Category Archives: the coffeepot’s on

>Another Apple Crisp

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>It’s election day. Chuck is driving a live truck to cover a candidate’s victory/defeat party. Amigo is at his boarding school, and La Petite is out of town, too. It’s just me and the news reports.

Readers, you know me. When the going gets tough, I blog and I bake. Apples are in season, so a pan of apple crisp was in order. I added a little rhubarb – the last of the season – too.
Autumn Apple Crisp
from Food to Live By; the Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook

4 pounds (about 10) small, tart apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4 inch slices
Juice of 2 lemons
1 cup flour (the book recommends whole wheat pastry flour; I used half all-purpose, half whole wheat)
1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
vanilla ice cream or whipped cream for serving suggestion, optional
1. Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Place the apple slices in a 9 by 13 inch baking pan. Add the lemon juice and toss to prevent the apples from discoloring.
3. Place the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a medium-size bowl and whisk to blend. Add the butter. Using your fingers (or a pastry cutter: worked for me!), blend the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. sprinkle the topping evenly over the apples, but do not pack it down.
4. Bake the crisp util the apples are tender when pierced with a fork, the juices bubble up around the edges of the baking pan, and the topping is crisp and brown, 40-50 minutes. Serve the crisp hot or warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, if desired. Coffee on the side, of course.
By the way, eating the opponent? Green Bay played the New York Jets. Chuck made a seafood chowder on Saturday, and we had bagels for breakfast on Sunday.

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>Staying sane in an insane world

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>Well, attempting to keep my sanity intact, at least.

Seeking out supportive people:
  • I had lunch with a former colleague, saw pictures of her grandson
  • a neighboring teacher brings me Starbucks frequently
  • I continue to take training with a literacy coach I respect, and she is one of my strongest advocates.
  • I truly appreciate a husband who not only fixes the house, but cooks like an Iron Chef.
Actively taking care of health:
  • My Neti Pot and me, we’re friends. Friends don’t let friends get sinus infections.
  • My multi-vitamin + iron, it’s my pal. Anemia, begone!
  • Weekends are for napping, sleeping in, and drinking lots of fluids. Laundry can wait.
Actively seeking out opportunities for relaxation
  • fire in the fireplace on a rainy day: warm and cozy.
  • nibbling on chocolate cake made with the last garden zucchini: delicious.
  • pumpkin pie spice flavor in my Dashboard Joe coffee: sweet.
  • Watching the Wisconsin Badgers with my sporty son: priceless.

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>Bread Pudding

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>I learned to like bread pudding long ago when I made it for a chain restaurant’s breakfast buffet. I also learned not to order it off the menu or buffet unless I’d made it myself. Just knowing that restaurants made it from stale leftover bread made me a little leery of the contents. Home made bread pudding, however, can be a lovely comfort food: breakfast, snack, or dessert, depending on how you want to serve it.

Bread Pudding
2 1/2 cup scalded milk
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3-4 bread pieces, cut in chunks
2-3 eggs, beaten
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place bread, sugar, & cinnamon in a baking dish (1 quart size). Add eggs, milk, and butter. Mix well. Place baking dish into a pan of water (1 inch deep) and into oven. Bake 20 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Serve warm or cold with milk or cream.
I also diced one and a half ripe bananas into the mix. I had the bananas, and I remembered using leftover bananas that were too ripe for banana splits in the buffet bread pudding. Yum. Oh, and about a quarter cup leftover apple confit, too. Tasty!
I served it with whipped cream and coffee. Are you surprised? No, don’t answer that. But try it; this is a good recipe for using excess bread and rapidly ripening fresh fruits, and a good comfort food as well.


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>Computer Crash – literally

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>It was the second day of school. The bell rang, the kids started to come in.

And then all hell broke loose.
Remember The Cat in the Hat? “Then something went bump. How that bump made us jump!”
This “bump” was more of a crash. I jumped. The first kid in the room jumped. The teachers across the hall jumped and ran in. My desk had collapsed. One leg fell off, tipping the entire desk, and everything, I do mean EVERYTHING slid to the floor.
Everything: including the computer.

Everything: including my coffee.

A friend brought me a 16 oz. Pike’s Place blend, my favorite, later in the morning. Helpdesk red flagged my request for repair, and the tech was out within a week. Don’t tell the library media specialist; her printer didn’t get fixed yet. I had first priority. I guess it pays to be nice to the I.T. people.
The desk is fixed now, and I requisitioned a computer table to lighten the load. Call me paranoid, and you’ll be right, but I’m not, repeat, NOT going through another crash like that. Nope.

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>Weekend Pajama Mama

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>It could be a reality show. Really. It’s the actuality on many weekends in my house.

Accomplishments, worthy of air time;

  • Read the entire Sunday newspaper, including sorting the ads and reading the few that mattered.
  • Spent some quality time with a heating pad on my stiff and sore back.
  • Scaled the peak of Mount Washmore and began the descent. That is, finished the majority of the washing and drying and began folding and stashing the clean clothes.
  • Reclaimed the kitchen table. No easy task, this one: it was covered with canning supplies from making salsa last night, a crate of leftover tomatoes, papers from my school and Amigo’s school, bases for two crockpots (the crocks were in the dishwasher and sink), professional membership applications awaiting my checkbook, cloth bags from yesterday’s farmers’ market, and more.
  • Filled and ran the dishwasher.
  • Took out and emptied full compost container.
  • Made breakfast, started coffee, dealt with the daily meds (including claritin and tylenol for the seasonal sinus headache).
  • Charged my cell phone.
  • Labeled and stored salsa made last night.
  • Handled two tedious but important school tasks (cut out felt pieces for white-board erasers, placed computer username/ password stickers on colored index cards) while watching The Muppets Take Manhattan. “Because you share a love so big, I now pronounce you frog and pig.” Priceless.
  • Reclaimed recliner in bedroom, relieving it of its temporary status as repository for clean jeans and t-shirts.
“Okay, Daisy,” says the show’s producer, “So what? A lot of working moms multi-task on weekend mornings. What’s so big about this list?”
“Well, darling,” replies Daisy, “Did you see what’s missing? All of this was accomplished in my pajamas.”
I can’t wait to see what happens on the Labor Day episode.

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>Math, math, math.

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I spent my days last week learning more and more and more about math – teaching math.
Here’s what my group’s table looked like at one point. These are Secret Code Cards for teaching place value.

If you’re wondering, there were two coffee cups just out of picture range. I’m holding mine. The training was good, but we teachers do what we have to do to stay focused in the final days of July.

While we’re at it, can you identify the two numbers illustrated below? Write them in words; no fair using numbers.

Get your coffee, and let’s get started. Math time!

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>Jammin’ with my Bloggy Friends

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>In generations past, cooks would exchange advice over the backyard fences, over coffee in each other’s kitchens, or over the phone. In today’s world, we’re not all that different; we exchange advice through our friends. Some of those friends, however, are not in the immediate neighborhood; they’re online.

I sought advice on twitter. I asked friends on Plurk. I visited City Slipper’s jam/ jelly tutorial on his Home Kitchen Garden blog. I visited Green Girl’s home kitchen and garden! Well, her raspberry patch, to be more accurate. After seeking advice from friends on Plurk, on Twitter, on blogs, and in real life, I did it. I successfully made three kinds of jam.

First I had to clean the kitchen. There was no room to work.

I didn’t take any pictures of the jam-making process. Trust me; it all went as planned. The house smelled wonderful. After the initial kitchen clean-up, the mashing of berries, the stirring of fruit and sugar, and the heating of jars, I cleaned up once again.

Oops, I forgot one sticky pot.
There. Now it looks better. Three kinds of jam: strawberry, strawberry-rhubarb, and raspberry. Organic strawberries from the farmers’ market, rhubarb from my backyard, and raspberries from Green Girl’s yard: wow. This is pretty darn cool, impressive even for the locavore in me.


Very cool – or rather hot. The jars will be cooler in the morning. Ooh: which should I spread on my toast for breakfast? Maybe I should bake bread, too.

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>Ah, Saturday morning.

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Bubbleboo often addresses the Small Talk Six on Saturdays. I haven’t tried yet, but this one looked like fun. Here goes: my first Saturday Small Talk Six.
The First Six Things You Do When You Open Your Eyes In The Morning
1. Squint at the clock.
2. Stretch.
3. Turn off alarm. I often wake just before it goes off.
4. Visit the bathroom.
5. Consider how this will be more difficult when the remodeling project starts and we have no bathroom on the second floor.
6. Stagger downstairs to feed the rabbit, shower, and prepare for another school day.
The weekend version is similar.
1. Squint at the clock.
2. Wonder why I wake up at 5:30 on weekends.
3. Use the bathroom, consider the upcoming demolition and remodeling and the accompanying challenges.
4. Give up on going back to sleep, stagger downstairs.
5. Feed rabbit, start coffee.
6. Read morning newspaper.
You might wonder why I didn’t mention coffee in the weekday set. Simple: I set it the night before. It’s primed and ready to start dripping while I’m showering and getting dressed. Be Prepared is the Girl Scout motto, after all. It works for me!

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>Ah, coffee. Such a history!

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>I felt obligated. With Tea Parties making the headlines and calling themselves patriotic, I had to do the research. Tea? Nope. Coffee, of course.

According to legend, coffee was discovered by a goatherd who noticed his goats were energetic and happy after eating the berries of a certain bush. Later on, Arabs cultivated this fascinating plant, calling its berries “qahwa” — literally, that which prevents sleep.
In the 16th century, coffee was so popular with Turks that Turkish law allowed a woman to divorce her husband if he did not provide her with a daily dose.
It’s possible that Lloyd’s of London began in the 17th Century as a coffeehouse called Edward Lloyd’s, a place where merchants and insurance agents met.

The 18th Century was full of coffee history. Coffee spread to the Western Hemisphere, Brazil’s coffee industry started as a result of a liaison between a Dutch mediator and the wife of French Guiana’s governor. He left her after the conflict was resolved, but he left her with a bouquet in which he hid the seeds of a new crop and a whole new industry.
J.S. Bach composed his Kaffee Kantate (why didn’t I learn this in my History of Baroque Music in college?) dedicated to while at the same time mocking women who dared sip the devastating brew thought to make them sterile. It contains an aria with the lyrics announcing, “Ah! How sweet coffee taste! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have my coffee.” Ah, Johann, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Toward the end of the 18th century I found my favorite piece of coffee history:

1773: The Boston Tea Party makes drinking coffee a patriotic duty in America.

There you have it, folks. Forget the so-called Tea Parties. Ever since the Sons of Liberty trashed the merchant ships, the fact remains: True patriotism is grounded in coffee.
Pun intended.

I used several sources to find the facts for this post, but the most useful was this: A History of Coffee Timeline. Pour yourself a cuppa and enjoy.

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>Not bad, for a (insert day of week here)

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>Not bad, for a Tuesday.

Tuesdays are my Yucky Days with a capital YD. My schedule has no breaks in it, I often have meetings with other teachers before school, and it’s just an exhausting day. If it weren’t for recess, I wouldn’t even make it to the bathroom.

But there are ways of seeking relief. There is a bright side to Tuesday – sometimes.

My colleague takes advantage of a strategically scheduled prep time to pick up Starbucks.
Starbucks mixed up my order. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t the Pike Place Blend I usually get. The note on the cup said BU. Bland Usual? Boston University? Boring Underwear? How did they know? It smelled like good strong coffee, so I sipped it anyway.
Whoa, Nelly, that stuff was STRONG. I wiped the sweat from my brow, blinked a few times, thanked the 6th grader who’d delivered, and growled “Get back to work!” at my class. If I start growing hair on my chest, I’ll blame the B.U. coffee.

Let’s summarize the day so far: awards assembly, three of my students honored, parents attended, kids behaved well in the audience. Plus.
Ordered coffee. Plus.
Coffee was wrong. Minus.

So on we go —
That Student (every teacher has one) had major attitude problems after recess and during reading class. Another student is bouncing off this one and causing troubles. Reteach behavior, reteach, reteach. Tomorrow, these two shape up or else; they’ve had their second chances. Minus.
Somehow, I managed to teach reading strategies to a few groups; that’s a plus.
Then a few trustworthy students told me they were supposed to get out early for lunch. What?! I had no information, no communication, so I said no. Oh, my goodness, you would have thought I was the Worst Evil Teacher in the world. Minus for the confusion.
A good number of my kiddos attended the Service Club meeting and signed up to help with a school fundraiser. Plus.

Later on, sixth grade students made an announcement for a special fundraiser. A group of children found out about Water for Africa and decided it was a cause worth supporting. They did their homework, put together a plan, and got it going. Major plus.
Someone or several someones are giving them grief because they should be raising money for Haiti. Epic minus.
I remembered a post on the Art of Non-Conformity regarding seeing the changes in safe water supply on a visit to Liberia. To encourage the students, I found a way to connect them with this post. Plus for the post, plus for the kids, plus for all.

Well, fellow working minions, what is your bad day of the week? And what do you do to make it better? I splurge on (usually) good coffee. How about you?

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