Volunteer week

It's volunteer week!  I am the school chaperone for all NYCares volunteer events so I spent my Saturday with my students fixing up Jackie Robinson Park, which is super easy to get to for me. But for my students, not so much.

The phone calls and texts ensued Saturday morning:

Student 1: "Miss, I'm lost. I'm in Central Park. I think I missed my stop"  

Student 2: "Miss, I'm lost. I'm in St. Nicholas Park"

Student 3&4: "Miss, we're lost.  We're on Broadway and all we see is a McDonalds"

Student 5: "Miss, I'm lost. I see a sign that says Lenox.  Do you know where I am?"

Student 6 & 7: Miss, we're lost.  People keep telling us the wrong directions.  It's okay miss, we'll use our GSP"

Oh my. GSP.
I give them props for even trying to make it to the volunteer event.  Also worth noting, the directions I gave them, with very clear instructions on how to get to the site, might as well have been in chinese.

We were assigned to paint the lines in the basketball courts.  Here's the before and after.

14 students participated.  For a Saturday morning, I'm surprised anyone showed up.  They all did a great job!

Lastly, I wonder if cutting out meat in my diet will only make me eat more sweets. Let's me think about this as we look at these hostess cupcake style cookies I made. 

 I got a little frosting happy. The last cookie was a tester.  It was ugly, but I ate it anyways. I might have overcooked some of them because they were a little dry but I ate them too. Frosting very easily covers that right up.  The recipe is here.

Carbo-loading

Recently, a good friend, Sharon, planned a NYC pizza tour! I was only able to hang out for half of it, but I left really full so I'm not sure how long I would have lasted anyways.  I still have a few pizza joints to try in New York, but summer vacation is coming soon.  Good time to carbo-load.

Behold!   Artichoke Pizza and plain slice at  Joe's Pizza in Greenwich village.  FYI, the artichoke pizza is super filling and tastes like spinach artichoke dip on bread. 

We continued to Motorino Pizza in the East Village.  Check out the ramps pizza with fior di latte and the seriously amazing brussel sprout pizza (we omitted the pancetta and it was still good!)

I still have yet to try Krescendo and Di Fara in Brooklyn!  Both are supposed to be awesome.

After eating at three pizza joints, we went to the Tompkins Sq. park to, of course, eat cupcakes from Molly's cupcakes, west village.

Holler to the chocolate frosted chocolate cupcake I ate. 

We spent the rest of the weekend at the Brooklyn Flea.  It was super crowded.  We had other food, but it was forgettable.I bought a really cute shirt and this also very adorable lobster roll from Red Hook Lobster.  We got to eat by the water and enjoy the view!

James and I took a class at the Brooklyn Kitchen called "Mystery Basket."  It was a gift from my cousin Amy and her boyfriend Chris.  Best present ever! That whole place is super cool and the store area has interesting products like DIY mozzarella kits.    The instructor was really nice and we had a great time.  We were split into two teams and given two different baskets.  The mystery ingredients were...

BARLEY MISO!
DRIED APPLES!
WHOLE FREE RANGE CHICKEN!

The pantry had random stuff from the brooklyn kitchen store, like brussel sprouts, organic flour, meyer lemons, and chicken broth.
The other basket had some sort of sliced ham, rainbow chard, and habanero peppers.  They made this kickass habanero cornbread.  We seared and roasted our chicken with miso and made an apple miso jus to drizzle over it, roasted brussels sprouts and sunchokes with agave syrup glaze, and some chili polenta squares with dried apples.  I think we're going back to take another class about pasta.  Because, you know, my goal in life is to one day be the ultimate ravioli lady....

That doesn't sound cool.  I need to rethink this title.

Spring break: Keeping Texas Weird

I spent spring break in Austin, Texas.  And came back to a whole LOT of stress. Seriously, I freaked out. My poor students.  I get crazy with them when I'm stressed.  

Austin felt like a suburban mix of hipsters and real life people. I wish I went to SXSW, but then again, it was nice to be able to SEE Austin instead of maneuvering through the people.

Why Texas?  Well, I've always wanted to go and we needed to pick a place. It was a cousins trip! We got to eat, drink, and go to the zoo!

 Don't worry, the turtle is not dead.  Life's hard.

This peacock was showing off. Strutting her stuff at the zoo without a cage!

I hope you get to visit Austin one day because the food truck scene is AMAZING.  It makes me want to quit my job and start a food truck.  

Patika coffee truck!

 Austin has a cool saying, "Keep Austin Weird."  And it is weird. Because everyone is super nice.  And that was weird.

 I enjoy coming back to the city though, we have a few food truck gems too.  Such as the Wafels and Dinges truck. Which smears fresh, hot wafels with a spekuloos creme, thats like some sort of highly addictive cookie butter. See below.  

Drool. I'm not even on twitter and I follow the tweets from the wafels and dinges truck.

     James and I are trying out a pescatarian diet this month. We couldn't give up sushi, but meat we can do.   I look forward to some of the new recipes I will try. Stay tuned! 

Three points off for spelling

Watch out for DNA 

Bye February, I didn't even know you were here.

Mural painting afterschool

    February kind of came and went before I even let myself believe it was February.  Maybe it was the weather, or the shortened winter break.  I think I was boycotting February and I didn't know it.

    Valentines Day was interesting.  I got some awkwardly arranged flowers and some chocolates from James. Score. We made dinner and I ate all the chocolates a few days later after a long day of yelling at children.

 

    Three of my female students sent me valentines, which was sweet. They made them out of plain looseleaf, which in some way, was nicer than the cut outs you buy 20 for a dollar. 

"Good luck in LOVE"

   Here's an excerpt from another valentine:

  "I know we all make you get crazy because we talk alot but Miss I have to tell you that something, you are a great teacher and I love when you get mad at us because we enjoy that. If I'm sad and I go to your class and you get mad, you make me happy.  That's one reason you are my favorite teacher".

Sigh. What the hell.

I flew all the way to California to snowboard in snow that felt like east coast snow (hard, cold, icy).  I usually spend my time on the mountain wondering when dinner will start.  The views and the cabin were pretty amazing, way better than anything east coast can offer. 

Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe

Oh and today in front of my class, I google imaged "lipodystrophy," a genetic disease that makes young children look old. And I got a bunch of pictures of saggy butts.  Note to self, do not free style google image in front of students.  

The Pancreas

During a lesson on soil

Student: Why does everyone like the mushroom?
Me: Hmm, I don't know.
Student: Cause he's a FUNGI

Hahahaaa. 

Do you know what else tickled our funny bone this week? 
Our posters on organs of the human body.  While this is technically the shape and the color of the pancreas, it's unfortunate in other ways.  

The Pancreas.  Causing trouble.

I feel like I can reuse this poster for my lesson on birth control AND male reproductive systems. Thanks kid.

Speaking of body systems, I did a demo lesson on HIV and AIDS.  I don't know if kids these days are afraid of STDs.  I mentioned the resistent strain of gonorrhea and what that means in terms of NEVER GETTING RID OF GONORRHEA.

And the kids just looked at me. Unfazed.

So I gave them cups of water and had them "mix" water with three people.  Two cups had a little dissolved sodium carbonate. A little phenolphthalein and BOOM.

Clear means you are disease free. Pink/ red means you have the "disease."  Here are the results.

 

Test Results

I had to assure the kids that the cups did not contain HIV.

As for the results, instead of being worried about the chances of getting HIV or STDs, I got a lot of "Ooh, that's pretty!" from the reaction of the phenolphthalein.  GAHHH, red and pink mean disease kids!  

Last weekend, we went upstate to visit James' parents and decided to use a pair of free lift tickets we picked up from a Warren Miller Film. The warm weather loosened the snow and made the day pretty awesome.  People were skiing in sweaters!

Gore Mountain

Too bad it rained the next day.  And the fog made the streets look like a scene from the Exorcist.  At least we got in one good day!

Overheard in the classroom

Student 1: I always wanted to be an astronaut.  But I found out that I can't become one now.

Student 2: Why not?

Student 1: I'm afraid of heights.