What do you want from me? VOTES PLEASE

Hello, readers!

Things have been keeping busy around here. I started my third week of teaching today. Over the holiday weekend, we hosted a party at our house and then attended one the next day. I might actually be committing to core every day and some kind of low-key weight training routine. All in all, I've usually got a lot to do when I come home every evening from work.

I'll just go in order with what I'd like to discuss. So, teaching first! I love it. I love my job. Have I mentioned that already? I had three classes for the last two weeks. It's wonderful getting to know kids and work with their unique personalities. And since I was a student myself in this program, at their age, I love seeing them make discoveries and enjoy themselves, just like I did a long time ago. My lead teacher and I have three classes, two that are with us for two weeks and one that is with us for just one week. This week, because of the Monday off, we only have the two-weekers. For the last group of two-weekers, we had quite the rambunctious, energetic, and diverse bunch in both classes. It was quite the effort sometimes to keep everybody together and on track. The classes that just arrived today, however, look to be quieter and less...interesting, I suppose. The classes are smaller, for one thing, but I'm also not yet seeing quite the large assortment of big (and I mean BIG) personalities that I saw in the last group. Then again, it's just the first day. Some kids take some more time to warm up than others. Tomorrow will be a good test of what they're really like.

We had a Fourth of July party at our house this weekend. Guess what that means? FOOD!

Behold, my first pie:

This is a strawberry pie I found through Foodgawker, on the blog "Gourmade at Home." Don't be intimidated by this pie. Pie making can be difficult, yes. The crust especially, because a lot of crusts require some pastry handiwork. This was not that kind of pie. The crust is like a shortbread cookie, and it takes no more than five minutes to put together. It forms into a cookie dough-like mass (greasy and a little sticky, but not dry and stretchy), which you then press into a pie plate. See below:

Be careful not to play with the dough too much once it's pressed evenly into the pie plate. I think I did too much of that, and my crust was a little too crumbly and cracked and broke apart too easily for my taste. Also, check on it while it's in the oven. If you press the crust onto the edge of the pie plate (like I did), they may cook more quickly than the rest of the crust, resulting in dark edges. They were fine, but I would have liked everything to be a nice, even golden brown.
Here's the finished crust product:

Below you'll see the strawberries cooking. The recipe will tell you exactly how to do it, but basically, rinse, hull, and chop all the strawberries. Put half of them into your completely cooled pie crust. The other half, cook with water, sugar, and cornstarch in a saucepan until boiling, and then simmer for about five minutes "until the sauce clears and thickens."

*Note: it's not going to get "clear." They just mean not milky-looking, like it does at the start. 

**Another note: when the recipe tells you to stir constantly, they mean it! I recommend using a spatula (like the white rubbery kind, not the kind you use to flip pancakes) so that you can scrape the stuff off the sides of the pot. Cornstarch makes things gluey (it's used a lot in Chinese take-out food sauces), so you have to keep scraping the sides AND the bottom. I burned a little bit of the stuff to the bottom of the pan, but it didn't get mixed back in with the good stuff, so as far as I can tell it didn't hurt it. But you have to stir so that doesn't happen to your whole filling.

Once the stuff has simmered and is all jellified, just dump it into the crust on top of the raw strawberries, and let it chill and set in the fridge for at least an hour. The finished product is below again:

The filling isn't too terribly sugar-laden, so make sure your strawberries are ripe, or it might seem a little plain to you. Also, my mother says that whipped cream (I recommend Reddi-Wip: Cool Whip is delicious, but it's not real cream and just doesn't have the same goodness as Reddi-Wip) really helped to sweeten it up without having to add more sugar.

I also made a sun-dried tomato and basil cream cheese spread for the party, off a recipe from the Cookin' Canuck blog (*Anyone know how to hyperlink stuff? And I don't mean pasting the link, I mean like embedding the link or something in text*). It's really easy: get Neufchatel (1/3 less fat) cream cheese. Add chopped sun-dried tomatoes and thinly sliced (or torn- I was lazy) basil. Mix it up. Done. Those flavors are just incredible together. This is especially great in the summer when you can get basil fresh.

In other food news, I made patriotic Funfetti cupcakes with red frosting, and rice krispie treats for a bake sale at my work. No photos. You can imagine what they looked like, and as far as I know, everything sold and no one got sick, so let's call it a success. If there's another one, I'll try and be a little more ambitious and go beyond a box mix.

My exercise has been going well. I found a scale in our friends' house the other day, and I weighed myself (we don't own a working scale in our house, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing). According to the scale- and I really don't know how accurate it is- I'm under 145 pounds. Considering that I haven't been very restrictive in my food intake and have just kicked in with running and core work, that makes me happy. It's not even about the number, but just the fact that I am actually losing some weight and that what I'm doing is working. Imagine what I could do once I really commit to weight training, which I'm easing myself into right now. For the sake of time, I've just been doing two sets of four or five different upper-body moves. I have decent-looking arms, but their appearance belies their actual strength. I also have broad shoulders and a broad back. I would just like to tone everything up and look a little more athletic, rather than just broad.

Almost done! Question: have any of you ever taught a kid how to read, or helped a kid with his or her reading skills? My neighbor is going to be a first-grader, and his phonics and word retention are really shoddy. Any tips that I can use when I read with him when I babysit? Nothing is really being reinforced at his house, which is sad and makes a lot of efforts a little pointless, but I would at least like to try to get him up to speed.

In the week ahead, I'm going to keep running and challenge myself with more core work- I don't want to plateau. I also have some good recipes lined up that I think I can realistically cook without too many crazy ingredients. They are:

Strawberry Jello cake

Penne with summer squash and sweet corn (in a ricotta based sauce)

Spicy lemon chicken

Oreo/Cookies and cream bars

Grilled pizza margherita

Peaches and cream pie (which would be my first venture with a rolled-out pie crust, I think)

Please comment or message me and let me know which recipe(s) you would like to see me try next. Also, please let me know what you'd like to see more of/less of on this blog. I want it to be interesting and helpful to others. I would love some feedback, even through FB, and I'm not getting any, so please at least let me know that it doesn't put you to sleep and that you don't hate reading it. :)

Love,

Imara

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.

Abraham Lincoln