Meal Planning & Desserts

Now that things have begun to slow down at school as we move toward the end of the year, and my personal life seems to be leveling off from the recent roller coaster that it has been on, I figured now is as good a time as any to get back to this blog.

When I thought about what to write for my "come back", I knew that I could post about what I have been cooking/baking (and I will be doing that, no worries), but I also thought that I would try to start something that I could make a little more regular: meal planning.

Since 2015 started, I have been meal planning each week. Now this may not be as "hard core" as some meal planning, but I sit down on Saturday or Sunday morning, and I plan out all meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for the whole week. I try to account for eating the leftovers as well, so that we have less waste. Then once I have all the meals planned out, I put together a huge list and go to the store. I think I may have written about this process before, but what I want to try and do now is give you guys my weekly meal plans (and recipes). I have had a few friends that have asked me to share, so I figured I would share with you as well!

April 26th - May 2nd (I plan Sunday to Saturday)

So each week this gets printed out and hung on my refrigerator. It keeps me on track and honest, and it also prevents a lot of frivolous spending throughout the week.

I get the majority of my recipes and ideas from Pinterest, so feel free to follow my boards (here). I will warn you that I am in the process of reorganizing my recipes so that they are easier to get to. I used to pin all recipes to my "Food" board. Well this was fine until I realized that I had over 700 recipes pinned, and no sort of organization. So I am not working on breaking them down into a better system.

Here are direct links for the recipes for this week's dinners:
Port Tenderloin w/Sweet Potato Fries
Meatballs (for Ziti & Meatballs)
Quinoa w/Black Beans - for the grilled chicken I just season chicken breasts with salt and pepper and cook them on my George Foreman grill.
Hamburger Recipe (also cooked on the George Foreman) - I make these regular sized, it is really just the seasoning combination that I use from this recipe.

I wish I could share the Greenwood Chicken BBQ with everyone, but it is a local treat and they keep the recipes very close to the vest.

As you can see, other than dinner, we really keep it simple. Eric likes eating the same meal every day for lunch, and breakfast is just quick and easy (we aren't super human, and we don't drink coffee).


As far as the shopping list, some weeks are smaller than others. Since I have begun this meal planning journey I have really developed a solid pantry with most of the staples that I need on a regular basis. My spices cabinet has also begun to overflow, and so at this point, I am pretty well established for the majority of the recipes that I find. Occasionally I will have to do a larger shopping trip (especially when the staples run low), but I typically try to spend between $40-$60 a week. I know this is high for just two people, but I do my best to budget as best as possible. Eric and I like to have nice dinners, and so we are ok with spending a little more than we maybe should.

Now, I do not have many pictures of dinners that I have made recently, but this past week I did quite a bit of baking (thank you Pinterest) and so I wanted to share the two sweet treats that I made!

First I made coconut cupcakes. Now I am not a huge fan of the Barefoot Contessa, but these turned out AMAZING. 

 

I did make a mistake with the frosting, that actually ended up working to my benefit. I was doing about a million other things while making these cupcakes, and when I went to make the frosting, I completely forgot to add the powdered sugar! I was extremely upset at first because I thought that I had ruined them. However, the sweetness from the cupcake, and the sweetness from the coconut on top made it so that the tartness of the frosting without the sugar was actually a good balance! If I were to make these cupcakes again, I would likely add the powdered sugar, but it is something for you to try out if you are super into sweetness.

My second baking adventure for the week was strawberry shortcake cupcakes from Sally's Baking Addiction.

  

The homemade strawberry whipped cream was to die for. I really think that I will make the whipped cream again anytime I need whipped cream for something (as long as it goes with strawberries of course). These were the perfect amount of sweetness and were light enough that you could enjoy them without feeling stuffed.

I will try to come back next week with a new meal plan, and new cooking/baking adventures.

Leave me a comment if you try any of the recipes, and let me know how they worked for you!

Happy cooking!

~C

Renew, Refresh, Reboot

Winter, you were a mighty foe, but I think we have made it out the other side. (Hopefully). This was our first winter at this most southern latitude, and I must say, initially I was concerned about whether or not I would get a winter. For all of December, and most of January it was gray, slightly overcast, and raining the majority of the time. Then February came with full force. Eight snow days later (usually in groups of two) and I have had my fill of winter. This week we are projected to be in the fifties most days, and I am very much looking forward to it.

This new shift in the weather has also resulted in this feeling of a fresh start. I know March is an odd time to restart something, but it is better to restart when the urge strikes (at least I think it is). As part of my restart, I want to get back into writing here about food, and life, and just things that interest me in general. The pickled eggs and all you might even say. So here we go with an update since it's been two months (exactly! how crazy) since my last post. 

I will start with food! When 2015 started I decided that one of my goals was to be better about the portion of our budget that gets spent on food. Now, the fact that we both have full time jobs, and very few expenses at this point in our lives means that I have a little more flexibility, but I thought: 'If I start these habits now, then I will have great strategies to use later in life'. After reading many "how-to's" on budgeting, the one idea that I really felt I would be able to successfully accomplish is advanced meal planning. That's right, meal planning done in advance of two hours before dinner needs to be made. I used to have the terrible habit of going to the store every other afternoon (sometimes every afternoon) and picking up the ingredients I needed for that night's dinner, and only that night's dinner. This resulted in a lot of extra spending of items that I was hungry for, or craved, or just saw and bought.

My new and improved meal planning happens Saturday morning (typically) and I plan out all the meals for the whole week. Breakfasts, lunches, and dinners (snacks I just restock as needed). Then from my plan, I make a master grocery list, and go shopping once, for the whole week. The only items that I purchase during the week are milk and salad, and occasionally fresh produce if I won't need it until the end of the week. These items can spoil if bought to far in advance and so I buy them as needed, but make sure that these are the only items I purchase when I make my additional trips to the store.

Now, when I say that I plan the whole week, I mean is really plan it. I account for leftovers, and when those will get eaten so that we don't have to throw away food that goes bad. And the part that really has made a difference for me is that I print out the plan, and post it on the refrigerator. This keeps me accountable for what is coming, it helps me not waste food because items no longer go bad, AND it let's Eric know what is coming! I cannot even count how many times he has come home from work and said "I have been looking forward to this dinner all day!" What a great feeling that gives me, and it is nice to know that he was looking forward to it as well.

Since I have been out of the blogging world for a while, I have also dropped the ball on taking as many pictures of my creations, but here are the few that I managed to capture.

 

Italian "Drunken" Noodles with Spicy Italian Sausage

This recipe was SO delicious, and relatively easy to pull together. I look forward to making it again, but for now I am trying to limit my number of repeated dishes!

Easy Lo Mein

You can of course tell by the picture that I didn't use traditional "Lo Mein" noodles. These are just Great Value brand egg noodles, but they were still delicious. And, this recipe truly is "easy" as the title claims. It was quick too! The hardest part? Cutting up the veggies!

As you can see by clicking on the recipes, most of the ones I use and love have come from other blogs, which I have found by way of Pinterest (follow my boards here!). The internet is an amazing resource, and although I do have my tried and true recipes that I use my cookbooks for, searching on Pinterest is fun!

In addition to meal planning, I have also been trying to find healthier recipes to help with another "reboot" project that I just very recently started. Rebooting myself. For Christmas I was blessed enough to get a Fitbit. For the first two months, I really just wore it, tracked my steps and my sleep, and never paid much mind to "meeting my daily goal". Within the past few weeks (maybe it's cabin fever), I have really begun feeling the urge to get myself in shape. I have goals that I want to reach, but never felt much motivation to get there. With the Fitbit, now I have the motivation. I can typically get about 7,000 steps in a day without too much effort (I teach, so I am on my feet and walking around always), but those last three or four thousand only ever came on a rare occasion.

I am currently riding a three day streak of reaching over 10,000 steps (the first day I made it over 15,000! - this did involve a 6 mile beach walk, but still) and I hope to continue this streak. Although the weather has been much nicer this week, it is still a bit brisk, and so to get myself started I have been doing one of my Zumba DVDs each day. I hope to eventually see results, but I am aware this might not happen right away. With summer quickly approaching, I am just trying to slowly work toward my goal right now. I don't know that I will ever feel comfortable sharing my "numbers", but maybe one day...

For now I will leave you with my recipe for dinner tonight (maybe I will post a picture later). The "recipe" is really just for the mixture of spices, but it is called "Brown Sugar Spiced Baked Chicken". My plan is to put it on chicken wings, so hopefully that will work! 

I hope that maybe this has inspired you to renew, refresh, or reboot something in your life! I will leave you with this quote:

"You renew yourself every day. Sometimes you're successful, sometimes you're not, but it's the average that counts."

Until my next adventure,

~C

A Little Organization and a Whole Lot of Cooking!

Well, I had been doing pretty good with updating this blog. I even managed to give an update right after my hectic Thanksgiving hosting gig. Then I don't know what happened, because I still did things that I want to share, but the holidays just go so quickly that I did not have two seconds to post even a picture. So I hope to update everyone today on what I've been up to (if anyone even reads this), because let's face it, I don't feel like lesson planning or grading.

I will start with the organization. I have realized that cleaning, organizing and cooking (a.k.a. household chores) make me... abnormally (?) happy. I have yet to encounter others who enjoy doing chores as much as I do. Although, I have always known I enjoyed these activities. I used to say that I would have been in heaven as a 1950's housewife. But alas I live in the 21st century.

I think it would be really cool if I could be a professional organizer, but I have no idea how to start a business like that, nor am I really at a place in my life where I can take that kind of risk. In the meantime, I have been trying to do some organization projects around our apartment to make if feel more homey. My most recent project was to tackle the "upper level" of our walk-in-closet. We are so very fortunate to have a very generous walk-in-closet, but the upper shelf left a lot to be desired. Eric and I had just fallen into the habit of throwing piles of clothes and random stuff up there with no real rhyme or reason.

To try and gain some control over the madness I went to Walmart (I know this isn't necessarily ideal, but it's what I've got access to right now). I purchased these cute storage cubes some in the tan color and some in the gray pattern. Below is the result:

I was able to take the piles of random clothes and provide some order. I was also able to get the random assortment of goodies that we use less frequently and hide/contain them in the upright containers.

I know it seems a little unorthodox to have the "top" of container pointing outward, but it has forced us (me) to take the time to make sure everything is put away properly and neatly after we do laundry. Since I took this picture I have added another container, and shuffled a few things around, but this is still pretty much what it looks like. The best part? I was able to get this amazing organization for about $30 worth of containers and about an hours worth of time. 

In addition to the upper level organization, I am also in the process of weeding out my clothes by applying a trick that I read about here from a pin on Pinterest. When Eric and I moved over the summer I put my clothes into the closet with the hangers backwards, so I am planning on going through in July to see what is still turned around. 

Now on to my cooking adventures! I have been quite busy over the past month due to my ever growing confidence in the kitchen. I am not going to try and put these recipes in order, but just get through them.

 Breakfast Christmas Morning (eggs Benedict).

 Christmas Day dessert: eggnog creme brulee

Christmas Eve dinner: pork medallions with cranberry and pear chutney

First is our breakfast Christmas morning. The only real recipe we used to make these decadent eggs Benedict meals was for the Hollandaise sauce. I really enjoy the recipes that the Pioneer Woman uses and in many ways I look up to her. The recipe that she has for Hollandaise sauce in the blender was much, MUCH easier than the last time we attempted to make it by whisking the sauce by hand. The only deviation from a "traditional" eggs Benedict was that we used bagels instead of English muffins.

For the eggnog creme brulee, I had originally intended to eat it Christmas Eve, but my lack of time management resulted in us having it on Christmas instead. It was a very simple recipe that you can find here, and I really believe that anyone with ramekins and a brulee torch can make it without messing it up! This was the first time I ever made creme brulee and it turned out wonderfully! It was also nice to finally get to use our creme brulee set that my Mom had gotten us for our anniversary in August.

What I did manage to accomplish was a yummy Christmas Eve dinner despite a multi-state ingredient search that ended up in me having to change the recipe (something that I NEVER would have attempted even six months ago). The recipe I was following was for pork medallions with a cranberry and fig chutney from my favorite cookbook from Better Homes and Gardens. I spent a solid three hours on Christmas Eve trying to locate dried figs, but it was to be a futile search in the end. I went to more stores than I would like to admit, and even crossed state lines hoping that would help. In the end I had to admit defeat and replaced the figs with some diced pears. It worked quite nicely and still made for a great Christmas Eve meal that I was able to share with my husband.

After over eating for Thanksgiving, Eric asked that we eat more vegetables in the weeks that follow. Our first attempt at this was a very successful stir-fry (pictured below) that we threw together without a recipe. You read that correctly, we didn't have a recipe and it turned out great! I was so surprised and thankful, and this really helped my confidence in the kitchen.

Stir-fry: beef, snap peas, baby corn, bell pepper, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, carrots, and broccoli.

After Christmas vacation (see I told you these were out of order), it was back to the daily grind for me at work and that also meant that I became mostly responsible for picking out and making dinner for us (again I love this, remember the '50s housewife comment?). My first dinner of the new year was these wonderful lasagna rolls (below) that I found with a list of healthy recipe ideas from this website. Even Eric, who can sometimes be picky about these things really liked them.

The only adjustment I had to make was that I used regular lasagna noodles because I could not find whole wheat noodles (healthier versions of food are very difficult to find where we live).

After making the lasagna rolls I needed another meal, because I didn't want us to eat these three days in a row (plus I wanted to take them for lunch too!). We have been having bitterly cold weather for this area (the windchill as I write this is 14 degrees) and so to warm us up on a day similar to this, I made this quick and easy chili (recipe). 

 Mine is the one with cheese. Eric isn't a huge fan. I think we both would still rather have my Crockpot version of chili, but this had to do for a weekday.

As we get ready to watch the Patriots vs. Raven's playoff game I will leave you with a little bit of Christmas cheer (yes I know that Christmas is "over", but not here!). For the fourth year I made another successful batch of my great-grandmother's lemon butter cookies. The recipe has been in my family for a long time and when I make these cookies every year I always feel that I am connected with all of my family members near and far. 

Lastly, I will share a collection of pictures of my Christmas decorations for this past year. Decorating for Christmas is one of my favorite things to do, and as we move to (hopefully) a townhouse, and eventually a house, I look forward to being able to decorate even more. The most exciting new addition to my decorations this year, was our stockings!

The bottom left picture is my pineapple plant! Everything got a touch of the Christmas spirit!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season filled with plenty of food, family, and love. May this new year of 2015 bring you and your families health and happiness, and of course plenty of new food adventures!

~C

My FIRST (Hosting) Thanksgiving

My FAVORITE season of the year is finally here: CHRISTMAS SEASON! (And it is also basketball season which is an added bonus). But, this year, the path to the Christmas season had a new hurdle for me, hosting my first Thanksgiving dinner.

With Eric scheduled to work the day after Thanksgiving, there was just no reasonable way for us to spend Thanksgiving at home like we have the past three years, so I decided to act as the hostess. This way we got to spend time with our families, without having to travel.

Eric's parents arrived Tuesday evening and we visited our new favorite local restaurant, Abbott's Grill because I was not going to try and store any additional food to cook meals before the big day. My parents and sister arrived Wednesday evening and we ordered pizza from Papa John's to do our part in helping to make the night before Thanksgiving one of the busiest nights of the year for pizza take out places.

Once everyone arrived, it was time for the big day! I will admit I was nervous, but I also was feeling confident due to the fact that over the past three years, my culinary skills have improved drastically! Thursday morning was an early morning for me, but I wanted to make sure that everything got moving on scheduled. I started off with mixing together the "wet stuffing" to go in the turkey. 

For most of my recipes I tried to keep them simple, knowing that I would have enough other stress, I didn't need to add in any complicated recipes. My stuffing recipe (for both the wet and the "dry" - I'll tell you the only change later) came from my trustworthy Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, page 480 "Old- Fashioned Bread Stuffing". The recipe is simply:

• 3 stalks chopped celery
• 1 large chopped onion
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 12 cups dry bread cubes (I used about 9 cups of herb seasoned bread cubes instead)
• 1 cup chicken broth

Saute the celery and onion in the butter, then add seasoning and pepper to the mixture before pouring it over the bread crumbs. Mix it all together, and then slowly add the chicken broth while stirring so that the moisture gets evenly distributed, rather than some bread becoming overly soggy! (Gross!) 

I made two separate batches of this recipe. The one in the picture went inside my turkey, the other one I just baked in a casserole dish for about half an hour. The only difference was in the casserole dish, I used ground sage instead of poultry seasoning.

Then came the big moment, prepping the turkey, stuffing it, and getting it in the oven. Here are the before and after pictures of my turkey! (Please ignore my outfit, I was just going for comfort)

I also kept the turkey VERY simple. I rubbed it down with about half a stick of butter, and then put just a bit of salt and pepper on top. I also accidentally roasted the turkey "upside down" (breast on the bottom), but it made the turkey breast so moist and juicy that I think I will make it that way every year! My turkey was about 20 lbs, and because it was stuffed it cooked for about 5 hours.

I had a flawless system of keeping track of when things would be done (picture below), but it was the best I could do with my lack of timers. It worked out though, because nothing was burnt or overdone!

My sister provided the art work for the "timer board".

For the sides for our wonderful dinner we had mashed potatoes (cooked in the pressure cooker), sweet potato casserole (made by my Mom, I will need to get her recipe and add it here later), green beans amandine, corn casserole, homemade gravy, fresh cranberry sauce, and rolls (just generic frozen rolls from Walmart). Check the caption for each picture if you're interested in any of the recipes (except the sweet potatoes, because I'm still working on getting that!).

My Dad made the mashed potatoes in the pressure cooker. Peal and chop the potatoes, cook them for about 7 minutes in the pressure cooker, then mash with heated milk. Quick and easy!

The sweet potato casserole is the front left on the table. It is cooked and chopped sweet potatoes with a sauce of crushed pineapple and brown sugar, topped with marshmellows. 
The cranberry sauce is all the way at the back of the table. It is just the recipe from the back of the Ocean Spray cranberry package.

Left: Green Beans Amandine from pg. 575 in my cookbook.
(It's just cooked green beans, tossed with almonds and butter)
Right: Corn Casserole from this recipe I found on Pinterest.

Eric and my Dad made the gravy right in the turkey roasting pan. They weren't following a recipe, they just "made gravy".

For dessert my Mom made homemade pumpkin pie, and my mother-in-law made a home made apple pie (I didn't get a picture of either of these before they were eaten!). I had also made spritz cookies, and my absolute favorite soft snickerdoodles. I have made these many times before, so check out my "Christmas Countdown" post for a link to the recipe.

I of course had other food for breakfasts, and snacks both on Thanksgiving and the day after. I have include a few pictures below, just because I'm proud of my presentation skills!

 Breakfast spread Thanksgiving morning.

Snack-itizers to hold people over until dinner.

All in all, I am extremely proud of the results from my first hosting attempt. Thankfully this has given me confidence to host many future family events. As much as I will always want to be at my childhood home for the holidays, it is great to know that I can re-create a little of that holiday magic in a new setting. I hope that magic will continue to grow over the years. 

Now that the quiet has returned to our apartment, Eric and I spent the day relaxing, decorating for Christmas, and watching football. I will post decoration pictures soon! And perhaps more exciting (and in the tone of where this blog seems to be going), I will post more of my culinary adventures, including one of my favorites: Christmas cookies!!!

I hope that your Thanksgiving was full of love, family, and tasty food!

Until my next food adventure!

~C

the Calm Before the Storm

With Thanksgiving just two short weeks away, these past few days have definitely been the "calm before the storm". Over the weekend Eric and I had a number of culinary adventures.

Friday night we treated ourselves to a night out in one of the nearby small towns (although everything is a "small town" around here). Our night out was really just dinner, with drinks at Abbott's Grill  where Eric ordered the Frog Leg and Jambalaya special, and I had a delicious roasted pork with butternut squash and bacon roasted Brussels sprouts. I had never had butternut squash or Brussels sprouts before and they were both quite tasty. I also tried Eric's frog legs (they were new for him too) and I have to say it wasn't horrible. I don't know that I would ever order it on my own, but it was pretty good. I won't say it tasted like chicken, but it wasn't that far off. Then to really treat ourselves we got dessert (we never get dessert). Dessert was new for both of us since we ordered a toasted coconut flan. It was SO good. I wish I had taken my camera for pictures, but... live and learn.

After a nice dinner out, we decided on Saturday to have a nice dinner in the apartment so we made clam chowder (recipe provided by my Taste of Home cookbook). It was so much fun to spend time in the kitchen together cooking, and then enjoying our yummy results. I love lazy Saturdays with Eric, they are very enjoyable.

One thing we are working on is getting better at eating leftovers. I have really found a passion and love for cooking and so I enjoy making new dishes every night. The problem is, with only two of us (for now) we always have leftovers. Eric doesn't ever take leftovers into work for lunch the next day (he wouldn't want to deviate from his PB&J with a granny smith apple), and I can only take so many leftovers with me for lunch. But we did spend a couple of days eating leftovers and have almost gotten rid of everything!

Tuesday was Veterans Day (thanks to all the former and current military and their families!) and since I had the day off from work, I made one of Eric's new favorite dishes: Roasted Pork with Sweet Potatoes. I love getting the Food Network Magazine, and I love when we try recipes that are super successful. This was one of those times! It sounds so simple, and it is so simple to make, but it is SOOOO yummy. The pork is tender and juicy and it just melts in your mouth. I have included a picture from the Food Network site here (we ate it too quickly for me to get a quality photo).

The only "change" to the recipe that Eric and I make is that instead of cutting up sweet potatoes into wedges, we buy a bag of sweet potato french fries (thanks Ore Ida). They work great, and are much easier to use than having to worry about chopping up big sweet potatoes.

Tonight I have andouille sausage Jambalaya planned. Don't worry, it's nothing fancy (I would go crazy being fancy every night), I just use Zatarain's rice and spice mixture. We do doctor the recipe though by searing the sausage in butter first, and then replacing one cup of the water with a cup of spaghetti sauce. Typically I use Classico Italian Sausage sauce, Eric says it just adds another layer of flavor.

This weekend I will be working on my lists to prep for my first hosting gig for Thanksgiving! It is an exciting time in my household. If you have any tips, tricks, or suggestions on how to make my Thanksgiving more of a success, let me know!

Until my next food adventure!

~C

Countdown to Christmas!

My absolute favorite time of the year has finally started! We made it past Halloween and so now I can publicly be excited about the holidays. Typically I put my full focus on getting to Christmas and while Thanksgiving is nice, I just view it as a check box on the way to the big day. This year is different. This year, I am hosting Thanksgiving for the first time! The pressure! Well, Eric and I are hosting, but with his work schedule I know that I will be doing a lot of the grunt work, and I am so excited! We are hosting both sets of parents, my sister, and maybe my uncle (who is also my godfather). It will be a packed house, but hopefully it will be packed with love and yummy food.

In preparation for Thanksgiving, I have been reflecting back on my own culinary journey and I am proud to say that I have grown A LOT, mainly over the past five years. I have posted a number of pictures of the things I have made in the past and I am impressed with all of those, and the things I haven't posted pictures of yet. One thing I have noticed though is that I have become much less afraid. If you are someone who isn't "good" at cooking or baking (or both) don't be afraid to try! If you have to throw out a meal every once in a while and order pizza, well then you will have at least learned something from that experience.

I hope to be able to track my food explorations better on here, and I will start today with something to really get you in the holiday spirit if you aren't there yet. One of the best parts of the holidays is the desserts! Today I didn't have school (thank you America for Election Day!) so I started off the dessert train with one of my all time favorites: snickerdoodles! I have included a few pictures here, and the link to the recipe. I will never claim to come up with these things on my own. I hope you try this recipe (it's super easy) and get your culinary journey started.

Cookies to take into Eric's office, and also to give as a gift to a friend today who I haven't seen in too long!

An artsy shot of some cooling cookies. It's difficult to let them cool before digging in!

Until my next food adventure!

~C

New School Year, New Adventures

Well, it is October. Fall has arrived, and with it the new school year. And trust me, "new" is an understatement. After being in a vocational/technical district for my first three years, I am starting to learn just how different it actually was from "normal" public schools. I am adjusting to this new life, which also involved a new mailing address, it has just taken me a while to feel like I was finally settled in.

I know it may seem crazy to be writing a post on a TUESDAY (I am a teacher after all, I should probably already be in bed), but I wanted to write about something NEW that I am going to be trying in my classroom. My new students have an age old problem of "forgetting" that we have homework, or a quiz, and so my new solution is something that I actually stole from a fellow math teacher who works across the hall.

Have you heard of "Remind"? Well I hadn't either until this school year, and I hope that it is as successful as I imagine. Simply put, Remind is a way for me to text all of my students without having their phone numbers, or them having mine (trust me I may be crazy to teach math to ninth graders, but I'm not that crazy). I hope to use this in combination with my Edmodo class websites to eradicate late work and missing assignments. HAHAHA!

But in all seriousness, I hope that it does help my students remember to do their homework (thus improving their grades, thus making my life easier). At the end of the day, I am in this for them, and so if this helps, then I will shout it from the rooftops (they are, after all the highest point in Delaware).

I will report back my findings, and hopefully they will all be positive. For now I am off to complete another school related task: taming the tornado that is my classroom. I have tried a few organizational tricks that I will post about later to make things flow better, but it always seems like I have to spend precious minutes at the end of every day reorganizing my life. Today my task is to organize my teacher desk!

Wish me luck!

~C