Arduous Process

Baking cabbage burger is an arduous process.

Okay, not really .... especially if you do them

the lazy man's way like I do.  

It would have been nice if someone in the family had 

written down a recipe.  But no, in our family, we don't write down recipes.

Years ago, Sister Two put together a cookbook with recipes

from Dad's side of the family.  One would think with 60 Germans

there would be at least one cabbage burger recipe.

But no.  

There's a recipe for pierogis.
  Another one for Chinese cashew chicken.
Or how about garbanzo bean salad?
Pink lemonade salad?

Does that even sound remotely German?

But believe it or not, I did figure out how to make cabbage burgers.

On my own.  By myself.

Will wonders never cease?

 

Here's what you'll need to make cabbage burgers:  hamburger,

cabbage, onions, garlic salt, onion salt, minced garlic, Rhodes dough balls, and butter.

I've already got the hamburger frying, but before you can begin the rest of the prep work you need to crank the tunes up as loud as they will go.

That way you'll block out the sound of the braying donkey.

The braying donkey who is letting you know 

he wants his daily ration of sweet mix and nose rubs.

Murphy is very insistent when it comes to sweet mix and nose rubs.

But I forgot to buy any.  Sweet mix, this is.  Bad, bad donkey owner.

I figure my music will drown out his attempts to make me feel guilty.

Of course I'm a frequent flier when it comes to guilt trips, 

so I took apples out to them.  They seemed to be okay with the

substitution and I was rewarded with a gorgeous sunset.

Back to business.

The hamburger needs to be liberally seasoned
with garlic salt, onion salt and minced garlic.

Of course, before you can do this you must check the expiration dates.

 

Especially if you're making them for Ms. Simpleton!

Not many people use garlic in their cabbage burgers.

But I do.  Lots of it.  About two tablespoons per pound of meat.

Plus all of the garlic salt on top of that!

While the hamburger is cooking, it is time to chop the onions.

Mardell suggested using the food processor for this step

but did you notice the knives in the lower right
hand corner of the first picture?

I'd had a really crummy day at school and 

my students had frustrated me to no end.

It's called knife therapy.
Trust me, it work wonders.

By the time I was finished with the onions,
most of my frustrations were gone and I was instead crying.

Not really.

But only because I know the secret trick to chopping up
onions without bawling like a girl (which is never a good thing).

 

Light a stick match and put the non-burnt end 

in your mouth after you blow it out.

Try it --- it works wonders.

I did 50 pounds of onions for our fund-raiser this way.

By the way, my picture is mis-leading.
  I only photographed half of my onions.


  But that's only because the other three looked like this:

Not really.
Those were from last summer.

Really, they were, Ms. Simpleton.

Next, I chopped up my two heads of cabbage.

 

Once again I used the knives.

Heads of cabbage are even more therapeutic than onions!

While I was slicing and dicing and chopping the cabbage,

I began adding the onions to the hamburger.

Then I slowly added the cabbage and let it cook down.

While it was slowly melding its flavors together,
we began rolling out the dough. Dough balls are the only way to go.


  Especially if you make 226 dozen.
Which I never recommend that you do.
Under any circumstances.

We like to use the pasta machine.

 

But that's only so that we can say that we've actually used it!

We dial it to number six, mash two dough balls together and let 'er rip.

Next I measure half a cup of filling and put it on the dough.

I carefully and lovingly fold it up and place it gingerly

on the awaiting cookie sheet which is lined with a silicon sheet.

If you don't have a silicon sheet for your cookie sheets,

I highly recommend that you invest in one.

We bought ours for $2.36 on clearance at Hobby Lobby.

 

After the burger has rested a bit and plumped
up, it's off to the oven.

We bake them at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

 

Be sure to relax while they bake.

Let 'em cool for about thirty seconds after 

removing them from the oven and rub the tops with a stick of butter!

Library Sherrie --- I have some filling left that I froze.  I'll send a batch down to you

when Mardell has her next quilt class and then you can elect not to share!

Friday Flashback

Once upon a time there was a young, energetic woman
who coached track at a rural school.  Her team desperately
needed equipment and a shot put/discus ring. Unfortunately
there was no money in the budget for such luxuries.

Since her concerted efforts at winning the lottery have yet
to pay off, she had to get creative and come up with a fund-raiser
that would raise a sizable amount of money in a short amount of time. 

The most important part that she forgot to add was
"with a minimal amount of work".

She probably won't make that mistake again.

She had the bright idea to hold a cabbage burger sale.
It had been done at another rural school where she had worked.
It couldn't be that hard.

  Each trackster could sell cabbage burgers by the dozen. 
She figured if they each sold five dozen, they could buy
a practice ring and some shot puts and discuses.  

It was an ideal set-up.  The kids would do the selling and she would enlist the help of every person that she could even remotely call a friend.  With twenty some kids out for track, they'd sell maybe 50 or 60 dozen. 

No problem, she had five or six really good friends.
They could kick those out in an afternoon.

Probably with their eyes closed ....

and their hands tied behind their backs.

Did anyone mention how cocky this young woman was?

That changed when she realized that her team had pre-sold 226 dozen.
Yes, 226 DOZEN cabbage burgers.

For the mathematically challenged, that is 2,712 cabbage burgers.

She and six of her closest friends and relatives slaved for three week-ends making cabbage burger after cabbage burger.

After they were done, she had a beautiful shot put/discus ring.

She had six additional shots.

She had two wooden and metal discuses that
were the envy of all the other country schools.

She had new track shirts for every track kid.

But alas, she had no really good friends left.

She swore there was no way in
HADES
that she would ever make another cabbage burger as long as she lived!


One should never say never.

Remember Mary's friend?
Tara Simpleton?

Yeah, the one suffering from a severe case of CDO.

She went with us (Mardell, Mary and I) to a quilt show.

  

This would be at a time when Mary was in the closet with her quilting habit, but that's another story for another day.

At any rate, after walking around looking at hundreds of quilts Tara decided she was hungry so she went to the concession stand and bought a cabbage burger for $8 or $9.

It was a bit disappointing to say the least. 

It was about the size of a small hamburger bun.

A very small hamburger bun.

It had sesame seeds on top of it.

I've never seen sesame seeds on a cabbage burger. 

I offhandedly remarked that mine were better

and someday I'd make her some.

Yeah, right--- when pigs fly.

 

Well, it seems that Ms. Simpleton has had a tough week.

What says, "Hang in there, we're thinking about ya"

better than cabbage burgers?

So I caved in even though Hades hasn't frozen over.

I made cabbage burgers to send over to her.  

Mardell is going over tomorrow for a quilt class
and she is going to deliver them.

Of course I pictorially documented the whole process
and will post it this week-end.
Simply because I struggle to find topics to ramble on about.

In the meantime, everyone send Ms. Simpleton happy thoughts.

And let her know just how loved she is
because I don't make cabbage burgers for just anyone!

Indeed

Spring has sprung.....

after Sister One's post yesterday

I was excited at the thought of Spring.

But look at what I spied as I

left work........

Hollyhocks.

Today's Gift

Every year on President's Day, our local service
unit hosts a mid-winter conference.

Vicki, the Young Thing and I all wanted
to go to "Motivating the Unmotivated."

(So what if it was a little self-help I was looking for?!)

Instead, we got to attend 
"Instructional Strategies to Differentiate for Students".

I wasn't really excited about the topic
because I really wanted to be in the other session. 
 

In fact, I was kind of pissy.


After all, Vicki and I went to a three 
day conference on this very topic last summer
and I wanted something new and exciting. 

We differentiate on a daily basis.

We have to in order to survive in our classroom.

 

 

What can I say?

Lunch was good.

I got to visit with Linda who lived next door to us as we were growing up.
I got to visit with one of my college professors.
I got to see my 7th grade English teacher.

But the best part was getting out at 3:00.

That was like an unexpected gift ....
especially since the weather was so nice.

I drove home all excited about the prospect of being home in the afternoon with daylight left.  Sure, the week-ends have daylight, but it just isn't the same.

I never get home before o'dark thirty so this was truly a gift.

This is usually what it looks like as I drive around the lake.

 

While it is beautiful, it is too dark to go hiking by the time

I actually get home and change clothes.

So today I decided to take advantage and take
the Doodles and the big dogs for a run.

Let me clarify that .... they run, I trudge along.

Naturally, I had exhausted my batteries taking pictures of the New Arrival so I opted to forego taking my camera along.  It figures that the Doodles scared up two pheasants and a pair of deer.  Of course if I had had my camera with me, this is probably all I would've gotten anyway:

(photo courtesy of istock royalty free pics)

Of course, without the lush green background.

Instead my background would have looked more like this:

Actually, it would have been nice to add that image
to my collection of "animal butt" photos.

Why, you ask, do I collect animal butt photos?
It's simple really.  I have this theory that any kid's book that has the word
"butt", "poop", or "fart" in it becomes an instant best seller.
Just ask Dav Pilkey.

I have considered writing a children's book about animals butts
and have collected butt photos for about six years.

I figure if it has the picture as well as the word butt,
it's bound to be a hit.



But I digress.

About the time a Great Blue Heron swooped up in front of me
and landed on a branch not more than twenty feet away,
I was really cursing myself for not bringing my camera along.

I was cursing myself for not being bright enough
to charge my battery while I was suffering through the in-service.

I was cursing myself for not at least bringing my old camera.

Then I quit cursing myself and went back
and fetched my trusty old camera that takes regular alkaline batteries.

Of course I didn't have any of those type of batteries either,
so I did the only logical thing.

I stole them from Mardell's mouse on her computer.
Please don't tell her.

This is the time of year when I am desperate for a sign of spring
so I set off with the hopes of finding some small inkling of the change in seasons.

 

No bats in my bat houses yet, so it can't be spring.

All I saw there was trim that still needs to be painted.

No blooming sunflowers in my garden, so it can't be spring.

All I saw was a drooping head waiting patiently for the chickadees to discover it.

My destination was Little Lake Alice, so I set off on our well-worn path.

One might think I did lots of hiking because of this trail ...

but one would be wrong for thinking this. 

The trail is courtesy of my dogs.

Chip of course thinks he owns the entire pasture.

I hadn't gone far before I discovered that 

Benny wanted to be a big dog too.

Of course, he is very serious when he picks up a scent.

We don't have God complexes at our house.

Rather, we have Dog complexes.

"Hey, wait for ME!" Zeda, our one-eyed cat exclaims,

"I'm a big dog, too!"

Determined to find some sign of impending spring, we continued on.

No fresh cat-tails in our cat-tail marsh, so it can't be spring.

All I saw were old, exploded ones.

No buds on the tree branches yet, so it can't be spring.

All I saw were toppled over trees that need to be chopped up this summer,

 

and pesky tumbleweeds that need to be eradicated.

No sticky sweet milkweed pods, so it can't be spring.

All I saw were dried up pods, gently rustling in the breeze.

Wait, there's a definite sign of spring!

 

Flocks of Canadian Geese and Canadian Snow Geese on the lake.

For the past week or so, we have had hundreds of geese in the fields and on the lake.

That's a sure sign that spring is just around the corner!

Of course, my dogs (the little blobs marked with blue arrows)

see something entirely different ....

 ... a walking buffet.

Life is good when you have waterfowl to bark at and chase.

Ahh, mud.

Definitely a sign that the world is
thawing and spring is just around the corner.

Unfortunately, the sun began to set and I had to turn back.

 

But I was grateful for this hike and can hardly wait to document the actual arrival of my favorite season.

My Rock Stars

I'm not much of one to travel. 

Oh, I have been to a few places and have actually left the country on a couple of occasions.  Last summer my teaching partner, her husband,  Mardell and I even went to whole new world .... for an entire week but I really hate being gone from home for more than three or four days.

However, every year without fail I go to the Denver Reading Conference.  I save my personal days for this purpose and I look forward to it.  This year was no different.

Vicki and I went together.  We left after school on Wednesday.  In fact we about beat the busses out of the school yard!

Last year when we went, we stopped at Centerra in Loveland and hit the big Barnes and Noble on the way down.  Consequently we spent several hundred dollars and couldn't afford to go to the Tattered Cover.  We weren't about to make that mistake this time.

To be on the safe side, we stopped in Cheyenne for supper.  

We ate at Sanford's Grub and Pub.  Curly and Ann at the Woodshed turned us on to Sanford's many years ago.  Vicki had never eaten there before.  Think junkyard ambience.  It was started by a couple of college kids cramming for finals.  I think they have great burgers and have tried replicating them at home.  Mom doesn't care for my replications, but this is a woman who eats peanut butter by the spoonful, so I try to keep things in perspective.

We got to the Marriott at the Denver Tech Center at about 9:30.  We were both beat and we hit the sack soon after we arrived.

The keynote speaker for the morning was Lester Laminack.

I'd heard of him in passing, but I had no clue
about anything he had written.
We now own every children's book that he has written
and two of his professional books for teachers.  We are ordering the others on payday.  He was that good.

We have not laughed so hard for a long time.  He moved around the room, climbed on chairs, pranced, and kept us very entertained.  He kept reminding us that we all had little Lesters in our classroom. Then he laughed maniacally.

We were so glad that we had gone.  That one session alone was worth it.
From there we went to a session where recipients of a grant outlined their projects.  We got a nice list of books to use with ELL kids if we ever have the need.  But better than that, we learned that we can apply for the grant even though we don't live in Colorado.  That would buy some more books for our classroom which is always a good thing.

Next we hit some exhibits and bought Lester's books.  The fool things are mostly in hardback.  I especially like hardbacks, but I don't like paying for them.  It kills me to buy one when I could be buying two paperbacks.  That's how good his books are ... we bought three hardback and two softback titles!

The author luncheon on Thursday was Jane Yolen.

She shares her birthday with Mom,
and everyone sang her Happy Birthday a few days early.

Care to guess who is older?

Jane turned 70 and Mom turned 66 on the 11th. 

Unfortunately Mom didn't have 700 teachers sing Happy Birthday to her.  She didn't even have one teacher sing Happy Birthday to her.  Trust me when I say there is a very good reason for that.

That afternoon we were scheduled to go see Julie Dannenberg who wrote First Year Jitters.

This was the book I bought for myself the night that Karen asked if I wanted my own classroom. 
We both really wanted to see her. But instead, we skipped out of that session and went to Lester Laminack's.

 

He read his Book Saturdays and Teacakes to us and explained how he invited the author to his grandma's house for the illustrations.  It was no longer his grandma's house ... his cousin owns it, but he called all of his family and they brought back her belongings and recreated her kitchen so that the illustrator could capture the feeling.  I think Lester's "Mam-maw" and Grandmother Hall were cloned.  Their kitchens certainly were.

He talked a lot about how he wrote the book and what his intentions were.  He illustrated how deliberate the process is and why he used the typesetting that he did.  It was fascinating and gave us a whole new level to consider with our student's writing.

I even won one of his books as a door prize.  I even told him that it wasn't enough to just win, I also wanted it autographed.  To Trudy the Great no less.

We hit a few more sessions and then met up with the other Scottsbluff teachers that were there.  We went to supper at P.F. Chang's.  It was good, but it doesn't hold a candle to The Wonderful House.  We are really spoiled.

After supper we went back up to our room and read children's books for the next hour or two.  By this time we had purchased about thirty or thirty five books.

The keynote speaker for Friday morning was B-O-R-I-N-G.  But I managed to get a few math papers graded, so it wasn't a total loss.

We have a student teacher this year.  Her name is The Young Thing.

So after the keynote, we went to get a book signed by Patricia Polacco for her.  We had just started a unit on alphabet books and discovered that Patricia Polacco had one titled G Is For Goat.  We bought us a copy and got one for her.

To get a book autographed, you have to get a ticket and stand in line for over an hour.  I think that is a Colorado law.  We had been there for about half an hour when one of the conference organizers explained that she wasn't personalizing books this year because her carpal tunnel was so bad.  She also explained that she was using book plates in place of signatures.  We were very disappointed, so we went to plan B.  I rushed off to the book store and bought another alphabet book "W is for Whale" since we have an ocean theme.  Then we went to get a ticket for Roland Smith's line.  Instead, we were greeted by Roland Smith himself and Vicki even got a hug from him.

 

We were slated to go to Jerry Pallotta's session...

 

but instead we got some books autographed by him and opted to wait for Patricia Polacco.

Incidentally, his shirt says "Read a Zillion Books". 
I want one. 
Just in case anyone cares.

The wait for Patricia was well worth it.  It turns out that she would personalize one and sign every book you brought.  Usually they limit you to two books, so we had left the other twenty up in our room.  It didn't matter .... getting The Young Thing's signed was the important thing.  Besides, we got our photo with Patricia.

 

I normally despise getting my picture taken, but we work so hard all year at elevating children's authors to rock star status, that it was worth it.  The kids will be impressed.  She visited with us for quite a while and told us about how her mother taught a multi-age room just like us.  She is truly a neat person. 

Heck, our students were impressed to hear that we rode alone in the elevator with David Schwartz. 

We didn't mention the fact that we didn't converse with him.

It was about ten o'clock at night and he looked more wiped out than we felt.

Anyway, we left the autographing area and went off in search of our next session on writing.  It was a commercial for a program guaranteed to improve student writing.  We picked up a few good tips, but the commercialized sessions don't thrill us much.

Then we went to the Patricia Polacco luncheon.  The theme for the conference was "Living Story Quilts" and Patricia read her book titled The Keeping Quilt.  It was incredible.   But even mo
re so when she pulled out the actual quilt that the story was based on.

 

In this photo, she was talking about her rotten red-headed older brother.  But then she went on to explain that you were truly lucky if you had a red-headed friend.  She recommended getting one if you didn't already have one.  There is a red-head in each of her books.

So Sister Two and Sister Three, a little more respect for the red-head in the family please.

The quilt belonged to her great-great grandmother and was made from the clothes of all the relatives they had left behind when they came to America.  She pointed out which applique had come from which relatives clothes.  There wasn't a dry eye in the room when she finished.

Her accent reminded me so much of Granny.  Especially when she said America.

She also told about her farm and the gardens and livestock.  That really made me think of Granny and miss her.

We had chosen to go see Nancy Pollette because we thought we would pick up some great tips.  We were right and we discovered that we have several books that she has written.  The name didn't ring a bell at all, but she started talking about different books and showing them and Vicki and I would lean over to one another and say, "We've got that one."

The hour that we spent with her just flew by.  This was the last major conference that she is doing because she is going into semi-retirement.  She told us this and then explained that she had been a teacher for 59 years!  She laughed as we were all doing the math and said that she'll turn 80 this year.  She doesn't look old enough to be 70, much less 80!

Then we went to Will Hobb's session.  I can't stand science fiction, so I was really disappointed.  But he signed his book Howling Hill for us.

Our last keynote session was Nancy Atwell.  We had used her book in my Adolescent Literature class.  She was very interesting, but obviously she is geared more towards the middle school crowd.  We didn't get out of there until about 6:20.  I had texted Mary and told her we would be done about 6:00 because she and Jamal were driving to Denver to have supper with us.  This is a long-standing tradition.  Fortunately, the boy didn't get out of wrestling until late, so they weren't waiting on us at all.

We went to T G I Friday's.  The food was pretty good, but really nothing to write home about.  The company was the best part.  Jamal was his usual charming self and we had a delightful evening.  We had originally thought that we would coerce Mary into taking us to the Tattered Cover, but somehow we spent our allotment at the Boulder Book Store which was the major vendor for the event.  So instead,  Mary took us back to the Marriot and once again we collapsed into bed.

On Saturday, we got to see the Two Sisters.  They are teachers who have written a book called The Daily Five which is a structure for managing students within the reading/writing block.  These two ladies are hilarious.  We had a two and a half hour session that seemed more like twenty minutes.

After it was over, they drew for two door prizes.  The first name was called and the winner received their book.  My name was the second one called and I was so excited.  

I won a plastic ruler, a pencil, and a raspberry shortcake cookie.

Whoopee!

But they too signed our book and we discovered that they are holding a one day conference in Portland, Oregon in June.  Vicki and I are going to write another grant in the hopes of attending.  Mardell is already plotting out quilt shops along the way!

Our last luncheon was with Jon Sczieska.  He is a scream.  His autobiography is entitled "Knucklehead", so that should be some indication.

He has been named as the first National Ambassador of Young People's Literature.

He even has a medal to prove he is the Ambassador.

 

He delighted in showing it off.

His stories were hilarious, if not a bit raunchy, which is precisely why kids love his books.

We left Denver happy, but exhausted.

Fortunately, we weren't too exhausted to stop at Centerra on our way home.

They were having huge sales on presidential biographies, so of course, we had to buy a couple .... or eighteen!

All in all, we ended up with 59 kids books and 4 professional books.

I'd say it was another successful conference!