stand and deliver

i think i'm becomming a foodie. i love to think about food. one of my favorite things to do is hang out in bookstores and look at cookbooks. i know, it's sad. i especially love used bookstores that have cookbooks from the past. i bought this great ethnic vegetarian cookbook from the 70's. i also love "diet for a small planet"- an old standard.

i get in phases with food. right now i'm obsessed raw food. i love the colors and textures of fresh fruits and veggies. not to mention raw nuts and raw nut milks. so smooth and delicious! and i am intrigued with the raw lifestyle. i own a couple of raw cookbooks and i can't believe what these people do to create their meals! i can't imagine dehydrating crackers or bread for 8+ hours or making mock sushi rice= grated turnips dehydrated for hours! talk about taking awhile to get dinner on the table! so as much as i think it's fascinating, i couldn't do it as a way of life. i'll stick to friuts and veggies and looking at the books and the beautiful people who eat that way.

i've also been cooking macrobiotic food at home. yesterday for breakfast i had brown rice, gomaisho, barley tea, and denjeng jigae"(a korean miso soup).

i know my friends think i'm a freak. when my husband and i first met, we were on a breakfast burrito hunt. every weekend we'd go somewhere new to search out the best breakfast burrito in the city. we must have gone to a dozen or more places. for any locals out there- our favorites are cafe lula and earwax. we like the simple breakfast burrito. no spinach tortillas, no fancy veggies or sauces. nice and simple and fresh.


on other fronts...

i've been touching base with some old friends. i had lunch with a teacher i worked with for years. he is so good at what he does. he teaches calculus to students in an inner city school- and i think he's one of the most dedicated teachers in the city. he teachers summer pre calculus to students who normally wouldn't get to take calclulus. most of the students would take precalculus their senior year, but with that course out of the way, they are able to take AP calculus instead (which is a huge door-opener for them in college). the program was inspired by jaime escalante's successes with calculus students in an inner city school in southern LA. those of you who have seen the movie "stand and deliver" know the story. jaime escalante gives up his corporate job to go teach math in an inner city school in LA. no one in the school believes the students are capable of taking calculus. no one has any faith in them. everyone thinks he is crazy to want to teach "those kids" calculus. he dedicates his life to the students. they work hard and all of the students in his class pass the advanced placement (AP) calculus test. of course the AP board thought the students cheated because they scored so well on the exam and were from an area of the inner city where the schooling had been less than spectacular. so they made all the students retake the exam! and they passed a second time, with only 24 hours to study! (sorry to ruin the ending, but i figured none of you would run out to rent a movie where the climax is a bunch of students passing a math exam...) anyway, escalente's calculus program continued to grow and he continued to have success teaching calculus to a population of students no one thought possible.

this is what my good friend and colleague is doing in chicago. i'm so inspired by him.