use one cookbook a day and make something from it. After all, I did have the entire summer off! However, now that I am looking at the front end of my final week of summer break, I was attempting to modify this claim without giving up it's purpose. (Purpose: My husband does not understand my need to purchase a cookbook when anything you could ever want is on the Internet. Hence, my need to demonstrate through superior cooking - my need for my current cookbooks and a deliberate attempt to tempt him into insisting I buy even more!)

So I will claim that I did make use of my Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays cookbook to make three delicious recipes; Dulce de Leche Brownies, Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream and Three-Meat Lasagne. We had houseguests coming and these seemed like excellent, convenient items to have on hand. All three were huge hits and so I'm inspired to continue.

So, in addition to starting a brand new position on August 3rd (more about that later), my new plan is to try one new recipe a week. That's reasonable, right?

Look for my cookbook list coming soon.

Dulce de Leche Brownies - my 2nd batch was much prettier, but I didn't take a picture of it. That will also be part of my goal - better photography!

Friday, March 13, 2015

Gamification Part 1

I've been reading Lee Sheldon's The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game and I am so excited to begin implementation of a game-based environment in my Tech Lit classes. As I tend to jump into things head first, I am making an attempt at reigning myself in - a little. The next unit my students will be working on is a Road Trip project in 8th grade. I've started a spreadsheet to chart potential XPs (points) making sure the important learning objectives receive the most points. The back end of this is a bit arduous - mostly because I keep adding things and rethinking how it will play out with my students.

The basic objective of the game is to plan a 10 day road trip starting from our school/town. The students need to travel no more than 10 hours a day, stay within a budget - I'm thinking $1000 - $2000 budgeting for food, gas, lodging, and document/journaling their adventure. I will also have daily point awards such as - find a state or national park to stop and have a picnic and a short hike today, - find a national landmark along your travels today etc. I'll also be giving additional awards for progress along the way - farthest point traveled by day 3, best food posts, most stops along the way etc.

I will do mini-lessons as we go along each day including - Internet Searching, Research Techniques, Spreadsheets used for Budgets etc.

We won't start this unit for a couple of weeks (I have students every other day and we're in the middle of a computer hardware unit currently.) so I'd appreciate any feedback, suggestions, ideas etc.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Switching Gears

Now that we've packed up the garden, it's time for me to switch gears. Expect new posts to reflect more of my professional experiences as well as splashes of life in the Midwest.

A couple of current projects:

I've started an Edublog for my 7th grade students. If you get a moment - please click on the image below. The kids are tracking our clustermap pretty carefully and have been SO excited when we get new hits from places outside of Anamosa.
We'll get some of their postings going by the end of the week.

As a "new" teacher I am required to put together a teaching portfolio based on the Iowa State Teacher Standards. You'll find it below.

In addition to the two sites above. I'll be updating our wedding website shortly. ;-)

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Coding with 8th Graders

I've been working with my 8th grade students to get started with Coding through Code.org. They have been very successful! Code.org provides some direct-instruction lessons but most of the lessons are computer-based and students work at their own pace. They learn from short tutorials but also from their peers as they work through more difficult situations.

Those who finish early go in to Khan Academy and are working JS Programming. They are also doing well with that. I can't wait to see where they'll go next!