Friday, August 8, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Italian Meatballs (w/ pictres from Picasa)
• Italian Meatballs
This week I really wanted to make an Italian desert. At first I could really think of a desert to make and then my wife came up with the perfect idea, cannoli. Now if you look back up to my title you will see meatball as my title. Why, you might ask. It is very simple, it is way too hard to make the canoi shells because you are supposed to have a special tool. Second, when my wife looked up how much it would be to buy premade cannoli shells she found out that it was an astonishing $38 for 12 shells. So I decided to go with a much more common and cheaper Italian food. I got the recipe from a book that I have previously used. It is The Food Nanny Saves Dinner by Liz Edmunds.
Step 1: Put bread in the blender or food processor and make bread crumbs This was rather simple. All I had to do was put the bread in the food processor and push a button. We will see in step 2 why this is important.
Step 2: Mix the bread with the ground beef. This was a very messy step because I used my hands to mix the bread and meat together. I wondered why I needed to put bread into MEATballs. I found out that the bread actually helps the meatballs so they are not so dense.
Step 3: Mix the eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and oregano with the bread and ground beef. This part was really gooey so I mixed all this using a fork. I mixed it until the mixture had a smooth consistency. I was pretty surprised at how “smooth” it was.
Step 4: Make the meatball and bake at 375 degrees. I tried making the meatballs with my hands but it was WAY to gooey for me. The cook book said the use a medium cookie scoop to have equal sizes, so I just scooped the mixture onto the pan. By doing this I actually made meatplops not meatballs. But oh well.
Step 5: Enjoy I ate the meatballs with some spaghetti and spaghetti sauce.
The meatballs were ok. I decided to try them with BBQ sauce instead and that tasted much better. This is a recipe that I will probably try again, however I think that I will make a few adjustments like different/more spices.
This week I really wanted to make an Italian desert. At first I could really think of a desert to make and then my wife came up with the perfect idea, cannoli. Now if you look back up to my title you will see meatball as my title. Why, you might ask. It is very simple, it is way too hard to make the canoi shells because you are supposed to have a special tool. Second, when my wife looked up how much it would be to buy premade cannoli shells she found out that it was an astonishing $38 for 12 shells. So I decided to go with a much more common and cheaper Italian food. I got the recipe from a book that I have previously used. It is The Food Nanny Saves Dinner by Liz Edmunds.
Step 1: Put bread in the blender or food processor and make bread crumbs This was rather simple. All I had to do was put the bread in the food processor and push a button. We will see in step 2 why this is important.
Step 2: Mix the bread with the ground beef. This was a very messy step because I used my hands to mix the bread and meat together. I wondered why I needed to put bread into MEATballs. I found out that the bread actually helps the meatballs so they are not so dense.
Step 3: Mix the eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and oregano with the bread and ground beef. This part was really gooey so I mixed all this using a fork. I mixed it until the mixture had a smooth consistency. I was pretty surprised at how “smooth” it was.
Step 4: Make the meatball and bake at 375 degrees. I tried making the meatballs with my hands but it was WAY to gooey for me. The cook book said the use a medium cookie scoop to have equal sizes, so I just scooped the mixture onto the pan. By doing this I actually made meatplops not meatballs. But oh well.
Step 5: Enjoy I ate the meatballs with some spaghetti and spaghetti sauce.
The meatballs were ok. I decided to try them with BBQ sauce instead and that tasted much better. This is a recipe that I will probably try again, however I think that I will make a few adjustments like different/more spices.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
The Pick and Roll Offense
Here is a podcasts that verbally explains the pick and roll offense that I run with my team.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Wordpress or Blogger?
I chose to look at blogger.com, wordpress.com,
and wordpress.org. They all share a
common feature which allows people to post comments, pictures, and videos to a
host website. Others can then go to your
blog to access this information. Blogger.com
is free and is associated with google and is very easy to use. I created my blog with them because of this association
with google. I did not need to create a
new account because I already had an existing account with google. For education purposes blogger.com does
everything I would need from a blog. I
can post announcements and help students by posting videos. Wordpress.com is also free and can also be
used as a content management system.
Worpress.org gives you more freedom to you blogging. You have access to a lot more designs and
plug-ins. Wordpress.org is also the way
to go if you are interested in making money by blogging.
Good Blogging Practices
After searching the web I found many blogging practices that are recommended. There are a lot more than I had ever thought of. I tried to narrow it down to the ones that I fell are most important for me and my situation.
1. Readable Text
a.
It is very important to right in
readable text. The text needs to be the right size and in a font that is
legible. Color is a blog is also very important to a blog. So, we
must make sure that the color of the font goes with the design of the
blog. The default of black font is always a safe bet.
2. Short Pages
a.
Nobody likes to go to a webpage and
see such a long page. It is very important to change your blog setting to
show a small number of posts.
3. Easy Navigation
a.
One thing that I have always hated
about blogs is how hard it is to navigate some blogs. Sometimes there are
a ton of ads and there is a lot of congestion. I always hate when it is
hard to find the different labels. I think that these need to be very
easily seen so that I person can link right to the information needed.
4. Choose appropriate tone for your blog
a.
It is also important to understand
who our audience is. We typically know who is going visit our posts so it
is important to what type of “language” we should use. Do we need to be
more professional or can we be more relaxed. Can we use “slang” or is it
necessary to be politically correct?
5. Cite your sources
a.
To be “safe” it is always important
to cite your sources. This helps protect us against any copyright
laws. It always good practice to give credit to people who came up with
the ideas first.
Overall I can see that it is very important to keep your blog clean and organized. We can do this by making things simple.
All of these ideas came from http://weblogs.about.com/od/bloggingethics/tp/Blogging-Best-Practices.htm
Blogs In An Education Setting
As a current teacher it is highly recommended by our district to keep an up-to-date blog. I will usually use my blog for parents. I have 3 different section in each post. The first is Last Week. Here is where I remind parents and students what we have previously done. Second is This Week. This is where I will post all assignments that we will do for the week. Last is Looking Forward. Here I just make a comment on where will be headed in the future.
I checked out one of the "best" blogs for the year. http://cougarnewsblog.com/ This is a blog that is ran by the students of the school. There are announcements for school and sporting events. There is even a post where students can post memories. I had never thought about having a blog where students actually run the blog. I think this would be a great idea if I could get active participation by the majority of my students.
Next I visited a blog called Edutech for Teachers. This was a blog that helped train teachers in education. Blogs can be used to help train people. There were lots of pictures to help teach the teachers. The most interesting post I saw was an app that will allow people to use paper for a keyboard when using their smart device.
It's called paper keyboard. It looks pretty cool, you should check it out. I guess I should mention that it is for iOS devices.
There are so many possibilities for blogging. I plan on continuing my blog with schedule for parents but also with math help videos so students can get help at home.
I checked out one of the "best" blogs for the year. http://cougarnewsblog.com/ This is a blog that is ran by the students of the school. There are announcements for school and sporting events. There is even a post where students can post memories. I had never thought about having a blog where students actually run the blog. I think this would be a great idea if I could get active participation by the majority of my students.
Next I visited a blog called Edutech for Teachers. This was a blog that helped train teachers in education. Blogs can be used to help train people. There were lots of pictures to help teach the teachers. The most interesting post I saw was an app that will allow people to use paper for a keyboard when using their smart device.
There are so many possibilities for blogging. I plan on continuing my blog with schedule for parents but also with math help videos so students can get help at home.
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