How to make granola!

So, since the only commercial breakfast cereal I can eat these days is Rice Chex (and Corn Chex, but it's not as good), I've been making a lot of granola. It's gluten-free if you aren't sensitive to oats (which sometimes are manufactured on equipment that does wheat and has trace amounts of gluten in it). Oats have been no problem for me and my joints, so I've been eating a lot of them.

The fun thing about granola is that once you get gist of making it, you can make it with anything you want. My mom made this when we were kids, with just oats, almonds and sunflower seeds, so I took the basic idea and threw in whatever else I could scrounge up. The flax seeds are for nutrition rather than any exciting flavor (they've got the Omega-3s and a lot of fiber) but they add a little extra crunch. Here's the recipe I've been making lately...

Coconut-Almond Granola

4 TB of salted butter (if you're anti-butter for some reason, you could use vegetable oil, but I will recommend you to the Weston Price folks who, slight bit of kookery or not, have convinced me that real animal fats are good and that fake, freaky margarine-style fats are evil.)
3 TB honey (or more)
2 cups of rolled oats
1 cup of sliced almonds
1 cup of shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup of raw sunflower seed kernels
1/4 cup of flax seeds
2/3 cup raisins (or however much you want)
2/3 cup Craisins (or any other dried fruit you feel like)

Here's how it works:

1. Melt the butter and the honey in a big sauce pan.
2. Dump in everything except the raisins/Craisins/dried fruit.
3. Stir it all around thoroughly until everything is coated in butter and honey. The mix should look glossy but not wet, and still be crumbly.
4. Spread the granola out onto a jelly roll pan. Bake at 325 for 10 or 15 minutes or until its mostly golden brown, or a little darker. (Check on it periodically...ovens are tricky, and you don't want it to burn. You can bake it at 200 for longer, if you'd rather be more careful.)
5. Take it out of the oven, and mix it up while it's still warm or it'll cool together in clumps. It will stop being sticky as it cools. Once it's cool, dump it in an airtight container (or a leftover Quaker Oatmeal tub) and add whatever raisins, Craisins, or other dried fruit you want.

Done and done.


I eat mine with milk, like a regular cereal. Or with yogurt. Or straight out of the tub.

I miss Billy Mays.

Last night my passenger side mirror nailed the trash cans for the last time.
So, I did what I always do when something breaks: I called my brother. After a quick photo email exchange and discussion of adhesive options, I picked up some epoxy. They didn't have Mighty Putty, so I had to get another brand. I hoped Billy Mays wouldn't be too disappointed in me.

Within two hours I had the epoxy rolled out, smushed into my mirror, tweeter speaker removed, screws unscrewed...
...and I fixed it all by myself! I feel like a little kid who like, ties their own shoes for the first time or something. Success.

I'm going to Oklahoma! (And TN, and AR, and AZ, and TX, and CA, and NM)

From June 30 to July 8 I will be driving along that little blue line with my friend Sarah. I made us brunch this weekend and in less than an hour we had google map-ed ourselves a plan. Or at least, an itinerary. The planning comes next. And that's the fun part.

If you had one day (or an evening and a morning) in these cities, what would you do?
Memphis, TN; Oklahoma City, OK; Albuquerque, NM; El Paso, TX; Tucson, AZ; Phoenix, AZ.

Oh, and then we've got three nights in southern California!

I am ridiculously excited for this vacation.

Bug Hunting!!

My sister is taking an entomology class at her college this month. She kept sending me text messages with pictures of bugs she'd caught for her bug collection, usually accompanied by multiple exclamation points and lots of capital letters. Hunting bugs with nets sounded kind of awesome, so I decided to head down to Greenville, SC this weekend to help her work on her collection. (She has to have 100 specimens identified by the end of the class!)

Walking around the science building at Furman I regretted (as I do with some regularity) not having at least minored in biology. Hannah collected vials and killing jars and giant nets, and we headed out! I'd failed to bring any shoes that weren't flip flops (although I had managed to bring my Smartwool socks) so I borrowed some shoes.


We drove about forty minutes to the Blue Wall Nature Preserve up near the NC/SC border, and near very little else. And we caught bugs!
(...although this approach was not very successful.)


All told we got about twenty-something different insects. And got to enjoy lots of other very cool nature. I wish I actually knew things about insects and could tell you what kind of butterfly will come out of this chrysalis. Right now my money is on the Gulf Fritillary, but I'm really not sure. Look at those gold spots though! So cool. (Did you know 'chrysalis' comes from the Greek for 'gold'? I did not.)
And for some reason I can't not take pictures of mushrooms. I have no idea what these are.
These butterflies are, I think, Eastern Tailed Blues. We caught one for Hannah's collection, so once she identifies it for certain I'll make sure to update this post. They're little guys, and would all cluster on the ground like this and then all fly up into the air en masse, flutter around like a little whirlwind of blue leaves, and then settle back onto the ground.

I'm apparently heading out to the Appalachian Trail in a month. I can't wait to see bugs and mushrooms and things up in the mountains.

I drove back to NC this morning, and thanks to an alert on one of those those overhead electronic signs on 85, was able to hop off the highway just before traffic slowed to a stop and all lanes were closed. (The warning sign just said "incident at mile marker 93.") I added about 40 minutes to my drive by taking back roads, but I would infinitely rather drive a longer distance than sit in traffic. So I drove through Gaffney and a few other little towns, played some Shins CD I found in my car, and enjoyed the gorgeous day.
I had a great weekend, a lovely detour, and summer seems so close I can almost touch it. Six more days of class with my kids. Then it's testing, retesting, grading, and out. Done and done. Hard to believe.

Decoupage!

Between Mother's Day and three people's birthdays, I found myself making cards last week. I was happy with how they turned out, so I thought I'd share the results:

Gimme an R, gimme an I, gimme an F. . .

What's that spell? RIF! Reduction in Force! Woo!

Okay, so not actually something I'm cheering about. I have officially joined the ranks of those millions of Americans who have been laid off at one time or another. And, I'm a Charlotte Observer headliner: CMS sends out layoff notices to 739 educators. Big news. That's about 8.5% of teachers in the district, if my math is right. But, budget crunches mean cuts, and when you're a public employee, that's the way it goes. It's just really unfortunate that this particular budget cut means there are 739 fewer people teaching our kids. They've upped the student-teacher ratio too, so kids are going to have bigger classes. The superintendent has stopped pretending we can do more with less. Everyone admits this will hurt kids. It sucks. They need everything we can give them. They deserve a lot more than having their teachers fired and their classes get larger. I'm upset for my kids.

And, it's a hassle for me. It would have been a lot easier to have the security of knowing I've got a job in August while I relaxed all summer.

But I've been really touched by the way all the teachers in my department called, texted and facebook messaged last night to see how I was doing (after they heard I had a meeting with the principal.) And today folks stopped by my classroom, asked how they could help... I guess I'm not used to having people concerned about me (I've never had anything to be especially concerned about) and I guess to a lot of people a layoff is a big, devastating kind of deal. But, as I've been telling people, I'm fine! No tears were shed; I just went home and starting looking for jobs.

Nobody likes uncertainty, and of course now this means I have to spend time looking for a job, and I have to be a little more careful with my money, but I've been there, done that. I had to find my art teaching job, then I was jobless and homeless in Chicago until I found Grosvenor, then I spent a lot of time hunting down NC jobs until Teach for America came through. . . so I feel like a pro at the resume and cover letter thing. I've been saving my money to have my regular paycheck amount, plus some cushion, over the two months I don't get paid in the summer. So I've got about three months before I have to start worrying about paying the rent. I'm not really worried that I won't be able to find a source of income by August, but I don't want to have to take a job I'm not excited about just because my savings is running out.

Apparently, the county will be approving their budget in June, and the state in July. These budgets could potentially give the school district money that would allow them to re-hire people who have been laid off. That's the ideal scenario, obviously. But who knows.

I had every intention of finishing my second year with TFA, and still hope to make teaching a career beyond that. I'd like to either stay teaching apart from TFA or CMS, or get into education in some other way.

But, for right now, all I can do is stay on top of the local news, see what the county and state do with their budgets, and either I get my job at West Meck back, or I get another job within CMS, or I get another job entirely. I'm also thinking of taking the PRAXIS exam in some other subjects or grades, so that I could potentially teach other classes. But mostly I'm going to be updating my resume, writing cover letters, and raining job applications on every high school, and middle school, and educational institution in the Piedmont.

As inconvenient as this sudden change of plans is likely going to turn out to be, I feel okay about it. If there's some bigger, better opportunity out there, I'm going to trust God to help me find it. If I'm supposed to wind up back at CMS, well, then that's what will happen. If I'm supposed to pick up and move again (as big a chore as that would be) well, then that's what I'll do.

Keep your ears to the ground for me, folks. Anything involving teaching, or nature and the environment, or kids, or art, or a job where I get paid to grow vegetables and read books...

Diet Day 123 - F-ing Pork

I made these for dinner last night. Garlic parmesan pork meatballs. While I've ruled out beef, and ruled in chicken, pork hasn't made itself an obvious 'yes' or 'no' thus far in my continual arthritis-elimination diet experiment. But I'd been 100% symptom-free for 4 or 5 days straight (no intermittent morning knuckle stiffness even!) so I thought now was as good a time as any to re-test pork where I'd get a clear response, or non-response.

I bought a pound of ground pork from Windy Hill at the farmer's market on Saturday, and thought I'd try making them into meatballs. They're really too simple to be called a recipe, but they were AMAZING, so in case you're interested, here's what I did:

Mix:
1 lb ground pork
1 minced clove garlic
1/2ish cup grated parmesan (maybe less? I didn't measure)
a couple pinches salt
a bunch of black pepper

Heat some olive oil in a skillet.

Roll the meat lightly into golf balls without mashing them up or compacting them too hard.

Plop the meatballs in the olive oil, letting them brown on one side before rotating them around so all sides get brown (tongs!) By the time all the sides of all the meatballs are brown and crispy (a little of the cheese will melt out too and crust up nicely) they should be done inside. Plus all the fat from the pork will render out into the olive oil until they're frying in their own fat. . . mmmmmmm.

I wilted some spinach with garlic, a little heavy cream and parmesan to go with the meatballs. Beautiful, beautiful food.

Until this morning. I felt the stiffness start creeping up in my left hand until by noon it was noticeably sore to bend it back and forth. By 2:00 my range of motion was at about half, and now at 4:30 it's excruciating to move my hand out of a neutral position. Arghh. And there are leftover meatballs in the fridge that I was REALLY looking forward to eating!!

But no. Instead, I am angrily eating marshmallow/coconut fruit salad directly out of the tupperware and hoping my wrist feels better in the next 24 hours. Although, from past flare ups, it'll probably be Wednesday or Thursday before it's back to normal. I miss red meat. Lamb was okay, but it's so freaking expensive. Sigh. Well, if anyone wants my leftover meatballs, they're yours.

What I'll be reading this summer...

I'm posting this so that I will actually read all of these. Accountability. Also, I'm soliciting suggestions for further additions, since four of these I'm at least halfway through.

Since I've now watched every extant X-Files episode (thanks, Netflix, for stealing horrifyingly many hours of my life), I find myself much more ready to pick up one of the zillions of books I want to read. So, on the list for this summer are:

Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall - I'm halfway done this one, and just need to finish it. It's about the Tarahumara indians of some mountainy part of Mexico and how they run super long distances barefoot and eat chia seeds and corn.

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan - I'm almost done this one. I read the first three sections (about the industrial food chain, the "industrial organic" food chain, and sane grass-based organic chain, but I got lost in the chapter on hunting and gathering). It's really good though, and it definitely makes you more aware of your food's source, and suggests that the source of your food actually matters.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander - I read about this book in some article someone posted on facebook, I think. Or maybe I read the article on the NYT's website and then I posted it on facebook. I forget. But its subtitle is "Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" and it's supposed to be about the tragedy and outrage of the disproportionate incarceration of black males, particularly as a result of the "war on drugs."

Let the Great World Spin, by Collum McCann - I don't remember who exactly recommended this to me. I feel like I saw it pop up on someone's little Facebook "bookshelf" application. I'm maybe two-thirds through but keep putting it down - it has some beautiful parts, but hasn't grabbed me yet. It's good enough that I owe it completion, though, so we'll see what I think when I've finished.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Everyone and their brother has told me how gorgeous this book is. I read half of One Hundred Years of Solitude one summer during my lunch breaks at AIG, and although I didn't finish it (okay, so maybe I should add that to my list too) it was beautiful and strange and I loved it. So...thought I needed to give this a shot. I have high expectations.

Little Bee, by Chris Cleave - Another one that was suggested to me by person or persons unknown. I think it might have been one LVD, who has terrific literary taste, but I'm not sure. If I like the book, I'll be sure and thank her anyway, just in case.

Endgame, by Derrick Jensen - Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization. And yes, it's about exactly what the subtitle suggests. Civilization is inherently violent and destructive and unsustainable and destined for collapse. If we care about the future of humanity we should do everything we can to maintain a livable planet and mitigate/stop/repair the damage done to it by civilization, particularly in its current industrial form. And it is as crazy as it sounds. But not actually THAT crazy. He's a fantastic writer, both funny and transparent, and allows (forces) you to think without first having to agree with him. This was a gift from my friend Matt, who also recommended the next item.

Modernity and the Holocaust, by Zygmunt Bauman - I've only just started this one, but his thesis is that our approach to the Holocaust has been to view it as something that happened outside of "normal" society, an aberration, and something that can be understood as a self-contained historical event. It happened because Hitler was evil and crazy, and his henchmen were evil or coerced into evil. This guy's idea is that the Holocaust was not, in face, an event that arose in opposition to civilization, but that it "was born and executed in our modern rational society. . . and for this reason it is a problem of that society, civilization, and culture." It was "an outcome of a unique encounter between factors by themselves quite ordinary and common," and not some bizarre, inexplicable eruption of insanity and isolated evil. At least that what he's said so far. I've only read the preface.

Radical, by David Platt - I think I saw this on some blog or online magazine. I don't remember. But its subtitle caught my eye ("Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream") and so I snagged it. We'll see. That's what happened with Francis Chan's Crazy Love too: I saw it in some Christian article somewhere, and I was disappointed to find it written in really short, really simplistic sentences that repeated the same thing over and over without nuance. I am hoping this one's better.

Any critical omissions? Any suggestions for poetry (as the genre is notably absent from my list)? Things you've told me to read multiple times but I keep not reading?

I don't really know what to feel about bin Laden's death.

I saw a headline online today: “Musings on the death of a madman.” I know bin Laden has been called a mad man since he started blowing people up, but it makes me uneasy, calling him that. It’s certainly easy to do so. Easy to relegate him to the cast of historical crazies, men whose acts were so violent, so reprehensible, that they MUST have been mad, because sane people don’t do such horrible things. But as far as I know, bin Laden wasn’t crazy. He did evil things, but he did them for reasons that, to him, made sense. Hitler did too, for that matter. Both men had values that were accepted by many others, goals based on their ideals, plans to reach them. Each took the logical steps to reach his goal. If we write history’s monsters off as nut jobs, it keeps us safe from our own lesser darkness. It creates a high, thick wall between us and them. They can do those things because they’re crazy. We’re not crazy. We’re different. We don’t blow up buildings with the express purpose of killing thousands of civilians. We accept civilian deaths (we call it ‘collateral damage’) as part of war…but that’s different (and it is, but is it a qualitative difference, or merely a relative one? Does that matter?) We may use enhanced interrogation techniques…but that’s different; we don’t cut off fingers. We don’t execute political prisoners, but we execute those who ‘deserve’ it, insisting their guilt absolves us of ours.

Osama bin Laden deserved to die, by any rational human standard (inasmuch as any of us are in a position to make that call). He did cruel, violent and terrible things. More horrible than any of us can ever imagine doing. But he wasn’t crazy. He was a human being, who had been angered, inspired to believe fiercely in whatever it was he believed in, and who lived out those beliefs to their most extreme conclusion.

I wasn’t personally affected by 9/11. I lost no family or friends. I’ve lost no one in the armed services. I remember walking into Mr. Bird’s room that morning and seeing the towers fall on the corner-mounted TV. I thought it was another one of his movies (we watched Predator when we studied Beowulf) and wondered what book it “related” to. Even after being shuffled into the school gym with the rest of the 200 kids in my high school, after hearing our teachers tell us what was happening, it still all seemed like one of Mr. Bird’s movies to me. And, in a lot of ways, it has continued to. I’ve never been to Ground Zero. I have no tangible connection to those events. I’ve been emotionally moved watching newsreel footage, but the events portrayed haven’t changed my life in any noticeable way, really. So, given that, I feel in a poor position to even form an opinion on the rightness or wrongness of what’s taken place over the last 24 hours. I didn’t lose anyone. I don’t want vengeance. I haven’t spent the last ten years of my life hoping for justice.

But then I’m not so sure I know what ‘justice’ means, anyway. It is used, it seems, as a synonym for ‘retribution.’ An eye for an eye is just. A tooth for a tooth. Justice is getting what’s coming to you. Karma is justice. It’s an unsatisfactory-sounding justice, I guess. And maybe that’s the best we can hope for this side of eternity. But I hope that’s not true. Shouldn’t justice be making things whole? Or at least better? Maybe bin Laden’s death will, ultimately make things right, in some way. Or better. Or not as f-ed up as they have been for the last ten years. I don’t know, I mean, I hope it does. But I’m not celebrating it. I am in no position to rebuke those for whom bin Laden’s death means their child’s murderer is dead. Or their mother’s. Or their friend’s. But I feel unsettled and uneasy by the whole media bonanza of exclamation points and congratulatory phrases. I thought maybe writing out my thought process would ease my unease. It hasn’t, particularly. I like having an easy position to retreat to, a nice clearly expressible opinion on whatever the issue of the day may be. But I don’t.