Love the Practice

January 19, 2009 – 7:02 pm

Penelope Trunk is right on with this post on setting goals. She reminds us to know what we love to do enough to practice it all the time, then pick goals accordingly:

So focus on the process when you pick your goal. Stop thinking about the end goal just for a minute so you can test yourself – would you really enjoy the life that would require all that practice time? Find something where the answer is yes. Because you will naturally restructure your day to accommodate that process if you are aiming to be great at something you love to practice.

I practice some things incessantly, because I love to do them so much. I cook a lot, because I love it. I practice cooking nearly every night. I think I’m a pretty good cook. I’ve been practicing it for so many years.

I also like to write — practicing writing comes easily to me because it gives me energy. Blogging is writing practice.

The practice of teaching

I like to create lesson plans — it’s something that I want to practice all the time. I like to think about how to introduce new topics to the kids or make old topics exciting. I like to find activities that engage. I like to link learning standards to teaching resources to specific daily activities.

Writing quizzes and exams gives me energy. I spent part of today writing a unit exam on vector functions for my calculus class. I was in flow most of the time I was working on it. I like to pick out a variety of questions: some just confirm that the students know the basics, some ensure they did the homework, some show them what will be on the AP exam, and some force them to actually think and transfer their learning. A unit exam accomplishes a variety of things. It doesn’t just assess the students’ knowledge. It also teaches while it assesses.

Classroom teaching gives me energy sometimes too though I’m still looking for the right presence and engagement that makes me passionate and leads to learning too. I played poker with my pre-algebra students on Friday. I had them do math problems to earn chips. Then we played Texas Holdem. It was fun. Time passed smoothly. Did they learn a lot of math? I dunno, but they were more motivated than usual and I felt like I met them as people instead of in the normal teacher-student way.

New practice

Lately I’ve been practicing something new: training a dog. Lucy demands it from me. I take her to the park every day. We practice recalls — she does pretty well with that. I haven’t gotten her to reliably retrieve a ball yet. I can’t let her off leash while we’re walking; in fact, I have to use a prong collar to keep her near me. I think about how to do better. I look forward to working with her every day. I feel driven to practice.

I’ve also started playing guitar. I don’t have my own guitar yet. I play my daughter’s kid-sized guitar. It’s exciting. I played piano for many years but didn’t find much passion in that. Maybe with guitar. It already feels more me than piano ever did.

Where passion lives

Penelope says: “3. Take action where your passion lives, and the other stuff will follow.”

My practice and my passion is in the prosaic: cooking dinner for family, taking my dog to the park, writing a lesson plan, crafting an exam that teaches and assesses, playing cards with students, practicing guitar with Laura. Painting? I miss painting. But all I want to do is mix colors and lay them on the paper. Maybe that’s where I’ll start, where I want to practice, not where I want to get to.

By Anne Z | Posted in Personal | Comments (0)

Pan-Seared Steak with Boursin-Parsley Sauce

January 12, 2009 – 9:53 am

steaksVery elegant and very delicious! This is from Cook’s Country magazine, brought to you by the same people who publish Cook’s Illustrated. I prefer Cook’s Country, because the recipes are easier and the photos in color. Plus they have a quick dinner section in the middle of every issue.

Rick bought New York strip steaks from Costco ($25 for five really nice ones). I cooked three of them for five people. We probably could have eaten another but there are limits to how much fancy steak I’m willing to serve at one go.

Pan-Seared Steak with Boursin-Parsley Sauce

For the steaks:

  • 3 or 4 New York strip steaks (you could also use ribeye or, for a cheaper option, CC suggests top sirloin)
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • Salt and pepper

For the pan sauce

  • 1 T butter
  • 1 shallot, finely chopped
  • 1/2 c red wine
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • 1/2 c low-sodium chicken broth
  • 1/4 c Boursin cheese (I used pepper seasoned), crumbled
  • 2 tsp minced fresh parsley

First, prepare the steaks by trimming off the fat from the edge, patting dry with paper towels, and seasoning with salt and pepper.

aromaticsHeat oil in large (12 - 14″) saute pan until just smoking. Add steaks, and let them cook for 4 minutes without moving. After 4 minutes, if underside is crusty brown, turn over and cook until done to your liking (I usually cook to 145 degrees F, as that gives me the medium to medium-well steak my family prefers). Then remove the steaks to a plate and cover with foil while you make the sauce.

negroamaroPour out any accumulated fat, and turn down the heat to medium-low. Add butter and shallots and cook for 2 minutes until shallots are soft. Stir in wine and brown sugar, scraping up brown bits on pan. Cook until wine is reduced to a glaze, about 3 minutes.

Add chicken broth and accumulated steak juices and cook until reduced by about half, again for about 3 minutes. Take off the heat. Whisk in parsley and Boursin cheese, adding the cheese a little at a time. Pour the sauce over the steaks and serve.

I made this with a negroamaro — a wine I don’t think I’d ever tried before — and then served the bottle with dinner. It was all yummy.

By Anne Z | Posted in Main Dishes, Meat | Comments (2)

The Motherlode On Opting Back In

January 7, 2009 – 7:48 pm

This post from Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode blog at the NY Times brings up all sorts of thoughts and emotions for me. I tried opting back in with the industry analyst/pro-blogger/book author thing and it so didn’t work out the way I wanted. It’s not that my expectations were dashed — I had no real expectations — it just didn’t suit my energy patterns and it felt stale to me after I spent most of the nineties in software development. After my initial burst of enthusiasm about Web 2.0 I didn’t feel like I was on a steep learning curve.

Then I took an orthogonal turn to math teaching and it feels so right. It’s not that I think I’ll be teaching algebra and calculus until I’m too decrepit to write an equation but more that this area feels new and fruitful and yet still like soil where I can plant the seeds I saved over from my tech career.

Now I have so much to learn and relearn, from administrative details about charter schools to innovative methods of math teaching to how derivatives in polar coordinates work. I only had an intuition that this would be right — so glad I listened.

By Anne Z | Posted in Personal | Comments (1)

What’s for Dinner: Greek Mini Meatballs

January 7, 2009 – 7:18 pm

We had these with hummus, pita, and a salad of cucumbers, red peppers, and romaine dressed with red wine vinaigrette. They are from one of my favorite cookbooks: The South Beach Diet Quick & Easy Cookbook.

I modified the recipe because I didn’t have eggs and I always double recipes that start with just 1 lb. of ground meat — that’s not enough for the six people I feed. Also I thought two tablespoons of dried oregano for just 1 lb. of ground beef (or 2 T for 2, as I was making it) sounded like too much. So I used 1 T for the 2 lbs. of ground beef.

I use lean ground beef — 90% lean or greater — if you use less lean beef you may want to cook the meatballs on a rack set over your pan so they don’t sit in their own grease. But since you mix in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, it makes sense to use lean.

The feta cheese blends in nicely even if you don’t crumble it too finely. I was concerned the kids would find it too strong tasting, but the eight-year-old didn’t. The five-year-old wouldn’t eat them though.

Greek Mini Meatballs

Serves 6

  • 2 lbs. lean ground beef
  • 1 small onion, grated
  • 1 cup feta cheese, finely crumbled
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease two cookie sheets with olive oil. Mix all ingredients lightly with your hands. Form into meatballs using a heaping tablespoon for each. Set on cookie sheets.

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until done. Serve immediately.

By Anne Z | Posted in Cookbooks, Easy, Main Dishes, Meat | Comments (0)

I Feel Good Again

January 6, 2009 – 8:58 pm

About a week ago, I started using a light box. We bought it for the one of our three kids who has an uptick in mood problems every winter. I figured I probably have the same problem — it’s not for nothing that my professional life imploded last January instead of some other time of the year — so I’ve been sitting in front of it for 30 or more minutes each morning.

And almost suddenly, I feel motivated again. I am blogging again. I had two good days in a row at school (see Polar Pictionary and Bungee Barbie). I am reconnecting online (but slowly). I am here again after being gone.

I don’t believe that mood disorders are just mental. I used to think that depression was just a bad attitude, but that’s before I tried an SSRI that fixed my restless leg syndrome, knocked out my carbohydrate cravings, eliminated my insomnia, and decreased the severity and incidence of my migraines. My family doesn’t suffer from diabetes, heart disease, or any other chronic disease — what we do fight against, at least some of us, is depression and anxiety, apparently brought on by some dysfunction in the serotonin system.

By Anne Z | Posted in Personal | Comments (0)

Hopes for 2009

January 1, 2009 – 9:28 pm

2008 was jarring. Talk about discontinuities. I quit pro blogging. I decided to go into teaching. I found a part-time job teaching calculus and algebra. I moved my girls from Montessori into the neighborhood public school. The stock market crashed. My sister had a baby. Our dog died. We adopted a new one.

For 2009, I wish most of all to continue in the direction we’ve already established. I’ve found a house I love in a neighborhood I love with great neighborhood friends. A job I love at a school that challenges me and everyone in it. An insanely energetic dog who pushes me out of bed each morning and gets me out exercising. And, of course, I have my wonderful husband, kids, extended family, and friends. I am satisfied. But I don’t want to just tread water.

Here’s what I’m hoping for in 2009:

  • Find a way to blog again and connect online again on a regular basis. I had too much face-to-face stuff to do in 2008 to spend much time online. Plus I was burnt out. I want to blog on a personal level and I want to blog about education. I’ve started a new blog about teaching but haven’t really gotten it off the ground yet. I’ll write a little while there before announcing anything about it.
  • Manage teaching logistics better. I have just two classes and 13 students — there is no way I should feel overwhelmed. Yet I do. I have some ideas. I’m going to have my algebra students do their daily work in a journal so I can keep each one’s assignments in one place. I’m going to move my calculus kids’ work onto the computer where it can be graded automatically and give them automatic feedback (see WeBWorK and WebAssign). The algebra kids get too distracted by the computer so I think mostly paper is better for now. The calculus kids are driven to get their work done so I can get them going on their computers. Plus they have tablets so they can write out equations easily.
  • Keep eating low carb. In 2008 I started eating low carb. I now don’t even have to do Shangri-La to keep my weight at the level I want. When I eat mainly proteins and fats I don’t have blood sugar highs and lows, don’t think much about food, and find my clothes more often too big than too small. Would like that to continue in 2009.
  • Follow up on professional opportunities. I love having a part-time job because it means I can pursue other opportunities, but so far I have focused solely on teaching and keeping my household functioning. I have a lot of ideas about how I could do more at the intersection of education and technology and hope that in 2009 I find the time and energy to pursue those ideas.
  • Spend more time with extended family. I’d like to see my sister and her new baby regularly (I hope I will be helpful and not a burden) and spend time with my parents and their respective partners. I am hoping to do a weekly dinner with my dad and his girlfriend because we all like experimenting with new recipes and getting together for fun.
  • Clean up my Facebook account. Through Facebook I’ve connected with a lot of people that are important to me — but even so I’m not keeping up with them because my Facebook account is somewhat bogged down with people I don’t really know and don’t have much interest in keeping up with. Same goes for Twitter. I think I will start an entirely new Twitter account.
  • Learn more. I love teaching for lots of reasons but one main one is because it is such a great way to learn. Every day I want to expand my knowledge of ideas and connections and people. I feel so fortunate to be able to spend my time learning and sharing learning. I guess that’s what attracted me to blogging professionally too — but there wasn’t enough learning in that for me, at least not where I was.
  • Paint, cook, garden more. Pump the creative well inside me. Renew my energy and inspiration daily.
By Anne Z | Posted in Personal | Comments (0)

I Love Lucy

January 1, 2009 – 8:34 pm

i-heart-lucy-smallLucy’s an eight-month-old pointer mix that we adopted from a prison training program for homeless dogs. We welcomed her into our house on December 11th. I didn’t know whether I had a parking place in my heart for another dog after Sally moved on. But it’s a bigger lot than I knew.

Lucy fits into the family great: she’s smart, driven, and a tad insane. She’s as good at couch-potatoing as going for a run with Rick or playing hide and seek with the girls or retrieving a ball for me.

Her puppyful exuberance makes me excited for 2009.

By Anne Z | Posted in Family | Comments (1)

The Everydayness of Teaching

October 23, 2008 – 7:15 am

Cooking and teaching are both everyday activities: you have to show up and make something happen everyday. Each weekday I plan a lesson (or two) and give it and see what happens. Most every day, Saturday and Sunday included, I plan a dinner and make it and see what happens. Both require daily thought and action. Both bring me into daily contact with people I care about, my family and my students. Both provide a new daily chance for improvement.

In my first career, I found working in software development could be too much living in the future: living and planning and coding for the next release that might be six months or a year away. It lacked immediacy.

In the book The Time Paradox psychologists Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd discuss different time perspectives people take on. You may live mainly in the past, reliving happy memories and revisiting old traditions or alternatively dwelling on the bad things that happened. You may locate yourself in the future, deferring gratification and working towards later fulfillment. You may center yourself in the moment, either as a hedonist or with Buddhist-style present moment awareness.

For me teaching combines the best of past, present, and future. From the past, I recall my own experiences of education: What inspired me? What engaged me? What can I bring forward from what I’ve learned to help my students learn? In the present, I show up every day, trying to bring my best self and my best energy to the students and to the material we’re studying. For the future, I write curriculum maps and lesson plans, think forward to the end-of-trimester and end-of-year tests my students will take, and gather data over time that I’ll be able to feed back into the everyday experience.

Sometimes the presentness of teaching feels like tyranny. What? I have to teach another class? I have to be ready for students again? But more often it feels — like cooking — like a celebration: a celebration of the moment and the present and what I can do with it.

By Anne Z | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Rick’s Favorite Salad

July 18, 2008 – 8:36 am

We partied with the neighbors last night and I was responsible for bringing salad. I modified “Julie’s Favorite Salad” from Help! My Family’s Hungry by Judie Byrd and the results were great. Rick liked it so much he ate at least three servings. Too bad I didn’t take a photo of it.

This makes a LOT of salad — I had to mix it in my huge stainless steel bowl. But it was all gone by the end of the night.

Rick’s Favorite Salad

Serves a bunch of neighbors

  • 3 romaine hearts
  • 16 oz. sliced button mushrooms
  • 8 oz. swiss cheese, grated
  • 6 oz. sliced almonds, toasted in 350 degree F. oven for 10 minutes
  • One recipe blender vinaigrette (below)

Wash romaine hearts and tear or cut up into bite-sized pieces, then spin dry. Toss lettuce, mushrooms, swiss cheese, and almonds in large bowl. Drizzle on vinaigrette and toss again. Serve immediately.

Blender Vinaigrette

I love this easy vinaigrette. The shallot gives it such nice flavor — and I don’t have to mince it since the blender does all the work. Adapted from The Best 30-minute Recipe.

  • 3 T red wine vinegar
  • 1 medium shallot, peeled and cut into large chunks
  • 1 T dijon mustard
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Blend vinegar, shallot, mustard, salt, and pepper for about 30 seconds or until smooth. With blender running, slowly add oil in a thin stream. Blend until dressing is thick and emulsified.

By Anne Z | Posted in Salads, Side Dishes | Comments (0)

She’s Gone, Gone, Gone, Gone, Gone

July 8, 2008 – 1:30 pm

The lyrics from John Mayer’s “Dreaming with a Broken Heart” make me think of Sally:

When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe
Wondering was she really here?
Is she standing in my room?
No she’s not, ’cause she’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone….

When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
The giving up is the hardest part
She takes you in with her crying eyes
Then all at once you have to say goodbye
Wondering could you stay my love?
Will you wake up by my side?
No she can’t, ’cause she’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone….

Each morning I get up and I’m reminded that Sally’s gone, because she’s not waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. If I wake in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I look around for a dark shape on the floor that might be Sally, but she’s not there either. Sometimes I see a movement in our backyard, and I think it’s her — but it’s not. She’s gone.

It was traumatic making the decision to have her euthanized but equally traumatic to watch her waste away, knowing how awful she must have felt. Though she was eating, she continued to lose weight, because the lymphoma had so screwed up her digestive system she couldn’t gain any nutrition from her food. She had begun vomiting and having diarrhea again — the symptoms that first led to her lymphoma diagnosis. We knew there was nowhere to go but gone and the question was, how long were we going to put her through it?

We’re left with our good memories — 13 years of them.

We got her at the Santa Clara County Humane Society. I went one day on my lunch break and picked her out because she pressed up against the chain-link holding her in so I could pet her soft fluffy fur. She had been found on the streets, a stray with no tags.

She looked like a golden retriever but fancier, with a fluffy tail and puffy pantaloons and a pink nose. She was blissfully unaware of how beautiful she was but everyone else noticed. People would stop their cars to say “what a pretty dog! What breed is she?”

We initially thought she was part malamute or husky, so strong was she when she pulled us around the neighborhood on walks.

We didn’t find out until later that she was likely part Nova Scotia Duck-Tolling Retriever, dogs bred to raise a ruckus at the side of a lake in order to draw ducks’ attention (that’s called “tolling for ducks”). She was frolicsome until almost the very end, when she no longer had the energy to toll for anything.

Goodbye dear doggie.

Sally sleeping

By Anne Z | Posted in Family | Comments (8)