Stitchery Dell

A no-sew hair-clip tidy

2011-09-30T12:31:00.000+02:00

Premise: my daughter's hair-clips and elastics were jumbled together in a box, and the resulting mess was a source of conflict.
I needed a quick and easy way to organise them all. I didn't want to do much or any sewing.
Even though I loved the idea of making a caddy which would hang over a coat hanger - we don't like making holes in the wall, and I would have nowhere to hang it.
I didn't want to spend much or any money.

Result: A stand-up polystyrene board cut to size, covered in fabric, with attached ribbons. Cost: zero. Time taken: half an hour.

Materials needed:

A piece of polystyrene board (or cork board, which was my original plan, but couldn't find any).

A ruler, cutter, pen, a fat quarter (a nice piece of quilting cotton), some ribbons, and some drawing pins and sewing pins.

Instructions: Measure the polystyrene or cork board to the size you want. Mine is 30 cm x 35 cm, because I want it to fit in the cupboard.

Cut out the board. Vacuum up all the millions of tiny polystyrene balls which go everywhere as you cut. Perhaps a hot wire would have worked better, but I didn't have one to hand.

Iron your piece of fabric, then lay the board on the wrong side of the fabric, and begin pinning. Pull the fabric taut so it is neat and tidy on the right side.

Endevour to make nice, neat and tidy mitred corners, but don't worry too much! No-one is going to see them.

Ta-dah! One covered board....now for the ribbons.

Cut your ribbons to size, tie a knot in the end or cut on the bias to stop the unravelling. Pin them to the board. Then take a wider piece and cover the tops of the ribbons with it. I used long sewing pins to pin this piece to the sides of the board.

I then at a loss, as I realised I had nowhere for the elastics...a few bead-headed sewing pins (long, quilter's pins), fixed that problem. You might come up with something a little prettier...I was working with what I had on hand.

And voilà! The finished product, with all hair-clips and elastics neatly arranged and ready to go.

Six Month Veganniversary!

2011-07-20T11:38:00.000+02:00

Well, about 6 months and two weeks really, but who is counting? We're celebrating by having dessert for lunch today, and I'm finally inspired to blog about it. A Flylady/Facebook friend of mine put me onto a recipe for a "zucchini apple pie" filling (from http://allrecipes.com). We have a zucchini glut (of course - Italy, July, what else?). I happened to have some store-bought wholemeal pastry in the fridge (for those of you in Italy, I use Buitoni Pasta Sfoglia Rustica, which is accidentally vegan). Only enough for bottom crust though, so the idea for Strudel came about.

I turned the pie filling into a strudel filling by adding 3 tbsp pinenuts, 6 chopped, pitted dates, 3 tbsps soaked sultanas and 2 tbsps breadcrumbs. I wrapped the whole lot in the pastry, and baked it at 200°c for 30 minutes (brushed the top with soy milk, first). And it came out like this:

When I cut into it, it looked like...STRUDEL!

And with soy icecream on top, it looked like...DESSERT!!

YUM YUM!!

Happy 6 month veganniversary to me :-)

Pre-school ESL...breakthrough moment.

2011-04-20T21:36:00.001+02:00

This blog purports to be about teaching English in Italy, but I haven't blogged about that for such a long time. Mainly because it is all just ticking over right now. And because everything is taking a backseat to the Delta (exam June 1 - beginning to think in terms of "countdown").

The biggest buzz is from my pre-school class at the moment. It's all come together so well this year (compared with last year's mad scrabble around for inspiration). My basic lesson plan is always the same, but I choose to emphasis different aspects each time, working on building their vocabulary and giving them usable chunks of language. A lesson of one and a half hours (with anywhere from 16 through to 28 kids) goes something like this.

Take the roll - they answer "Yes" to their names.
Count the kids, out loud, going around the class (yes, they can count past 20 now).
Use genkienglish.net warm-up song (action version), What's Your Name song, Hello, How Are You song, to get them singing, moving, laughing, having fun.

Read a story book. So far we've "done" "Mrs Wishy-Washy's Farm" (success), "Animal Boogie" (near success), "Watch Out, Big Bro's Coming" (fail), Ten In The Bed (huge success), and today I introduced "Are You My Mother?"...

Move into Wiggle Time. We use the Wiggles songs a lot. Their favourites are Five Little Ducks (be warned, if you use the live version, with Captain Feathersword crying his eyes out, expect hysterical laughter from the kids), Here Comes A Bear, Captain Feathersword (the Pirate Dance), and Rock-a-Bye-Your-Bear.

Once we're all Wiggled out, we move on a DVD of children's songs which I've had forever.CYP Best songs from this are Open Shut Them, Teddy Bear Teddy Bear, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Heads Shoulders, Insy Winsy Spider, If You're Happy and You Know It, and to my great surprise, Tommy Thumb!

And THAT is where today's breakthrough came from.

I like Tommy Thumb in that it teaches two very usable chunks - Where is X? and Here I am! I'm never sure of the actual uptake in the class - they usually learn something VERY different from what I think I'm teaching! So today while I was reading "Are You My Mother?", and we got to the part where the baby bird says "Here I am, Mother!" and one of my students sang "Here I am, Here I am", I wanted to sing and dance and cry all at the same time! A very exciting moment...

And after all the singing and dancing (of the lesson plan, I mean), I hand out a worksheet which has some tie-in with the lesson. Today I tried to move towards literacy, by giving the 5/6 year olds a tracing writing sheet, the 4/5 yr olds a "letter a" writing sheet (trace, copy, and fill in the space with "a"), and the 3/4 yr olds a colouring sheet with the same theme (family words). Hard to tell how that went, although I noticed that one of my "problems" was thrilled by it! He doesn't usually participate in the colouring, so perhaps he's telling me that he's really wanting to be challenged. Something to think about for next time.

When I think back three years ago, and how terrified I was at the idea of teaching young and very young learners, I have to smile...can't laugh yet, because there is still so much for me to learn, but I'm so glad I said yes to giving it a chance.

A Sunday morning walk in the Italian spring sunshine

2011-04-17T09:55:00.000+02:00

I took advantage of a quiet Sunday morning (early start thanks to my lovely full-of-energy kiddies), and went for a walk in the spring sunshine. There were so many flowers (wild and otherwise) that I couldn't resist taking a few photos. And then I thought that perhaps some people are still in winter, or heading into winter, or could just use a little colour...so here they are! Plus a few general views for orientation.

A view of San Michele from La Vignetta

The path in front of me as I wander, singing

Olive trees, because they are all around

A lone poppy - it must be nearly ANZAC Day

Remembering...

Bobbing peony roses

Little yellow roses on a wall

Pretty pink flowers against a wall

More olives and distant hills

I think I will come back to this post in the dead of next winter, just for a breath of freshness and colour.

My first short story.

2011-04-16T17:52:00.000+02:00

Two years ago, I wrote my first short story (as a grown-up, that is...), as a Christmas present for a friend. I also entered it in a competition. Although it didn't win, I still feel a small thrill whenever I read it. And I think it is time to share it :-)

I hope you enjoy it. I love feedback on my writing, so if you have any constructive comments, they would be much appreciated (positive or negative!).

Northern Skies

An original short story

Jo Gillespie

Dedicated to Jo K., a person who personifies faith and optimism,

and who is a very dear friend.

Merry Christmas.

I’ve been back in London all of thirty minutes, and I’m already remembering some of the why I left. We’re stuck in a motionless train under south London. The smell of the plane trip hangs around me. The shower I had in Beth’s dingy Sydney bathroom is a thirty-hour old memory, and although I sprayed copious amounts of the latest Giorgio Armani parfum pour femme all over me in Duty Free, I’m uncomfortably aware that at least some of my fellow passengers are not enjoying sharing this trip with me.

And although I’m not the only one with luggage, my overstuffed rucksack seems to be more offensive than anyone else’s. I’ve tried to tuck the straps away, but more than one person has managed to trip over them, all the same. I’ve said “sorry” more in this half hour than in the last six years altogether.

Six years ago, I left for a gap year. Running away so fast from my life in London. Running from my in-each-others’-pockets family. We’d lost our way after burying my father much too soon. They’d let me run, though. In those six years, I’d missed my sister’s wedding, and the birth of her first three children. I’d missed one brother’s graduation from Law School, and the other’s growing success as a chef. I’d missed witnessing my grandfather’s slow slide into dementia. Those were events, though. I’d been too busy enjoying a million adventures Sydney-side to miss anything else.

It’s the twenty-fourth of December. As we pulled away from station under Heathrow Airport, the carriage was mainly taken up with fellow travelers, tourists, or locals returning home, like me. I wonder briefly how many have been away for as long as me. I’m the only one with a tan. So my guess is, even if they’ve been away longer, they haven’t been as far. I want to feel smug for being such a great adventurer, but remind myself that I’m now back for good. I feel slightly ill.

Four stations on from the airport, the carriage is now jammed full, most people carrying one or more pretty paper or plastic bags, advertising where they’ve done their Christmas shopping. My gifts are taken care of, thanks to kangaroo, koala and boomerang shaped key-rings. Thanks, Sydney Airport. I want to sink my head in my hands, but resist.

The temperature is rising in the stalled train, and people are starting to shed their layers. Out in the open air of London, it’s probably three degrees, and people are wrapped up to ward off that above-ground chill. I’m glad I had the foresight to stow my jacket before catching the train, but I’m still over-heating in my zip-up sweatshirt, which bears the logo of the Sydney Olympics.

Six years in a warm and friendly outpost of Britain’s former glory, and I’ve forgotten, or lost, that hard London edge. I make eye contact with a business type, his orange and blue tie chosen to make a statement. A smile crosses my lips, but he scowls.

‘What you looking at?’

‘Just that advert above your head.’ I pretend to be fascinated by the ad for Life Insurance, wondering how such a professional-seeming gent could be so rude. Bad morning at the office, I guess. Or maybe this stalled train is making him late for a million pound meeting. I turn to look out the window into the darkness of the tunnel.

The carriage is too quiet for my comfort. I can hear myself think too loudly. Conversations which could be carried out safely, masked by the noise of the engine, have drifted into silence, and now no-one speaks. I suddenly wish I’d agreed to Tony’s offer. I could be cruising in his yacht off Sydney Harbour by now, heading away to see the world. Standing by a handsome man. Adventures waiting for us over every sea we travel. Trouble is, I’m done with that now. My sense of adventure has deserted me.

The train suddenly starts to move, and there is confusion as people struggle to keep their balance. Mr Orange-Tie falls against the pole he was hanging onto, and swears, but we’re in England, and no-one else makes a fuss.

As we pass through the stations along the line, the crowd changes, swells, thins. Too soon for me, the train pulls into the station I’ve been waiting for, and dreading. Thirty-one hours after leaving the burnt acid blue of a southern hemisphere sky, I’m blinking up the dull grey of that of the north, the Christmas shoppers oblivious to the drizzle. The smell of fried chicken mingles with exhaust from the Turnpike Lane traffic, and I’m jostled off to the side of the pavement. I’ve made the wrong decision. London is hell.

Right now, Beth, Tony, Amy and Craig would be sleeping up on the open deck, being rocked gently by the swell of the ocean. They’re leaving tomorrow. First stop, Auckland. Then they’re doing the Pacific Islands.

I’m being rocked by the irritation of strangers. It’s my rucksack. They think that I don’t know where I’m going, but I do. This street leads to my family. I’m going home. My family just don’t know it yet. I push myself out into the stream of pedestrians, and point my feet towards the place I grew up.

The crowds thin out as I leave the shopping streets, and hit the residential zone. My shoulders are screaming at me, telling me what I already know – I should have left more stuff in Sydney. I should have left myself there. I stop at Number 24. Grandma and Granddad’s house. Before Granddad passed away. The letterbox is still the same, and I touch it for luck, before walking on, walking to Number 32.

There used to be orange curtains in my room, overlooking the street. Now they’re green. I hate green. The downstairs lights are on, so someone must be home. As I open the gate, I notice my hands are shaking. Tired shoulders. The anxious knot in my stomach doesn’t let me lie to myself. At this point, I am sure I should have stayed in Australia, and put this moment off for another year or four. The three steps to the front door seem to take a year, but before I’m ready, my traitorous hand has snaked out and rung the bell.

There’s a clatter of small feet, and a pixie opens the door. A suspicious pixie, who frowns up at me. We stare at each other because the pixie doesn’t know me at all, and because I can’t figure out which of my sister’s children is hiding under that floppy green hat. We’re saved by the pixie’s mother, who comes waddling down the hallway.

‘Fergus, who is it? I’ve told you not to open the door without asking who it…Holy Mary, Mother of God. It’s your Aunty Isabel.’

I’m engulfed in my sister’s warm arms before I can say a word, my rucksack getting stuck in the doorway as I’m pulled inside.

‘Mum! Paul! Issy’s back! Oh, Gran’s going to have another heart attack at this. You’re soaked right through. You should have called. Mike could have picked you up, for sure.’

The offending pack gets dumped in the hallway, to drip all alone on the doormat. The pixie who, as it turns out, is my sister’s youngest child (but not for long, judging by the size of my sister’s belly), skips ahead of us, singing Jingle Bells for good measure. The twenty-fourth. Lunch. A family tradition that I’d forgotten. Everyone is going to be in the kitchen. I wonder if they’ll be able to make room for one more. An almost-stranger now.

We enter, and as I look at the over-loaded table, and the crowd of faces, showing various expressions of shock, surprise and happiness, I remember. And I realize.

This is not the wrong decision. This is the right decision for me, right now. I’m not a stranger. This is my family and home is where I need to be. I pull up a chair, and Mum places a plate in front of me, and squeezes my shoulder.

‘It’s good to have you back, Isabel. Merry Christmas.’

The end

Entertaining and Eating Out - two new experiences.

2011-03-23T14:57:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday was a VERY special day. An old friend from my AFS Turkiye days (1988-89!), who makes amazing chocolates on a small island in Maine (blackdinahchocolatiers) was visiting Italy with her husband and two friends...two VEGAN friends! Via facebook, we organised to meet, which in the end turned out to be lunch at mine. First time entertaining since becoming vegan. I was VERY excited. And in my focus on "cooking for friends, cooking for vegans" I forgot to worry about the "cooking for a chef" part! Oops!

Our menu was as follows:

Bruschetta - plain garlic, olive patè, artichoke patè

Wholemeal pennette with Puttanesca sauce

Roast potato and parsley pesto salad

Beetroot and Blood Orange salad

Carrot and Sesame Salad

Leek and Mushroom Quiche (which was a bit of a disaster! I made the filling with soy cream, but didn't add enough cornflour and it didn't set. I ended up scooping out the filling into a pot, stirring in more cornflour and cooking it until it thickened, then pouring it back into the pie crust! - it still tasted ok-ish).

For dessert we had soy icecream (store-bought), with homemade vegan chocolate sauce (which was a crazy choice, considering I was cooking for a Chocolatier! Eek! However, she declared it delicious - I think I had VERY polite lunch guests ;-) )

It was a real pleasure entertaining as a vegan, and cooking for vegans. The discussion about the whys and wherefores was interesting as well.

That was Thursday, and on Saturday I had another first. First time eating out as a vegan. I planned ahead. Luckily in Italy, because they generally cook from scratch in restaurants, instead of cook chill which is common in some places, as a vegan you can ask chef to leave out things, or change things around a bit. It helped that the friends I was dining with know the restaurant owners, too! There was much hilarity as I tried to explain what I DO eat (everything EXCEPT that which comes from animals...yes, that means honey, too), and in the end, I had a very satisfying and delicious meal!

Bruschetta with olive and tomato
Borlotti beans with porcini mushrooms (to die for! Honestly!)
Hand-rolled spaghetti with simple tomato sauce.
Fruit salad for dessert.

Perfect :-)

And to top off the week, I just discovered a recipe for the best hummus I've ever made!

http://vegweb.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=ec11327653c032bd93cf02b2c39d7b56&topic=18020.0

Challenge Fail!

2011-03-13T21:31:00.000+01:00

Sorry. It's one thing becoming vegan (which was so much easier than I expected it to be). It's a whole other thing trying to get a very unfit 40 year old body into REAL exercise every day...
I started so well, but fizzled on Thursday. That was a given, really, because of teaching from 8 until 5, with lots of driving in there too. You may remember that I'd done double duty (exercise-wise) on Wednesday...well, my knees really let me know what they thought about THAT on Thursday. So I decided my sprint from car to school to car to school to high school to school to car was plenty. Then there was some excuse (like needing to work on the DELTA) on Friday which stopped me, then I examined for PET/FCE most of the day Saturday, and it rained today. (Nobody mention the orbital trainer upstairs in the warm and dry...).
So I've failed.
Bummer.
And I'd love to say ... well, I'll just jump back in tomorrow...but I think we all know THAT isn't going to happen. I'll stick with the vegan challenge, and passing the DELTA with more than just a pass (ha ha ha), and perhaps in the summer time, will be more movement-inclined. Ho-hum...

wow - day five already...

2011-03-09T21:20:00.001+01:00

The flab is losing its sag! I can feel it, even if no-one can notice. Got up at 6 a.m. again, and shuffled downstairs to do the GAG routine (I LOVE the fact that Bums, Tums and Thighs turns into GAG in Italian - Glutei, Abdome e some other large muscle group which starts with G...gambe? maybe...) Anyhoo...did it. Took 30 minutes. Felt good...but not enough. Uh-oh...addiction kicks in around Day Five maybe?

I taught at the pre-school - much better today (relatively speaking...). Lots of Wiggles, including their favourite song. Rockabye Your Bear - it never gets old. Love the dance. I'm thinking end-of-year recital with all my little cherubs...even though I know it is NEVER going to happen!

So after that, I decided it was time to try out the vegan sponge cake with "butter-cream" icing. I used margarine (vegan) in the icing. I've never cared for margarine, and being vegan isn't enough to make me like it. However, the fact that it tastes more or less like Italian butter (which always smells and tastes rancid to me) makes the whole icing thing acceptable to all those in this family. In fact, as I write, at 9.15 p.m., there is one small, sad slice of cake left on the plate in the fridge. That's a good result in my book!

Dinner was also a success. My first try with TVP , and it turned out very well. Tasty, chewy, wonderful food for a cold evening. I boiled it for 15 minutes, then let it drain (I had a few hours. Usually you just squeeze the extra moisture out). I sautéed an onion and a leek, then added the TVP, let that sizzle for four minutes, added garlic, diced potatoes and carrots, some shoyu (1 tbsp), and a tbsp of tomato paste, then covered the lot with enough boiling water to cook the vegies...left it until they were down. Turned into a really comforting stew. I'm impressed! Served with broccoli and mushrooms, and my work here is done. Which is good, because I'm in the throes of planning for tomorrow's seven hours of teaching children of various ages...

Oh yes....after lunch and before afternoon lessons, I ALSO fitted in a 30 minute walk/run around my village. 3.13km of uphill/downhill. On the off-chance that I don't feel like the orbital trainer tomorrow evening after all that teaching, I'm going to consider that I'm one-up.

Still doing it

2011-03-08T20:12:00.001+01:00

I got up at 6a.m. again, and did another 25 minutes on the orbital trainer. It was tough - it really is the blog that keeps me to it! How odd. Remembering to take the iphone (with podcasts) upstairs before going to bed helped! Very interesting podcasts on ten odd animals in history - only listened to the first five, so will listen to the other five next time I'm on board.
I also walked from my car to school and back - which granted, only takes seven minutes, but that is 14 minutes in total. It counts, right?
And when I got home from work, Miss 7 reminded me that she REALLY needed a new exercise book, otherwise there was NO WAY she could do her homework...
Which necessitated a walk down to the village shop and back up. Add another 10 minutes to today's total, and it is starting to look pretty good.

Also discovered that, given the fact that our one and only bar/coffee shop in San Michele just closed down, the men all now hang out in the shop. It was packed (well, packed for SM) - there were five men in there, gas-bagging. I love my village.

Vegan round-up - pasta and vegies for lunch, minestrone with beans and silverbeet in it for dinner, followed by my vegan Peaches and Cream - the cream was made from ground almonds - tasty, but not creamy enough. They were too gritty to have the same mouth-feel as whipped cream. I will keep on hunting.

If you based your opinion of my teaching ability...

2011-03-07T12:49:00.000+01:00

on today's lesson at the pre-school, you'd probably think "What the HECK is this person doing teaching kids?" What a disaster! Thank goodness I've had some wonderful lessons with this group recently, because otherwise I'd chuck in the towel RIGHT now!

Some comments I've had recently from the kids (in Italian) are "The English teacher is just so lovely." "English is really FUN!" and "The English teacher is really FUN and LOVELY!" - so I'm taking that to mean I'm doing something right (Thanks to Genki English!)
But discipline really is an issue. I know it isn't just me - both the PE teacher AND the Religion teacher are having problems, but today was diabolical. Let's blame it on the wind! - it is blowing a gale, and the sun is shining, so it is a Mad March kind of day.

What to do about a little one who does roundhouse kicks, followed by punches and slaps to anyone he can reach? Same fellow only stays in his chair for about two seconds at a time - and only gets out of his chair to kick and punch...today the teacher left the room, and there was an all-out brawl! I feel very ineffectual at moments like that, because even if I speak in Italian, they just won't listen, and won't stop. I can't even catch the fellow to put him in the Time-Out chair - not that he'd stay there.

I think I need some advice, but the teachers tell me I'm doing well (????) - today it doesn't feel like it.

______________________________________________________

If I wasn't vegan, I'd ask for some cheese with that WHINE! ;-)

On a brighter note, I hauled my comfortably-sized behind out of bed at 6 a.m., and did my Aerobics Arms DVD for 30 minutes! Today's challenge - TICK. I didn't want to do the orbital trainer today for two reasons...one is that my leg muscles were telling me they'd quite like a rest, and the second was that I didn't have my phone upstairs - no podcast = very boring workout = high likelihood of stopping after 10 minutes...

I can feel my triceps. :-)

Day Two of the Exercise Challenge.

2011-03-06T20:22:00.000+01:00

We woke up too late to go to the mountain. I wasn't very sad about that - it meant I could fit in my 20 minutes on the Orbital Trainer before my shower. While pedalling away I try to increase my brain power (or at least my ability to answer pub quizzes!) by listening to podcasts from the lovely folks at Stuff You Missed In History Class and Stuff You Should Know. Today I learned all about quicksand - even though many old movies (and some not so old - Hi, Indie!) would like us to believe differently, it is actually fairly unlikely a human would die in quicksand - it usually just isn't deep enough. :-)
I needed to know that.
Yesterday I learned all about Richard the Lionheart - dreadful administrator, genius at war, which is why he spent most of his rule either crusading, or beating up on his should-have-been-father-in-law Phillip of France. Great fun - keeps me pedalling, otherwise I'd give up after 8 minutes (that's my boredom threshold limit for orbital trainer).

To make up my exercise regime to thirty minutes (you know the drill - "moderate exercise, thirty minutes at a time, three times a week, blah blah"), I vacuumed vigorously and washed the floors feverishly - it ended up adding another twenty minutes to my regime - bonus!

Legs - sore.
Knee - complaining.
Feeling - pumped :-)

And menu, because after all, this started as a vegan challenge, and morphed...
Lunch was the standard wholemeal pasta with herby tomato sauce, and dinner was a wonderful soup - thanks to my Dutch friend Arja for the suggestion!

Small onion
2 leeks
2 potatoes
4 carrots
1 celeriac bulb
250gr split green peas
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste

I sautéed the onion and leeks in a little olive oil, then added the chopped vegies (diced), and garlic. Sweated them awhile, then added the washed peas (I didn't soak them), salt and pepper, and covered with 2 litres of water (which I had to top up later). Brought it slowly to the boil, and then let it simmer for an hour. I pureed mine, because I prefer a creamy soup. Served with nutritional yeast - delish! Hubby had his chunky, and also pronounced it "delish" - or rather, his seal of approval - a shrug and a "You could make it again." :-)

Another update

2011-03-05T21:06:00.000+01:00

I guess I knew that this would happen - once the challenge ended, so did the blogging. I AM still vegan, though, and we've still been eating well, as my ever-expanding behind proves. I thought I would share a few new photos of some of our more interesting meals. And then I thought I'd share my NEW 30 day challenge idea...

Grilled eggplant with parsley

vegie burgers made with okara, carrots, zucchini and rolled oats

ugly looking but normal tasting home-made tofu

Samosa-stuffed pastie. Fine! VERY FINE!

Still my fave from Veganomicon - seitan with brussel sprouts, kale and sundried tomatoes.

And the new challenge is (mostly to get me blogging again!) -
Building exercise into every day for 30 days. I'm enjoying my food too much, and it is showing. Spring is in the air, and with that, the desire to shed what I am kindly calling my winter weight...
So, as my diet is probably not going to change much (trying to keep up with calorie intake, plus vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, protein, etc etc...), my exercise regime MUST change.

Today I began with 20 minutes on the orbital trainer. That felt good - made me quite grumpy for the rest of the day, and my sit-down muscles are telling me to go to Hades right now...
Tomorrow might include a trip to the snow - I'll try to make that count.

Wish me luck - I hope to be as successful in THIS new challenge as I was in the last!

Truffles, anyone?

2011-02-19T14:35:00.000+01:00

Flash!!! I remembered that one of the reasons I began blogging about my vegan adventure was to develop a menu plan which I could recycle every four weeks, and never have to worry about meal-planning again. So WHY then, did I find myself at 6 p.m. on a Friday evening, on facebook SPECIFICALLY because I DID NOT know what was for dinner?
I can't answer that question.
However, it did prod me to look over the meals we'd had in the last month, and I managed to put together a passable dinner of Potato Parlsey Pesto Salad, carrot sticks and sautéed mushrooms. Wonderful stuff. My next task is to take all 30 days of Vegan Adventure posts, and actually CREATE the four week menu plan to work from. No problem - sure I can fit that job in somewhere.
Last night I also made Almond Milk in the Vegan Star. The recipe needs tweaking, as the resulting milk is quite runny. It left me with some almond pulp though, and I didn't want to throw it away, so....

Almond and Walnut Truffles

About a cup (maybe less...) of almond pulp
1/3 cup walnut pieces
1/3 cup almonds
1/3 cup sultanas
1tbsp agave syrup
coconut for rolling

Use a food processor to chop up the walnuts, almonds and sultanas. Mix these with the almond pulp and agave syrup. Roll into balls, and roll in coconut. Put in fridge for 1-2 hours. Yummy, and dare I say it?...a little bit FANCY. :-)

Time for a Still-Vegan catch-up post

2011-02-16T21:25:00.000+01:00

Wholemeal pasta with broccoli and herbs

Stir-fried cabbage with miso and cider vinegar

Big fresh mixed salad

Vegan Scalloped potatoes, baby!

And a big pot of lentils.

Well, hi there! It seems like ages...but really, it is just a few days. A few very packed days. However, we're still eating well, and it is still a grand adventure. The best way to catch up is by looking at the above photos. I think the highlight so far has been the scalloped potatoes. Made with vege broth, garlic, herbs and nutritional yeast - it really looks like parmesan on top there, doesn't it? They were so creamy and delicious.

And today, my newest shiny appliance arrived...I've already made the first batch of soy milk. I soaked the soy beans for 4 hours (recipe said 1 hour, but it was dance night!). I wasn't sure how long it was going to take, perhaps an hour or something like that - 25 minutes! It took 25 minutes to make 1.5 litres of creamy soy milk. I'm so excited to try almond milk and rice milk now.
Well...not right now...tomorrow now or the day after tomorrow now, if you get what I mean. NOW now is all about DELTA Assignment Number Five...getting it sent in before midnight.

Night night.

Good food day.

2011-02-11T21:14:00.001+01:00

I was at home, studying today. I finished Assignment/Task Four, and sent it in. Then I made lunch for daughter and me. We had wholemeal pasta with a tomato/cannellini bean sauce.
And I made dinner while I was at it, because I had to take daughter to dentist in the afternoon, do the shopping, run an errand for a friend, AND SEND MY BOOK to the competition (which I did! Great feeling!).
So dinner was grilled eggplant slices, and then I made up a vegetable stew kind of thing.
Olive oil, sautéed two leeks, added some garlic, then added eggplant, diced small, some sliced zucchini, then some sliced mushrooms. I then added some miso, tomato paste, oregano and basil, and some red wine, and let that stew for some time...then added some cooked cannellini beans, put the lid on, and turned off the heat. I reheated it at dinner time. All the flavours had melded, and the texture was wonderful - creamy, tasty, herby, warming. The photo is dreadful ;-) We had that with the grilled eggplant slices, and some Valeriana salad greens (apparently known in English as Lamb's Lettuce) - they were on sale at the market today, and looked so pretty! I just dressed them with a little olive oil...didn't even need salt.
And that was today as it happened...

The other news is that my volcano in Iceland (I say "mine" - I mean the one my book is loosely based on) just started erupting! Which would be super marketing, if my book was ready to be published!
Iceland volcano...again

The first chance I get....

2011-02-10T20:13:00.000+01:00

I'm making THIS!!!! raw blueberry cheesecake (a great blog to visit for recipes. She's amazing!)

Today was a looooooong one! As are all Thursdays - and from the 24th they're going to get so much longer...but I'm not going to think about that just now.

Knowing I'd be home late, and tired, I asked Saint M-I-L to make minestrone for dinner - and she did with a vengance. Lentils, borlotti beans, carrots, silverbeet, potatoes, rice, and all manner of vegan goodness. Followed by lots of fruit (kiwifruit and apples).

Lunch - I was halfway to work when I realised I'd forgotten to make any...which shows where my brain is right now...well, shows that it is AWOL, anyway! So I popped into Café Ripasso before work, and asked the lovely Carlo to have grilled vegies ready at 12.30...and because he's such a sweetie, when I went back at 12.30, not only were my vegies ready and waiting, but he'd ALSO set the table for me! It really made my day. I can't imagine the people at Café Grandori extending the same friendly hand! Yay for Café Ripasso, I say.

That's all, folks. No photos, but we'll get back to them when things calm down a little. I have the day off work tomorrow in order to prepare last part of DELTA Task 4 (due at midnight), so will have a little more time to do something interesting with the vegies I'm going to pick up from the market in the morning - although I do have to take Daughter to dentist in the afternoon, so am not sure WHAT I'm going to make. Watch this space!

I missed a day! That was awful!

2011-02-09T21:16:00.000+01:00

Am now an official blogging addict :-)
I spent some of my yesterday working on the DELTA, some of it working on lesson plans, and the REST of it (until *ahem* 1.45am) EDITING THE BOOK! Finally! The The Clendon Award deadline is fast approaching, and nothing makes me focus more than a looming deadline. Hated not having time for a blog post!

Of course, woke up dazed and confused this morning, checked the fine print, realised what I THOUGHT was meant by "ARC Format" wasn't what it was at all...much cursing and gnashing of teeth, and frantic "well, if I do this, race here, duck over there, and squeeze that in here" - upshot was that I DID NOT GET IT IN THE MAIL today...nor even printed out! I did, however, get it whipped into what I believe is ARC format! I compared it to a published paperback, and it looks pretty similar :-)

Yesterday's meals were great! Still vegan...my m-i-l made pumpkin risotto for lunch, so I nabbed a plate of that (she's very careful to let NO cheese near it now - poor thing, I think she's terrified), and then for dinner, I finally made Veganomicon's chickpea cutlets! Wahoo! They are AWESOME. And as there is a slight snarky note about how the recipe has appeared on blogs all over the 'net, I'm NOT going to be one of them! You'll just have to google ;-)

Don't they look just like schnitzel?
While making the chips, I managed to totally wreck my food processor bowl! I guess one of the spuds was too heavy - the blade buckled, the plate support snapped clean in two, and the plastic bowl cracked all over the bottom, and up the side! Gave me one heck of a fright - luckily, most of the chips were cut. And I can get replacement parts...no-one was injured, and that's the most important thing.

Today - first time I've had lunch at the bar since Day One (thanks, Heather, for making me GET OUT MORE!). Carlo from Cafe Ripasso in Viterbo is such a honey (can I still call people honey now I'm vegan?), and made me a super plate of grilled eggplant and zucchini, with olive oil and garlic (apologies to colleagues at meeting afterwards), and mini bruschette...yummy!

Dinner was the rest of the split pea soup from Monday, which I padded out with wholemeal pasta stars. And lots of fruit to follow. Gotta have that fruit!

Right, back to the DELTA, and lesson planning I go...but relieved in the knowledge that I have finished the book (Novel One, finished first draft, haven't finished editing. Novel Two, haven't finished first draft. Novel Three - contest ready, baby!).

The Thirty Day Vegan Challenge ends here - being a vegan doesn't.

2011-02-07T20:55:00.000+01:00

It's been a very satisfying and educational thirty days. I'd like to start by thanking those readers who have followed the blog, checking in every day, leaving encouraging comments and suggestions on facebook (Leslie, Pea, Rowena, Kate, Ushka, Ken, Cathy and others I may have missed for now), and in person (Anna, Heather, Naomi...) and keeping me honest (and honestly reporting).
Perhaps I entered into this lightly, a little bit tongue-in-cheek, a little bit like making fun of my earlier self (I do remember saying so clearly, when I was a vegetarian, years ago, "Oh, being a vegetarian is easy...but vegan is a full-time job. I couldn't do it!")

Guess what? Being vegan isn't hard work, really. It does take a little planning, perhaps I haven't been at it long enough to really understand all the nutritional side of things yet, and I'm yet to try eating out as a vegan, but it has opened up a whole new vista of cooking, a new way of approaching food, and I'm feeling the love in the kitchen again.

At the beginning I said that I wasn't going to make my kids go vegan, and I stand by that. School lunches are what they are here in Italy, and with me being at work so much, there is no way I can pick them up, take them home, feed them good vegan food, and take them back to school (perhaps if I was a more militant vegan, I'd be marching down to the mensa, DEMANDING a vegan option for my kids...). BUT...I must say that because my attitude towards preparing the evening meal has had a bit of an adjustment, and perhaps because they can see that I'm back to cooking with joy, the children are eating better. That's a fantastic side-effect.

I wish for the last blog post of the 30 day challenge, I had some pretty pictures and a great menu plan. Instead, it was one of those days! A Monday - dance night. Also the day my daughter got her mid year report, which meant a trip to her school and a queue (not for long, luckily).

My lunch was leftover spaghetti puttanesca from yesterday (way too much, but no-one else was going to eat it, and I hated to waste it - and therein lies the main reason for my well-cushioned posterior!), and dinner was supposed to be a flavoursome split-pea soup...and it was, for the children. Hubby and I instead had salad and fruit. I was stuffed full from lunch still. I even managed to fit in a walk between feeding son, and feeding daughter (not my week to take the girls to dance).

Thanks once again for following...not too sure where this blog is going to go now...perhaps I need one more week of menu planning - I always feel better with five weeks instead of four (and I hate to stop blogging!), or perhaps I'll now get back to the teaching/DELTA blog this is technically supposed to be!

Only tomorrow will enlighten us. Until then, thank you again, friends and strangers, for your eyes on this writing. I appreciate your visit here, to Stitchery Dell.

Jo

Day 29...WOW!!!

2011-02-06T20:34:00.000+01:00

One day off completing the 30 day Vegan challenge...but certainly not one day off going back to "normal". Vegan is my NEW NORMAL. There are still some things which need tweaking (one of them being QUANTITY). In the first two weeks, I lost a kilo...in the second two weeks, I put it back on. Looking back over the four week menu plan, I'd say this is because of the amount of grains I started adding (like bread, which I don't usually eat at all), and is probably also due to the amount of sitting and studying I'm doing - no exercise gives Jo a big tummy...

The spring weather seems to have arrived (whether it lasts or not remains to be seen), so I might be able to slip in a few more walks during the week now. I'm thinking of either recording all my notes as a podcast, or else downloading some discourse analysis podcasts, and listening to them while I walk - so I don't feel so guilty about stepping away from the desk.

Okay, on to what we ate and made today.

Breakfast - the usual.
Lunch - the usual for Sunday - wholemeal pasta alla Puttanesca! Yummy as always.
Dinner - I had the left-over left-over pumpkin from yesterday's lunch, reheated, smushed up and spread lavishly on toast! Wonderful...then fruit.

I also made RICE MILK today, after scaring myself by reading too much about soy...I used the recipe from my new favourite blog vegan reader and one cup of rice made A LOT of milk, so I'm hoping I won't be the only one using it.

It's that funny brown colour because I used maple syrup to sweeten it. It isn't too bad, but the real test is coffee tomorrow morning!

And because making rice milk creates nearly 3/4 cup of rice bran (from one cup of rice), it was time to make rice-bran/raisin/oatmeal cookies! And they are wonderful!

You can just SEE the goodness, right?

I feel like tomorrow should be a celebration, but I'm working, then picking up daughter's school report (a two hour mission last year...), so not sure that dinner is going to be out of the ordinary. I'll be dancing in bliss all day though! 30 Days a vegan...

Day 28. That's Four Weeks. Not a month.

2011-02-05T19:03:00.000+01:00

Another Saturday, another wonderful lunch from my mother-in-law, who hasn't realised she's now cooking vegan at the weekend :-) Well, once a weekend, anyway.
We had her wonderful spinach risotto (and I wanted to take a photo, really...) - spinach from our garden, so all the more special. White rice, but hey, let's not rock her boat toooooo much!
Then followed by the (by now standard, but by no means boring!) roast pumpkin, cardi and oven baked potatoes with fennel seeds. Yummy!

For dinner, all I did was re-heat the leftover cardi and pumpkin, and added some beans on the side, dressed with olive oil and garlic smoked salt. Super! The kids had carrot sticks and apple slices instead of the vegies, and also stewed pears for dessert (slightly sweetened with agave syrup, as a special treat).

I feel all virtuous today. The pumpkin looks like a big smile on my plate :-)

Day 27 - still going strong.

2011-02-04T20:02:00.000+01:00

Today was the second seminar for DELTA, so I got up at 5.30, got ready, had my yummy overnight oatmeal (ooops, not so overnight today, because I forgot to put it to soak...), then headed out to catch the train. It was only once I got on the train that I realised I'd forgotten to do anything about lunch! Double oops.

Never mind! The train station Termini in Rome has a lovely little supermarket (Despar) which, owing to its high tourist traffic, stocks all sorts of wonderful things for the hungry vegan. My lunch (on the train on the way back home) was the following: four small mandarins, 2 bananas and a packet of mixed nuts, with a bottle of water. Very fruitarian, I thought, even though a real fruitarian would only have eaten the mandarins, or the bananas...

Tonight I tried to do something with tofu. I cut it into slices (which, in hindsight, were too thin), and marinaded it in a mix of red wine, garlic, sage, basil, olive oil and a touch of shoyu. I turned it after 30 minutes, then left another 30 minutes. Then I laid the slices on a baking sheet, and baked them at 200°c for 20 minutes, turned them and baked them for another 10 (I was working from a recipe...). They tasted quite good, but were very tough - so next time I'll leave thicker slices, and perhaps bake them for less time. I am also going to experiment with different brands of tofu, until I can make my own. (that is for a future post...)

I served it with oven-baked potato wedges (yes, that is a repeat from earlier this week, but they were so good, and the kids asked for them...), and another type of braised kale, this time with spring onions, garlic, zucchini and red wine. Very tasty.

Fruit to finish and that was Day 27. I had a chat with mother-in-law, and she's promised not to put cheese anywhere near the risotto for tomorrow's lunch :-)

Off to write assignments, plan lessons, edit book, and hang out with hubby now...Rugby 6 Nations starts tonight!

Day 26 - A guilty vegan...

2011-02-03T20:39:00.002+01:00

... but only guilty of missing a blog day! I was just so tired last night, all I could do was go to bed...so sorry!

However, I need to fill in the menu-plan gap for my own benefit, so today is almost two for the price of one...almost, but not quite, and I will explain why.

On Tuesday night, I put some beans on to soak. It was a mix of kidney, black, cannellini, and borlotti beans, and I soaked them all together. Yesterday morning, I rinsed them, brought them to the boil, then changed the water, not once, but twice during the cooking time (to avoid socially unacceptable side effects - and I must say it worked!). Then I left them to drain.

(Lunch was spaghetti with a simple herbed tomato sauce and nutritional yeast).

In the evening, I sautéed some spring onions, garlic, diced celery, carrots and zucchini. I added a little miso, then some red wine. Once that had reduced a little, I tipped the beans in, added some tomato paste and a little water, some dried basil and oregano, and let that all simmer. I also made some wholemeal bread, as the carb/comfort on the side. It was a great rib-sticker of a meal for a cold evening.

Today I took the standard pasta, carrot and broccoli mix to work for lunch. There were plenty of beans leftover for hubby and I for dinner tonight (see, two for the price of one!), along with a mixed salad courtesy of mother-in-law (who also made her rabbit stew for the kids. Was I tempted? Only by the green olives she puts in it...I have a tin of green olives in the cupboard, and thought about opening them, but it wasn't worth it...) I think she put in some fresh garlic shoots or spring onion shoots (in the salad I mean) because it was powerful strong! :-) I apologise in advance to all those I must speak with or sit near tomorrow!

I feel like I'm ending the 30 day challenge with a whimper rather than a bang, but I realise that I've learned so much these past four weeks. The most important lesson is that, with planning and a little effort, being vegan is quite easy, very tasty, and hugely satisfying.

...the next four days will decide whether this is a more permanent change ...but I believe it is.

Day 24...

2011-02-01T20:24:00.001+01:00

Menu:
Overnight oatmeal (with ginger for a change, yummy!) - breakfast.
Lunch - kasha (toasted buckwheat) with steamed broccoli and carrots, plus fruit.
Dinner - yummies! Chickpea, olive and sundried tomato salad, oven-baked chips with basil, sage and garlic, and seitan with mushrooms and black curly kale. Fantastic and satisfying meal.

Off to hit the books for DELTA, and edit MY novel....

Week Four, Monday.

2011-01-31T21:38:00.000+01:00

Yep, I'm feeling about as flat as that title, but that has nothing to do with my wonderful new lifestyle choice :-) It's nearly a month, see, and female readers will read between the lines. Even vegans get PMT, it seems :-)

Anyway, I'm well into the swing of DELTA assignments - did I already mention, 18 assignments in 17 weeks? Oh, and it isn't just "write something, hand it in and wait for feedback..." It is "write something, hand it in, read what everyone else has written, give feedback, wait for feedback on both what you've written, and the feedback you gave..." I'm loving it, really :-) Trying to absorb all the terminology so that I can fling it down on the page on June 1, and sound knowledgeably concise ... My 40 year old brain just about wants to tell me what I can do with the DELTA.

Anyway, today's menu. Chaos. I just wanted to mention again, because I haven't for quite some time, my vegan breakfast of choice: Overnight Oatmeal. The wonderful and very tasty cereal I've been eating for years (oh, how I miss the freeze-dried red fruit pieces!) was riddled with dairy, so it had to go! Now I roll my oats before I go to bed, mix them with sunflower seeds, linseeds, sultanas and cinnamon, and pour soy milk over. Put it in the fridge, covered, and in the morning, I give it a stir and add some agave, or maple, or malt syrup for sweetness. That's it. Delicious, and it really keeps me going until lunch time.

Lunch today was a really thick and creamy mushroom noodle soup, of which I ate MUCH more than I should have done! Fruit then followed, of course (I have stopped mentioning the fruit, but am eating at least 5 pieces a day!).

Dinner was hurried - daughter had dance, and it is my week to take the girls. I made a soup from barley, buckwheat and yellow lentils, flavoured with spring onions, grated carrots and a little celery, and a potato. By the time we got home, it was more of a grainy stew than a soup, but it was delicious, and there is enough for hubby's lunch tomorrow, and probably mine, too, so BONUS!

Okay, off to do more work/study...

Work always expands to fill all available time...I officially have NO more available time, but more work keeps on arriving. At some point very soon, the balance is going to tip, and I am going to run screaming mad ...

or else I'm just going to keep on getting everything done, keep on smiling, and on June 2, sit down quietly in the theatre in Viterbo to watch my daughter's ballet recital, happy in the knowledge that, whatever the result, I did the best on the exam that I knew how to do at the time.

I vote for option two :-)

Vegan Baking (which nearly rhymes when said in my accent...)

2011-01-30T22:00:00.000+01:00

Very quick post today.

Made some chocolate apricot almond cookies which were wonderful (better warm than cold though.)

I then made pineapple and carrot muffins (again...can't remember if I've already posted a pic of them, so forgive me if this is a repeat!).

And I turned out the vegan "cheese" and took it along to the lovely afternoon tea at my dear friend's house.

It is really only "cheese" in the fact that you can cut it and stick it on crackers. Otherwise, I would say it tastes more like the old Kiwi favourite dip, made of Nestles Reduced Cream and a packet of Maggi Onion Soup, with a dash of vinegar - solidified....

If I ever make it again, I wouldn't put in the onion - I would put in a selection of fresh herbs instead. I think that would raise it from "ho-hum" to "give me more" status.

As for other food today, lunch was the standard wholemeal spaghetti with Puttanesca Sauce (without the anchovies, naturally), and leftover tapioca pudding (very starchy meal!), and I didn't bother with dinner. Bonus, because that means what was meant for dinner tonight will be dinner tomorrow night! It will have to be...otherwise it would need to be tossed, and I am not going to start wasting food like that! Actually, am now thinking it might be my lunch, and I will make something else for dinner...

On to the weekly menu planning now!

The Offensive Vegan

2011-01-29T20:47:00.000+01:00

The menu for today wasn't mine. And I think I offended my mother-in-law, but I really didn't mean to do it! I've mentioned before that Saturday lunch is the meal we all share as an extended family every week, and M-I-L cooks. She had been going to make her wonderful spinach risotto, but when she checked, she found that she'd thawed out Chicory instead of Spinach (she's having her cataract operation on the 14th of next month...). Chicory is too bitter for risotto and I'm mildly allergic to it anyway, so we decided on pasta and tomato sauce, followed by vegetables. Fine.
Only today she did something she has NEVER DONE BEFORE!!! She mixed parmesan cheese through the pasta before pouring the sauce over it. Why??? Only yesterday I'd managed to slip into the conversation the fact that I'm currently not eating cheese, in such a way as not to elicit any unwanted comments (I congratulated myself on that one...obviously too soon!).
So I sat down to my big plate of pasta...and then had to push it away. I wanted to tip it back into the bowl, but she was watching :-) So I had to say "I'm sorry, but I'm not eating cheese right now...", and of course, she shot back, "How ridiculous. It is only a little bit. Just eat it. You SHOULD have told me."
Two options at that point. One - shrug, think "Well, it's only 30 days anyway, what's a little parmesan going to do? I'm not REALLY a vegan." and eat the darned pasta. Or TWO - stick to my principles, smile sweetly, say "You're right, I'm sorry, I should have told you. I'll just eat the vegetables."

I went for Option Two! And she slammed a few pot lids around, dropped one on the floor, SWORE (jeez, she NEVER swears....all for a little parmesan?)... So I apologised again, said that I hoped she wasn't offended, but that this was a choice I've made and that I thought I'd told her yesterday, put the pasta from my plate in my hubby's plate, and dished a plate of all the wonderful vegies she'd prepared. I mean, come on! Her main worry, of course, was that without the pasta, I wouldn't have enough to eat! HAH! She'd made cardi, roast pumpkin, roast potatoes, AND a big bowl of silverbeet. What more could a vegan want, I ask you?

And after that lunch, who would want dinner? My daughter is out on a dinner date at her friend's house. My son just wanted tapioca and fruit (easy!), hubby just wanted to lie on the couch in peace, and I just wanted to finish the leftover silverbeet and pumpkin from lunch :-)

I used what would have been my dinner cooking time to prepare tomorrow's dinner, because we have a special afternoon tea to go to in the afternoon. I also experimented with a vegan cheese recipe, and if it works, I'll post the link to the recipe tomorrow.

Now I'm off to work on DELTA Task Three, which right now, is making my brain hurt...

Mexican Vegan or Vegan Mexican....and peanut butter

2011-01-28T21:19:00.001+01:00

When does a "day off" not mean a "day off"? When you're doing the DELTA and learning to be a vegan at the same time, that's when! Today was supposed to be a study day. So far today, I have read half a chapter of "Beyond The Sentence" (Scott Thornbury), scribbled some notes on the print-out of Assignment Two, tried to figure out how I'm going to write this with the teacher in my group, done the shopping, weathered a trip into the depths of the spaghetti bureaucracy that is the Italian Health System (and come away screaming, wailing and gnashing my teeth, facing ANOTHER trip to the same place tomorrow, to try and sort out what went wrong today)...

Lunch on the run - the last wholemeal bread roll with the last black bean burger, plus lots of fruit...

and because I had a spare five minutes, I made peanut butter!

I used this recipe, which is hardly a recipe at all, considering I bought roasted, salted peanuts :-) 300gr packet, 1.5 tbsps of our good olive oil, in the food processor for about five minutes. It's never going to have that store-bought consistency, but then...it ISN'T store bought, and I know exactly what is in it - there is no hydrogenated vegetable fat here, folk, nor sugar, and next time, I'm going to rinse off the salt, too.

Inspired by the kidney beans in the cupboard, I decided we'd have a Mexican Vegan night. I have a great recipe for low-fat guacamole, made from peas (500gr frozen petit pois, thawed out, 2 cloves crushed garlic, 2 tbsp lemon juice, or 1 of lemon, 1 of lime, chopped fresh parsley and chopped fresh coriander (cilantro), which I didn't have, so I used the spice, which gives a different flavour, but is still good. A little salt, and I added some cannellini beans, just for extra protein and creaminess. Whizzed it all in the food processor and there you go! Low fat guacamole!

I still wanted to use those kidney beans, but we had refried beans just yesterday. Thinking along the lines of "salsa", I chopped up some black olives and sun-dried tomatoes, mixed them with the beans, then drizzled over some lemon juice, and let that sit for a bit.

And of course, completed the meal with our favourite carrot salad. I thought the plate looked very colourful and inviting, and the kids were very happy. There wasn't a single "yuck" from my son tonight.

Here endth (food-wise), day Nineteen!

For my LICEO BIOLOGICO STUDENTS!

2011-01-27T21:28:00.000+01:00

Thanks for stopping by. Here is a link to YOUR class wikispace, where you will find a copy of the important language from today's lesson, to help you with the homework task.

http://sticherydell.wikispaces.com/Liceo+Biological+PET+Class

See you next Thursday :-)

PUDDING!!! VEGAN PUDDING!

2011-01-27T20:41:00.000+01:00

But I forgot to take a photo.

As I write, I feel like a well-wrung-out floor rag. Not the fault of the diet though, that's for sure! VERY busy Thursday (as they all are), compounded by the fact that I carried my laptop and projector all over Viterbo :-)

Menu: Lunch, standard wholemeal pasta with carrots and broccoli (I was at work, after all).

Dinner: Total panic on way home - next time I say "I'm going to do this week without a menu plan and see what happens" could someone please remind me of today's post?

I called my mother-in-law from Viterbo, and asked her to put a big pot of water on to boil. Then I planned the meal around that ;-) It was boiling when I arrived. A quick glance at the five (FIVE!!!!???!!!!!) different kinds of brown/wholegrain rice we have in the cupboard showed me that the GANGES River Brown was going to cook the fastest (35 minutes as opposed to 45 or even 55 for one type!), so I rinsed 300gr of it and threw it into the pot with a bit of salt. After 20 minutes I added two handfuls of frozen peas, then after another five minutes, two chopped carrots.

In a pan, I sautéed a small red onion, a couple of garlic cloves (not chopped, so that I could find them and make sure they didn't end up on the children's plates), then some ground cumin, ground corriander, garam masala, and ground cardamom (thanks, Heather Mc!), toasted that, added half a cup of red wine (remember, I was just grabbing wildly for anything I had...), then threw in some borlotti beans. Probably not the best type of bean for Indian spices, but we had black beans last night, and cannellini a few days ago, and I want to use chickpeas tomorrow (yes, I DO have a plan for tomorrow!). I just let them simmer away, and they got all mushy and toasty and spicy and surprisingly, very, very tasty.

And because, my female readers will understand, it is a time which requires, no, DEMANDS chocolate, I invented Vegan Chocolate Custard! 2 spoons potato flour, 1 spoon cocoa powder, 100ml agave syrup, some cinnamon and nutmeg, a pinch of salt, a little vanilla essence, and 2 cups of (homemade) soy milk. Whisked it all up, then stirred it over low heat. It was pudding, all right! Next time, I think I'd use less potato flour, as it was a stick-to-your-ribs kind of density. If you wanted more of a pouring custard, you'd need either less flour or more milk. And you could use cornflour instead of potato flour, but I don't have any right now. So a gluten-free, low-fat, vegan dessert, which everyone really enjoyed!

I've just noticed that this is a post which seemingly requires many, many exclamation marks. I'll put that down to the fact that I've been non-stop busy-bee since my feet hit the ground at 6 a.m. this morning...and I can't stop yet.

Now I'm off to create a Wikispace for my high school students to check in to for a copy of today's Mimio lesson. Embracing the teaching technology....

Day Eighteen - Oh so busy...

2011-01-26T20:09:00.000+01:00

On days where there is just SO much to do, I just get SO much done :-) I love that!

I wanted to try making bread with my new grain (so far I've only used it for muffins). It was great! Wholemeal flour though - perhaps I needed a little more yeast? Or a little more rising time? It was a bit too chewy for our tastes - heavy, not light bread (but then...it IS wholemeal...). It was also a little too sweet for me - I used agave syrup instead of honey (of course - honey is not vegan friendly), and I probably should have halved the dose. However, hubby ate two rolls, and the kids loved theirs!

I thought they looked pretty cute and wholesome :-)

Another thing on my to-do list for today was making more soy milk. I'm still using the recipe from the aforementioned "Meals Without Meat" (yay, Ms Holst!), but I might just try another one next time - one where you soak the beans for a bit longer. However, it turned out much better this time - and I didn't bother adding any flavourings - not even cane sugar. I want to be able to use it in cooking, and it is better if there is no sugar in it. There was more, but one of the bottles exploded - the soy milk was too hot, and I poured it in too quickly. I think I lost about a cup and a half.

Lunch was the leftover couscous from last night, which I turned into a kind of cold pilaf, with chopped sun-dried tomatoes, capers, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and some walnut pieces. I also had a plate of steamed broccoli :-) And some kiwifruit. And some mandarins. (and I wonder why the pounds are not just melting away!).

Dinner was a different kind of burger - they were supposed to be sausages, but didn't want to form sausage shapes. Then I realised we had two meals practically the same in the space of a week - which is a reminder of WHY I should/must do weekly menu plans!! So a black-bean burger (15oz can black beans, drained, a cup of finely chopped fresh mushrooms, half cup of flour (I used a mix of oat and potato), some tomato paste, some garlic, some dried herbs, a tsp of miso, and some nutritional yeast - mix all of that together, and form sausages or patties, cook in a little oil), salad, carrot sticks, and a bread roll.

I did have ambitions of making proper burgers, but ran out of time and energy! It still looked lovely plated! (if not almost identical to one day last week!)

Store cupboard cooking today.

2011-01-25T20:22:00.000+01:00

As my mum would say..."DID YA SEE THAT BUS GO BY???"

Got home at 6.10, dinner on table at 6.50 p.m. Planned it in my head on the drive home. I first cut up the huge head of broccoli from our garden, and put that on to boil (I know, healthier to steam, but it wouldn't have all fit in the steamer pot, and sometimes we just like it boiled.)

Chopped up the last of the scallions (bought from market last week, so they lasted well! Worth buying again. They seem to be easier to digest that the red onions from our garden that I've been using, although it is back to them tomorrow.) Added some garlic after ten minutes, then two tins of tomatoes, three boxes of cannellini beans (yay for cannellini!), a dessert spoon of barley malt (because I don't have molasses), some herbs, salt, pepper, and set that all to simmer.

Then I whipped out the couscous, toasted it with a little garlic and olive oil, poured on the boiled water and a little salt (1.5 cups couscous to 3 cups boiling water - made enough for dinner, AND my lunch tomorrow), and covered the pot. Easiest side dish of carbs I can think of!

That was dinner, folks - eaten and enjoyed by everyone (oh, the broccoli was just dressed with a little olive oil - keeping it simple.)

And what about lunch? Busy day at work, so this morning in the middle of the madness, I put two chopped up carrots in a pot, brought that to a boil, added a few broccoli trees, and then a couple of handfuls of wholemeal pasta. Dressed with oil, and nutritional yeast, it was the perfect, tasty, full-me-up lunch I needed when 1 p.m. rolled around.

And that, my friends, was Day erm...let me count on my fingers....17?? Really? Wow.

The day got better...

2011-01-24T20:08:00.000+01:00

Just.

The pre-school class was a little bit of a nightmare this morning - the teacher was distracted by parents coming in for enrolment for September, and the pupils certainly take advantage! I solved the problem by teaching them the Hokey-Tokey (thanks to my colleague and great friend Heather for that idea!), and that passed a full half-hour! All the body parts! Excellent stuff.

As to the diet etc...

Acidy all day (need those ulcer test results to confirm my suspicions...)

Lunch was the last of the wonderful Beetroot, Orange and Cannellini Bean salad - the beans were pink all the way through today :-) The usual fruit to finish.

Dinner was a wonderfully rustic soup - Spelt (Farro), Split peas and yellow lentils. I sautéed a little spring onion, garlic and diced carrots in olive oil, then added the rinsed grain and legumes (grain+legume=complete protein), "enough" water, a little salt and voilà! Left it to simmer for 35 minutes, then put the lid on and let it rest for another ten. Creamy, tasty, and warming. As a side, I sliced some button mushrooms, and sautéed them with oil and a mix of dried rosemary, oregano, basil and a little red hot chilli pepper (at this point, I give up on the stomach. It will either be bad or it won't - there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason). For a salty taste, I added half a teaspoon of Miso. TASTY!!!

An apple to finish, and another Happy Vegan Day to me!

Disappointment

2011-01-24T09:09:00.000+01:00

(This might be a too-much-information kind of post, so don't read on if you don't want to know too much!)

I was on a high - I'm loving being a vegan. I feel so good on this diet/lifestyle. So I was (perhaps naively) thinking that my tummy troubles were behind me...

Until I woke at 5a.m. this morning with severe heartburn - in fact, it felt like the beginning of a gallstone attack, and I know that can't be possible, because I had that operation in September.

It is either the hernia or an ulcer - must get my results from the hospital this week. However, I'm blaming it on the packet of crisps I had at the cinema yesterday, because otherwise it was the white bread bruschetta I had with my beetroot salad for dinner, and I don't want to give up that Sunday evening treat just yet...

I'm writing at 9 a.m., and am still shaky and acidy, which happens after an attack. Luckily I only have the pre-schoolers this morning, then can rest.

This is just a wobble. Every day that passes, I am more convinced that I've made the right decision for my body. Health-food shop/guru guy says 21 days is the magic number, so let's see if one more week makes a difference.

Day one of a new fortnight...

2011-01-23T20:01:00.001+01:00

I think I had too much to eat today :-)

Lunch was wholemeal spaghetti with Puttanesca sauce. I sautéed a little garlic then added chopped black olives and capers, tomatoes and a little tomato paste, salt and pepper, and cooked that for about 20 minutes.

As a "seconda", I made braised cabbage with cumin seeds, and a beetroot, orange and cannellini bean salad, which was so simple, yet delicious, it was a shame no-one else loved it (real shame! Meant I could eat more of it myself!

Okay, so the beans went pink, but that didn't matter at all. I just chopped the cooked beetroots (four medium), two oranges, and about a cup and a half of cooked cannellini beans, then a simple vinegrette of olive oil, apple cider vinegar and salt and pepper. So easy!

And that was dinner, too. Leftovers :-) Hey, it's Sunday!!

I'm still not missing any particular vegan-unfriendly foods, but I really am craving fruit! I don't know if it is because we're moving into the spring, and my body wants the vitamins, or if it is a side-effect of my body changing and having different requirements now. What I do know is that two Kiwifruit, an orange, some mandarins, and an apple are starting to sound like a complete meal.

Taking a deep breath and diving into what is going to be a VERY busy week - deadlines all over the place, final edit of my book before I send it off to the RWNZ full manuscript competition...and the normal teaching load. I don't have a menu plan worked up yet, but I no longer think that matters! My fridge is stocked, my pantry is stocked, and we're good to go!

TWO WEEKS = A FORTNIGHT...one day before halfway.

2011-01-22T21:06:00.000+01:00

And it was very nearly a cop-out! Saturday is the day we lunch with my hubby's parents, so this morning my mother-in-law came upstairs and said words which two weeks ago, would have been magic...
"Eggplant parmesan".

Uh-oh. I nearly caved! I confess!!! I very nearly caved in on the spot. I didn't know how to get out of it, given that "Melanzane alla parmiggiano" is known to be one of my all-time favourite dishes...

I KNOW I should just 'fess up to her, and explain what I'm doing, but there is NO WAY on God's Green Earth that she would A. understand, B. approve, and C. be able to avoid making MANY comments ...

There is enough going on in my life right now, and I don't want to add yet another cause of stress. So I am keeping my diet to myself.

Luckily she gave me an out, by saying "I'm doing pasta for the others." - So I asked very nicely (explaining that I am trying to eat "light" after discovering the hernia), if she wouldn't mind just doing pasta for me, too.

I could see that she wasn't happy, but luckily it was just a small tray of eggplant p. she'd taken out of the freezer, so it was okay just for mother and father-in-law. We had wholemeal pasta with a simple tomato sauce, followed by roast pumpkin and cardoons or cardi, which are one of my winter favourites. I had no room for fruit after that lot - so much for eating light!

This afternoon, our school hosted our annual Cambridge Speaking Examiner co-ordination, with the school from Terni which we always do it with, so it was off to Viterbo again. I got home late, and the kids were hungry, even though hubby wasn't. I could have copped out again, gotten by with just the leftover vegan quiche, but I looked in the fridge and all those vegies were beckoning me.

So, the quiche got finished, but we also had potatoes (if you chop them into small enough pieces, they only take 20 minutes to boil), carrot sticks and steamed broccoli. The kids had some cheese instead of the quiche because they didn't want any (and because the last piece was kind of small).

Fruit (Kiwifruit and mandarins) to finish, and there goes Day Fourteen.

Something I am really noticing is that I am having sugar lows much less often. I used to arrive home from a day like today, late, and get into the kitchen just ravenous, needing to eat - which meant that what I produced was quick and not very good for us. Now I get into the kitchen, but my blood sugars seem much more balanced, and I can focus on choosing good recipes or creating good dishes. Very positive side-effect!

There's a Banana in My Briefcase! Day Thirteen

2011-01-21T22:11:00.000+01:00

I've decided that the humble banana is a vegan's secret weapon. On days like today, I swear they are the only thing which keeps me going.

Today was the first DELTA seminar, or "input session". It was Background to Second Language Acquisition. We looked at the three big theories - the Behaviourist position (BF Skinner, with his 1957 book, Verbal Behaviour, Robert Lado, Contrastive Analysis), the Innatist/Mentalist position (Chomsky, with his 1959 "A Review of BF Skinner's Verbal Behaviour", Stephen Krashen, the Input Hypothesis), and the Interactionist position (Michael Long, caretaker talk, negotiation of meaning).

I left the building a little dazed and glazed - and ate the banana from my briefcase, and felt so much better.

Then I slipped. Not a major slip-up in the grand scheme of all things vegan. I mean, I didn't sit down and have an oozy, bloody steak. I didn't munch down on a ham and cheese sandwich. I didn't even get a whiff of a fast-food burger...

Nope, while in the supermarket at the train station, looking for some nuts to snack on, I weakened, and bought Gatorade. A coffee (which I am also trying to cut back on) would have been a better option! At least I could have put brown sugar in it. I did think "Oh, bad food choice, bad food choice" while buying it, but low blood pressure was saying "Get me some Gatorade, woman!", so I did...

On the train, I had my prepared lunch - peanut butter on brown bread sandwiches, mandarins, a(nother) banana, and the hazelnuts I'd bought (along with the Gatorade). I drank the Gatorade, as I googled it...and found that, apart from being appallingly bad for my health, the fact that it contains white sugar means that it technically isn't vegan, because white sugar is refined in a process which uses animal bones. This magazine contains an interesting article on the subject (of sugar refining), as well as some recipes and other useful stuff.

It's been such a busy couple of days that I decided not to beat myself up toooooo much about the slip-up, and just get on with it.

It was straight off the train, into the car, and off to Viterbo for our annual Cambridge Exams seminar, organised at the lovely Villa Sofia. There were three speakers. Josephine McNulty, who gave a very useful presentation on using technology in the classroom. She's the first presenter I think I've seen who addresses the "what to do if you only have the projector and computer, and not the actual interactive whiteboard?" question, and I'm about to go download some interactive whiteboard freeware to start getting a handle on it.

Rebecca Haag spoke about the new FCE for Schools exam, and her talk included some ideas and tips for classroom activities as we prepare our students for this exam.

Margaret Horrigan was the last speaker (she was also the first of my day, as she's one of my DELTA tutors!), and talked about traditional teaching methods. Page 21 of this journal is where you'll find her article on this subject.

Back to menu plan - raced back home and found my mother-in-law's wonderful minestrone, and this time, hubby had asked her not to put in the parmesan rind, so I could eat it! Yay. It was full of borlotti beans, rice, potatoes (yes, starch, starch and more starch, but yummy anyway!), carrots, celery and all those good things. I topped it with some nutritional yeast, and was as happy as a vegan who cheated could be! Finished with two kiwi-fruit, a mandarin and two oranges. I think I got my 5+ today!

Off to google wine + vegan now, and plan a lesson using my new freeware.

Day Twelve (?? I think...I'm losing count)

2011-01-20T20:10:00.000+01:00

I had a few minutes to spare this morning (by accidentally getting up fifteen minutes early!), and decided to get a head-start on dinner. There were mushrooms which needed using, so out came my well-loved copy of the great Kiwi classic - Meals Without Meat, by another great Kiwi classic, Alison Holst.

I don't know why the photo is sideways - I've tried several times to change it, and it refuses, so please just tilt your head slightly to one side.

Alison has a recipe for Mushroom Burgers, which I've loved forever (well, for the last 18 years, anyway), but it needed some tweaking to make it vegan. Here is my adapted version:

3 shallots, chopped finely

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tbsp olive oil

300gr mushrooms, cleaned and finely chopped

1 cup fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs

1 tsp potato flour or cornstarch

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tbsp ground flaxseed

1 tsp miso paste

Sauté shallots and garlic in oil until they begin to soften. Add mushrooms and continue cooking until they turn soft and dark. Tip the mixture into a bowl or food processor (I find it much easier in the processor) and add the remaining ingredients. Mix well, then with wet hands, make burger patties (I got 14 small ones, but if you're making them for burger buns, make 6-8).

Cook in a little oil, using a non-stick pan, until lightly browned on both sides.

I served them with the left-over rice salad from last night, plus fresh salad, and fruit to finish. Very tasty.

(lunch - we're not talking about lunch today. Thursdays! Fruit, rice crackers and peanut butter...spread out over the day during ten minute breaks here and there....oh, I did talk about it after all!).

I also wanted to mention the need, during the first days of a vegan diet, for DIGESTIVE ENZYMES, if you don't want to gross yourself or your friends out while that intestinal flora gets itself sorted...

My health-food guru-guy recommended Nutrizym, and it is working wonders!

Something about a BUSY day which means you can fit more in...

2011-01-19T14:32:00.003+01:00

Or at least that's what it always seems like to me. A "day off" may result in achieving nothing, whereas a day with four lessons, a trip to the doctor, dance for the daughter, study and lesson planning results in...
dinner ready at 2 p.m!

We're only half-way through Day Eleven as I write this, but I'm going to post the menu plan now, as I have a moment...just a moment :-)

Lunch: leftover Braised Seitan with 60gr wholemeal pasta (and fruit to follow). The Seitan was even MORE delicious and flavoursome today, after its night in the fridge (just realised that I didn't take a photo! Bother!)

Dinner:

Vegan Mushroom and Zucchini Quiche

Brown Rice Salad from imagination

One Vegan quiche, adapted from this recipe, and a brown rice salad, with olives, capers and sundried tomatoes. Rounding it all out with the grated carrot salad, which is becoming a bit of a fixture! Tasty, raw, colourful - it just feels right on the table. (UPDATE: Modified the Carrot Salad, by adding a small chopped shallot, some sunflower and pumpkin seeds, some sultanas, some ground linseeds, and some toasted chickpeas. Made a dressing with oil, salt, pepper, dried basil, and nutritional yeast, and apple cider vinegar. Let it sit for an hour - WONDERFUL modification!)
(A word about the quiche. It was very quiche-like in texture, but not so much in taste. I put too much turmeric in it, so you could taste it. Next time I'll either use less, or use saffron, which is pretty much tasteless. But there WILL be a next time, and next time I'm going to make my own vegan wholemeal pastry, without resorting to store-bought. I hope that it works with olive oil, because I refuse to add margarine to our diet, just because it is animal-free!)

Oh - daughter ate everything, son nothing (his Nonna made him his favourite soup instead...vegie broth with small pasta cooked in it.)

DAY TEN! Worth celebrating - shame I have no time for that.

2011-01-18T20:41:00.000+01:00

Found some more Cavolo Nero at the small market in Piazza San Faustino, so I was very happy. I'm finding that I'm craving fruit, fruit and more fruit, so I bought oranges fresh from Sicily, mandarins, and bananas. Bananas are such a perfect snack - easy to transport, not messy to eat, and very filling.

Menu plan: Lunch was cold wholemeal pasta (50gr) with 2 carrots (I peel and slice the carrots, put them in the pot with the cold water, bring it to the boil, add the pasta, cook for 10 mins, and it's ready to go!). I made a dressing with dried herbs, chilli flakes, and nutrional yeast and olive oil. An orange, 2 mandarins and a banana, and that was lunch.

Dinner was a bit more involved, but very, very tasty! I made Braised Seitan with Broccoli (didn't have the Brussels Sprouts the recipe called for, but broccoli worked well), Kale and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. This is a recipe from The Veganomicon, and colourful, easy to make, and it tasted as good as it looked! The Seitan didn't pick up the flavours as much as I thought it would, but it was still a very satisfying dish. I did plain boiled potatoes as a side, dressed with olive oil. Oh, and a grated carrot salad, and ended with two kiwi-fruit.

---------------------------------

Change of Subject

DELTA - Day Two and it has taken over my life pretty much. Which is what I expected. I'm working on Task 1 and 2 simultaneously, and everything else, including facebook, favourite TV, and the occasional game of Angry Birds, has been put away...

It's only six months. I can do anything for six months .... :-)

Day Nine, just for the sake of it

2011-01-17T21:26:00.000+01:00

Boring food day. No time for fancy.
Lunch - leftover broccoli-potato soup from last night.
Snacks - a banana, an apple, 3 oranges (throughout the day)
Dinner - see lunch.

Tomorrow will be better, one hopes.

I can't NOT post my menu plan...

2011-01-16T21:08:00.000+01:00

Today we had another rustic family picnic. I made the Sunshine Carrot-Pineapple muffins from The Veganomicon. I didn't have soy yoghurt in the house (and doubt I ever will because I can't stand the stuff!), so substituted a banana (thanks to my friend Rowena for this vegan tip!).
I had great luck with the new grain (Grano Capelli Arkrux) in the mill, and made a cup and a half of wonderful tasting flour in about 3 minutes. The muffins turned out really well. I also made a simple bean salad, and took a loaf of wholemeal bread, some fresh fruit salad, and some mandarins. A perfect picnic, and all vegan.

Sunday night is egg night in our house - a tradition which dates back to at least my childhood, but perhaps even to my mum and dad's. So the kids had their eggs on toast, hubby had his cup of tea (don't ask...!), and I needed something a little more interesting and tasty. There is some fresh fennel in the fridge, and at first I thought about a carrot and fennel soup, but then realised that the broccoli I bought on Tuesday really needed using. I whipped out the Veganomicon again and found Broccoli-Potato Soup with fresh herbs. Just the ticket - and my daughter had gone foraging with her Nonna and had brought back some fresh fennel fronds, which I used instead of the dill that the recipe called for. It was wonderful - a delicious, warming, chunky soup, filled with green goodness. I was greedy, and had a couple of slices of bruschetta (white bread, shock, horror! But good Italian salt-free white bread, from the local bakery. No preservatives, no nasties - if you don't count the commercial bleached white flour, that is!).

Fruit to finish, and that was Day Eight. Goodness from start to finish, and I feel joy, joy, joy, down in my heart!

Vegan Adventure Week One Complete...

2011-01-15T20:09:00.001+01:00

Yahoo!!! I've made it through to the evening of Day Seven without (m)any challenging moments. Menu plan today was easy - mother-in-law cooked lunch because I was at work (and because that is usually the meal we all have together as an extended family in the week).

Lunch was spinach risotto, followed by pan-roasted pumpkin and potatoes with rosemary and garlic. I finished with fruit, but the others had Bignè for hubby's birthday. They didn't attract me at all, and I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

Dinner was left-overs. Yay for being able to produce a vegan leftover dinner :-) The kids had finger food platters, which they always love (not vegan, as they had cheese pieces to round out their plates). I had the last pita pocket, with the last of the mushroom and walnut paté, as well as a big bowl of salad (lettuce, radicchio and grated carrot, with a simple olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing and nutritional yeast flakes), and then I finished off the fruit salad from yesterday.

I'm stuffed to the gunnels, and completely satisfied. Right now, being a vegan is rocking my world.

Also should add - weight loss Week One - 500 gr (just over a pound for our American readers...). Gotta love that bonus side-effect!

Next week, I will probably only post if I make something REALLY delicious, or discover something new, because the DELTA starts on Monday, and I'm already feeling the pressure of preparing lessons while studying, while blogging, while thinking about what's for dinner...

And if I DO blog, I'm probably going to write more about teaching...

Unless you REALLY want to know about the week's menu plan ;-)

Shopping as a vegan.

2011-01-14T22:09:00.000+01:00

Today was my first visit to the regular supermarket as a vegan (not counting the earth-friendly supermarket, because it is a different kind of experience). I spent a lot longer in the fruit and vegie section today, and really had a good look at what was on offer. I got three cartons of mushrooms instead of one, because so many vegan recipes call for mushrooms (the little powerhouses that they are! Filled with lovely B vitamins and whatnot...and they taste good, too!). I was hoping to find some varieties, but they only had champignon, so that's what went in the trolley. As well as four cartons of carrots. I've done a lot of the colour orange so far, and it was time for a change...

The greens were calling me, and I noticed an odd looking vegetable which I don't remember noticing before. Cavolo Nero. It wasn't just calling me - it was screaming my name, and practically jumped into the trolley by itself when I got close enough. Black Curly Kale is an attractive vegetable, with an almost sinful depth of colour, and such a pretty leaf. I was SURE I could make something delicious with it.

Standing at the check-out was a very special moment in my adventure so far - not a single animal product was in my trolley, and yet I felt like I had sufficient food for an entire week's meals, without stress or worry. If the little old signora in the queue behind me had said "And what are you going to do with THAT, my dear?", I could quite happily have said, "Oh, that? Well, that's going into a Moroccan style pie, and this is going into a soup, and these are going to be sprinkled on top of a salad. " The realisation that I am, finally, after 21 years of cooking for myself (and others dependant on me for their meals), totally in control of my kitchen and meal-planning. Did I have to go vegan to get to this point??? And why? And does this mean that thirty days is only the beginning of what is going to be a much longer adventure?

Today's menu: Lunch was a fiasco, but that's because I had lessons at odd times, students that stayed longer, and others that arrived earlier, and so I had a banana at 10, one rice cake with peanut butter at 1.30, the other one at 3, with an apple and two mandarins, and then another banana before shopping! I don't think I'll bother reporting work-day lunches any more - It's kind of embarrassing.

Dinner, on the other hand, was rather special! Today is hubby's birthday, but there was no time to make cake. Mother-in-law is handling that tomorrow (and I will avoid eating the bigné that she makes because she still doesn't know about the adventure, and I don't want to tell her).

I sautéed some garlic, zucchini, carrots and celery in a heavy pan for about 20 minutes, adding water as necessary, then put the MOPUR sausages on top, and put the lid on. This kind of "vegetable meat" is best braised, rather than grilled or cooked like real meat.
In another pan, I sautéed a chopped garlic clove in some olive oil, added a cup of water, a tsp of cumin seeds, and some cracked peppercorns, and a little salt. Then I added 325gr of chopped Cavolo Nero (black curly kale), and put the lid on. It took about 15 minutes to soften, and smelled wonderful.
I served the lot with boiled potatoes dressed with olive oil.
A HUGE fruit salad with kiwi-fruit, apples, oranges, and pineapple finished our Day Six Dinner. My daughter HATED the sausages (it isn't often that food makes her gag, but they did, sad to say). She loved all the vegies, though! My son was the complete opposite, of course. He enjoyed the sausage (but did say that the German wurst that they eat when we go visit our German friends, "the animal ones, Mummy", are MUCH better).

Hubby and I enjoyed the sausages, but agree that neither of us are actually missing meat at all. I think this MOPUR will be for moments when I realise we need a protein injection, or a change from pure vegetable dishes.

Day Six COMPLETE - feeling more than good....feeling on the way to GREAT!

Day Five, full-on day, not much cooking.

2011-01-13T21:04:00.001+01:00

Thursdays are my longest working days, and I don't usually get home until after 6 p.m. Today's lunch was a peanut butter sandwich on wholemeal bread, an apple and a banana. I had asked my mother-in-law to make her wonderful winter minestrone (she uses carrots, potatoes, celery, and thickens it with rice). Perfect solution...for the rest of the family, I realised as I was driving to work. The soup gets its wonderful flavour from the rind of parmesan (that would be CHEESE!!!) she cooks in it, and also from the stock cube...and I don't know WHAT'S in that...

Thank goodness for the morning market in Piazza San Faustino, and a thirty minute break at work. I raced over and bought a head of lettuce, a very small (and kind of sad-looking) head of radicchio, some broccoli and mushrooms (what would happen to a vegan who hated mushrooms?). I also visited the best healthfood shop in Viterbo (which doesn't have a website - it is Shao Yang, Via delle Piagge, 1, 01100 Viterbo), and got a new kind of grain to try less-complicated flour-milling. It is a very ancient grain, grown in Sicily - if it is a success, I will post details. I also got some vegan "sausages" made from an Italian product called MOPUR (their site obviously needs a better translator, but you get the idea...). They'll make next week a little easier (mabye).

Anyway, back on topic - I got home and found I was correct. There was cheese in the soup. I dished for the family, and made myself a simple salad (like last night's, with carrot, lettuce and radicchio), a re-heated pita pocket, and some of the left-over mushroom and walnut pate. An apple rounded out the meal, and everyone was happy and satisfied.

I had a few hungry moments today, but I always do on a Thursday - banana at 1, and sandwiches at 3 will do that to a person.

It's all good on the Vegan Frontline!

Day Four, nature's bounty

2011-01-12T22:36:00.001+01:00

Yesterday's Beetroot and vegetable soup, which did for lunch today as well. There is something about this soup - it is like getting a vitamin injection. Beetroot is going to be on my shopping list from now on, and come March -
I'M PLANTING IT!

Dinner - take a bow.

Super cooking day today. I feel like I'm getting my chef groove back! After discussion on the forum of The Fresh Loaf, I found that home-milled flour can often have quite a bitter taste, and that one way to get around this is to "soak" the flour for 24 hours. So yesterday I milled a batch of Grano Duro and Barley flour, added a little salt and then 2 cups of boiling water, to make quite a sticky dough. I left it covered on the kitchen bench overnight. It looked highly unattractive, and had that awful smell that has been putting me off using my mill.

But when I got home from work at 2 p.m., it smelled like BREAD!!! I then added the yeast - I used active dry yeast, 1 tbsp sprinkled on warm water (which I'd dissolved a teaspoon of maple syrup in). It went lovely and frothy. In the end, I had to cheat and mix some store-bought white flour, as I'd obviously put too much water in the night before, but hey! It is all a learning experience. I probably added a cup in total, so it was still predominantly wholemeal flour.

I kneaded it for fifteen minutes, then put it to rise. The children helped me shape it into pita pockets - we made sixteen in total. They were left to rise for another 40 minutes, then I cooked them in batches of four for 8 minutes a piece. They were very puffy, just as they should be. When I took them out of the oven, they went straight under tea-towels to soften.

While all that was happening, I also made Walnut and Mushroom patè (which ended up as more of a dip), a mixed salad (cheated! Opened a mixed salad from the supermarket, and dressed it with olive oil. It had carrots, rucola, lettuce and radicchio), and a kidney bean and tomato salad with a simple oil and balsalmic herb dressing. The table looked bright and inviting, and the house smelled wonderful!

My son was a loooonnnnnggggggg way from impressed (although he loved the bread), but my daughter cleaned her plate. She's getting excited about Mummy's "new diet" because she's been saying for a very long time that she feels sad when she eats animals. Now she's asking all sorts of questions, and I have a feeling that she might be the reason that this new habit lasts more than 30 days :-) She talked me up to 90 during dinner.

Anyway, there was no dessert tonight, just fruit, which is better for us anyway.

Okay, now I say Veeeeeeee-gan...but the Italians say vey-gan.

2011-01-11T22:19:00.000+01:00

I seemed to spend a lot of today cooking and washing dishes. So much for keeping it simple.
Lunch was wonderful though! I wanted to make a beetroot soup, because in spite of claiming to hate beetroot, a vacuum pack of four steamed ones looked mighty good today. I found a recipe which called for vegetable broth, so I put a pot of water on the stove, added 2 carrots, a zucchini, some celery and parsley, and a little salt and got it boiling. When it was done, though, all those vegies looked pretty good, so instead of just using the water, I threw a potato in, waited ten minutes, then threw in the beetroot...cooked it for another ten minutes, then pureed the lot! Blow me down! What a bowl of energy that was! Brilliant red colour in the plate. A swirl of our oil on top, a few of those nutritional yeast flakes, and I was in Vegan Heaven! I rounded it out with a couple of bruschette, and I am glad I did...
because although after lunch I was bursting with energy, by the time 5.30 rolled around, I was CRABBY!
Mind you, that could have been because my dear wee boy is going through a "Loudest Boy In The World" phase.
Dinner was the roasted potato salad with the parsley pesto, which was definitely A KEEPER! Yummy. I also made a very simple grated carrot salad (just grated carrot, with an apple cider/olive oil dressing), and had bowls of sultanas and mixed seeds on the table for adding.
My find of the day was the Vegan Society of New Zealand website, and their recipe for fat-free, gluten-free vegan Brownies!!! I halved the recipe, and used Cannellini beans instead of black beans, because that was what I had on hand, and WOW!!!! I was sure the kids would turn up their noses, but NO...everyone came back for seconds, thirds...fourths...lucky I saved two for the kids' snack boxes tomorrow.
Now I am searching for a source of Agave syrup which doesn't involve a trip to the earth-friendly supermarket in Terni...

Day Three was a success food-wise, but mood-wise, not so much. Bearing in mind that my body is probably beginning some fairly serious de-tox process right about now (or probably right about 3 p.m. this afternoon, when the bad mood kicked in), I am NOT going to give up, but am going to ride it out, stick with it, and continue to enjoy this experiment. After all, IT IS ONLY THIRTY DAYS, and you can do anything for 30 days...

Please remember, if you read this blog, I love comments, and if you are a vegan, and have any advice, suggestions, great sites to visit...don't be shy now!

I say Vey-gan, you say Vee-gan (Adventure Day Two)

2011-01-10T20:12:00.000+01:00

...and I still don't know how you say it in Italian, which is fine, because I don't intend to make a big announcement to those around me any time soon.

Today was the first day back at work after our three-week Christmas break. I thought it was going to be tougher than it actually was (mainly thanks to Genki English, but that's for another post). Last night was a mega-insomnia night. Perhaps I'd had a tad too much green tea (??), too late in the day. Perhaps I was just feeling a little stressed.

So, in spite of very little quality sleep, I've been able to keep going all day, with only two coffees (in the past it probably would have been a four cup kind of day). Is it the new diet? I doubt it, after only one day. It is probably more likely that I'm just happy to be back at work. A person who loves his or her job is truly blessed.

Down to it! Here is today's menu, as it panned out. I knew there'd be no point posting my weekly menu plan until AFTER the week :-) Nothing is ever carved in stone in my kitchen.

Breakfast: Overnight oatmeal (again - easy, tasty, gets me through to lunchtime without the munchies. You have to love that.)
Lunch: I made it before I went to work, because I knew I'd be home late. I cubed some pumpkin (there is going to be a recurring pumpkin theme this month, as we had a bumper crop this year), sliced a carrot, and put them in a pot with water and salt. Once it was boiling, I added 50gr of wholemeal pasta (penne rigate), and cooked for ten minutes. I drained it, put it all in a glass bowl, and poured a little olive oil over, then covered it with a plate, and left for work. When I got home, all the flavours had melded, and it was a delicious, creamy pasta salad.
Dinner: was meant to be roasted potato salad with parsley pesto, but I didn't get it started in time. So it was back to pumpkin. I roasted it with garlic, rosemary, drizzled in balsalmic vinegar. Yummy!

The roasted pumpkin, still in the pan

And then there was the sudden rush of inspiration from Vegan Piggy, so I made stuffed mushrooms with what I had on hand. Fresh breadcrumbs, a little red onion, a little garlic, mushroom stems, basil, parsley, and baked for 30 minutes.

Stuffed mushrooms (bad photo - they look like eggs!)

And the kids have been asking for tapioca pudding for ages, so I thought I'd try making it with the home-made soy-milk I made yesterday. I needed to add vanilla essence to cover the rather strong taste, but the kids came back for seconds (and even thirds!).

Home-made soy milk. I added oil, but won't do that again. Needs a good shake before using.

And so, Day Two is drawing to a close. Any changes yet? Perhaps a little too early to ask this, but my forearms are no longer itching. Perhaps it is the clay which is doing something - Too Much Information coming up (been going to the bathroom WAY more than usual! - this is often what happens at the beginning of a vegan diet, so I've read, but not usually so soon, as far as I can tell).

So far, so VEGAN :-)

Day One - Challenge Begun

2011-01-09T20:04:00.000+01:00

The Menu:

Breakfast: Overnight oatmeal (the quantity in the recipe (see previous post) was enough for me for two days. It probably would have been enough for three days, if I hadn't been a little greedy. It tastes good.

Lunch: I made spinach and ricotta ravioli for the kids. For hubby and myself, I cooked two cups of Venere wholemeal rice. In a pan, I heated through some pre-cooked spinach (yay, thank you, Mother-In-Law!), with some herbs and spices (the Pasta Mix we got from the market in Campo di Fiori in Rome), and a little oil. Then I stirred the rice through that once it was cooked. We had yeast flakes sprinkled on top instead of parmesan, and it was delicious.

Dinner: Hubby was still full, so he had green tea. The kids had sandwiches (peanut butter for one, Asiago cheese for the other) and fruit. I nearly took the easy option and had peanut-butter sandwiches myself, but then gave myself a hearty shake. I don't mean to opt for cop-out on the first day! So I cooked half a head of cauliflower, and made a peanut sauce.
RECIPE: 2 big dessert spoons of crunchy peanut butter, 2 tsp of soy sauce, some chilli pepper, cumin and coriander, as well as some dried garlic. Thinned it down with boiling water, and whisked until it was creamy. I poured it over the cooked cauliflower, and ate with the usual seeds, and nutritional yeast. I served a big PAT ON THE BACK on the side :-)

I'm not going to mention all the fruit, because that would just get boring, but rest assured (in case you were feeling a little anxious!), that I'm getting my 5+ a day - plenty of mandarins and apples being devoured.

Bring on Day Two, I say.

I also should mention that we picked up some Green Clay (Argital) from the earth friendly supermarket, and so we are also trying this drink for a month. Well, 4/3/3/4, as you're supposed to do.

The Beginning of my Thirty-day Vegan Adventure

2011-01-09T09:44:00.001+01:00

I became a vegetarian at university, 18 years ago, and I remained a strict vegetarian (lacto-ovo) for 13 years. Because of low iron levels during my first pregnancy, I began eating meat again. We’re careful to get our meat from a known source, avoiding factory-farmed meat. We also keep chickens, so know that our eggs and chicken meat are free-range.

That being said, eating meat doesn’t sit comfortably with me, and my husband has been slowly moving towards a meat-free (or at least, a meat-lite) diet for the last two years, after reading Dr Ehret’s book “A Scientific Method Of Eating Your Way To Health.” That is too extreme for my tastes, but the idea of going vegan has appealed for years. My reasons for not doing it are that it seems too labour intensive, too complicated, too difficult, and too easy to get wrong.

So why now? The coming year is going to be very busy. I’m teaching full-time, raising two lively children, keeping house, AND beginning the DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching). So WHY is now the right time to add a “complicated” diet into that mix?

Health. That is the main reason. In September I had my gallbladder removed after many years of trouble. I hoped that would solve the other issues (mostly digestion-related), but it didn’t. Then I found out that I have a hiatus hernia as well, which probably explains a few of those other issues, but still not all. While doing this challenge, I’m going to be monitoring these things: the acid reflux, the aching knees, the brain fog, mood swings, hair-loss, and general energy levels. I'm hoping that weight-loss will be a welcome side-effect, so will be monitoring that as well.

There is another reason why “NOW” is the time. I found this article by Steve Pavlina while in the “going vegan right now” mindset, and it really lit a fire under me. I know about creating habits from being a flybaby, and so I know this works. 30 days? I can do anything for 30 days. Then I can reassess the situation. No harm, no foul, as Steve Pavlina says.

My goals for this month are to KEEP IT SIMPLE. I’m not looking to replace meaty meals that I make now. I’m trying to keep things as easy and healthy as possible. I’m going to be thinking about cooking methods (steaming, stir-frying, slow-cooking), ingredients (heavy on vegetables, low on processed “vegetarian food”). I’m also going to be experimenting with making soy milk, making vegan “cheese”, and making our own bread – starting with this wholemeal pita bread recipe.

The main recipe book keeping me company on this month-long adventure is The Veganomicon, by Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Romero, and I’ll be reporting on recipes I’ve tried, and the reaction the family has had to them.

Oh - the family! I’m not making my family do this with me. I still am not convinced that children should be vegan (which may sound strange, considering that I am doing it for MY health). I think my children have a very healthy diet, with lots of fruit and vegetables, and hardly any processed food. I think they will benefit from the changes I’m going to make, but they will still be getting everything that society thinks they need. If we do decide as a family to go vegan, I’ll be taking them to a doctor who specializes in children’s diets, and making sure we do it right.

The Challenge So Far:

Day Zero:

Breakfast was Overnight Oatmeal (delicious! A keeper for sure!)

Lunch was not vegan. (mother-in-law made lunch).

Dinner: I steamed cauliflower and pumpkin cubes, grated a carrot, and mixed them together to make a warm salad. Sprinkled with sunflower, pumpkin and linseeds, and made a dressing of tahini, lemon juice and a little soy sauce. I thinned it down with the water from the steamer, to add back in some of those nutrients which may have been lost. I loved it. The rest of the family (who had pan-fried halibut with carrot sticks and a little taste of my salad) were not so keen. Hubby said that there were too many tastes mixed in there for him. He prefers cauliflower alone, just dressed with olive oil. I like it like that, too, but wanted something that looked and felt vegan for my first real vegan dinner.

Today is the first full day (Day One), and although I have my menu planned, nothing is carved in stone, so I will write the menu for each day the day AFTER, as a record of MY THIRTY-DAY VEGAN ADVENTURE.

Any questions, comments and advice much appreciated.

The First Annual Paliferi Family Very Rustic New Year Picnic

2011-01-01T18:55:00.000+01:00

...bring your own damper.

It may have been the strong Pugliese wine I drank last night, or the fact that it was 2 a.m. before I got to sleep, but when I awoke this morning, all I wanted was Damper.

Not entirely true. I knew that a trip to our difficult piece of land (called "La Bastarda" for a reason) was on the cards. Mr Hubby had to burn some clippings and general undergrowth after he and his dad cut down an unwanted tree yesterday. I also knew that I didn't really want to go - the pull of studying for the DELTA is getting very hard to ignore, and the idea of a morning kid- and hubby-free was admittedly appealing.

Then I got to thinking about the OTHER book I'm reading right now - Dale Carnegie's very famous, very old, yet still very relevant "How To Win Friends and Influence People", and I thought "What does everyone want today?".

My answer was DAMPER :-) And potatoes cooked in the embers.

Mr Hubby in charge of the fire

Yes, I was a Brownie, and then a Girl Guide, and yes, some of those memories are the best of my life. I was up before everyone else anyway, and it wasn't hard to find a recipe on-line for Damper. I used this one, and it was perfect. Very light, cooked very well, and tasted wonderful. (Next time I would double the mixture, even though this made six good sized rolls.

Potatoes cooking in the embers

Our potatoes are quite big, so I cut six in half, and also cut crosses in them, because we didn't want them to explode out of the fire. I oiled and salted them before wrapping them individually in tinfoil (al-foil for those non-Kiwis reading this!).

Then it was off to La Bastarda, where we gathered large handfuls of damp leaves to get that fire going. It was smoky, and it was hot, just as I remember Girl Guide camp-fires being. I also remembered saying "I hate rabbits." to make the smoke go in another direction, and some rather silly camp-fire songs came back, too! Quartermaster's Store anyone???

Showing the children how to cook their damper

The Coca-Cola Christmas lesson

2010-12-20T22:30:00.000+01:00

Projector lesson: I really wanted to try out some technology, to jazz up the teenage PET class and also for my own professional development. This lesson took me about 18 hours to prepare, but a large part of that was learning how to use PowerPoint. I'm not sure how to add a ppt into the blog. The main thrust of the lesson was to introduce two Coca-Cola Christmas advertising songs, and to make the students aware of how advertising colours our view of Christmas, whether we want it to, or not.

I began by asking the Ss to work in pairs, making lists of Christmas symbols.

I then showed them a slide with animation - introducing the most well-known, with vocabulary (Father Christmas/Santa Claus, bells, gifts, nativity scene, Christmas tree, stockings), and then a new slide..."COKE", then Coke = Christmas? I asked them to consider why this might be so.

Then I adapted four texts from www.saint-nick.com. There was a worksheet with questions about the texts. (If you want a copy, ask in the comments below). Then we talked about what happened with the advent of TV...and I showed them this youtube clip. The worksheet had the lyrics with some errors for correction, and the next slide was a copy of the correct lyrics, and clipart to illustrate vocabulary.

Then I asked them if they thought things were different now...

This slide got a big laugh.

After showing some screen shots of the Coke ads which followed the Hilltop Singers ("Holidays are Coming", "The Greatest Gift" and the one with the polar bears and penguins, we flipped over the worksheet and there was a gap-fill for the full song used in the 2010 NEW Coke ad, which had only just started playing on TV in Italy. Only a couple of the students had seen it. Train have a really cute video and a catchy song, and I was hoping the teens would love it :-) I played it first without the video, so they wouldn't be distracted.

It was hard for them - I scaffolded it the second time by writing the missing words on the board in random order...it made it easier, and then I just underlined the words as they came up the third time around.

To end the listening part of the lesson, I played the advert and had them underline the parts of the song they heard in it.

And then I showed them the making of the advert, with the words of the director highlighted afterwards on a separate slide, to generate discussion. See it here.

That's it :-)

I've used the lesson six times so far, with individuals of all levels, as well as with the teen class. It's been a hit every time. The song is quite difficult, so a little scaffolding goes a long way. Also, the discussion will depend on the level of the students.

Personally, I really enjoyed experimenting with PowerPoint, learning how to download youtube vids, taking screen shots, and am now wondering what else I can use, and where to go next!

Ravioli - because I can.

2010-12-20T12:46:00.001+01:00

It's about time I added a post about "life in Italy", instead of always teaching, teaching, teaching. Today's my first official day of the Christmas holidays, and the children are still at school until Wednesday. Three days for catching up on writing, studying, housework etc.
My daughter requested Ravioli for lunch today ("NOT tortellini, Mum! Spinach and Ricotta ravioli.") Well, it's nearly the holidays, she's a great kid, so I thought, "Why not?"
Then I found that our local shop only had TORTELLINI, NOT Ravioli! They did have ricotta, though, and I had the day off. Again I thought "Why not?"

I started with two cups of flour and two eggs, and made the dough. It was a little dry, but that doesn't matter.

I began rolling it through the machine...(the machine that my mother-in-law got as a wedding present!)

First pass

Second pass

Third pass

Fourth pass

About the sixth pass, I think

Almost too long for the table

The filling - ricotta, spinach, nutmeg, salt, pepper and parmeggiano

Beginning construction

Putting the lids on

And enough pasta left over to make fettucine!

In the end, with two cups of flour and two eggs (plus the ricotta and spinach, etc), I made 28 large ravioli and enough fettucine for two adults (probably). Then I made some simple tomato sauce, and lunch was ready. It took about an hour to make, with a few facebook pauses. I'll post pics of the cooked ravioli in the next post.

Trying something different in the teenage class

2010-12-03T00:51:00.000+01:00

I had a feeling that my group of 17 teenagers, who are supposed to be preparing for PET, were getting a little bored and restless, and I wanted to jazz it up a bit. The unit theme was education, so I found/developed four texts about Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand and The USA, and their different educational systems. I used photos of pre-school kids, primary, secondary and university students, to elicit the different stages of education and ages. In a small bag I had cut up the names of the countries (5xUSA, 4xNZ, etc etc), to sort them into groups (so they weren't working with the same people). This worked well, and they were soon in their groups according to which country they pulled out.
I then said "Tell each other about what you know or imagine about the ed.sys in that country. - 2 minutes".
Then I gave them each the text about their particular country, but all chopped and jumbled. It didn't take long for them to put it back together. They then had to fill in a chart in their groups. I wanted to get them writing questions about their text, but was running out of time. (I had my CELTYL tutor's voice in my head - what's the CRUX of your lesson, Jo? What's the crux?') - admittedly, it was probably the question writing.
I put the whole texts up around the room, and asked them to choose another country which interested them, and go take notes, to report back to their group. They seemed to be very interested in this. They then reported back, and finished filling in the table.
To wrap up, I asked a few of them what they had found most interesting or unusual about the ed.sys in the other countries - and writing homework was, of course, writing a similar text about the ed.sys in Italy.
Overall it was a fun lesson, which got them working with different people, and speaking more. It needs tweaking (the whole filling-in of the table didn't seem to serve much purpose really), and something else to make it more motivating, but as a first step away from the book, I felt quite happy with it.
I am going to try asking for feedback about it from them next week. Their class teacher would also like to observe a lesson soon, so I'd better keep creating that material!

Here We Go Again

2010-12-01T16:02:00.001+01:00

Today was the first day back teaching at the pre-school. 30 children, from age three to almost six. All together, in one class, for two hours. I went with high hopes, as I always do. I want to expect the best from them, and they always reward me by being amazing.
Today, I have to say, I was too ambitious. It was a good lesson for me. When you have 30 children in that age group, with only one teacher to help, arts and crafts any more complicated than colouring in two objects gets out of hand very quickly.

WHAT I DID:
I used the We Are Busy Beavers Weather Song, which was a last-minute decision. My plan was to have this lead into first making the weather mobile from Very Young Learners and from there, into a Dress-a-snowman activity.
The song was FANTASTIC! I reintroduced Lulu and the Cookie Puppet from last year, then used flashcards of hot, sunny, cold, raining, and did a chant to teach the vocab. I also worked on classroom language - today's target was "Listen" and "Repeat". With hand gestures, they GOT it!!! Then we got into the song. They just loved it. We listened the first time, then added gestures the second time...and the third and fourth...
Then I used Cookie to call them back to their desks four at a time.
And then chaos ensued. I could have and should have predicted it. They weren't allowed to get their own colours from their backpacks, so had to share three packs of school colours (for thirty kids). Then, of course, we had to cut out the shapes for the mobiles. There are only six children who are allowed to use scissors, so the other teacher spent a lot of time cutting...and then we had to attach the pieces to the straws.
The book suggests using sticky tape and sewing thread, and I blindly followed instructions. Result - immensely fiddly and slow. The teacher (years of pre-school experience under her belt), pulled out some thin ribbon, such as you might use to tie up a gift to make it look pretty, and a stapler. Excellent idea, one to be remembered and repeated for the rest of my teaching career. You can imagine, however, that this meant those children whose shapes were tied to the straw in boring old cotton, suddenly wanted to rip them all off and have the pretty pink ribbon. *sigh*

Owing to the chaos, we never finished up with the attractive class set of weather mobiles which my over-active imagination had assured me we would. Instead, the kids ended up just stuffing them into their backpacks. I chalked it up to a learning experience for me, and we cleaned up. The kids from last year remembered the Tidy Up song. That was a huge positive. Once we had things in order again, we went back, listened to the song again, did the bye-bye song, and the school bus left, leaving about ten children behind...so we sung Jingle Bells a few times, which leads in nicely to my up-coming lessons - two before Christmas - on the obvious theme!

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME:
This could have been a quick "colour the cloud" activity but still would have been chaos. So...what could I have done? Well, I could have prepared the shapes (cloud, sun, snowman, and umbrella) earlier, and laminated them - a class set so that each child had ONE shape. When their verse came up, they could hold it up...or else, I could do the gestures, and the children with those cards would hold them up. Hmmmm, there's my lead-in for the next lesson!

Phew. Any comments? What would YOU do with this many children?
I've decided to rely on really simple songs from supersimplesongs and wearebusybeavers, making up actions where possible, and using flashcard activites. Two hours is a lot for children to sit still, but this group descends to chaos almost immediately if they get up....

The Epson wonder-thing

2010-11-12T20:16:00.001+01:00

Our school got an invitation to visit a certain informatica shop in Viterbo, to attend a presentation of the new Epson EB-450Wi interactive projector with a view to perhaps adopting it in our classrooms (in some imagined far-future...). I went with a colleague today at 11 a.m. We were the first to arrive. Did someone say interactive whiteboard thingy? I'M THERE!!!! In fact, I had already cased the joint at 8.45, so that I knew where to go.
I didn't have to be convinced by the IWB. I already am. I've been desiring one since I bought the 4th edition of Jeremy Harmer's The Practice of English Language Teaching, which shows teachers using the things. Then, as previously posted, I got to try one out at the recent IH ELT conference in Rome.
This new Epson wonder-projector negates the need for an IWB though! You can project onto any surface, including a blackboard. How retro would that be? That surface then becomes interactive, by using a special infrared pen (or else there is an infrared light from the projector which recognises movement...or something! I don't need to know how it works to know that it is wonderful.)
The people giving the demo were suitably convincing, and my colleague and I chatted about the application all the way back to school.
Then I got to thinking. I've been considering getting my own set-up to take when I go out to other schools. A decent lap-top and a portable projector - but is this the way to go, or will it create other issues which I am unaware of? How much can you actually do with the thing once you've got it? Am I going to have to learn a whole new skills-set to maximise the benefits? And will the technology make me a better teacher, or will it interfere the rapport I build with my students?
Consider that I don't really know how to use Powerpoint...

I did consider this, and as I had a bit of time up my sleeve (due to the fact that we really didn't take much convincing about the Epson Wonder-thing, and that they couldn't really keep us once we'd seen what it could do), I played with Powerpoint before my individual lesson.

What I came up with was a short presentation with images of Tod's shoes and bags, a photo of Diego Della Valle, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Why? Well, this particular student is preparing for a public exam to enter into a certain public entity which has something to do with markets and stock exchanges. For the English part of her exam, she will be presented with a fairly technical article about finance or markets or something. She will have to read it, then precis it, and then answer some comprehension questions about it.

I'm running out of financial articles that I can grab from the 'net! We've done them all. Especially ones about Italy. However, today I found a little piece about said Diego become the main shareholder of Saks. It was an uh-huh moment. I found as much information as I could about his company, Saks Inc., Carlos Slim (who was the main shareholder until Diego shouldered him aside), and the deal.

The PPP worked as a nice lead-in to the articles...but then?

Sadly, there is nothing that technology can really help with when the exam she has to do is sooooo dry! She did enjoy the article about the slap-down shouting match between Silvio and Diego, though.

A Word Monster

2010-11-11T23:20:00.001+01:00

I also had my Starters group today. I wanted to jazz up their vocabulary learning a little, and remembered an activity I'd used with the pre-school class. The Word Monster. Which was perfect for today's lesson, as we were doing body parts (having done colours, numbers and "how many..." over the last few lessons.)

I had a sheet of brown paper already stuck to the board when they came in, so they were very curious about what we'd be doing. I went over the body parts with them, eliciting face, head, eye, ear, nose, mouth, body, arm, hand, leg and foot.

Then I got a big pen, and said...This is our Word Monster. He has a BIIIIIIIGGGGGGG head (which I drew). Then I asked how many eyes does he have? etc etc etc....

Once we'd drawn and coloured our monster, and talked about him, they gave him a name (apologies to Alex Case - it was the students' idea, really!), and we put him back on the board.

Now, this is a Word Monster (idea taken from "Very Young Learners" by Vanessa Reilly and Sheila M. Ward), so he 'eats' flashcards. I forgot the blu-tak today (will forget head tomorrow). Usually I would blu-tak the flashcards they know to the monster's mouth, and then check again at end of lesson - if they remember, then the monster eats the words which end up in his BIIIIIIIGGGGGGG STRIIIIPPPPPPPYYYYY BOOOOODDDDDDDYYYYY. :-) Today he got to munch on those words immediately, and the flashcards sat on the ledge of the board. Ah well. It was fun and creative.

Instant warmer for PET

2010-11-11T15:14:00.000+01:00

I started with a new PET prep class today, at one of the local high schools. Lovely school - run by nuns, and the English teacher is switched on and speaks very well. I have sixteen students, probably all about 15 and 16 years of age. A good mix of boys and girls, and all at about the same level (with the obvious gradings of ability).

I only have them for an hour at a time, once a week, for 24 hours in total. That isn't much time, when you consider that I am preparing them for all three parts of the exam (Reading/Writing, Listening and Speaking). Usually our job is just to prepare them for Listening and Speaking. We decided to use Skills Booster 4, by Alexandra Green (published by New Editions, HEINLE CENGAGE Learning), because it is a short course, and covers the four skills very nicely, and is also aimed at the appropriate age group.

As I was preparing the first lesson yesterday, I had one of those completely blank moments - I just KNEW there was something I usually do at the beginning of a PET Prep class, but I couldn't force it from the dark recesses of my currently-overtaxed brain...

Until I got into the classroom, of course! Ta-dah! I immediately discarded the completely lame idea I had planned as a warmer, and put them into groups. Then I wrote up some questions about the exam on the board : How many papers are there? How many parts in Reading? How many in Writing? How many words do you write in Part 2 Writing? In Part 3? How much time do you have for Reading/Writing? How much time for Listening? Where do you write your answers for Listening? How many people at a time do the Speaking Exam? How many examiners are there?

I negotiated a time limit (5 minutes) and set the timer, then let them at their handbooks....

They really got into it, and although no group answered all the questions, it familiarised them with the handbook, and with the exam.

And then we got on with the Skills Booster book, lesson one.

And I am well pleased with the book! It is just the right level. Gave them a confidence boost right from the get-go, and I think it is going to be a great group to work with.

NaNoWriMo in Iceland

2010-11-07T21:10:00.000+01:00

I'm wearing a different hat in November. I'm a teacher. It is what I do. I love it. But I'm also a writer. It's what I do. I love it. I get paid for doing the first. I'd love to get paid for doing the second (actually, I have been paid, once. Which means that I know I can do it again.)
Why November? If you follow the link to NaNoWriMo, you'll find out. NaNo gives me the kick in the pants I need to make me fit writing in and around all the other aspects of my life (you know, wife, mother, daughter, sister, teacher, friend...), and shows me every year that I CAN write, and I LOVE writing.

The first year was when I wrote the novel I'd been thinking about for ages. I finished that book, and its been rejected by several very reputable agents. :-) As you know, rejection means that I'm a "real author"!

Last year I wrote a book which I loved - only it had a very saggy middle which kept me bogged down. So much so that it is still a work in progress. I thought about resurrecting it this year, and making the 50,000 words the second half of that book - but then I had another idea.

And also a change of genre.

I've moved from Chick Lit - erm, I mean, Contemporary Women's Fiction - into ROMANCE. Yes, romance, with the necessary Alpha male, strong yet vulnerable female, and some slurpy bits. And to add a bang to the whole story, I've set it in Iceland (because I needed a literal bang, as in a volcano!).

Previously, I've written about New Zealand, Italy, London...you know, places I've actually been to, and know something about. This year, I'm completely in the dark. Well, not completely, of course, because we have the Internet, with blogs, flikr, ads, mapmyrun for calculating distances, and all those good things.

However, if you are visiting this blog, and you live in Iceland, or have been to Iceland, I'd love to hear from you. Really! Especially if you live anywhere near Skaftafell, and/or are a geologist, an Earth Sciences student, or a photo journalist :-)

Thanks for checking in!

Another way to do a song...

2010-10-31T08:30:00.000+01:00

What can you do with a song in an ESL class?

Error correction

Gap fill

Re-order the lines

Re-order the words (!)

Running dictation (with the text...correct while listening)

And one I learned from Margaret Horrigan of IH Manzoni

Take the first verse of the song you want to do with your students. For this example, let's use "These Boots Are Made For Walking" by Nancy Sinatra (because this is what MH used at the conference, to lead into her lesson about shoes).

Count how many words there are in the first verse, and maintaining the punctuation, replace each word with a letter (in order---1,2,3,4,5,....). You can do this on the board, leaving space to replace the numbers with the words. Or you can use the technology available, and do it as a document, which you then project onto the board (or else, surely, you can do it somehow on an interactive white board, but as I have no experience with one, I'll leave that to the really techy people!)

If you do it as a doc and project it, you have the words under the numbers, but in white on a white background, so they are invisible at first. As the students guess them, you can then change the colour of each correct word to the colour of the team which guessed the word....

Proceedure : Divide the class into two or three teams, and assign each team a colour (according to your whiteboard pens, of course!). If you are still working on a blackboard, you may have coloured chalk. If you have no coloured chalk, assign each team a shape - the Circle Team, the Oval Team and the Rectangle Team, for example.

Explain that they must listen to the song, and then they can hazard a guess - one word, or two or three or four (etc) words TOGETHER (this is to show them the lexical chunks). If the words are correct, write them up on the team's colour (or put the team's shape around the word). They can listen again and again, while they build the verse up on the board.

Once that is done (and you can help them with questions such as "What can come before a noun?"), you then go straight into the lesson.

This technique can also be used with short reading passages (which you, the teacher, read to the class), which also lead into the theme of the lesson.

I hope I've explained this clearly enough. If not (or even if), please leave a comment, and I will attempt to clarify!

feedback session

2010-10-27T17:14:00.001+02:00

I gave a brief and rushed presentation on the conference today at our staff meeting. I was happy with how it went, but obviously needed a lot more time to fit in two days' worth of inspiration. So I've said I will report a little more on here...just not right now!

Diamante poetry

2010-10-23T22:20:00.000+02:00

Diamante poetry was one of the techniques suggested by Jeremy Harmer in his presentation "The Marriage of True Minds: poetry and music in language teaching", given at the Accademia Britannica International House 50th Anniversary Educational Conference, in Rome, Oct 22/23, 2010.
Here's my first attempt (written on train on way to second day of conference).

FIRST DAY

Student

eager, open

repeating, speaking, inventing,

textbook, dictionary, computer, whiteboard,

miming, eliciting, smiling,

prepared, delighted,

Teacher.

I know - it's never going to win a competition, but the creative spark was struck, and I felt great pride in my little poem. Now imagine your students producing something similar. They have to tap into their lexis to find words they can use. You can give them the theme (Men/women, cats/dogs, summer/winter, day/night....), put on some background music (if they want it - remember to ASK. And remember, don't turn of the music before it is finished, just because you think the students SHOULD be finished!).

He talked about many other activities you can do with poems in class. If you want to know more, comment, and I'll report, but for now I will just mention Jeremy's favourite - "YOU".

The students think of someone they love, and write that person's name at the top of the page.

Then the teacher says "Write about that person as if they were

... a month." "You are April, flowers blooming, sudden showers."

...a kind of weather." "You are a sunny day, warmth spreading."

...a kind of food." "You are a bowl of porridge, strength to get through the day"

and so on and so on! He says that the students engage with this kind of writing, and that poetry can also be used to vastly improve students' pronunciation. I'm excited to try some of his techniques.

Accademia Britannica International House 50th Anniversary Conference, Rome, 22-23 October, 2010

2010-10-23T21:53:00.000+02:00

DAY TWO

What a GREAT day! I think I enjoyed it even more than yesterday. I'm looking back over the programme, and I think the presentation I enjoyed the most was "CLIL - Herstory", by Deborah Withworth and Jo Glaiser, both of Accademia Britannica International House. As has long been noted, text books to tend to focus on HIS-tory, with only token females (Amelia Earhart? Marie Curie?) appearing now and again - and those tending to be white and European. The presentation began with an exercise for students - nine women from history, of different cultures and colours. I felt ashamed that I knew only two of them - but I wasn't alone. We were then given the names of the women, and the countries, and had to match them to the pictures. I recognised more at this stage. The women were Rosa Parks, Ci Xi, Pocahontas, Anita Garabaldi, Truganini, Miriam Makeba, Aung San Suu Kyi, Jacqueline du Pré and Hypatia. We then were given a list of what they were famous for, and had to match again. The task then focused in on Jacqueline du Pré, with a listening (audio/video) taken from youtube, with some questions for the first listening, then a braille-coded gap-fill type exercise, where we had to reconstruct the text (listening). A very clear lesson plan.
We were then shown how to do something similar with a reading text about Truganini.
This was such a valuable presentation as it reinforced what I'd learned while doing the CELTYL - when teaching our young learners (or anyone, really), it pays to be creative with materials, instead of relying on the text book.

Jeremy Harmer spoke again this morning (and autographed my copy of The Practice of English Language Teaching! I'm such an ELT groupie!). His presentation was based on a series of short videos he'd made using a flip-cam. At several different ELT conferences, he'd asked teachers to talk about a successful lesson they'd taught recently, and we used their responses to think about the beliefs we bring to our own teaching.

There were two presentations in praise of the IWB (interactive white board) again - I even got to try one out! Yes, I want one. As with any tool, they don't work by themselves. The teacher still needs to put in the time for preparation, perhaps even more time than before, at least at the beginning. It seems that they might take some getting used to. You have to think about where you stand, so you don't block the beam, and you have to write very neatly on the board. That being said...I STILL WANT ONE!

The after lunch speaker, Paul Roberts, from the Centre for English Language Teaching at the University of York, offered a theoretical presentation entitled "Fixed Standards and Language Flows" which raised questions about how the type of English we teach our students. He talked about problems he has had with groups of students from different cultural backgrounds trying to negotiate and make decisions in English. One culture's way of showing respect may be another's way of showing disrespect - so are we trying to teach a "culture" while we teach a language? He ended with two tentative conclusions and a question...
"Fixed standards may only be slightly relevant."
"Native speakers are probably irrelevant."
"Where are the new teaching materials?"

And I will leave you to ponder those while I make my way to bed.

Accademia Britannica International House 50th Anniversary Conference, Rome, 22-23 October, 2010

2010-10-22T22:11:00.002+02:00

MY IMPRESSIONS (to be expanded later...)
DAY ONE

Nothing beats an ESL conference for giving your teaching a lift, and the first day of the IH conference had me soaring. Although I must admit that gone are the days when I just absorb everything. I am now more attuned to the presenter who is really informing me, and more aware when the presenter is just trying to sell me the latest textbook or product.

In this post, I'm going to deal with the speakers who really taught me something, and inspired me to be a better teacher. Therefore, I have to begin with Norman Cain who, with just a few comments to open the conference, reminded me what a truly gifted teacher he is. It was fascinating to learn that back in 1984, Norman got his CELTA (which was called something else back then) at the very school he now runs (IH, of course).

The first speaker of the day was the famous (in ESL circles) Jeremy Harmer, the author of The Practice of English Language Teaching, among many other titles. His presentation, entitled "The marriage of True minds: poetry and music in language teaching, began with an enthralling performance of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. He then went on to explain that his talk had arisen from a show he'd created with a musician friend called Steve Bingham, called Touchable Dreams. As well as some ideas for helping our students learn to pronounce perfectly through poems (I will deal with specifics in a later post), he touched on the use of music (rather than just songs) in the classroom. An important point - as teachers, we should remember to ASK our students if they would like some background music while they do a task, instead of just playing it...and then turning it off when we think the activity should end, even if the music hasn't finished!

Margaret Horrigan was the next presenter to inspire. Her talk on Biodiverse Teaching was based on a lesson using shoes as the theme. I'd seen part of this during the CELTYL course, but that didn't detract at all. The main message was that as teachers, we should show respect for accents, cultures, races, and beliefs, and that our teaching (especially of children) can be a chance for us to gently open the minds and broaden the horizons of our students. I got to help Margaret on the stage, too, which was a thrill (yes, my nickname IS Herminone!).

Norman Cain then gave a presentation on CLIL - Culture, Traditions and Religion - going where many ESL teachers fear to tread! And, of course, showed us how it can be done, in the most engaging way! He videoed a taxi driver in Malaysia, talking about Thaipusam and the Batu Caves, and played it to his students. REAL English, unedited...and they loved it. There are just so many possibilities.

The after-lunch slot is never easy, but Hugh Dellar (author of the Outcomes series of ESL textbooks) made it look that way. He compared ELT with the British Royal Family, with vocabulary and pronunciation coming in as lowly ranked nobles in thrall to King Grammar. His talk ended with King Grammar is dead! Long live...?
...lexico-grammatical structures?
...grammaticalised lexis?
... curiosity and wonder in the ordinary!
...learning and teaching!
and an invitation to join him on facebook (which I did, naturally...)

My brain was about full by this stage, and I didn't manage to get very excited by the last presentation, which was an introduction to the web platform english360...that is, until the presenter, Valentina Dodge, began to show us what we could do with it. It looked like the future, manageable, right there on the screen. And you can try it for free www.english360.com - which I will do, after the conference ends, tomorrow.

As with any conference of this nature, there is a lot of information to process. Tomorrow, I will reflect on Day Two, and then in later posts, go into specific details, applicable to lesson planning.

A festival for Saint Bartholemew

2010-08-28T19:50:00.002+02:00

San Michele in Teverina is protected by St Bartholemew, who is also the patron saint of Armenia, bookbinders, butchers, Florentine cheese (eh?), salt merchants, Malta, neurological diseases (and those who seek their cure), plasterers, shoemakers, tanners and leather workers (he was flayed).

Our village church has a large statue of him, and every year, in the week leading up to his Feast Day (August 24th), we celebrate with Masses in his honour, live music in the piazza every evening, games for the children, an Ape Gymkhana (see photo), and on the final day, a procession of the statue around the village.

This is an Ape (Ah-Pay), Italy's answer to the ute.

Gruppo Folkloristco arriving...

This year, on the Sunday afternoon, we also had a "Gruppo Folkloristico" come and perform. The first impression was more Main Street, USA than Corso d'Italia, but they were a lot of fun...AND check out the ribbons on their hats.

Yes, Italy does feature...

They had some really fun instruments, and I especially loved the cymbals on the scissors. This group seemed to have pulled "folklore" from the United States, England (Morris Dancing, anyone), and ... well, I guess, Italy.

The funny man with the scissor cymbals.

The marching/cheer leading girls were a big hit, and highly skilled. It was an original act, and I think most people enjoyed the music and the dancing. The main thing is that our village is protected for another year, and we can rest easy.

Very exciting moment.

2010-08-19T11:33:00.002+02:00

For many of us in the on-line TESOL world, Alex Case is a bit of a hero. Well...he is for me, anyway. I check his blog regularly, and value what he has to say. So I was thrilled to bits when he asked me if I would comment on the Young Learners course I did in June. It took me longer than I wanted to write the blog (perfectionism going strong!), but I finally took advantage of Anti-Procrastination Wednesday (www.flylady.net), and GOT IT DONE...and submitted, too!
Today it is up on his blog, and I am really tickled to a high shade of rose to see it there! Of course, now that it is up, I'd like to tweak it a bit, but I'll deal with anything that needs tweaking in the comments!
A big thanks to Alex for inviting me to write for his blog. www.tefl.net/alexcase/teaching/tefl/teenagers/yl-extension-to-celta/

A little oneirology for Thursday.

2010-08-12T19:05:00.000+02:00

Studying your own dreams can be an interesting window into your current mental state. Most adults dream about two hours EVERY NIGHT of their lives – but most adults are also highly unlikely to remember more than one or two of their dreams.
When I was younger, single, and had more time on my hands, I kept a dream journal for six months. As soon as I woke up every morning, I would write down all the dreams I could remember. Initially, only one or two were clear, but as I began this habit, I started to remember more and more details, and then more and more actual dreams, until I could record up to seven dreams from a single night.
I was disappointed to note that there were no real patterns. Most of my dreams were fairly unexciting, and seemed to be more of a rehash of the day’s or week’s events, than any specific message from my subconscious.
Except for the Anxiety Dreams. I had read that people often have a particular recurring dream during times of heightened stress. The common examples are appearing naked in public, being chased, not being able to move, and the classic, turing up for an exam without having studied (I didn’t need to dream that one – it actually happened my first year of university. It was stressful. And I failed.). However, none of these was my Anxiety Dream of choice at the time I’m talking about (ten years ago now).
No, my AD was about toilets. A severe need to pee, and nowhere to do it, or else the toilet was up a tree, or in a vast maze of cubicles, mostly occupied, or mostly filthy, or mostly with a large audience. Whenever I found myself recording a toilet dream, it was a sign for me to examine more closely what was happening during waking hours.
I no longer have the time or the inclination to record all my dreams, but I have noticed over the last year that the nature of my AD has changed. In anxious moments, the location of terror is now an airport. I need to catch a connecting flight. I have too much luggage. I can’t find the gate. I have to go from one terminal to another, but can’t find the way. There are too many escalators, mainly going in the wrong direction. And last night, I was in a country between Italy and New Zealand (maybe Singapore, maybe Bangkok), and they had told us to wait in a garden. Where a smiling flight attendant gave me a suitcase, and told me to hurry to Gate [unintelligible], which was over there [vague gesture]…up and down escalators, have to validate boarding pass, have to go through a long corridor which is also a luxury hotel (picture walking along side many cubicles, each with a fancy bed and delicious linen). At the end is a staircase, very crowded, and my Australian aunt is there, but she isn’t going where I am going. She knows where I need to go, though, and starts to give me directions, while we are both being jostled by the crowd. In the background, at all times, is a large red clock, ticking loudly, counting down how much time I have left...
As it approaches 0:00 I am thankfully wakened by my son yelling “Muuuuuummmmmmmmyyyyyy.”
If I visit another airport tonight, I’m getting help.

NaNoWriMo - not just November.

2010-08-09T21:22:00.000+02:00

For those of you who don't know, National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) starts on November 1 every year, and ends on the last day of that month. The challenge is to write the first draft of a novel (at least 50,000 words) in that month. If you want more information, check them out at www.nanowrimo.org or on facebook under NaNoWriMo.
At the moment, as a way to keep us on our creative toes, they are running writing challenges, in the comments section of their fb wall, and today's was "Write a story that uses the words "happy" and "coffee" and is 50 words or less!"

So I thought I would cheat on my blog today, and just publish my entry :-) This year will be my third NaNo, and I am very excited about it - although this is the first year that I haven't had a single plot or character idea in the lead-up. I'm a little worried, but not too much, yet :-)

I'd love some comments about my wee story - perhaps THIS will spin out into the 50,000 for NaNo2010?
__________________________________

Just another day turned to cheap farce when Samson entered his usual coffee shop and found the waiter locked in an embrace with Sylvia. Perhaps she had forgotten that this was where Samson always had breakfast. Or else she was trying to show him that she was no longer happy.

__________________________________

A day's not wasted when you learn something.

2010-08-06T20:55:00.000+02:00

I've been subscribing to TIME magazine for ten years now. Its weekly entrance into our home provides a take on world news and culture which I don't get from other sources - and nearly every week I find myself reaching for the OED to look up a word I don't know. Anything that expands my vocabulary is a good thing.
This week, however, I am excited to have been introduced to a whole new piece of jargon - for jargon it can only be. The August 2, 2010 Europe edition has an article about South Korea's LG Electronics, and I was puzzled by the sentence "...more than tripled the share of R&D spending on "disruptive" research -...". ??? How can research be disruptive, was my immediate thought. Reading on, I gathered that this term refers to research into brand-new areas, "breakthrough solutions" and that this research may not show results for a very long time. Okay...got it...
The very next article is about OLEDs (or Organic Light-Emitting Diodes) - fascinating reading. These are flat, flexible, and can even be transparent. They emit a warm glow, similar to sunlight, but remain cool to the touch. The last sentence of the second paragraph reads "..."That's the disruptive nature of it."..." - again, this word leapt off the page at me. At this point, a trip to the dictionary becomes mandatory.
My trusty OED only has the standard entry ...
disruptive adj. Causing problems, noise, etc. so that sth cannot continue normally.
Yes...time for a trip to that other font of all knowledge - google. Google, then to wikipedia, where I discover that I am many years behind on this one!
The entry for disruptive technology first entered the wikisphere in 2002! I'm eight years behind...
No, WAIT!
"The term disruptive technologies was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave[3], which he co-wrote with Joseph Bower." (wikipedia).
I'm fifteen years behind!

And this is what wiki tells me it is all about.
"Disruptive innovation is a term used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by lowering price or designing for a different set of consumers."

Thanks to TIME, for helping me catch up, and thanks to google and wiki ( for teaching me something new today.

Why I am a reader....and why I want my children to be readers, too.

2010-07-06T21:00:00.000+02:00

When I read about housekeeping, I (albeit briefly) become a better housekeeper.
When I read about parenting, I become a better parent.
When I read about writing, I become a better writer.
When I read about teaching, I become a better teacher.
When I read a novel, which someone has poured their love, imagination and effort into, for weeks, months, years -
I have a window into a world I never knew existed.
I have a window into a culture I will never visit.
I have a window into lives of people I would love to have as friends.

I want my children to grow up with these opportunities. To enrich their lives, and let their imaginations soar. To discover that they can learn more from a book than from the TV. And that in times of sorrow, pain, heartache, a book may be what sees them through.

Too hot to teach!

2010-06-09T16:04:00.000+02:00

- let alone learn! Today the temperature hit 30 degrees, and inside the classroom, it was roasting. The little cherubs had been for a walk in the morning, up to the Piazza, to rehearse the play they're performing Friday evening. When I arrived, they were sitting quietly, drawing.
I had no intro from the teachers today, so it was a bit hard to begin. The Hello song got their attention (mostly), but it was really difficult to keep it. Then someone spilled water all over the floor, just as we were getting into the action songs, so it was "Everyone back to your table" - worksheet time.
I tried giving out stickers again today...same problem as the first time, in that my sticker pads are lovely, but all different, so many arguments about who got which sticker - and then they don't detach easily from the page so it took forever. Not to be repeated.
One girl cried because she asked me when English finished, and when I told her "tomorrow is the last lesson" - sobs...."I don't want English to finish!" Ah, sweetie.
Reflection points: The Wiggles are great for this age group, but only certain songs. The ones which work best are "Here Comes A Bear" (although I haven't bothered trying to teach them what a Wombat is!), "Rock-a-bye Your Bear", and "Five Little Ducks".
They only enjoy the worksheets when they can see a very clear reason for doing them. They didn't like today's at all, because there wasn't time to explain WHY they were doing it.
They know their colours, clothes, animals and sun/rain/hot/cold very well.
I'll be sad at the end of tomorrow's lesson.

Did you see that train go by?!

2010-06-07T15:40:00.000+02:00

Whoosh! Stated aims for today's lesson were:
Children learn body parts - head, hands, feet
Children review clothes vocab - hat, shoes, trousers
Children enjoy completing a worksheet
Children learn a new song

What really happened:
I arrived at 2p.m., to find that the last yoga lesson of the year was still in session. This gave me time to set up the chairs in a semi-circle, at which point I discovered that I had left my poster of Lulu the Blue Kangeroo, with her handy pouch for flashcards, at home.
D. and G. also ran up to me, demanding a piece of the "yellow-tak" I use to attach posters to walls and flashcards to posters.
The children had taken off their shoes and socks for yoga, so we sang (well, I sang, and two children joined in) the "Put your shoes on" song. GOOD!
Then they sat on their chairs, and we sang the hello song - at which point they all stood up again (action song!), and it was very difficult to get them sitting again, of course! (predictable). REFLECTION: Perhaps at the point I had them all sitting, I should have skipped the Hello song, and moved straight to the flashcards (or even just given up on the lesson aims, and read a story they know and like).
To add to the confusion, there was a photographer, who was also videoing the lesson. Always nice to be informed of these things! <---- sarcasm.
I had the Cookie puppet, with a hat on his feet, which moved to his hands, and finally his head. This was a very involving way to introduce the new vocabulary. I also showed them a worksheet with Lulu and Cookie learning a new song. We clapped hands, tapped feet and nodded heads...and then did the song, which again involved standing up and doing actions.
I then wanted to hand out worksheets, and bless them! They actually started lining up in the train, to get their worksheets - hurrah for children and routines!
However, because we'd started late, it was then time to tidy up and get ready for the school bus, so the whole consolidation part of the lesson was consigned to "next time".
I quickly flipped to the goodbye song...
and to wrap up a totally confusing lesson, I then had to stay, as the teacher was called away by a parent, so I pulled out The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and read it, standing up, while they all sat at their desks with their backpacks on.
This was positive, though! I wondered how much they were really getting from the story - this is the third time I have read it, and one of the 6 year old boys usually seems very bored by it.
Not this time. A couple of other children stood up in front of me, and L. couldn't see. He asked the others to sit down (strongly), then came over and explained that if they didn't sit down, he and the others couldn't see, and that they wanted to enjoy the story as well! Yahoo! I'd call that a success.
So, I was in, done and out, hot and bothered, and just wondering what, if anything, I'd managed to teach them today...
but now that I've reflected, I think I can say they did learn something - or rather, they HAVE learned something in the time I have been there. Four more hours this week, and we have finished.

Avoidance or Acceptance?

2010-06-06T20:08:00.001+02:00

I've been reflecting on my parenting this weekend, rather than on teaching, which is still chugging along nicely. The occasion for this reflection was a trip to the supermarket with both children, and husband, in tow.
Saturday morning is never the best time for this undertaking, but with my work hours all over the place at the moment, I'm just not managing to fit it in during the week. I have been doing top-up shops here in the village, but we were seriously low on fundamentals (think loo-paper, washing powder, and cornflakes - things which just cost so much less at the big supermarket).
Things were tense from the moment we left home - well, actually from about 2kms from home, when hubby suddenly realized he'd left both his wallet and driver's licence at home. Oh dear! With Wee Man already starting his usual chorus of "When are we get there, Mummy?" and "How long does it take?", we decided that me driving was the better option. This lead to the Big Man chorus of "Change gear now" "Watch that pothole" and "You could have overtaken him there". T.E.N.S.E.
Our children no longer fit in the seats of the supermarket trolley, but they do love riding in it - only problem is that now they are so big, they have to get out again as soon as we start putting any consumables in...
And thus it begins..."Mummy, look at this." "Mummy, can we buy that?" "Mummy, do you need this?" "Mummy, X from school always eats this." WE KNOW THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. So why, then, does it always make us tense, and slightly crazed-looking around the eyes?
There are some things in parenting which are simply inevitable. THIS IS ONE OF THEM.
Which is why I've decided to break my parenting down into two possible reactions to any given situation, and plan accordingly.
I can either AVOID the situation all together, which means shopping during the week, while the cherubs are at school.
Or ACCEPT that they find the supermarket amazing, and are filled with wonder when there. I can thus prepare by making a list of things for them to find. (This time, Emily loved picking the best apricots and bagging them. Weighing them turned into an instant maths lesson. Liam was less than impressed that we'd only left the carrots for him to bag.) I can make sure they're well-fed and watered before going in. I can explain clearly the behaviour I expect from them (staying close by, keeping hands away from things which are not on our list..). And to end well, I can choose the check-out lane which does not have all the chocolate and lollies displayed to tempt little fingers and frazzled parents.
Avoid or Accept - my new way to deal with parenting.

What's happening in their heads?

2010-06-02T22:21:00.001+02:00

I haven't posted for a while - things have been ticking over - or rather, just ticking, like a time-bomb, waiting to explode. The whole experience of teaching this preschool class is getting wrapped up in all the local politics whirling around us.

So, just a couple of things to note about my class. There are thirty children on the roll. I've never had that many at a time - usually more like 20-25. The older ones, the 6 year olds, and the 5-nearly-6 year olds are the ones which seem to be paying more attention, but sometimes the younger ones really surprise me.
My son is in the class, and he shares his table with little Mr F who is one of those boys who has a hard time sitting still, but he's quiet, and even if he doesn't like to be part of the crowd singing and dancing at the front of the class, I notice he is often doing the actions and mouthing the words from his seat at the back. My son always calls me "Mummy", of course. The others call me "Maestra d'Inglese" or just Jo. But when I went to Mr F.'s table to check he was able to do the work last week, he said "Mummy, non ho i colori." (I don't have the colours). He called me MUMMY! I loved that! Showed he's paying attention to the interaction (in English).
The second thing which suprised me this last week was a little Miss 5, who always wants to help me (so she can nab a bit of the yellow sticky stuff I use to stick the flashcards to the wall.) She sidled up to me the other day, with her usual "Maestra, posso aiutarti oggi?" (teacher, can I help you today?", and I said "Sure!". [not sure why I have slipped into this "sure" instead of "yes" business - may need to work on my teacher-talk!], and she turned to the class teacher, who was about to send her back to her seat and said (in Italian), "Teacher, she said "sure", and that means "yes"!". I was floored! She had picked that up only through context.
The last moment this week which had me smiling to myself was the brightest button in the class, a chatty, out-going Little Miss 6, who loves to do all the action songs, and often stands beside me, as a helper, demonstrating the movements. We have been doing clothes - hat, shoes and trousers. The song goes "Cookie, put your trousers on..." etc etc. They've learned the song, and repeated it ...
I pulled out the flashcards, and held up the picture of trousers, saying "What are these?". Little Miss 6 called out, excitedly "TROUSERS-ON!!!!"
*BLINK*
"Yes, trousers! - that's right!" (What am I doing to them???!)

Washing On The Line

2010-05-25T20:33:00.000+02:00

This week I give myself a 2 out of 10 for planning! I just can't seem to knuckle down. I know in my general teaching, I tend to rely too heavily on the course book and teacher's book - then wing it a little, depending on what comes out in the lesson. I think after teaching for so long, I can do this. Perhaps my lessons would be a little more brilliant if I made extra activities. I admit this. However, the lessons always go smoothly, and I am always aware of the individual students in a group, and do extra practice when necessary.
None of this works for the pre-school. Apart from being aware of possible topic areas, my "normal" way of doing things counts for little here. The course is wonderful, but my group is not its target audience, so everything needs to be adapted. That was fine at the beginning. I had that beginner's enthusiasm, and desire to succeed brilliantly.
Then, of course, staying up until midnight, then not sleeping for worry anyway, began to take its toll, and I just had to back off a little from the intensity.
And it should be noted, that once I DID back off a little, things got a little easier. And now I can get it together 30 minutes before a lesson (provided that I read through the TB before going to bed!).
What I have discovered so far, about my group, anyway (it remains to be seen if this knowledge is transferable), is that it all depends on the mood of the crowd. If they are restive, even the best planned lesson is going to be a struggle. If they are able to focus, they manage to absorb everything.
This week's topic is clothes. My idea for today was to revise using the flashcards, then do the song again, but then I drew a blank. Half the class had done the puppet and dressed him yesterday, so I didn't want to do that again (also, having started halfway through, they don't have English folders to put their work in, so most of them had taken the puppet home!).
My idea is hardly original, but it felt so to me! I used WordArt to write a curved title "What's On Your Clothes Line?" across the top of a page, printed it out, then drew a clothesline, with pegs attached (but no clothes).
After the word review (I also had them pull clothes out of a bag, and taught socks and skirt, to add to Hat, Trousers and shoes from yesterday), and the song, I then drew Cookie's clothesline on the board, and they called out clothes, and I drew them hanging on the line. This also let us review Sun and Rain (and Incy Wincy, of course!). Then they went to their desks, and got drawing.
I had the usual M. saying "I am not good at drawing. I can't do it." The teacher told me that they deal with this by saying "Just try - it will be what it will be." - I also added that I was sure she could do it, and that I have already seen her doing some beautiful drawings.
She tried....and surprised herself, I think!
Tomorrow is the big interview for the CELTYL at International House in Rome. I'm off to do some last minute cramming. I found out today that the oral part usually takes about an hour!!! I hope my voice holds up!
Oh, I also firs

Too much to deal with

2010-05-24T22:08:00.000+02:00

It wasn't meant to be like that, but today I really went in without a lot of pre-planning. I read through the teacher's book over my morning coffee, and nodded my head a lot, without managing to absorb much (late night last night due to Miracle Baby C's very moving Baptism). This week's unit is all about clothes - well, trousers, hats and shoes, anyway.
The first thing that happened when I arrived (VERY stressed after a morning driving first south and then north, behind very many large and slow trucks), I was told that it was S's birthday, and so we would be celebrating.
Happy Birthday in English, of course, then I helped giving out plates, forks, cups and serviettes, and telling the children the English words for all of that. Then I served the drinks, so used "Would you like Coke or Fanta?". Going for meaning based on content, here! They got it!
After the cake, and clean-up, we got down to the lesson. My heart wasn't in it, though, after the OTHER news I got upon arrival.
The first I already knew - from September, the intermediate school will no longer have a Prima Media (the first year), but only Seconda and Terza. Which means that the students in their last year at the local primary school must now go out of town for school. They all have to do that for high school, anyway, but it is sad to lose the intermediate school, too.
The second piece of news left me numb at first. I had heard that the local primary wouldn't have its full complement of teachers from September, which meant that two of the classes would have to be combined. I figured this would be something sensible, like the first and second year combined, or the second and third. Instead, it will be the second and fourth! That is 7 year olds with 9/10 year olds.
The reason (if we can call it that) is that this year's First and Third classes are the smallest (9 in the former, not sure how many in the latter), so they are the two which can be combined from a numbers point of view.
Nothing about taking the children's learning into consideration there.
I went to a primary school where there were two years combined in each class - that is not my concern. I am concerned that they are combining two completely different levels of learning in one room. In the 2nd year, they are learning about making longer sentences, moving onto more complicated multiplication. In the 4th, they are writing compositions, and studying History.
After school (the lesson went just fine...), I talked to a friend whose daughter is the same age as mine. They go to Dance School together. She takes her daughter to school in Viterbo. I'm going to look into it. Even though I would struggle with the logistics of it, my children's education is much too important for me to muck around on this one.

Out of Context

2010-05-22T21:16:00.000+02:00

Today while shoe-shopping (lucky me!) with my friend (double lucky me!), I met up with one of my pre-school kiddies. He's one of the stars of the class - not for any particular ability, but because he always seems to have a blast. And because he always draws an extra picture just for me, with his name written on it. With his dark curly hair, and big brown eyes, he reminds me a lot of my little brother at that age - especially when he lights up with his cheeky grin.
I first spotted his mamma, and although I recognized her as one of the mums, I couldn't connect her with the correct child, until I saw D. I was so happy - I just blurted out "Hello D!".
He freaked out! It was kind of funny, but it made me wonder about the psychology of it - I still have a lot to learn! He had been running towards me, but when he saw me, he froze, then started running away from me, while looking for...perhaps his dad, or mum. I hope I didn't scar him - I'm sure that it was just that I was totally out of the context in which he knows me. Now I can't wait to see him on Monday, to see what his reaction will be.
As to the shoes - I had (yes HAD) to get new shoes for a Baptism tomorrow. C. the Miracle Baby is getting Christened, and we are all invited. I went in looking for heels...I have a very pretty dress, and wanted something really pretty to match. There were some REALLY special shoes, in a pale lilac with flowers at the toes, and a 4 inch heel...I put them on. They fit. They were beautiful.
Then I remembered my promise to my husband - "you can relax....I will look after Liam. Don't worry about a thing."
I took off the heels. You can't run after a 4 year old Liam in 4 inch heels. Well, not without falling over and ruining your pretty dress, anyway.
Luckily, my friend has an eagle eye for JUST the right shoe....a beautifully flat, just-the-right-shade-of-purple ballerina.
I left the shop on a real shoe-high. But still wondering about what goes on in the mind of a 5 year old, when confronted with a teacher completely out of context.

What a difference a day makes ...

2010-05-21T15:48:00.000+02:00

... and a smaller class! Today's class was a success from my point of view. I think this was mainly due to the class size being very much reduced (the reason for this is unclear). There were 14 pupils. When I arrived, they were sitting quietly at their tables, all anticipation. We began with the Hello song, which they all respond to, and enjoy. Today I asked I. and S. (two girls), to be my helpers for "What's in your pocket, Lulu?". In the Teacher's Book, it is "What's in your pouch?", but I think "pocket" is a more useful vocabulary item, so have adapted accordingly.

Today the items were Happy/Sad, Big (spider), Little (spider), Elephant, Parrot, Frog, Snake, and Bat.

After the presentation, and drill, I pulled out "The Monkey Puzzle", by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. This is the first time I've tried a story with them, which they didn't already know (we've done The Three Little Pigs many times). I translated some bits, but mostly read it in English, with lots of mime. I asked lots of yes/no questions, and they responded correctly, in English.

While reading "Children Learning English" by Jayne Moon, I was struck by a teaching example in Chapter 5, where a Hungarian primary teacher is telling her class of eight-year-olds the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. She only speaks in English, but accepts answers from her students in Hungarian - which she then reflects back to them in English. This method seems to be very sensible to me. It lets the children know that they have understood, even if they are not yet ready/able to respond in English. It also models the correct English for them.

I tried this today. I stopped often to let the children comment on the story. The book is beautifully illustrated, so the children were very engaged with the story. They were excited to see what would happen next. I had most of them to the very end.

An interesting CLIL point - some of them didn't get that the Butterfly was the caterpillars' mummy. Perhaps with more time, this book could lead onto a whole science lesson in English!

One negative that I will allow myself today - my follow-up activity was not well thought-out. In my defense, I hadn't thought we'd even get that far! We reviewed "I like...." and "Do you like...?" and then I asked most of the children (until boredom and bottom-jiggling set in), Do you like elephants? Do you like... etc etc. Then they all drew their favourite animal from the story.

They don't really care for free drawing, it seems. I get a lot of "Ma io non sono buona/o..." (I'm no good at drawing...), which always surprises me from this age group. I let some of them trace the animal they wanted, from the book.

To end the lesson, we did Incy Wincy, and Five Little Ducks, and I also stayed to support the teacher, while she got the children ready for the school bus. (Note: there was another biting incident, before I arrived today, between two local girls - Ts worried about expected fall-out).

I left feeling very positive. Long may that feeling last.

A difficult lesson

2010-05-21T10:58:00.000+02:00

It is never easy taking over someone else's class. For whatever reason you have to do this, there are issues to be dealt with - the last teacher's style, the rapport they had built with their students, the students' own feelings about having a different teacher halfway through the course.

I'm discovering that coming into a pre-school English course half way through adds several other issues.

First of all, there was no record of what the group had already covered. I was told "seasons, clothes for winter, some songs, and hello, what's your name?".

I had already decided before beginning, to start with Cookie and Friends, Starter, and work to supplement with further activities for the more experienced children. This system is working fairly well, although I must say that we end up doing rather more colouring than I care for. That is an issue I need to address.

The main problem for me (and this is no surprise!) is class(room) management.

The class roll has 30 children. Their ages range from just-gone-four to just-gone-six. There are two children who survived the Haiti earthquake, and are living the local youth hostel. This has created some discipline/management issues with the regular teachers, not just for me.

The classroom is long and narrow - it is actually a lovely space. There are large windows, and room to move. There are six hexagonal tables with chairs for the children to work at. At the start, they seemed to have assigned seating, but the last two weeks, I have noticed that this "rule" has become rather flexible.

And that is the crux of the matter.

My job here is not to criticise. I only wish to reflect on my OWN experience of teaching pre-schoolers and young learners. This means that I must establish "English Lesson Rules". What happens when I am not there must not concern me as the English Teacher (me as a mum of one of the pupils is another matter entirely).

So yesterday, after reading another chapter of "The Practical Guide to Primary Classroom Management" by Rob Barnes, I decided to be more pro-active. I translated "We play like friends." and "We keep our hands and our feet to ourselves." into Italian for them, and used it several times. I praised good sitting down, and good joining in, and good being quiet and listening, and everything else I could find.

I felt it had little impact, but with persistence, I expect to see results.

Teaching ESL to very young children in Italy.

2010-05-19T15:00:00.001+02:00

Over the Easter break, my son's pre-school teacher called, to tell me she'd had to let their English teacher go, for various reasons, the most important one for me being that from October through to the start of April, she'd only done 25 hours of a 70 hour program. Which meant that SOMEONE needed to pick up the remaining 45 hours - and complete them before June 11th.

That SOMEONE being ME.

By virtue of my being a native English speaker, being an ESL teacher (they were warned many times that I have little experience with children, and NONE with pre-schoolers), and living close by, I was their best bet, and their last resort.

That was Sunday evening. I began on Wednesday morning.

After first hopping the train to Rome, going to Feltrinelli International, and buying an entire course of material (Cookie and Friends, Starter and A - OUP).

Two hours - the lessons are usually two hours long, in the afternoon, and the class is 4, 5 and 6-year olds, 30 in total. Throw in two wee ones from the Haiti earthquake, and you may start to get a feel for the challenge.

I'm now 25 hours into my own personal growth /professional development challenge, and have also decided that it is time to embrace my inner ECE/Primary Teacher, and do the CELTYL.

When I think back over my life, focusing on the kinds of books I've always loved reading, a pattern emerges. What do Anne Shirley, Jo March, Anne Hobbs and Jane Eyre all have in common? TEACHERS! They are all teachers. I love teaching! I am really interested in how children learn. I must also remember that for the longest time, if anyone asked me what I wanted to do when I left school, I replied "Kindergarten teacher" (that is 3/4 year-olds in NZ). I got sidetracked along the way, but now....

It is time.

Time to teach!

Time to teach Littlies!