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This trail mix is soooo good! It’s sticky and more like...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:21:48 -0600

This trail mix is soooo good! It’s sticky and more like granola, but very rich and satisfying. The addition of spices (nutmeg, cinnamon), vanilla and honey, along with toasting for a few minutes makes this mix different than your typical “throw nuts and smarties in a bag” variety. Keeping good snack food around is difficult, but I’m glad to add this to my arsenal. The next challenge is consistently packing things up the night before so I actually bring it to work!

Now THIS is a cat calendar!

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:44:41 -0600

Now THIS is a cat calendar!

Flying solo

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:31:23 -0600

This week the boyfriend is out of town, and I’m on my own. Great in lots of ways (no offense, honey!) but when it comes to eating, not so much. I’ve never done well with cooking just for myself… It’s hard to cook for just one person, and I don’t particularly like leftovers. Still, I did my weekly grocery shop today, and I’m hoping to not cop out and eat canned soup all week.

Tonight I did a quick stir-fry of bacon and baby bok choy seasoned with garlic, pepper and lemon juice. It was delish.

Catching up

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:22:00 -0600

I haven’t been up to much out of the ordinary lately… but I haven’t been posting either. Still cooking away, trying new things. I’ve tried a few different recipes, with varying degrees of success.

I made a spicy cauliflower recipe which was pretty awesome (though sadly my cauliflower was white, not purple). The roasted texture and the spicy flavour definitely made this veg more interesting.

I made some ginger lime chicken bites, (and found a new source of recipes and paleo info in the process!) which turned out tender and with a nice flavour. I felt like this might work as a marinade before cooking.

The other day I put together some double-pork stuffed chicken breasts. Meat, stuffed with meat, and wrapped in meat! The flavour was good, but honestly, it was a lot of meat. I can’t imagine eating one of these suckers with my hands, as described in the recipe. A couple of servings of roasted vegetables rounded out the meal.

There it is. Still cooking, still eating, still trying my best to be healthy. I reorganized my kitchen a while back, which has made cooking a little easier. I think the next step is going to try getting better at planning and preparing meals (or parts of meals) ahead of time, to avoid eating late and having a lot of work to do in the kitchen after a long day at work. We have enough freezer room to store stuff in, but I’ve never been a huge fan of frozen food (unless it’s ice cream!). I’d rather eat fresh every day. Something to think about, anyway.

Fitness comes in all forms...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:41:00 -0600

Fitness comes in all forms...:

Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) tweeted a link to this blog post as a reference to comic artists… What a great resource! Not to mention the wonderful cross-section of humanity here - so many personalities and stories. I find it interesting to see what kinds of fitness I can relate/aspire to - some of these people I have no interest in emulating (the long-distance runners, no thanks). I like the triathlon/decathlon guys, and that one female basketball player is pretty awesome too. It’s worth asking: what kind of fit do you want to be?

Creative Assignments Using Technology

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:07:00 -0600

In a couple of weeks I will be conducting a workshop that focuses on how instructors (in higher ed) can build creative assignments that use technology. For obvious reasons, I’ll be drawing a lot of inspiration from ds106, particularly the Daily Create and Assignment pool, but I was wondering if anyone else out there in technology land had any ideas or thoughts they wanted to share.

Pedagogically, the big message I want to give people is that you need to focus on what you want students to demonstrate they have learned - rather than wasting everyone’s time going on ad infinitum with details about what the final product should look like (think of research paper requirements: double spaced, APA style, blah blah blah). Technology-based assignment formats can engage students, help them practice useful skills they’ll be using in their careers, and start building critical media literacy skills. Based on that message, I plan to show some examples and introduce instructors to tools they might use.

What do you think?

I was googling for crossfit socks when I ran across this video...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:19:59 -0600

I was googling for crossfit socks when I ran across this video of an event held in the states… it looks like so much fun! I really need to figure out a way to get back to the gym and start training with people again. I miss the social aspect.

nom nom debut

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:12:16 -0600

This meal was a couple of firsts for me. First first, this Asian Almond chicken salad recipe came from nom nom paleo, a lovely and entertaining tumblr I just discovered (which makes me late to the party, I know. I will be going back there for more recipes and ideas, for sure. And I will probably have to buy a t-shirt).

Second, I made a new vegetable friend today: kohlrabi! I’d never had it before. It’s like a cross between an apple and a radish, and I like it. Managed to slice some finger off while chopping it though. Good reminder to work on my knife skills a bit (PS. typing this is really hard with a bandaged ring finger. I’m hitting the “l” key a lot.). Anyway, I served the salad with some roasted sweet potatoes, with the chipotle dip I mentioned in a previous post. Nom nom indeed!

sausagefish

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:30:52 -0600

Cooked another good meal last week. Discovered that fish and sausage makes a surprisingly good combination, and that celery can hold its own in a salad. Chorizo and almond crusted cod - recipe from Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint Quick and Easy Meals book, served with simple celery and almond salad, recipe from Mark’s Daily Apple. The salad keeps well and the leftovers are great to take for lunch.

Age and Muscles

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:00:00 -0600

Age and Muscles:

Found this on Swiss Miss today and had to share. It’s true that 74-year old triathletes are more the exception than the rule (though that brings up its own questions) but I can’t believe the difference! I wonder how many people would be moved to make a difference in their lives if they could see stuff like this.

Note to self: when old, be mostly muscle.

Also, when I hear the word ‘adipose’, I can’t help but think of these guys:

RDJ kitteh. I’m just going to watch this for a...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:39:00 -0600

RDJ kitteh. I’m just going to watch this for a while… found on Reddit. hmm the .gif didn’t embed. Click through for giffyness.

Personal Cyberinfrasctures - where do I even start?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:58:00 -0600

It’s time to write about stuff for ds.106! Our first task, after establishing a digital home for ourselves, was to think about some of the ideas posed by Gardner Campbell on personal cyberintrastructures. In this article in particular, he questions the effectiveness of the LMS, or Learning Management System. This was particularly timely and relevant to me, as the institution where I work has just announced that we are upgrading our LMS. I have been involved with this upgrade process to some degree since I started the job I’m in, and it will play a big role in my daily work life for many months to come.

How am I involved, do you ask? Primarily, my job is to work with instructors to teach them how to use the system, and find ways to use it effectively for learning. As an instructional designer and technologist, part of my job is knowing the system’s affordances inside and out, so I can help make design and implementation decisions that best support learning. Right now I’m maintaining a website with announcements and training resources, an LMS-related twitter account, and working on a comprehensive training plan that involves thinking up the most creative and effective ways to help people manage this change.

While I need to be a critical consumer of any learning technology, I also feel like in this case, it’s my job to be positive about these things. After all, I spend my day-to-day helping people and trying to make the best of things. I figure anything I say won’t be very effective if I don’t stand behind it, right? And if I hate what I’m doing, I’m in the wrong job, right? And then there’s the fact that I honestly believe we can do something good with this type of technology. Maybe that’s my youth and naivete talking.

THE GLASS IS HALF FULL, DAMMIT!

But I’m not going to lie, sometimes my job feels like this:

(Not sure why this is funny? Read about it here)

So this is where I’m coming from. See why I might have a hard time sorting out my ideas? I feel like I’ve still got lots to say, but I had to start here. I hope to think and write more about: how design thinking might help us deal with this issue a bit better; how magical thinking ruins educational technology for everyone; and how technology affordances are very often a reflection of institutional policies rather than problems inherent with the technology itself. Sound good? Good. I look forward to some discussion!

crab citrus salad

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:01:05 -0600

I made a salad based off this recipe from Mark’s Daily Apple. I used canned crab meat instead of lobster, skipped the cilantro and served it on a bed of romaine with crumbled bacon and an avocado. I never would have thought crab and grapefruit would be such an awesome combination. The dressing was tangy and citrusy at the same time (it had a bit of dijon, as well as lemon and lime juices). It was so good. So good. I’m still thinking about it.

laughingsquid: Great Danish Butter Brand Spot Celebrates the...

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:32:00 -0600

laughingsquid:

Great Danish Butter Brand Spot Celebrates the Joy of Healthy Cooking

Only instead of “made with butter” I would say butter. Or coconut oil.

Fried chicken

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:03:05 -0600

Earlier this week I tried a fried chicken recipe I found on Mark’s Daily Apple. The fact is, I do love breaded chicken, even though it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, nutritionally. So I figured that maybe nuts would be not only a good alternative, but tasty in its own right to boot.

The verdict? Pretty good. I went with ground almonds and dill, which I figured to be a safe bet, flavour-wise. Plus, that’s what I had in the house :-) My boyfriend declared it awesome, which is even better. Next time I would grind the nuts a little finer, and I wouldn’t coat the chicken quite so much (I double dipped in egg and nuts). Still, it was tasty, and I got a lunch out of the deal since the chicken cutlets were quite large. I served it with avocado, some roasted sweet potatoes, and cole slaw made from a recipe in Paleo Comfort Foods. The cole slaw was as classic as any I’ve ever had - for some reason I wouldn’t have considered this a paleo recipe, but it is!

Spaghetti squash. You know you love it. I figure if I’m...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:06 -0600

Spaghetti squash. You know you love it.

I figure if I’m going to fit in with the DS106 crowd, I better learn how to make animated .gifs. I haven’t done this in years, but photoshop and layers makes it pretty easy.

Also, spaghetti squash is the shizz. Fo reals.

I heart Robb Wolf. He’s so intelligent and reasonable....

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:54:50 -0600

I heart Robb Wolf. He’s so intelligent and reasonable. This seems like a good video to show people if they are curious about the whole Paleo diet thing.

One day late, here is my first Daily Create for DS106! Video...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:46:00 -0600

One day late, here is my first Daily Create for DS106!

Video isn’t something I’m really comfortable with, either from a technical standpoint or from a being-in-front-of-the-camera standpoint (which is odd, considering my day-to-day consists of teaching & facilitating and otherwise talking to people). So even though this is far from exciting, I still felt like it was a bit of a stretch for me. My first YouTube video! I used the built-in webcam on my laptop, and edited in Camtasia.

scienceandkitties: Cats in space! Edit: cats in spaaaaaaaaace!

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:08:31 -0600

scienceandkitties:

Cats in space!

Edit: cats in spaaaaaaaaace!

I would definitely get a food processor! I have a small one that was only about $30. I use it all the time: onions, garlic, pesto, sauces, protein shakes...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:01:57 -0600

A $30 food processor? I think the cheapest one I’ve see is around $100! Maybe I should start looking harder. We have a blender, but I’m looking for something that has one of those grating discs…