Adventures in Baking

Can you guess what I am doing today??

I haven't made any real food in my kitchen yet because I am gearing up for some major baking today because it has been TOO long since I have played Betty Crocker!

I went to the grocery store this morning to pick up all the ingredients and it was like a treasure hunt! The kinds of things that you easily locate and plop in the cart are hard to find when you are looking for the item names in German! I translated the ingredient names and both baking soda and baking powder translate to the same word, Backpulver, even though they are very different and cause different results when added to baked goods. Luckily, I made friends with another American woman who gave me the rundown on some of the differences between American ingredients and their German counterparts.

I never would have looked for this, but vanilla comes in little vials like perfume samples.

Apparently it is very potent, so you can just add a very little bit.

The Backpulver, which is baking powder, comes in little packets like yeast. Baking Soda is called Natron and comes in a box, but it still looks very different than it does in the U.S.

I was really happy to find M&M's because I want to make this recipe for Monster Cookies from Ashlee's A Year in the Kitchen blog. She is awesome and the desserts she makes always look amazing! These cookies use peanut butter, M&M's, chocolate chips, raisins, and oatmeal in the dough in addition to all the other typical stuff.

A little bit of everything for a delicious bundle of cookie joy! Mmmmm. Can't wait!

I am also thinking of making a batch of oldie but goodie chocolate chip cookies too. Surprisingly chocolate chips are actually quite hard to come by when you live in Germany unless you have access to a military base or you hunt down a store that sells American products (which are really expensive...and I have heard about stores like that, but have yet to actually see one). My friend went to England over fall break so she picked up these babies for me...

dark chocolate bits of gloriousness

I absolutely love baking and if I weren't a teacher, I think I would want to have a little shop or business that would allow me to bake all day and make adorable, fun little treats. How fun would that be?

What is your favorite thing to bake?

It's finally here!

After being in Germany for three months, and living in our apartment for over a month with a "temporary" kitchen consisting of a mini fridge and two hot plates, I am proud to introduce my new

kitchen!

I had absolutely nothing to do with the selection of this kitchen. Our landlord picked everything out prior to our renting the apartment, so I am really happy that it came out looking as nice as it does! For some reason my husband thought it was going to be blue, and given some of the crazy kitchen colors at Ikea, and Germany's obsession with Ikea, I was a bit nervous. The kitchen actually did not come from Ikea, which is good because they came and went in one day and spent about 8 hours on the installation which would have been longer had it been from Ikea.

The one thing I am nervous about is that there is no backsplash and with me being the messy cook that I am, I guarantee there will be some tomato sauce splashage on the walls before I know it. We also don't have a freezer. The fridge is pretty small, but at least there are drawers underneath so it is elevated a bit higher. Crouching down to access the fridge for the past month was not fun. I am debating if we really need a freezer because we haven't used one for the past three months, but we have room for a free standing one if we decide we can't live without.

We still have to figure out what we doing with the other side of the kitchen because our table is in the other room. I would like to get another piece for storage because right now all those cabinets are full of dishes and bakeware and I need somewhere to put food! We had just put a nice new walk in pantry in our house in Portland and we also had a big cabinet in the kitchen with pull out drawers. It was fantastic. I need something like that again!

Hubby and I will probably hit up Ikea tonight to look into some storage solutions. I have gotten almost everything put away, but my tupperware still needs a home and so do all our bottles of wine and alcohol.

I can't wait to cook in this new bad boy, but I am too tired from a hard day of watching men install the kitchen, so I am thinking I will wait tomorrow and have my first baking debut in the kitchen with some of my girlfriends.

for the love of dorkiness

Today I worked on my research for one of my doctoral papers and I got immense enjoyment out of the organizational scheme I came up with. So if you can handle the dorkiness that is about to ensue, please read on.

You might find this helpful or you might find this sickening...

I started with a huge stack of book and articles on multicultural education.

Disclaimer: I have a serious problem/obsession ordering books from amazon.de with my amazon prime shipping.

It's getting ugly.

As I read, (I have been working on getting through these texts for quite some time now), I used this handidandy highlighter, which doubles as a sticky flag dispenser.

Whoever invented that was a super smartypants!

Today, I went through the documents and typed up the important quotes/ideas that I highlighted which I think will be good to include in my paper. I typed them into a word document formatted with 2" X 4" labels and then printed them out. For each quote, I included the author's name at the bottom and/or the other researcher(s) that were being quoted and the page number from the original source. I will have to go and locate primary sources, so it's important to write down all that good stuff.

how do you like that quote teacher friends??

Once they were printed out, I cut them apart and sorted them by theme, which will become the different sub sections of my paper. You might be thinking that labels are expensive, which they are, and that using labels is a waste, which is probably is. I wanted to use index cards, but I didn't have any. I suppose I could have run on down to the grocery store, but I had to be home to receive my package from amazon.de. ( I know...it's a problem....but if I am not home, then I have to walk all the way to the post office the next day to get my book and that definitely puts a damper on the awesomeness of the overnight delivery) I also figured it would be easier, and faster, to type the quotes rather than write them out by hand. I also liked the fact that I could stick the labels onto something rather than having loose cards.

Once I got the labels cut and sorted, I stuck them onto file folders and labeled the folders with the appropriate theme or idea that corresponded with the quotes and will correspond with the sections of the paper.

Now I have 4 colorful folders that each contain information for a different section of the paper. When I being the actual writing process, I will not need to keep flipping through various articles hunting for the information and quotes that I need because it's all nice

and organized in my folders.

Ta-Da!

So if you made it to the end of this post without gagging, then hopefully you are like me in that you appreciate a good organizational, timesaving system.

Thoughts?

Hey all you workout fans...

***Thanks to everyone who answered my Blog Hop question yesterday. I think teachers have an automatic bond with each other and it is interesting to hear about what other educators struggle with because we can look to each other for support since we all have different reasons to feel challenged in our profession***

__________________________________

As I was running on the treadmill listening to my favorite all time "get pumped" workout song, I realized my playlist is way old and I am in desperate need of some new tunes! I am so out of touch with current music in the US and I need some suggestions of what to download for a new updated workout playlist! I like it loud and fast to keep me moving.

What is your all time favorite workout song that gets you pumped up?

Any new songs that are really good that you think I should download?

I am not against Britney Spears or anything else that anyone would deem possibly too cheesy.

I have been known to rock it out to Miss Hannah Montana, I always appreciate a good Disney Channel star turned singer.

Suggest anything that you like and I will listen!!!

The playlist I was listening to was one I made when I was participating in a women's boot camp class back in Portland. We had to run a timed mile the first week and the last week to see how much we could improve. I always brought along my music on the test days because I am convinced the right song mix seriously enhances my performance.

Seriously.

Anyone else with me on that?!

So my mix consisted of three songs. (I was aiming for a fast mile!)

O Fortuna

The intro of the Rocky Theme Song

O Fortuna (repeated for the big finish)

If you are not sure if you know O Fortuna....trust me you do. It is frequently used in movie trailers, such as Mall Cop. Still not sure? Have a listen, I included a video below.

Turn up your volume and get blown away!

There is definitely a wait for it quality to this song.

It builds up to a great ending.

This may seem like a really random selection to run to, but I swear it was magical. I literally got goosebumps while I ran. And, I ran my ass off! I tried to keep up a good pace throughout, but there is a part of the song starting around 1:45, we'll call it the climax, which motivated me to bust out in a full on sprint to the finish. I had no idea what those voices were singing about, but I felt like they were singing directly to me telling me to run fast.

This video shows a translation of the words and boy are they intense. Since I really don't understand the lyrics when I am just listening, I just prefer to pretend they are singing something wildly inspirational!

Still think this is a completely rando running playlist??

My mile time was 6:27

better than high school

best ever

:0)

MckLinky Blog Hop

I haven't really felt moved to participate in the most recent Blog Hops, but today's is pretty fun. The idea is to simply ask your readers a question that they can respond to through commenting. It's a great way to get to know readers better! Since a good portion of my readers are teachers, and a good portion of my blog content is about teaching, I thought my question(s) should be related to teaching as well.

So here it is:

What is the toughest challenge that you face as a teacher and how do you deal with/respond to it?

I think one of my toughest challenges is not being able to understand where every student/family is coming from. I would like to be able to teach all students in a way that is meaningful based on their backgrounds and personal experiences, yet I don't always have the background knowledge myself to draw upon. I have worked with several families living in poverty and given the life that I have been privileged to lead, I am certain that I am not completely understanding of some of the issues these students and their families are going through. I am also now working with students in Germany who have seen a lot more of the world than I have. They come from countries and cultures that I may know nothing about. I am interested and willing to learn, yet one person cannot experience everything that every student has experienced in order to help them foster connections. I guess this is where learning from the students and relying on them to share knowledge and expertise while encouraging them to think critically and make connections comes in. I am working hard, especially in my current studies, to think about what other perspectives students and their families might have. I might not know outright, but I can certainly ask and learn from what they share with me. I want to have all the answers, but I think an essential part of educating a diverse group of students is not having all the answers, rather finding the answers through the process of teaching the students and learning from them as well.

If you are not a teacher, but a parent, I have another question:

What is something a teacher did for you or your child that you will never forget?

Looking forward to reading what you have to say!

craziness

Not only did I get sent home today because I was "exposed" to the flu, but my school has decided to close for the rest of the week to allow students and staff to completely recover. Apparently around 30% of the study body has been absent which is what prompted this decision.

I am hoping that given it's a private school that doesn't mean we are adding those days to the end of the year....

Well, that means all of my doctoral papers should be getting done this week!

and....

It means I get to be home all day on Thursday when my kitchen is finally installed! Make sure to check back on Friday for some pics!! :0)