Style

Lily has her own sense of style.

Do you know the Muffin Woman?

Tonight I was going to make banana bread. I'd managed to save back two bananas from my fruit-loving kids long enough for them to ripen nicely finally! I knew if I waited another day they'd disappear though, so I had to act.

I was assembling my ingredients and found I had no brown sugar! Darn it! Tom makes great oatmeal and we compete over, er I mean SHARE the brown sugar. Well what's a girl to do? I surfed around a bit for other banana bread recipes, but then started thinking about what else I could make. 

We had a bunch of fresh cheeries in the fridge. Bananas and cherries go together right? I decided to try altering my tried and true muffin recipe to use about 1.5 cups of bananas and a half cup of chopped cherries.

Angela Mott's Marvalous Muffin Recipe:

Dry ingredients:

4 c all purpose flour

1 c sugar

2 tblsp baking powder (not soda!!)

1 tsp salt

Wet ingredients:

2 eggs

2 c milk

1/2 c oil 

Mix your dry ingredients in a big bowl. 

Mix you wet ingredients in a small bowl. 

Make a well in the dry bowl and dump in the wet stuff, mix it just till moistened but lumpy.

Now for your options. Pick one:

Fold in 2 cups of fruit and then put batter into muffin tins. (Blueberries are my favorite! But tonight I did bananas and cherries.)

Or

Put a soon of batter in each greased muffin cup and then put a little bit of preserves or jam in the middle and cover with more batter (I call these Surprise Muffins).

Either way, I usually spray my muffin tins with Pam, but I was out tonight. (Man, no brown sugar AND no Pam!) This recipe made 3 doz muffins (I have 3 different sized tins, one is old and quite small). So I greased one pan with Crisco. Sprayed one with Baker's Joy, and spayed muffin cups with Bakers joy in the third tin. (Right to left in the image.)

Bake for about 25-30 min at 400. Usually I start checking about 20 minutes just in case.

Let cool on wire racks if you have them, otherwise just put them on plates or in a basket.

I took photos as I went tonight. I think these cherry banana muffins turned out great! Poor Tom was asleep, but he'll have a surprise in the morning! Maybe I'll take some to work to share too. 36 is a LOT of muffins!

I'm back, and I'm pissed off

So what does it take to get me to do a blog post? Apparently just an incredibly ignorant suggestion from a Republican (surprise!) that we discontinue compulsory education. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3612150

First of all, I don't usually go off on a tangent without at least trying to see both sides of the issue and really thinking my thoughts all the way through so that I can lay out a solid arguement. But this really has me pissed off. 

I don't think it's even partially correct to suggest that parents don't care about their child's education. I taught in a low SES school  (something like 98% free/reduced lunches) for two years. Racially it was primarily African-American (over 80% I'd say). I taught the toughest kids in that school my first year. (Self-contained ESE my first year and 1st grade my second year.) It was an "F" school (graded in Florida by the FCAT testing under NCLB). And every single one of my students' parents cared. Deeply. Some were working 3 jobs as a single parent to try and make ends meet, and so yes, they weren't able to help them with homework every day, but they all cared a great deal about their child's education. 

They knew very well that their children's only chance to lift themselves out of poverty was to do well in school. But getting them to and from school, outfitting them for school, trying to help with homework and projects, all while also trying to keep their family safe and provide food, clothing, shelter and if they're lucky, medical care, it is a hell of a lot to try and manage. I do not blame parents one bit for expecting schools and teachers to manage the education of their kids while they cover the kids' needs at home as best as they can. 

Passing poor families off as 'not caring about their children's education' is a low, innacurate blow and an attempt to blame the poor for their own plight. And trying to pull the rug out from inderneath them by taking away public education doesn't just hurt the kids who would not be attending, but also society as a whole. A democracy cannot exist without an educated populace. 

I can't even believe an American would suggest such a thing. I suppose the only explanation that makes sense is to ask yourself: who benefits by leaving poor and minority people uneducated? The wealthy and politically powerful. That's who.

Don't even try to put the blame on the failure of educational system on the parents. And placing blame on teachers is only marginally less abhorrent. Instead try placing the blame exactly where it lies: on the lack of funding and support from government. You wanted a strong military? You pumped trillions of dollars into it. You want a strong educational system? So you cut education spending, threaten teachers with unfunded mandates based on unreliable, unauthentic assessments, and cripple schools from every direction? Nope, not going to work.