Updates: kids, grading, retreat, dreams, sticky rice
I feel totally behind on grading. And it's not that I've not done ANY...it's that there's just lots more to do.
Thursday and Friday I went with the freshmen on retreat out at Fullersburg Woods in DuPage Cty. For the past several years we've gone to Waterfall Glen, which I'd loved, but which I admit I'd hit the point of knowing just too well. The change was welcome AND the new site is just GORGEOUS. The kids did geocaching with little GPS toys (the Garmin ones at the top right on the site). The first day I went with the GPS group and WOW did we suck. The second day we were actually orienteering, which worked much better; a map and a compass gives us MUCH clearer and more consistent information than some satellite thing! And I KNOW how to use a map, compass, and the SUN. Two of the boys in my group were REALLY good and we found all seven of the checkpoints amongst us. It was really quite fun. The only badness was being et by bugs--ITCHY!
The first day I even got to read half a dozen chapters of my class textbook. It's not a bad textbook, but there's just nothing new in it. I'm working on having a mindset that says, "Well, it's easy and I know this stuff and I'll be able to have records on paper that PROVES I know the stuff that I know since I have no documentation of my sp.ed. prowess." It's true enough and, well, it's nearly free and...hey...not much work. So...yeah. The second day I was going to grade papers but I literally was dozing off every few minutes after the morning of tromping through the woods.
The tromping was an utterly perfect Equinox activity and I saw all manner of wildlife (including an antlered deer that ran only 50 feet or so away from us through the woods), all manner of wildflowers and mosses and fungi, and all manner of trees (several of which I just had to hug). I saw the first few turned leaves, and saw a number of leaves falling gently. I saw previously flooded areas that were now cracked and moist hard mud flats. I picked up a couple of sackfuls of litter. I gathered a handful of GORGEOUS and enormous acorns that we used in Circle with the kids last night. They're both very good at calling quarters (in our simplified kid way) and are very excited about celebrating "our" holidays. Elf wants to plant her acorn and try to grow a tree. It makes me happy.
I have been obsessing about the Thai dessert Mango and Sticky Rice I didn't want to keep purchasing it, so I looked up recipes, experimented, and it turns out to be hella easy and YUMMY. Yum, Yum, Yum. I want to share it with EVERYONE! Last week I shared it with sure_i_am, who is In Love. Last night I shared it with julietma and her husband and friend S. Everyone loved it, and it was our accompaniment to watching the first two eps of Torchwood from BBCAmerica on demand. Such a frustrating show, that.
In case you'd rather not click on the link, here is the recipe:
Mango with Thai Sticky Rice
This is a recipe I've been experimenting with based on bits from these two web sites:
http://importfood.com/recipes/khaoneeomamuang.html and http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/recipes/Sticky_Rice.htm
Thai sticky rice (also known as "sweet rice" or "glutinous rice") Thai sweet or sticky rice is a particular variety of rice, and you cannot substitute other varieties except some sushi rice.
Ingredients
2 cups sticky rice
2 cups coconut milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 ripe mangoes, cubed (see below)
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Mango Prep
Start with a mango that's nice and ripe, with a slight give to the touch. Mexican mango is sold throughout the year in the United States and are tasty and sweet but not as fragrant as most Thai mangoes. The mango flesh should be bright and yellow. Peel the mango (I like using a vegetable peeler with a gentle touch), then slice off the stem end (only just barely; you don't need to cut off much). Standing the mango on the slightly flat end, slice down about 1/2 inch off from the center along the flatter side. Rotate the mango and do the same on the other side. This should allow you to avoid the pit while giving you two nice chunks of mango. You can also cut off the outer 1/2 inch or so around the outside of the pit to use as much of the mango as possible. Dice the mango into 2cm or 1 inch cubes.
Rice Prep
Prepare the 2 cups sticky rice as per the following instructions.
Rinse rice 2-3 times, until water runs (mostly) clear. Place rinsed rice in a bowl (I rinse and soak in the same bowl I'm going microwave--make sure it's a glass bowl, not plastic) and fill with warm water so the water is 1-2 inches above the rice (about 1 cup of rice to each 1 1/4 cup of water). The site says that soaking the rice is very important and that without this step it will NOT work. Cover the bowl with a dish/plate and cook in microwave for at full power 3 minutes. Stir the rice around to move the rice from the top to the bottom. You will notice that some of the rice is translucent or cooked and some still has white center or the uncooked portion.
Heat it up again for another 3 minutes. Check and see if it is done. When cooked, all the rice should be translucent. If it needs more cooking, heat it up and check every 3 minutes or so. How long it takes to cook really depends on your microwave.
While sticky rice is steaming, mix together 1 1/2 cups coconut milk, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Immediately after sticky rice is cooked, and still hot, put it into the coconut sauce and stir together well. Cover and let cool a bit, though I like the rice warm with the cool mango.
Topping (optional; I've made it and not made it and am indifferent)
Mix 1/2 cup coconut milk with 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar and the tapioca starch. Bring to a boil.
Put the sticky rice and mangoes on a serving dish. Pour the topping sauce over the sticky rice. Enjoy!
The kids are fantastic and adorable. They are squabbling more, but right now they're playing nicely together, putting together a puzzle on the living room floor. After they finished that, Elf got down a stack of flashcards and drilled Ben on colors and numbers, "What number is this? ...Good." Very focused, very encouraging, very no-nonsense; she has all the makings of an excellent teacher, while Ben is still TOTALLY our Little Engineer. *beam*
Husband did dishes this morning, so I unloaded the dishwasher and re-loaded it. Yay for clean dishes and a tidy-ish kitchen!
The kids' clothes have been a DISASTER. We had NOTHING like adequate room for the clothes they have and so, in the interim of having no housemate (we'll see where that goes from here) I've rearranged clothes so that Elf has both the white dressers and Ben's clothes are in what used to be Husband's dressers (which are, unfortunately, in the next room, but...things FIT and Ben thinks it's cool to use the dressers that used to be Daddy's). FINALLY, all but one drawer opens without brute force and the drawers aren't all hanging open due to not being ABLE to close. AND winter clothes are in drawers. I also went through the next set of clothes and we're well-stocked for Elf for the next year or two, then we have a gap till she's 12 or so. For Ben...well...after this round of clothes, we're out of stored supplies. So we either need to find more benefactors or hit some outstanding yard sales, either of which we can do. I've also got to give away a bin of culled clothes and shoes to mtgat and/or julietma.
I think it's going to be a LOVELY thing to be able to get out kids' clothes without complete chaos. Course, I still have to clean all the stuff out of their closet that's stored there, but there is a bin less in the basement and a bin less in the kitchen. Yay, me!
The house at large is a mess--dog fur, toys everywhere, junk everywhere...but at least there is a bit of progress, right?
I've been squirmy and dreaming and not sleeping well for several nights, which means Husband has not been sleeping well, for some reason, as I kick my feet like I'm swimming. Last night I slept in the spare room so Husband could sleep. I woke up, inexplicably, on the sofa. I figure I must have gotten up sometime in the night to go potty and remembered only, "not sleeping in my room" and crashed out on the sofa. I have NO memory of this. I DID get to sleep in this morning, though, after moving back to the spare room. Still very busy dreaming, though.
Last night, I also dreamt the car was stolen...and that was AFTER a long, long, LONG road trip. I had parked it to go in and get my hair cut, got inside and saw the guy I liked wasn't working, was displeased, headed back to the car, go in, turned it on, then was almost arrested becuase it wasn't my car and, in fact, my car was just GONE and the one my keys had started was there as a decoy of sorts (and looked nothing like my car--it was HUGE in a land-barge kind of way). I then went back repeatedly to where the car was and kept looking for it to show back up, for my stuff that was in the car to turn up een if the car was being broken up for bits, thinking how we hadn't budgeted to get another car this soon, finding a woman who remembered my car being parked there and knew my name and where I worked, but had gotten it from seeing a sheet of paper on the dashboard (and it did seem slightly curious/suspicious, but, well, she was fannish and seemed nice and believable and said she'd not seen anyone run off with the car. I was in total denial, though, WANTING to believe that I'd get the car or my nifty stuff back that I liked and that had still been in the car from the road trip.
I'm back to the, "I really don't have the energy to live two full lives, one in day, and one at night..." feeling.
I think it's definitely time to make something for dinner. Something with protein.
Thursday and Friday I went with the freshmen on retreat out at Fullersburg Woods in DuPage Cty. For the past several years we've gone to Waterfall Glen, which I'd loved, but which I admit I'd hit the point of knowing just too well. The change was welcome AND the new site is just GORGEOUS. The kids did geocaching with little GPS toys (the Garmin ones at the top right on the site). The first day I went with the GPS group and WOW did we suck. The second day we were actually orienteering, which worked much better; a map and a compass gives us MUCH clearer and more consistent information than some satellite thing! And I KNOW how to use a map, compass, and the SUN. Two of the boys in my group were REALLY good and we found all seven of the checkpoints amongst us. It was really quite fun. The only badness was being et by bugs--ITCHY!
The first day I even got to read half a dozen chapters of my class textbook. It's not a bad textbook, but there's just nothing new in it. I'm working on having a mindset that says, "Well, it's easy and I know this stuff and I'll be able to have records on paper that PROVES I know the stuff that I know since I have no documentation of my sp.ed. prowess." It's true enough and, well, it's nearly free and...hey...not much work. So...yeah. The second day I was going to grade papers but I literally was dozing off every few minutes after the morning of tromping through the woods.
The tromping was an utterly perfect Equinox activity and I saw all manner of wildlife (including an antlered deer that ran only 50 feet or so away from us through the woods), all manner of wildflowers and mosses and fungi, and all manner of trees (several of which I just had to hug). I saw the first few turned leaves, and saw a number of leaves falling gently. I saw previously flooded areas that were now cracked and moist hard mud flats. I picked up a couple of sackfuls of litter. I gathered a handful of GORGEOUS and enormous acorns that we used in Circle with the kids last night. They're both very good at calling quarters (in our simplified kid way) and are very excited about celebrating "our" holidays. Elf wants to plant her acorn and try to grow a tree. It makes me happy.
I have been obsessing about the Thai dessert Mango and Sticky Rice I didn't want to keep purchasing it, so I looked up recipes, experimented, and it turns out to be hella easy and YUMMY. Yum, Yum, Yum. I want to share it with EVERYONE! Last week I shared it with sure_i_am, who is In Love. Last night I shared it with julietma and her husband and friend S. Everyone loved it, and it was our accompaniment to watching the first two eps of Torchwood from BBCAmerica on demand. Such a frustrating show, that.
In case you'd rather not click on the link, here is the recipe:
Mango with Thai Sticky Rice
This is a recipe I've been experimenting with based on bits from these two web sites:
http://importfood.com/recipes/khaoneeomamuang.html and http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/recipes/Sticky_Rice.htm
Thai sticky rice (also known as "sweet rice" or "glutinous rice") Thai sweet or sticky rice is a particular variety of rice, and you cannot substitute other varieties except some sushi rice.
Ingredients
2 cups sticky rice
2 cups coconut milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 ripe mangoes, cubed (see below)
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Mango Prep
Start with a mango that's nice and ripe, with a slight give to the touch. Mexican mango is sold throughout the year in the United States and are tasty and sweet but not as fragrant as most Thai mangoes. The mango flesh should be bright and yellow. Peel the mango (I like using a vegetable peeler with a gentle touch), then slice off the stem end (only just barely; you don't need to cut off much). Standing the mango on the slightly flat end, slice down about 1/2 inch off from the center along the flatter side. Rotate the mango and do the same on the other side. This should allow you to avoid the pit while giving you two nice chunks of mango. You can also cut off the outer 1/2 inch or so around the outside of the pit to use as much of the mango as possible. Dice the mango into 2cm or 1 inch cubes.
Rice Prep
Prepare the 2 cups sticky rice as per the following instructions.
Rinse rice 2-3 times, until water runs (mostly) clear. Place rinsed rice in a bowl (I rinse and soak in the same bowl I'm going microwave--make sure it's a glass bowl, not plastic) and fill with warm water so the water is 1-2 inches above the rice (about 1 cup of rice to each 1 1/4 cup of water). The site says that soaking the rice is very important and that without this step it will NOT work. Cover the bowl with a dish/plate and cook in microwave for at full power 3 minutes. Stir the rice around to move the rice from the top to the bottom. You will notice that some of the rice is translucent or cooked and some still has white center or the uncooked portion.
Heat it up again for another 3 minutes. Check and see if it is done. When cooked, all the rice should be translucent. If it needs more cooking, heat it up and check every 3 minutes or so. How long it takes to cook really depends on your microwave.
While sticky rice is steaming, mix together 1 1/2 cups coconut milk, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Immediately after sticky rice is cooked, and still hot, put it into the coconut sauce and stir together well. Cover and let cool a bit, though I like the rice warm with the cool mango.
Topping (optional; I've made it and not made it and am indifferent)
Mix 1/2 cup coconut milk with 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar and the tapioca starch. Bring to a boil.
Put the sticky rice and mangoes on a serving dish. Pour the topping sauce over the sticky rice. Enjoy!
The kids are fantastic and adorable. They are squabbling more, but right now they're playing nicely together, putting together a puzzle on the living room floor. After they finished that, Elf got down a stack of flashcards and drilled Ben on colors and numbers, "What number is this? ...Good." Very focused, very encouraging, very no-nonsense; she has all the makings of an excellent teacher, while Ben is still TOTALLY our Little Engineer. *beam*
Husband did dishes this morning, so I unloaded the dishwasher and re-loaded it. Yay for clean dishes and a tidy-ish kitchen!
The kids' clothes have been a DISASTER. We had NOTHING like adequate room for the clothes they have and so, in the interim of having no housemate (we'll see where that goes from here) I've rearranged clothes so that Elf has both the white dressers and Ben's clothes are in what used to be Husband's dressers (which are, unfortunately, in the next room, but...things FIT and Ben thinks it's cool to use the dressers that used to be Daddy's). FINALLY, all but one drawer opens without brute force and the drawers aren't all hanging open due to not being ABLE to close. AND winter clothes are in drawers. I also went through the next set of clothes and we're well-stocked for Elf for the next year or two, then we have a gap till she's 12 or so. For Ben...well...after this round of clothes, we're out of stored supplies. So we either need to find more benefactors or hit some outstanding yard sales, either of which we can do. I've also got to give away a bin of culled clothes and shoes to mtgat and/or julietma.
I think it's going to be a LOVELY thing to be able to get out kids' clothes without complete chaos. Course, I still have to clean all the stuff out of their closet that's stored there, but there is a bin less in the basement and a bin less in the kitchen. Yay, me!
The house at large is a mess--dog fur, toys everywhere, junk everywhere...but at least there is a bit of progress, right?
I've been squirmy and dreaming and not sleeping well for several nights, which means Husband has not been sleeping well, for some reason, as I kick my feet like I'm swimming. Last night I slept in the spare room so Husband could sleep. I woke up, inexplicably, on the sofa. I figure I must have gotten up sometime in the night to go potty and remembered only, "not sleeping in my room" and crashed out on the sofa. I have NO memory of this. I DID get to sleep in this morning, though, after moving back to the spare room. Still very busy dreaming, though.
Last night, I also dreamt the car was stolen...and that was AFTER a long, long, LONG road trip. I had parked it to go in and get my hair cut, got inside and saw the guy I liked wasn't working, was displeased, headed back to the car, go in, turned it on, then was almost arrested becuase it wasn't my car and, in fact, my car was just GONE and the one my keys had started was there as a decoy of sorts (and looked nothing like my car--it was HUGE in a land-barge kind of way). I then went back repeatedly to where the car was and kept looking for it to show back up, for my stuff that was in the car to turn up een if the car was being broken up for bits, thinking how we hadn't budgeted to get another car this soon, finding a woman who remembered my car being parked there and knew my name and where I worked, but had gotten it from seeing a sheet of paper on the dashboard (and it did seem slightly curious/suspicious, but, well, she was fannish and seemed nice and believable and said she'd not seen anyone run off with the car. I was in total denial, though, WANTING to believe that I'd get the car or my nifty stuff back that I liked and that had still been in the car from the road trip.
I'm back to the, "I really don't have the energy to live two full lives, one in day, and one at night..." feeling.
I think it's definitely time to make something for dinner. Something with protein.