Day One - Challenge Begun

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

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

...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

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.

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

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

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....