pickled daikons, saving animals and eating the foodchain!

rain, rain, keep on falling! and temperatures, please drop and freeze everything up so that we can enjoy an ice day tomorrow! (pretty obvious that i live in the south and we haven't had snow days this year).

as i was walking through the hallway after school the other day, i saw a box with a string attached and i thought of those candid camera shows, wondering what might be inside or under the box. then as i got closer, it turned out to merely be cable for enhancing our internet connection. while the first would've made for a great story, the latter will really be great for our students and teachers!

you can see how it might look like a trap, right?

 and before i left for work the other day, i had thrown a load into the dryer, but when i opened the door, there was a dank smell. when i looked behind the dryer, i noticed that the hose had become detached from the pipe, so i had to just shut 'er down until returning in the afternoon when i had more time. so when i got home, i moved the dryer out and gathered the necessary tools. i was able to get the hose connected; i now have one more 'first' marked off my list.

although, the plate surrounding the hose is not flush to the wall, so there is still some 'exhaust' escaping...hmmm..duct tape?

 and then there was the day that we had to go over to another school for a coaches meeting, and there i saw abraham lincoln with a mouth that somewhat exemplified a small bunny rabbit. (squint your eyes)

this is abe "rudolf bunny lips" lincoln

if you recall, i was SO looking forward to eating at the nammi foodtruck place at the valley view mall, but they weren't open on saturday, so i had to improvise and found a philly cheesesteak joint-yum! and then i may have visited it again for the gyro! (no worries, health-team, i only ate the meat! and veggies). 

 while i did enjoy the cheesesteak and gyros, i was still craving the vietnamese fusion cuisine, so i looked up the important stuff. yesterday i purchased some daikon radishes and carrots to make some do chua:

purple cabbage slaw and do chua. the dish normally comes with rice as well, but that isn't on my current menu, so i'll be cooking up some chicken and having a long-awaited (week) meal tomorrow...

we had a professional development day on friday, and once again, the church was so gracious to provide such a fun snack spread! it was hard to not go straight to the cheese nips and all of the miniature candy bars, but i did it! pretty sure my team did a good job too!

 the pd was actually great! we had MOMENTOUS institute come out to give us a great training on social/emotional learning health. it was phenomenal! they spoke on the brain and breathing and working with students to lessen the stress so that they can actually function. in the afternoon, we had the writing training, which was good, but not exactly what i was expecting. it will be a good catalyst and jumping off point to be able to go into classrooms to model.

then on saturday i got a text around 4 asking if i was interested in going to a benefit for operation kindness, a no-kill shelter. olivia bought a ticket, but was sick and didn't want it to go to waste. i was debating to go, not to go...i decided it would be for a good cause. once i got there, i was happy to have gone. i was very impressed by the artwork donated by one of the art classes at booker t washington. i was most persuaded by the word: symphony! love me some mozart and vivaldi! good for the soul-the slide sets were awesome as well! unfortunately, by the time i got back out to the gallery, the painting i was going to purchase had been sold, so i settled for notecards (surprise!).

and today i decided that it was probably wise to go ahead and use my baby portabellas in the recipe i've been meaning to create. it looked delicious and it taste just as good as it looked. (and healthy to boot!) i've never been huge on eating fungus, decomposers...but turn 'em upside-down, throw a little pepper/onion mix(producers), and some pork(consumers) and the only thing i'm missing from the food-chain is sunshine...but we're happy about that, because remember what i said first: hoping for an ice-day!

i'll do these again. if for nothing else, they're so cute-they look like little ninja turtle road-kill kinda...but looks can be deceiving-yum!

alright, everyone just stop what you're doing for a moment and say a prayer for one day of ice for dallas!

julie

i hope heaven has food trucks!

happy valentine's day, all you lovebirds out there! and elementary school teachers! i mean no one rakes in the cheap chocolates better than teachers, along with stuffed animals and other silly knick-knacks! don't get me wrong, the sentiment is absolutely precious, but how many pink teddy bears does one human being really need??

it's been a busy week with ups and downs. i got to attend a REAL SCHOOL GARDENS coordinator meeting last night-which means i received some great instruction to pass on, and i also received baby onions and potatoes to plant. we will be participating in the SMART POTATO program again. i think we may try something a little different this year. we may be planting some of our potatoes in laundry baskets-and have classes be in charge of taking care of their potatoes, so that we can have an additional garden bed for the hot season plants.

but the best part of the evening was the food truck! when i got to the school, i parked and there was a food truck near the door. i thought to myself, 'hmm... that's pretty cool, parents can get dinner to go on the way home!" it smelled SO GOOD!!! i was wishing that it was for our meeting. weeeellllll.....when i got inside, they gave me a green ticket to go back out to get dinner at the food truck! nammi food truck showed up and i was in heaven! woah! i mean to tell you: it was incredible! in fact, i didn't know which food truck it was, nor what type of food it actually was, so i just looked it up a bit ago and found out it was vietnamese-ish. so then i had to look up recipes because if i were stuck on an island and could only have one meal for the rest of my life, this might be it! AND guess what! they have a permanent spot at valley view mall-which is mere minutes from me-i'm excited to see if it's as good the second time around!

i do need to go get some groceries tomorrow so i can make fruit roll-ups and prepare some meals for the week-including my contributions for tuesday's AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MEAL-yum.

so, there's this chair that i've had for years that i really like. about 4 weeks ago, i saw some strange pieces of metal scrap on the floor-no idea where it came from. the next day, another piece, before i knew it, i rolled the chair and it lifted a little, and the wheel fell off. so i put it back and just tried to keep it on the ground. finally, after the wheel falling off several times, i decided i had to do something about it. so i got it to a point where the wheel was no longer falling out.

yesterday, i heard a little clink! and when i looked down, i saw the same piece of metal on the ground that started the demise of the first wheel. so i took the wheel and rigged it up the same way. now it's a matter of a. seeing how long the 'fix' lasts, and b. seeing how long it is before another wheel bites the dust! most people would probably have thrown the chair out by now, but nope...not me-

whatever works!

then this happened this week as well: i  was at school and i had lunch. when i went to grab the sweet-potato chips i'd baked the night before, i only saw an empty baggie. i didn't remember having eaten them, so i thought, "wow, i must be boredom eating or something..." and i was still hungry to boot...it was a little strange. well, it must've been a baggie from something else because when i got home, there were my snacks sitting where i had left them in preparation for the day!

nothing is worse than leaving food at home!

looking forward to another relaxing weekend and whatever next week brings!

julie

living dangerously-licking the food processor blade!

why is it that when i start to watch the foods that i put into my body, the dog food all of a sudden looks like my favorite childhood cereal-cocoa puffs? i just kinda' wanted to pour some milk in...

but, that said...the time has come. no avocado will ever go bad under my watch again! i am smitten by the 'chocolate' avocado mousse! ayayayaiiiii! (is there a good way to spell that?) so yes, i portioned it out and then licked the bowl...and brought 'licking the beaters' to a whole new level! with extreme skill and unbelievable deftness, i carefully removed all of the mousse from the food processor blade...like a ninja! (a ninja who licks blades on large kitchen utensils).

i spent a whole lot of time watching webinars on saturday, and the one i really enjoyed the most introduced this great tool called thinglink. check out the presenter's blog-susan oxnevad; solid! i've embedded a simple thinglink from the first picture i could find on my computer. it should be on the right hand side of the screen-
let's see how this works!

the other gadget that has already come in very handy for me is the camscanner app. great for scanning and straightening, flattening..it uploads really quickly to my google drive as well; love it!

i will be out at a training tomorrow for thinking maps-which is a uniform graphic organizer across the campus. we've been using them for awhile now, so it will be good for me to get a little refresher. we began using it as a campus, and this year we began diving into their writing program. basically it helps students learn to structure their thinking. and i believe that our focus on writing has gotten better. i'm so proud of the work that our teachers have put into the kids and their writing! it's great to walk down the hallway and see writing samples in different content areas!

today i went to a thinking maps training, and it was really good! i wish we were using them well. we've begun to implement usage, but i just experienced how impactful(yes, made up word, deal with it) they can be! right now we are mostly using them as graphic organizers, but not really getting the real THINKING part out of them!

my table was a pretty good group of ladies-engaged. i came back from the restroom and one of the ladies had her ipad out and was telling them about this app she found and insisted on taking a pic of the girl across the table. it was the aging app for the kids' 100 days. well, i've seen it because we have a teacher who has used it on his kiddos the past couple of years-so fun! it didn't seem as fun to me to do with adults, (i passed). this was some time just after lunch, and she had to ask the girl's name-ha! none of us had introduced ourselves early on, but we were working like pros who'd known each other forever! i don't remember any of their names. (i am convinced that i do not need to remember the names of every person i meet! #notashamed!)

p.s. we're over 100 days into school! that means we're closer to getting out!
julie