It’s time for me to revive this blog and so why not start with a restaurant review.

Today we were out doing errands in the Arcadia area just east of Pasadena.  Arcadia and Alhambra have a large Asian and specifically Chinese population which means the vegan and vegetarian restaurants in this area are very different than the ones we find in our neighborhood which consists of mostly of Vegan Thai.  We love vegan Thai but  eat it often and were happy to try something new.

When we’re out and about and hungry, all I have to do is click my VegOut iPhone application and voila! we get a listing of the nearest vegetarian restaurants. I love that I can customize the program to only find me vegan or vegetarian and not “vegetarian friendly” as Avi and I, because of the kosher thing, won’t eat where meat and milk are served.  Besides, I don’t eat any meat and Avi will not eat non-Kosher meat. 

So, there we were buying some sunglasses at REI and I clicked my trusty iPhone app and discovered that just around the block was a Vegan Chinese place called Bean Sprouts, so we went for it.

As we entered the first thing we noticed was that the majority of customers were older Chinese folks speaking Chinese. We also noticed the place was cute and clean.  The “specials” board was written in only Chinese. this was a good sign as we weren’t getting the ‘same ole same ole’ Thai Vegan.  As we perused the menu we discovered that this place had almost all very traditional dishes. 

As we both ordered two items each it didn’t occur to us that this was going to be a place that does everything in family size…oops.  I went crispy fried chicken which was fried with basil. The crispy fried basil was so good. The chicken was about the closest thing we’ve had vegan that is similar to KFC! It was so freaking good and seasoned amazingly.  I also ordered Won Tons in Hot and Spicy Sauce. These wontons were delish! They were spicy and filled with water chestnuts, tofu, and mushrooms.  Avi ordered the hot and sour soup which unfortunately was the only thing we didn’t really care for. He also ordered  fried rice with soy ham. The ham was tasty though in general I don’t do ham. I only had one bite.  The nice thing was that this was not some unhealthy fried rice but rather very traditional white rice with carrots, peas and ham. 

All in all we enjoyed our meal. If you’re ever out the Arcadia way, definitely check it out.

During Sukkot I like to wear this necklace.  I long forgot the artist’s name but after some clever Googling I found the artist’s site.  This special Sukkot design is part of the Images From Galilee collection by Israeli artist Angie Olami.  It’s really unique and lovely.  My chain is different and I don’t have the earrings but other than that mine is identical to the picture here.  In my research I discovered another reason I like this artist besides her beautiful work, SHE’S GREEN!

As of July, 2007, the sterling silver used in all Angie Olami’s jewelry collections is 93% recycled (alloys, which comprise 7% of sterling cannot yet come from recycled materials). We are very proud of this fact and hope you will share it with your customers.

Angie Olami has also launched a new collection for Fall 2007 which, in addition to the recycled materials above, also uses recycled component parts from electronics such as computers and radios: hi-tech motherboards and transistors provide a striking contrast to the Ancient roman Glass. The Collection is called TOTALLY GREEN and is already being featured in many websites and fine galleries across the United States.

So, go check out some cool jewelery.

A food that is being consumed more and more on Sunday mornings in our home is Shakshouka (Shakshuka).  Shakshouka is a Middle-Eastern egg and tomato dish. It is a staple of Yemeni, Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian and Israeli cuisine ^{(Wikipedia.org).} Shakshouka is an amazingly easy to make meal with amazing flavors that pop when you devour them.  Here’s how I do it:

These are the required ingredients.  Lots of fresh veggies and a little spice.

Slice the onions and dice the 2 garlic cloves.  Sautee them in olive oil until the onions are translucent.

Dice the bell peppers. I usually use 1 each of red, yellow, orange. Today I had green.

Add the bell peppers to the translucent garlic and onions and saute for 10 minutes or so.

While those are sauteing, dice up 3-4 tomatoes. 

Add the tomatoes and if you like saucy, 1 can of tomato paste.

Now add your spices to taste. I use some Hot Red Paprika and Asian Red Rooster/Sriarcha chili sauce.

Let this saute till bubbly, then reduce heat and let saute apx. 15 minutes until the tomatoes are soft and saucy.

With the back of a spoon make indentations in the sauce and pour the eggs in.     

Crack your eggs into small dishes. I use tiny glass bowls that fit one egg each.              

Cover the pan and let the eggs cook until they set. I prefer my eggs well done so I let them cook until the yolks are hard.  If you have high cholesterol, simply pour only the whites in.  Quick note, I’ve tried using EggBeaters and they run. This still tastes great but doesn’t look as nice.  This is what your Shakshuka should look like once done and eggs have set. 

AND VOILA!  I don’t always eat it in a bowl but today it was the easy way to do it.

ENJOY!

The fires in my local mountains are just horrid. The air is putrid. The sky is the color of dusty, dry dirt. I’m about 15 miles from the nearest fire which is pretty close air wise; not in any danger of course. I shot these pics with my new iPhone. Not sure the phone has  zoom so these aren’t great but you’ll get the idea. The thing that blows my mind is that this fire has created it’s own weather causing pyrocumulus clouds!

The sun in the morning with  fire particles abound, looks like a UFO!

Pyrocumulus clouds from afar

I am trying to slowly wrap my brain around school. I get SO lazy over summer. I have not done anything super brain stimulating.  Look, you can even tell by my writing.  In the process of trying to get ready to ‘get ready’ I Googled my school and came up with some wonderful shots found online. I also tried to check our API scores but those aren’t available until next month. As a brand new school that has been open just one year, those scores are surely going to guide and define us this year. Another thing I did was take a trip to Staples. I bought a calendar to do some planning, some clipboards, pens for grading, and supply boxes for group work.  I haven’t yet begun to do the real meaty part of planning, but it’s a start.

I’m excited and wary of the new year. LAUSD is a mess. Our school is set up in Small Learning Communities (SLC) and my SLC which is a STEM (Science Technology Engineering & Medicine) Academy has voted to become a Pilot School.  The model comes out of the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE).  It was a big deal to do this and took much planning, proposal writing, and a 2/3 vote amongst teachers and 50% of parents who attended the meetings regarding Pilot Schools.  I’m wary because the district has pink slipped one of our 3 English teachers which directly affects me. We also lost our counselor and I’m not sure she’s been replaced. We lost our AP too but thankfully they rescinded her pink slip.  To add to that chaos we have another 3 or 4 new teachers to what was becoming a tight team in the first year. In some ways it feels like we are starting over.

Some things to be excited for? Seeing my students again. Not having to follow the district’s mandated curriculum since as a Pilot school we have autonomy over curriculum and of course are still held to the state standards. With this freedom comes a ton of responsibility and planning which I’ve yet to do. I’m excited to see the fruits of our first year’s labors.

There are other exciting things starting in the fall, first and foremost being my starting Grad school!  I wasn’t planning on getting in as the GRE was required and I took the GRE fully cold turkey. I swear to you, I didn’t study at all. I skimmed the GRE book for tips but that’s it.  I scored so terribly low in math, like the bottom 10% that I was sure I was not getting into the program. To top that off, my English was above the median score but not by much. My writing was a 5 which I am pleased with. Needless to say, when I got the acceptance message I was floored and freaking out.

I’ll be doing a Masters in Education Technology through SDSU. If you want to look it up, the program is called COMET. This is a distance ed program geared at teachers who are working full time. I think I can pull this off. Two courses a semester from home including video conferences (I think), message boards, and the like. The program is set up in cohorts which should help me out a lot because I don’t do well working in isolation. One of the most exciting things is that my Graduate Advisor is a person I know, a person I respect, and the person who introduced me to blogging over five years ago now: Bernie Dodge will be my advisor.  This will be a good motivation for me as well because I respect him and do not want to let him down.

So…that’s what’s up here.  Below are some pics of where I teach. Enjoy. I did not take these and did fail to post the sources (I’m a bad English teacher).

The view from most of our school, including the football field, is the Hollywood sign. Living here it’s easy to forget what a strong symbol this is to so many of you in other areas.

This photo is taken from our upper quad. The photographer used a wide angle because that concrete area below sure looks larger than it really is. You can see the Hollywood Hills in the background.

This is another seemingly wide angle lens shot of our lunch area. It’s big but not THIS big.

Our library really is beautiful, again, the wonders of a wide angle lens.

This pic is obvious, the only thing is that all last year the pool was empty due to a leak or crack. There was some legal fight to have them redo it. I wonder if they have fixed the pool over the summer. The building behind it is our athletic area.

Avi and I finally went for a nice ride on Sunday. First we had to load the bikes on the car, only our second time doing it and this time we were taking the freeway. Bikes w ere fine. The rack we bought on Craigslist is just fine except that it was missing two loose straps so we picked some up at REI.  We headed WAY out to Manhattan beach but since I didn’t really know where to start exactly, we did a bit of driving around and then had to look for parking.

We rode for 8 miles with two short stops. One to eat a banana, one to eat a snow cone . That South Bay trail is really really nice though my husband does not enjoy having to drive 40 minutes each way (including looking for parking) in order to ride for an hour or hour and a half.
I can’t blame him. LA is a crazy big crowded city, but we do have a ton of gems. 

We did good considering how bad both of us have been to get out on our loved but neglected bikes. I’m not feeling bad about 8 miles, it’s a great start!

Today, Tuesday, we stayed local.  We loaded the car with our bikes for the less than ten minute drive to the tennis courts at Griffith Park. We parked our car there then rode over to the LA River Bike Path. This is such a neat spot and so close.  The LA River was once a river, now it’s a cross of beautiful nature surrounded by concrete and freeway. It’s a trick to  the senses.

We rode 8.2 miles today. Today was harder than Sunday. Partly, I think, because coming back we were going directly against the wind, not to mention the freeway traffic creates it’s own wind.  But I persevered and did it. The bike bridge was tough going up, but did it twice. 

I’ve been back from the cruise for just over a week now.  I learned that although I may have little in common with my family, they are pretty good people.  I also learned that I will likely never take  a self imposed cruise.  It’s just not really for me.  I’m not one who lays out in the sun day in day out. I don’t really gamble with the exception of giving myself a ten or twenty dollar budget to play some slot machines to kill time after dinner.  The evening shows were fun but nothing you’d find me at if I were back home.  The Vegas style music shows were just o.k. in my opinion.  There was a hypnotist/comedian who was fun. I found myself very very skeptical during his first show. A couple days later he did an adult show and man was that FUNNY.  I’m not a big time drinker. Sure, I had a few drinks on the cruise, but that’s because I was on a cruise!  

The particular ship I was on is a bit older and smaller than other ships.  It had one pool that was filled with kids.  The pool was freezing from what I’m told. The hot tubs, which should be for adults, were piled high with kids every moment of every day.  Mini-golf was on the upper deck, that’s fun but for how long can you mini golf on a 5 night cruise? There was a basketball and volleyball court but again, no thanks. I like volleyball but with the teens fighting for that space and the heat…There were a couple of ping pong tables and a giant chess board.  Of course there were a few different lounges that had random games and activities throughout the week.  I went to Name that Tune once, got 15 out of 18 right.  Another time they had the Captains Cocktail Party. I of course went to that because the cocktails were free.  There was a showing of a short animated movie that Disney collaborated with Salvador Dali on. That was actually pretty interesting. I took one of my nephews to that.  I watched an ice sculpture and dropped in on a class that taught you how to make animal shapes out of towels. Campy!  Each night our steward made some sort of animal on our beds, cute!

Ports. Our first port was Cabo San Lucas. Although it’s very pretty and pristine there, I wasn’t super impressed. Cabo didn’t really FEEL like Mexico.  Sure there was a downtown “centro” where there were vendors you could bargain with, but other than that it’s very new and Western.  15 of the 19 family members on the trip decided to swim with the dolphins. This cost $100 per person ($160 if booked through the cruise).  I have always dreamed of swimming with dolphins, but not like this. The facilities are sort of small. They have ten dolphins. They do the swimming activities 8 per group and 4 groups go at a time in the 4 corners of the tank.  NO THANKS!  My family went in two groups. I watched the first group then decided to go off with one of my brother in laws to the downtown area. He wanted to visit his favorite cigar shop, Hemingways. Afterwards I went off on my own to find some bargains on my own.  I’ve been to Puerto Vallarta and THAT feels like Mexico, Cabo, not so much.

Our second port was Ensenada. None of us booked any shore excursions through the ship but  as we shuttled over to the downtown area, a bunch of us paid $15 to get shuttled to La Bufadora. THIS felt like Mexico.  It was actually really beautiful and amazing. The nature was great and the small shops and vendors made it feel more authentic. 

All in all the trip was good. It was special to spend quality time with family as we’re not always super close. Having breakfast and dinners together were some of the highlights.  I shared a cabin with two nieces which went well thankfully.  I was really really ready to come home and it took me a couple of days to stop feeling dizzy and to feel rested. 

This past week has been so so hot. I’ve only ridden my bike a couple of times. I’ve run errands with Avi. We took a nice coastal drive last week and sat on the rocks at the ocean and talked for a bit. That was really nice.   Now my bike is getting adjusted and I won’t have it until Wednesday. Hoping to motivate myself to ride it a few times a week if only this heat would let up some.

I’ll keep it brief. 

Cruise.

20 family members.

No cheap internet access.

Won’t have my laptop.

Sharing cabin with a 6th grader and a 10th grader. (which I’m not complaining about, that might be the most fun!).

Plan on trying to work out each day (twice if possible -Yeah, I really need it. ‘

Should be fun and interesting. Hoping I like it more than I’m thinking as I am more of an explorer than a sit in front of a pool, my cellulite hanging out, tanning .  I do have a couple books to take along: Girl Meets God and The Color of Water. I’ll likely grab some magazines too.