Lord Bonkers has too much fun highlighting headlines of the day in various media with a curious bias towards Shropshire.
You can participate in his poll by voting on his website now.
Solar panel performance – 2012
Another year, another desperately late solar panel performance post. It’s been sitting on my to-do list since January 2nd, but at least writing this will let me tick off something today.
So last year continued a downward trend that looks like it will be over by the end of 2013. At this stage in the year, the graph is the only source of information still recorded so we’ll have to guesstimate the heat output as 3666kWh.
Nottingham Energy Partnership have an Energy Costs Comparison table. I neglected to look at it last year, so will have to use the data from last month now to estimate the financial value of the heat we got from the sun. I use the gas rate of 5.06p/kWh, since if the water were not heated by the solar panel, it would be heated by gas. Interestingly this appears to be a lower cost than last year’s gas cost.
That means the solar panel gathered around £185.50 of energy last year.
The running total to the end of 2012 is therefore £831.06.
There are all sorts of flawed assumptions being made to come to that figure, so take it with a fairly large pinch of salt.
This year I have had my annual half-hearted attempt to work out if it’s possible to do more comprehensive data logging using the equipment I have. I did pay extra for the ethernet connection with the idea of putting some sort of graph on my website to show how the system is doing in real time. I’m super jealous of this guy who has done exactly that with the same setup as me. And as a favour to everyone else he has made public the code to do it. And I don’t have a clue what any of it means or how to use it!
If you are considering a solar panel of your own, whether for hot water or to generate electricity, and you live vaguely near Nottingham, do please get in touch with Sungain at Nottingham Energy Partnership, who would be delighted to let you know what to do next. You can also follow them on Twitter, and they also have a very helpful service on their website that lets you compare your electricity and gas tariffs and see if you can save money.
Buckets more information about my own solar panel under this link.
And a declaration of interest: I’m on the board at Nottingham Energy Partnership, where they very kindly describe me as an “energy expert.”
Things I stock up on in French supermarkets
As a frequent traveller to French France there are a bunch of things I try and buy a bunch every time I’m over there.
Our recent school trip had the super wheeze of stopping off in a hypermarket instead of using motorway services, which was a really effective way of exposing the students to an opportunity to use their transactional French, and just have a glimpse of every day French life.
And there was also a chance for teachers to shop.
Some things I always, or nearly always buy in French shops:
Coffee filters. So much cheaper in France than England!
Olive oil. Ditto.
Bonne maman jam. A luxury brand in England, but an every day one in France, so it’s cheaper over there. I have very pedestrian tastes, so I pretty much only buy fraise, and sometimes gelée de mûres, but there is a huge range of fruits available too. P is rather partial to châtaigne – chestnuts – which comes in a jar with a brown gingham top.
Speculoos spread. We found this for the first time last year, but it has since become available in English supermarkets too. See also Dan Lepard’s recipe made with English mixed spice.
Carambars. This is a very recent addition to my lexicon, influenced by Dom’s MFL blog. Delicious sweets, each one with a truly corny French joke on. You can also make them into a tarte. I’m afraid I bought four bags – two fruit flavour, one original, and one pâté de nougat, and I have just sat for days troughing them. I don’t understand all the jokes – the ones based on puns on names of French sportspeople are especially difficult – but it’s fun to see what I do get. If there are any left I could use them as rewards in lessons, or use them with this reading comp resource and this youtube advert:
Classroom tat. The last few years I have a quick look to see if there’s anything I can use for teaching. One of our “ofsted ready” preparations is about use of authentic materials, so things like calendars, maps, exercise books, stationery, etc call all help with that. The last few years, there has been a real trend for American 50s chic amongst the tat in French supermarkets, which has been a bit of a pain. I’m still on the look out for a large French / German perpetual calendar I could use on the board, but ultimately I think I’m just going to have to make one.
Moving on to matters more alcoholic and less suited to school trips…
Pastis. Available in England. A nice refreshing aniseed summer drink with ice and water that goes cloudy when you dilute it. It’s also a super ingredient for cooking fennel as many ways of cooking it lose its gentle aniseed flavour.
Crème de…. Crème de cassis is a blackcurrant liqueur, a little like alcoholic ribena. It’s used with champagne to make a kir royal, or white wine to make a kir. It’s a similar idea to flavoured syrups in American coffees. It makes a lovely simple cocktail, takes the edge of any slightly nasty white wine, and since it’s a liqueur served in a glass of wine, is pretty effective at taking the edge of you too. Crème de cassis is widely available in the UK, but (sing it with me) much cheaper in France. Much more interestingly, though, are the wider varieties of crème de… that you can use in the same way. Pêche is an old favourite, as is framboise, but this time to mix things up a bit I’ve come home with bottles of crème de pamplemousse rose and crème de cérise. One of my favourite drinks of late has been a gin-and-tonic-and-pink-grapefruit-juice, so pink grapefruit is a flavour I use a lot.
Meal plan nowish
Ouf, I don’t know where the time goes.
(I do, I know exactly where it goes. 12 hour days of school work, and every waking minute worrying that the school work is not good enough is where it goes.)
Anyway, since I last allowed me fingers to fly over the keys of the blog, we now have a veg box arriving, the first last Wednesday.
Astoundingly, it’s around six years since we last had a regular veg box, and that was not a universally positive experience.
Still, on verra. After all, I’m massively less fussy than I… no wait.
This week’s offering from Riverford was – with one exception – all perfectly normal stuff. Carrots, onions, mushrooms. Apples, bananas (not as many as I would like) and oranges, which we don’t really eat but I can happily juice. A salad bag, some celery. And the only slightly outré offering – a head of kale. I can cope with these things. I could cope better if we weren’t already quite well stocked with veggies, but no matter.
We’ve been living a little from the freezer anyway, and will continue to do so this week, but here’s what it vaguely looks like:
(drawing a veil over two nights of takeaway)
Last Friday was leftover Thai pork patties.
Saturday was a visit to friends – they fed us lovely onion tartlets and a leg of lamb, and I made Raymond Blanc’s pineapple sorbet and Nigella’s Nutella panna cotta.
As written, the recipe needs more gelatin as the they did not quite set enough.
Sunday was the first real foray into the veg box – kale and potato cakes topped with grilled cheese and a celery salad with a mustard vinaigrette dressing. The potato cakes were made plainer than the recipe with no real spice at all, and were still good homely fare. The cheese helped no end.
Tomorrow, the plan is bangers and mash with onion gravy and the rest of the kale.
Tuesday, a small bag of pork mince from the freezer will become pineapple rice a recipe which introduced me to toasted sesame oil, a miracle flavour ingredient which does wonderful things to salad dressings and lifts the entire recipe up.
Wednesday is that busy night again, straight from school to yoga, and if we have the strength of mind not to come home via the chippy again, we shall have hummus and crudités and the remains of the veg box.
Thursday is the last day planned. Last time we had veggie falafel burgers the recipe made an absolute ton, so we shall be defrosting and frying the remains of that and eating it with pitta bread.
Meal plan w/c 17 Nov
A wish expressed by P for more traditional fayre. Last week he cooked an amazing almost veggie pie (bacon doesn’t count, right?) including making the pastry and having the pastry go under the pie as well as over it, which I would never do! He also found a tasting menu deal at Browns for Friday night, but those were this week’s food highlights. A lot on at work for me and a hectic social life for him meant a three-day takeaway binge in the middle of the week. Miraculously, I haven’t got too much heavier.
So this week, back on the wagon.
Sunday – Shepherd’s pie
Can you get more traditional than this? No need for a recipe, really, is there? A half-kilo box of lamb mince will be bought, and half will be for this meal, and half frozen for Friday’s.
Monday – mustard chicken thighs
OK, day two, and ahem, the trad theme is gone already. Something a little like the link, but there’s lots of things in there I don’t like so a little variation. I will cook extra chicken so that the following day…
Tuesday – Nigel Slater’s leftover chinese chicken wrap
These have become a bit of a staple. Chinese 5 Spice is weirdly hard to find it. Sainsbury’s don’t seem to sell it.
Wednesday – leek and herb baked potatoes
A late night meeting in school means yoga night is displaced, so something oven-timery will have to be done. For a change it won’t be beans, but something a little like this from Good Food. Leeks are seasonal right now, eh? (no) (double check. Ooh, maybe they are!)
I might also add a jar of sliced olives to this.
Thursday – veggie burger wraps
There will be leftover lettuce from Tuesday, so on Thursday I will stuff it with veggie burger mix made from a festering out-of-date carton of chickpeas in the store cupboard. I don’t actually like pulses and don’t know why I bought the chick peas or butter beans but they have got to be et, so I will blend them with onions and half a jar of roasted red peppers, shallow fry them and serve them with lettuce, tinned bean sprouts and chilli sauce.
Friday – cheese stuffed meatballs
A new recipe from Recipe Rifle that just has to be tried. I mean even the name of it is saying “try me, try me!”
Meal plan w/c 3 Nov
A break from meal planning, or at least blogging about it, with half term and visiting family and giving up on cooking, and not eating properly.
Term resumes on Monday and so we must draw ourselves together and pretend we have some sort of order, discipline and professionalism, and resume planning what we eat rather than cobbling together leftovers and phoning for pizza.
Sunday – Thai pork patties
An old favourite I learned about from Recipe Rifle, which I started to read because she’s married to Giles Coren and carried on because the recipes are good. I bought the book
this recipe comes from, read it cover to cover, and didn’t find anything else in it that grabbed me. Maybe I should reread it and see what I missed.
I shall probably buy 500 grams of pork mince and use half of it and freeze the rest to be pineapple rice at some point in the future.
Monday – baked potatoes and sausages, rice pudding
We have a huge glut of milk at the moment, because I forgot to cancel the usual order while I was away. The rice pudding will use up some of it. The oven can cook three things at once and it will start on a timer while I am at work. When the potatoes are half done, I shall get home and add the sausages and rice pudding in.
Tuesday – baked eggs
As chicken owners we have occasional egg gluts and we really don’t eat as many eggs as we produce. Baked eggs makes a substantial meal out of them. Fry bacon, onion, and other veg until they are soft and put them in ramekins with tomato purée, slightly beat enough eggs (four for two people for us usually) to cover and pour over. Grate parmesan on top and bake in a normal oven until the egg is solid and the tops are golden.
Delicious, but such a pain to wash up afterwards.
Wednesday hummus and crudites
We ate this out of desperation the other week when we were under the cosh, and it turned out to be simple and delicious and healthy, so lets do it more often. Wednesday is beginner yoga night at The Yoga Place which entails changing into my PE kit before I leave school and then heading straight to the yoga place, then home, starving, v v late.
Thursday – leftover sausage pasta
Will cook extra on Monday and then use up the rest with pasta and tomatoes and wine.
Friday – Faggots.
A freezer special. Maybe this will be frozen baking fish instead.
Munzeeing
So, a lovely visit to my family on the south coast has given me a new a hobby. My little nephews are currently obsessed with, among many other things, spotting munzees stuck to street furniture.
It is, at last, a real world application for QR codes that people might actually do. In my brother’s coastal town, there are clearly a bunch of people into this hobby as every lamppost for miles had its own barcode for people to hunt down and scan with the Munzee smart phone app.
Back in Nottingham, there are fewer around. My local park has a bunch and there are loads in the city centre, but neither of my local shopping districts has one at all. Well, we can fix that, I’m sure. Some near by towns have absolutely loads – Long Eaton is well represented. And one crazy local person has deployed over 4,000 of the little barcodes all over South Notts. You can use the website map to find if there are any near you.
Dahn sarf, I was clicking away like a mad thing, and captured a fabled seafront golden munzee – but in doing so, depleted my phone battery and it didn’t register. There are motel munzees with special features – the first five people to scan it get “rooms” in it and so they get points every time it is scanned. There are mystery munzees which award a different number of points each time they scanned and special holiday ones – for halloween, there were bloodshot eyeball munzees.
There are also social munzees, which don’t get you any points and don’t have to be located in a permanent physical location, so here is mine, which you can scan by downloading the munzee app:
Welcoming Bertha to the hen house
We had a death a month or two again – Houdini the chicken looked a little peaky in the afternoon, but she’d looked peaky before and rallied so we left her to it and went out to see Jason Donovan in Priscilla The Musical On Tour. By the time we came home, Houdini was dead, and in full rigor, under the feed bowls.
Going from two chickens to one answered a few questions in a slightly surprising way. We had assumed it had been Persephone laying the shell-less eggs, and that it had been Houdini who like to shout from the rooftops at 5am dawn. It had been the other way around.
We have postponed finding another celly for Persephone for the months since just because when you read about how hard it can be to introduce new birds to a flock, it seems awfully offputting. We had half-baked plans in our head of fencing off half the run, buying additional food bowls, keeping two chickens apart, maybe even using the cat transporting box as a temporary roost… but talking it through with our chicken supplier out by IKEA this afternoon made it all seem a little simpler. “Just chuck her in and see how she gets on,” was the advice. “There will be ten minutes of squawking and feathers and then it will be fine.”
The chicken lady was concerned our existing bird would try and injure our new one, but our concern, on seeing the birds for sale, was that they were enormous and it would be Persephone who would suffer.
It’s her size that gave Bertha her name: as the chicken lady hoiked her out of the pen and trimmed her wing, she said, “Come here, Big Bertha!” And that’s the name we’re going with.
We drove her home, chucked her in the pen, watched for half an hour and there wasn’t too much aggro. Persephone ducked and froze for a while and allowed herself to be pecked before flying up to a perch and sitting out of the way and bokking.
Then she jumped down and gave chase for a few minutes before it was Bertha’s time for the solitude of the perch. It’s quite hard to take pictures of a white chicken against the dark of the bark, she just ends up overexposed and ghostly. Chickens generally don’t stay still long enough for good photos anyway.
After a few minutes a sort of peace descended, broken by Bertha’s reaction to the cats in the garden. Persephone is used to them by now, but Bertha got into a complete flap and the cat ran past the hen house as fast as it could. (Not our cat – a neighbour’s cat comes up through a gap in the fence and spends most of its afternoons sunbathing in a corner.)
We heard chicken calls for a while after we got back into the house but now it’s after dark. Have the hens managed to roost together without another battle? Better go and check.
Random snapshots of my whiteboard
I started taking photos of the things I wrote on my whiteboard as a student teacher – it would normally be names of students who needed rewarding or punishment on the school’s computer system, and since I wasn’t in my own room I would have to take a record with me to type up in the staffroom.
A bit later I started taking the occasional snap of things I’d done in lessons I quite liked, or wanted to use again, or needed a record of the vocab I had given one class so that I could use it again with another.
Most of the time, I don’t spend a lot of time writing stuff on the board, because my handwriting isn’t very good, especially if I’m going quickly, and because it’s almost always easier and quicker for me to put my 60WPM typing into practice and make a quick powerpoint slide. Standard advice for new teachers is also not to turn your back on a class for longer than necessary as they might kick off when you’re not looking. Judging by mess in my classroom at the end of most days, there is still a fair bit of chucking stuff around the room going on when I am not looking.
Here’s a random selection:
Introducing forming the past tense to Y8 in context of sport. We attempt to drip feed past tense phrases in lexically throughout all they learn, but we focus on getting them to understand better early in Y8.
Fiddly extra bits is not a technical grammar term, that would be “complement” or “predicate” but I’m not confident enough that those are correct. I’m also focussing on the AU part of jouer AU foot as students often omit this, and those who have learned German first pronounce it wrong. I have countered this with two little classroom games: “I say JOUER, you say AU! Jouer (AU) Jouer (AU)” and “How do we pronounce this? Yes that’s right, as in AU my goodness I can’t believe you’re still getting this wrong!!”
Don’t know why I took this. Dictionary exercise to stage into better L4 sentences with opinions and reasons. J’aime le fruit parce que c’est sucré. I tell them they need CORN for Level 4 – connectives, opinions, reasons, negatives. Je n’aime pas les croissants parce qu’ils sont dégoûants ticks three of those criteria off straight away.
NB every time I have done this lesson there have been students who have confused the word they are looking up and come up with transpiration, so now I make sure I disambiguate sweet and sweat before we start. There are still some who don’t listen.
Sport again, but with able Y9 so we add a variety of adverbs of frequency to try and get more sophisticated writing.
“Avec les extra-terrestres” – with aliens – is part of a little bit of fun I’m having trying to motivate boys with weird extra bits of vocab. Happily it works with girls too! The criteria say they have to use connectives, nothing about whether it has to be true. Indeed “It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be French” is a bit of a mantra of mine. Last year in “describe your ideal house” we added “un bassin de requins” into the things we might have there (a shark pond). This year for sports I’m including avec les extra-terrestres and avec mon ami imaginaire.
This was turning facts from the morning news bulletin in the car on the commute to school into a numeracy activity for my tutor group.
NB, “how old will you be in 2033?” was a less tricky question than I had envisaged. “Um, sir, we’ll be 33, of course.”
This was the first time I tried Cluedo, a speaking activity I got from Dom’s MFL.
It worked really well, so I do it now with all classes that will be quiet enough to let me explain the instructions. It can easily be adapted to use a wholly target language approach. In this case, students love the opportunity to say nasty or nice things about other teachers, although I do stress that we are doing a GRAMMAR exercise about FRENCH and it should not be assumed that they are writing truthful accounts of other real people in school.
On teaching practice, the German textbook Echo 3 got students to compare teachers using comparatives and superlatives. After a gale of laughter and some dictionary use I went over to find “Herr S ist der schwitzigste Lehrer” – Mr S is the sweatiest teacher. Can’t fault the German language skill, and if the task is motivating, go with it!
The Cluedo task above was used several ways in the same lesson – I usually play the game once – this takes 10-15 minutes as a whole class activity – and follow it up with “write two sentences based on this frame.” If students have already done a lot of writing, the extension might be to play the game in groups on tables as further speaking activity. Then, often, we will look at ways to extend the same sentence even further. The task above eventually resulted in this poster, which I still think I should frame and stick to my door:
One final thing on Cluedo – there was at least one student last year whose writing was improved by a whole level simply because he memorised a past tense sentence generated by an activity like this, and regurgitated it in his writing test. Brilliant. If some can do that, then it’s worth continuing with the activity.
Weekend Zentangles
A weekend spent – so far – doodling and clearing my head.
Immensely tired as we come to the end of the first half term and so I ditched ringing for the third week at the home to stay slobbed out in front of the TV.
I also came to keeping my hands busy and doing a bit of creative doodling, and so combined two hobbies: sending postcards to strangers through Postcrossing and making Zentangles.
Here are three cards I made:
Today, more of the same. Some work in my sketch book
Some new types of different tangles.
NB, my sketchbook looks like this:
It reminds me of my solo audiobook for Librivox, for which I still get a lot of email thanks from around the world.
I’ve also been having a go at making Zentangle tiles on Artist Trading Cards.
I also thought I’d have a go at making one in colour, using my fab set of multicoloured fineliners. But it looks rather a dog’s dinner.
Perhaps I should read teh chapter in my Zentangle book about colour before I have another go.
I’m quite impressed with how some of these turned out. I’m no artist but am producing little bits of work that when I return to them months later, I find myself thinking they look quite good. And that’s without the added benefit of the calmness and quiet you get from just sitting doodling for a few minutes.
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