Meal plan w/c 14 October

So, last week nearly went to plan, apart from our anniversary night when a choice was made about whether to spend 40 minutes waiting for sausages to roast or waiting for the guy from Dominos to ring the bell. We phoned so late the pizzas were with us in way less than the time it would have taken to cook sausages.

I really need to stop ordering such large pizzas as there were slices in the fridge bumping up the calorie count for days.

Monday – roasted pepper and caramelised onion wholewheat penne.

We’ll have half a jar of roasted peppers left over and some time on Sunday to oven caramelise some onions so this should make an easy veggie start to the week.

Tuesday – Beans and cheese baked potatoes.

It’s going to be one of those weeks with next to no time to do anything. Gonna have to rely on getting the timer on the oven to do the work and keep it really simple.

Wednesday – cold cuts, hummus and crudités

Yup, that kind of a week. Hot meals at school (must remember to take in cash to top up my fingerprint account) picnic food in the evening.

Thursday – frozen fish parcels

I don’t even think there’s a night this week I can have a shopping delivery so I’m going to have to spend some of Sunday battling the crowds in the supermarket. So one of those meals from the freezer you can just bang in the oven.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday – bacon joint

Finally by Friday there may be some time to catch up in the kitchen. I love the small bacon joints, shrink wrapped, long life, and can be forgotten about in the oven while you get on with the rest of the stuff. They last two people two or three days, so it will do a night of bacon joint and freezer veg, perhaps a night of ham egg and chips and there may still be some fab chunks for a third night of spaghetti carbonara to help us gear up for the final gruelling week before half term.

Meal plan for w/c 7 October

Monday – we’ll be having the Mackerel potato salad held over from Friday when I was unexpectedly home alone. I always struggle more to eat healthily by myself.

Tuesday – a supermarket stir fry vegetable pack with a ready made sauce.

Wednesday – sausages with onion gravy and frozen veg

Thursday – leftover sausage pasta – something like the online recipe but I usually do it with red wine, making it heavy on the veg and very light on the pasta – a handful of pasta for the two of us.

Friday – roasted mushroom tart – something a little like this one from the blog Manda gave me the link for last week.

On Saturday we are going to Clarkies Supperclub – hit the link for the menu. I’m currently thinking salmon, venison, pear, but I could just as well manage duck, pork, apple… We have to be a little careful as there have been too many nights with the Clarkies where we are too piggy, and massively overeat, and end up barely able to move.

Tonight – French Living.

Most awesome German words

Some awesome German words

It all started with Schifffahrt, a fab word with a ridiculous triple F brought to you by the Neuschreibregeln in the late 90s. Earlier spelling rules said that triple letters that are the logical consequence of joining Schiff to Fahrt, should in fact just have the two, because, you know, that would sensible.

Then, after I did most of my German learning, the orthographic reform came in, throwing everything I knew into confusion and making the difference between long and short vowels crucial into whether you use ß or not, and adding in triple consonants if they are logically there.

For a while I was under the misapprehension that it was Grossstadt, but Duden says it has to be Großstadt.

But talking about Schifffahrt recently has unearthed other German friends’ favourite three-consonant words:

Seeelefant (elephant seals)

Programmmusik (“programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative”)

If one triple consonant just isn’t doing it for you, there’s also Flussschifffahrt.

And triple consonants are just the half of it. There are also the super long words. The UK press was full of the Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz over the summer.

But when I showed some of the stories to German friends on choir week, it was a completely new one to them – and they pointed me in the direction of the Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher. You can see one of those in the video below.

What are your awesomest German words?

Edit 6.x.13

Some more awesome words from this BBC discussion:

Imbissstube (how could I forget that?!)

Fußballländerspiel (international football game)

Balletttänzer (ballet dancer)

Betttuch (as opposed to Handtuch or Taschentuch)

Schusssicher (bullet proof)

Kaffeeernte (coffee harvest)

Useful ML GCSE grammar resources

Googling random French words looking for stuff to teach birthdays and celebrations (*), I found a useful booklet with hundreds of grammar drills, gap fills, copy-and-conjugate, match the sentence starts and ends. They were pitched at able GCSE candidates and had lots of useful vocab. I was a little worried to start with that I’d accidentally found something I wasn’t supposed to be able to have without paying, but on closer inspection it turned out to have come from the Northern Irish curriculum agency.

I imagine there will be areas where the NI GCSE does not quite match the specs of AQA or other English exam boards but there is still plenty of top notch useful information.

There are microsites for French, Italian, Spanish and German, and although I haven’t explored the higher level at all, there are also productive-looking links for GCE A Level materials.

The main useful booklet I found was “Resource Pack Expansion Pack” – I haven’t even looked yet in the Resource pack.

One further source of usefulness, digging back in my memory, was pointed out by Steven Smith of frenchteacher.net. If you have run out of past papers to try (and some schools I know of have a compulsory “we do a past paper every half term in KS4 and 5” policy) it’s worth crossing the Irish Sea to try the archive of French exams over there.

(*) I just couldn’t stop myself: after we’d done “fêter” in five tenses, I pointed out you could do all the same for “peter” – to fart. Si j’étais poli, je ne peterais pas. Il faut que je pète.

Meal plans for two weeks

So, yes, meal plans help you spend less in the supermarket, in theory, and eat better, because you have something in the fridge for tonight that you have planned to eat and fits with your diet goals. You don’t have to plan something fancy every night and you need to be mindful of how tired you will be any given night.

I have until recently been in a cycle of shopping on Sunday mornings after ringing, but supermarkets are crazy busy on Sundays, so this week I am trying to be organised far enough ahead

Last week’s and this week’s are both pretty multicultural, taking advantage of autumn to use the timer on the oven to have food ready for when I come home.

Monday 23rd Sep – Chicken chasseur -a chicken, bacon, mushroom and tomato stew – made with four chicken legs so there was two nights’ food.

Tuesday – Chicken chasseur

Wednesday – Greek salad

Thursday – Pan fried pork steaks with apples, onions, carrots and peppers, with a crème fraîche and wholegrain mustard sauce

Friday – Mr Brain’s frozen faggots

Saturday and Sunday – Stifado – a Greek beef and tomato stew spiced with cinnamon, cloves and bay leaves, but in our case, no garlic. Based a little on Jamie Oliver’s recipe, it’s in the oven right now, so I shall be interested to see how it comes out, given that he doesn’t give a stock cube as an ingredient.

My parameters for a week’s food are currently: low carb main meals every night. Next to no bread, pasta, rice or potatoes. I have recently fallen far short of my aspiration to have two meat free main meals each week, and only manage it by substituting fish next week, as you will see. Failing on the carbs, too.

Monday 30th September – tbc

Tuesday – lamb tagine. Trying to prove wrong the online comment I read that people who buy tagine dishes only ever use them once. This will be the second time. I shall be rather more circumspect with the ras el hanout this time.

Wednesday – pineapple rice

Thursday – salade niçoise

Friday – smoked mackerel potato salad – a version of a recipe where the smoked mackerel is crumbled with mayonnaise and wholegrain mustard, and spinach is cooked by lining a colander with it, and pouring over the boiling potato water. Except that I will probably be using frozen spinach and this blates won’t work with that.

Well, that at least is what is in my Google diary shared with P so we both know what is planned. Whether I shall crumble and phone for pizza again is another matter.

Zentangling Siena

Now that the postcard has finally arrived I can share some patterns I found in the Duomo di Siena.

First some background!

Zentangling is a deceptively simple meditation / doodling crossover that I have been playing with for a few months. I see from searching these pages however, that I haven’t blogged about it yet (although you will find some photos of my art here.)

I started off using the book One Zentangle A Day but have fallen way way by the wayside.

Zentangling’s premise is that you can produce quite complex interesting art “one stroke at a time” – there is a method that helps you build up patterns by following a series of strokes. The various different patterns – called tangles – are “taught” by using diagrams like this one that shows you what order to do the strokes in. Tanglepatterns.com is a brilliant online index of loads of different patterns and places to find their step diagrams.

At the time I found out about these for the first time, it had recently been creativity week at school – a system we use where all the residential trips and work experience placements happen at the same time to avoid lots of small groups of students being out at different times. Those staff and students left in school have a week off timetable doing something completely different. So I half wonder whether I could use this if there ever comes a year when I am in school and not out on a FL visit.

Since starting, I have been intrigued by the patterns I see around me and wonder whether they could inspire new tangles. Re-reading the instructions about the difference between a tangle and any old pattern perhaps not.

Although I have spotted interesting patterns all around, the cathedral in Siena was simply on another planet. Every available surface is completely covered in art, much of it representative, but much also based on recurring patterns. Indeed as an English protestant, used to much plainer places of worship, I kinda felt the Lego cathedral was a little de trop.

In any case, here are the tangles I drew on a postcard to similarly afflicted friends, followed by bad, flashless, cameraphone pictures of the things I saw that were the pattern in the wild, in the cathedral.

Duomo zentangles

Duomo zentangles

Duomo zentangles

Finally the right-hand O came from an illuminated symbol in a beautiful manuscript of plainsong in the crypt.

Duomo zentangles

There are strong resemblances, to my mind, of the official tangle “Mooka” which is explained in this video:

To loop it all back to education – and even to languages – a wonderful post by blogger and primary languages expert Clare Seccombe, who is currently entering a competition inspired by the Lindisfarne Gospels (which I failed to go and see whilst in Durham this summer) and European Day of Languages.

Pudding club: Lancashire hotpot II

I’ve tried this once before – this one worked out better, I think.

Lancashire hotpot for last pudding club of the hols.

I didn’t really read my recipe from last time, just had a quick glance at Delia’s version and the BBC Good Food for quantities. Yes, I did need to buy two supermarket blister packs of lamb chunks at more than a fiver each. (A main course that works out at around £2 each is not unreasonable, really, though is it?) No, I wasn’t going to include kidneys (I wouldn’t mind but P would and I’m guessing two small boys wouldn’t be keen.) Basic stew, chop up some potatoes for the top, uncover halfway through cooking, brush potatoes with butter and brown off.

I liked Delia’s factoid:

This has acquired its name from the time when it was baked at home, then wrapped in blankets to keep hot and provide lunch for a day at the races.

Hotpot then is super appropriate for taking to a friend’s house.

I also liked Delia’s potato topping – more like chips or roasted potatoes than the food processor slices I did last time. I was going for that, but completely failed!

It wasn’t quick, by the time you have browned the meat a fair bit, then given the onions a good long time to almost caramelise on their own, in the juices, then add and soften the celery and carrots. After all that, a further two hours in the oven, which it can almost do on its own apart from the uncovering / browning stage when I felt the need to keep checking that it wasn’t actually burning.

Anyway, pudding club with friends, followed by watching #GBBO as part of a crowd, was an awesome way to end the holidays and not give too much thought to the first day of school tomorrow…

Updating an ancient post about Paris

I’ve just added a new footnote to a very old post here describing a few things that are worth doing in Paris.

The new footnote is just this link in French to places with incredible views over Paris which came from one of the mfltwitterati.

My next trip to the City of Light will be with a coach load of Y8s. In December. Which may well give me a whole new perspective on teaching and indeed on Paris.

GBBO Back!

This little trailer for the new series of GBBO made me chortle out loud.

(Did they really get a choir and orchestra in specially to sing “and he shall bake for ever and ever…” or am I mishearing the start?!)

I shall miss the start because I shall be in Italy (#BOHOF).

It reminds me nonetheless that our Y9 first language courses start with a media module, and that last year I wrote some reading comps in French and German which I shall copy below should anyone care to use them or highlight the howlers in my TL.

French

Je regarde très peu la télévision – environs 3 heures par semaine. En regardant la télé je mange souvent mon repas. En ce moment il y a deux émissions par semaine qui me sont importants. Tous les lundis à 20.30, je regarde Only Connect. C’est un jeu télévisé où les questions sont tous très difficiles et les joueurs sont très intelligents. Chaque mardi, le soir, je regarde Great British Bakeoff, qui est un programme de télé-réalité et aussi une émission de cuisine. C’est sur chaine BBC2 et l’émission dure une heure. C’est plus longue que Only Connect. Le programme cherche le meilleur chef de cuisine de Grande Bretagne. Ça commence avec douze candidats et on en perd un chaque semaine. J’aime bien tous les deux émissions, mais Only Connect, c’est mon émission préférée en ce moment.

(I especially liked “on en perd un”, I hope that’s not wrong!)

German

Ich sehe nur selten fern, nur etwas 3 Stunden pro Woche. Während des Fernsehens, esse ich oft mein Abendessen. Neulich gibt es zwei Fernsehsendungen, die mir wichtig sind. Jeden Montag um 20.30 sehe ich gern Only Connect. Das ist eine Quizsendung mit Victoria Coren. Die Fragen sind schwierig und die Mitspieler sind sehr intelligent. Ich gucke auch Great British Bakeoff, eine Realityshow und eine Kochsendung. Sie läuft Dienstags um 20.00 Uhr im zweiten Programm. Die Sendung sucht der beste Bäcker des Vereinigten Königreich. Am Anfang gab es sechzehn Mitspieler und jede Woche verlieren wir einen davon. Beide Sendungen sind toll, aber Only Connect ist meine Lieblingssendung im Moment.

Comp questions

How much TV do I watch each week ?
What do I often do whilst watching TV?
What are the questions and the players like on Only Connect?
How many contestants did they start off with on Great British Bakeoff?
Which of the two programmes is my favourite right now?

I also had an extension task with Find the French for… and work out genders for (which was very revealing on the students’ ability to understand how un/une related to le/la.)

After this I pretty much stopped writing blocks of text for fear of the faults I make. It’s got to be better, most times, to find where someone else has already written something, and nick it and simplify it for the classroom.

Pudding Club: Raymond Blanc’s pineapple 3 ways

Recipe now on Raymond Blanc’s own site.

I think Raymond likes to put a challenge in his programmes and dare viewers to make the most complicated possible dishes. How many people does he really expect to have the time to follow such elaborate instructions? Saved for a year when I have days to practise is his “café crème” – a hand made chocolate espresso cup with coffee icecream in it and garnished with sugarcube truffles. (37-step written recipe here)

But for our recent pudding club outing it was his Pineapple 3 Ways dessert I made, another of his signature dishes, and one created for the Queen Mother, who was partial to pineapple.

The recipe is here, and I pretty much followed it as written, should you too fancy faffing for four hours with fruit.

Making caramel is still something I find difficult, and it’s possible I burnt it slightly. Adding cold water to hot caramel in a pan is a weird thing to do, and resulted in the caramel solidifying on the bottom with the water floating on top of it. Eventually it melted again and left me with a sauce for drizzling the roast pineapple in. Every 15 minutes for two hours!

When it came out, it looked like this and I should have served it this way for spectacle, rather than having to cut it up to transport:

Making Raymond Blanc's insanely complicated "pineapple 3 ways"

The roasted pineapple was delicious. If I do this again I will roast two pineapples. The same amount of caramel basting liquid would be fine and it would not be much more work to prepare and cook two. Even after roasting for two hours, I think the core was still pretty tough, so I carved it off and removed it.

The pineapple sorbet recipe is easy and delicious, and definitely something I will make again, although in slightly smaller quantities as it bulked up a lot in the ice cream maker and foamed over the edge of the pot before it froze. It would make a lovely inter-course palate cleanser for one of those no-holds-barred dinner parties.

The dried pineapple was a bit of a disaster. I don’t have a mandolin and could not get the slices thin enough.

Ultimately, six of us – four adults and two children under five – wolfed down two pineapples very quickly, with the children slightly short changed in how much roasted pineapple they got. It certainly wouldn’t have fed 8 adults, hence the idea of using two next time.

As I started to write this I had in mind that it was an enormous faff, but clearly by the time I get to the end I’m starting to think about the next time I do it…