I don’t know if you have a Penzey’s Spices near you, but it’s my favorite place to get spices! They seem to have everything you will ever need. I love it when I get a catalog in the mail for two reasons. First, there is always a coupon for free stuff. The next time I go I will get a free bottle of cinnamon sugar! The second reason is that there are many recipes and stories about real people who like to cook. Someday I will try to put a recipe in there!
So today for dinner we were “scheduled” to have leftovers. I don’t know about you but I HATE leftovers. I would much rather throw them away and serve something fresh, but that’s extremely wasteful. What I like to do when we need to eat leftovers is make something I LOVE to go with it – and mask the not-so-fun part of eating leftovers, so I made guacamole! Guacamole and chips can make any meal amazing!
On a separate note, I just discovered that people in Texas don’t eat pork and sour kraut for New Years. Instead they eat black eyed peas. Regional foods are interesting!
As I mentioned in my teaching post, our district was pretty much the only district I know of in North Texas to go back to school today. I’m not really complaining because we get an extra day off (comp day) the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. weekend (four day weekend!!). What I’m leading into is that my wonderful, charming, handsome, and thoughtful husband was home today while I went to work, and he made dinner for me! This is rare because I love to cook and often don’t give him the chance. He made salad with pan fried ahi tuna steaks, and canned soup on the side. It was so nice! If you ever want to make tuna steaks, all you have to do is put a little salt and pepper on each side, put some olive oil in the pan, and cook them over medium heat for about 4 minutes per side. They will be a little pink in the middle, but that’s good!! Another thing you can do to give them a bit more flavor is brush them with dijon mustard and sprinkle them lightly with black or white sesame seeds (I prefer the look of the black). Then fry them in olive oil 4 minutes per side again. If you stick the cooked tuna steaks on a salad, you’ve got an amazing and healthy meal!
Even though it’s only January 2nd, our district is back to school. To be honest, I am ready to be back! With the new Texas STAAR test coming I am working on a game plan to get the kids motivated and ready. I want to start using one released test question each day so we can talk about it in depth without overwhelming or boring the kids. Unfortunately today didn’t provide time to start – hopefully tomorrow. Today was pretty good overall, until the birthday cupcakes came at the end of the day! When my student’s mom came into the room, six kids rushed to give her a hug, and they were milling around the room until I corralled them to their seats. Tomorrow I have a fun Science experiment planned, so hopefully we can make the time we need to do the experiment justice! If all goes well I will share the experiment (I feel like I need to try it first before I tell you about it).