The success of OCS’s end-of-year Charity Marketplace highlights a truth: one person, no matter how small, can make a difference in the world. This year’s marketplace raised over $4,750 to help local charities including the Pasadena Humane Society, Danny’s Farm, Habitat for Humanity, and Union Station. Our childrens’ efforts brought us an exceptionally enthusiastic and fun-filled day and, by any measure, brought pride to the community we all live in.
But our helping hands, and those of our children, can extend far beyond the school’s borders. Consider this: In the developing world, investing in agriculture is twice as effective in reducing poverty as other forms of investment. Right now 963 million people worldwide face hunger every day, and many of those hungry live in countries where agriculture is the predominant employer. It is also far more likely for poor children to be underfed than adults since their caloric needs for healthy growth are often underestimated.
At the recent G8 meeting in Italy, the U.S. has affirmed its commitment to increase agricultural investment, especially in Africa, as an anti-poverty measure. This is great news for poor farmers and their families, who too often have relied on food sent from the United States and other western countries to help address their hunger. Instead, they’ll now receive tools, seed, fertilizer, money for infrastructure and irrigation, technology and training to improve their own farms and feed themselves.
In our small way, one by one, we can help. To find out more about what you and your family can do, check out ONE at www.one.org/us/actnow
July 10, 2009
June 4, 2009
Guacamole Fiesta
Below are some photos from last week's guacamole fiesta. Thank you Mr. Cullen and HOM parent Liz Burrill and Ms. Jessica and HOM parent Maggie Haase. Enjoy.
May 26, 2009
May 20, 2009
Spring into Summer
As I watched kids piling into school the other day wearing shorts, sneakers and t-shirts, I had to grudgingly admit that it is beginning to look like summer. A Saturday stop at the Pasadena Farmer’s Market made that even clearer. No, it wasn’t the shoppers in flip flops who convinced me. It was the displays of artichokes, strawberries and cherries showing off their summer color. The smell and intense color of rainier cherries sends out an almost hypnotic call which local shoppers can’t resist. The season for them is short, a mere five weeks, so now is the time to get cherry wild. There were also collections of early dug potatoes, some no larger than a walnut, with colors from white to red to brown to purple ready to be boiled in salt water and drizzled with butter. One farmer had displays of colorful radishes, even elongated pink and white French breakfast radishes, right next to multihued beets all sharing space with big, sugary sweet onions with gigantic green tops banded together. Farmer’s markets can inspire your inner chef and looking at those onions, my inner chef was whispering ‘onion rings’. There were crates of small blushy apricots and a farm helper was cutting up a few and handing out samples. His stand was a few feet away from another farmer selling vegetable and herb starts; small fingers of rosemary to plant, tomato seedlings of all kinds and big buckets of mint for $3 which, once planted, are sure to keep you in tabouleh all summer long.
Toward the market entrance was a flat bed truck piled high with avocados for sale. Almost all were the black pebbly Haas variety with a bag of four selling for $1.50. That’s pretty cheap, especially by farmer market standards. Avocados start to mature in spring and by now the trees are loaded with ripe fruit which must be picked and eaten. How lucky we are.
While we add avocados to salads for dinner, mash and spoon them on top of whole wheat toast for breakfast or into veggie sandwiches, nothing compares with our deep desire to turn them into guacamole. At my house, the spicy, smooth, limey flavor of guacamole keeps everyone reaching for another tortilla chip until the bowl is scraped clean. I expect that we’re not unusual. People have been making guacamole since Aztec times, only the original Aztec recipe was a stripped down combination of avocados, tomato and salt. In fact, the word ‘guacamole’ is compound word of Aztec origin. In native Nahuatl, the word “ahuacatl” means avocado and “molli” means sauce.
There are as many recipes for guacamole as there are passionate guacamole eaters, which is to say, a lot. As a general rule of thumb, avocados should be the main ingredient. From there, anything goes. Add jalapenos, hot sauce, onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice, whatever else you like, and you have a great dip to share or to hoard entirely to yourself.
It’s not a hard dish to make. To prove it our Kindergarten through 8th graders will be whipping up batches of guacamole all next week. Contact your child’s teacher and find out when the festivities will begin and plan a ‘surprise’ visit. You’ll be delighted at what you see and what you taste.
Toward the market entrance was a flat bed truck piled high with avocados for sale. Almost all were the black pebbly Haas variety with a bag of four selling for $1.50. That’s pretty cheap, especially by farmer market standards. Avocados start to mature in spring and by now the trees are loaded with ripe fruit which must be picked and eaten. How lucky we are.
While we add avocados to salads for dinner, mash and spoon them on top of whole wheat toast for breakfast or into veggie sandwiches, nothing compares with our deep desire to turn them into guacamole. At my house, the spicy, smooth, limey flavor of guacamole keeps everyone reaching for another tortilla chip until the bowl is scraped clean. I expect that we’re not unusual. People have been making guacamole since Aztec times, only the original Aztec recipe was a stripped down combination of avocados, tomato and salt. In fact, the word ‘guacamole’ is compound word of Aztec origin. In native Nahuatl, the word “ahuacatl” means avocado and “molli” means sauce.
There are as many recipes for guacamole as there are passionate guacamole eaters, which is to say, a lot. As a general rule of thumb, avocados should be the main ingredient. From there, anything goes. Add jalapenos, hot sauce, onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice, whatever else you like, and you have a great dip to share or to hoard entirely to yourself.
It’s not a hard dish to make. To prove it our Kindergarten through 8th graders will be whipping up batches of guacamole all next week. Contact your child’s teacher and find out when the festivities will begin and plan a ‘surprise’ visit. You’ll be delighted at what you see and what you taste.
May 12, 2009
Telling Time with Flowers and Bees
Below is a reprint excerpted from a new book called "The Rhythms of Life" which explores the science of chronobiology (i.e. the biology of time). In it the authors, Leon Kreitzman and Russell Foster, detail the timekeeping abilities of flowers and bees. There are some great gardening/teaching ideas here for children.
"Gardeners know that plants open and close their flowers at set times during the day. For example, the flowers of catmint open between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.; orange hawkweed follows between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.; field marigolds open at 9:00 a.m.
In “Philosophia Botanica” (1751), the great taxonomist Carl Linnaeus proposed that it should be possible to plant a floral clock. He noted that two species of daisy, the hawk’s-beard and the hawkbit, opened and closed at their respective times within about a half-hour each day. He suggested planting these daisies along with St. John’s Wort, marigolds, water-lilies and other species in a circle. The rhythmic opening and closing of the plants would be the effective hands of this clock.Plants have carefully timed routines determined by internally generated rhythms. In 1729, Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan, a French astronomer, put a Mimosa plant in a cupboard to see what happened when it was kept in the dark. He peeked in at various times, and although the plant was permanently in the dark its leaves still opened and closed rhythmically – it was as though it had its own representation of day and night. The plant’s leaves still drooped during its subjective night and stiffened up during its subjective day. Furthermore, all the leaves moved at the same time. It took another 230 years or so to come up with the term circadian – about a day – to describe these rhythms.
In a similar vein, tobacco plants, stocks and evening primroses release their scent as the sun starts to go down at dusk. These plants attract pollinating moths and night-flying insects. The plants tend to be white or pale. Color vision is difficult under low light, and white best reflects the mainly bluish tinge of evening light.
But plants cannot release their scent in a timely manner simply in response to an environmental cue, like the lowering of the light levels. They need time to produce the oils. To coincide with the appearance of the nocturnal insects, the plant has to anticipate the sunset and produce the scent on a circadian schedule.
Flowers of a given species all produce nectar at about the same time each day, as this increases the chances of cross-pollination. The trick works because pollinators, which in most cases means the honeybee, concentrate foraging on a particular species into a narrow time-window. In effect the honeybee has a daily diary that can include as many as nine appointments — say, 10:00 a.m., lilac; 11:30 a.m., peonies; and so on. The bees’ time-keeping is accurate to about 20 minutes.
The bee can do this because, like the plants and just about every living creature, it has a circadian clock that is reset daily to run in time with the solar cycle. The bee can effectively consult this clock and “check” off the given time and associate this with a particular event.
Honeybees really are nature’s little treasures. They are a centimeter or so long, their brains are tiny, and a small set of simple rules can explain the sophisticated social behavior that produces the coordinated activity of a hive. They live by sets of instructions that are familiar to computer programmers as subroutines – do this until the stop code, then into the next subroutine, and so on.
These humble little bees have an innate ability to work out the location of a food source from its position in relation to the sun. They do this even on cloudy days by reading the pattern of the polarization of the light, and pass this information to other bees. In the dark of the hive, they transpose the location of a food source in the horizontal plane through the famous “waggle” dance into communication in the vertical plane of the hive.
Honeybees can tell their sisters how far away the food is up to a distance of about 15 kilometers. For good measure, they can also allow for the fact that the sun moves relative to the hive by about 15 degrees an hour and correct for this when they pass on the information. In other words, they have their own built-in global positioning system and a language that enables them to refer to objects and events that are distant in space or time.
German scientists in the early part of the last century called this ability of bees to learn the time of day when flowers start secreting nectar and visit the flowers at appropriate times Zeitgedächtnis, or time-sense. But the species of flowers in bloom, say, this week, is likely to be replaced by a different species at a different location next week or the week after. The bee needs a flexible, dynamic appointments system that it continually updates, and it has evolved an impressive ability to learn colors, odors, shapes and routes, within a time frame, quickly and accurately.
While the initial dance by a returning scout bee informs her sisters of the location and distance of food plants and the quality of their nectar, bees that visit the food source learn to synchronize their behavior with daily floral rhythms, foraging only when nectar and pollen are at their highest levels. At other times, they remain in the hive, conserving energy that otherwise would be exhausted on non-productive foraging flights.
Although most animals, including humans, cannot sustain long-lasting periods of activity without circadian rhythms, honeybees have developed a marked flexibility in their circadian rhythm that depends on the job they are doing. Whereas a particular circadian determined behavior is usually fixed to a certain phase of the cycle, in honeybees the circadian rhythm is dependent on the job the bee is doing.
Adult worker bees perform a number of tasks in the hive when they are young, like caring for eggs and larvae, and then shift to foraging for nectar and pollen as they age. However, if the hive has a shortage of foragers, some of the young nurse bees will switch jobs and become foragers. The job transition, whether triggered by age or social cues, involves changes in genes in the honeybee brain; some genes turn on, while others turn off.
"Gardeners know that plants open and close their flowers at set times during the day. For example, the flowers of catmint open between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.; orange hawkweed follows between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.; field marigolds open at 9:00 a.m.
In “Philosophia Botanica” (1751), the great taxonomist Carl Linnaeus proposed that it should be possible to plant a floral clock. He noted that two species of daisy, the hawk’s-beard and the hawkbit, opened and closed at their respective times within about a half-hour each day. He suggested planting these daisies along with St. John’s Wort, marigolds, water-lilies and other species in a circle. The rhythmic opening and closing of the plants would be the effective hands of this clock.Plants have carefully timed routines determined by internally generated rhythms. In 1729, Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan, a French astronomer, put a Mimosa plant in a cupboard to see what happened when it was kept in the dark. He peeked in at various times, and although the plant was permanently in the dark its leaves still opened and closed rhythmically – it was as though it had its own representation of day and night. The plant’s leaves still drooped during its subjective night and stiffened up during its subjective day. Furthermore, all the leaves moved at the same time. It took another 230 years or so to come up with the term circadian – about a day – to describe these rhythms.
In a similar vein, tobacco plants, stocks and evening primroses release their scent as the sun starts to go down at dusk. These plants attract pollinating moths and night-flying insects. The plants tend to be white or pale. Color vision is difficult under low light, and white best reflects the mainly bluish tinge of evening light.
But plants cannot release their scent in a timely manner simply in response to an environmental cue, like the lowering of the light levels. They need time to produce the oils. To coincide with the appearance of the nocturnal insects, the plant has to anticipate the sunset and produce the scent on a circadian schedule.
Flowers of a given species all produce nectar at about the same time each day, as this increases the chances of cross-pollination. The trick works because pollinators, which in most cases means the honeybee, concentrate foraging on a particular species into a narrow time-window. In effect the honeybee has a daily diary that can include as many as nine appointments — say, 10:00 a.m., lilac; 11:30 a.m., peonies; and so on. The bees’ time-keeping is accurate to about 20 minutes.
The bee can do this because, like the plants and just about every living creature, it has a circadian clock that is reset daily to run in time with the solar cycle. The bee can effectively consult this clock and “check” off the given time and associate this with a particular event.
Honeybees really are nature’s little treasures. They are a centimeter or so long, their brains are tiny, and a small set of simple rules can explain the sophisticated social behavior that produces the coordinated activity of a hive. They live by sets of instructions that are familiar to computer programmers as subroutines – do this until the stop code, then into the next subroutine, and so on.
These humble little bees have an innate ability to work out the location of a food source from its position in relation to the sun. They do this even on cloudy days by reading the pattern of the polarization of the light, and pass this information to other bees. In the dark of the hive, they transpose the location of a food source in the horizontal plane through the famous “waggle” dance into communication in the vertical plane of the hive.
Honeybees can tell their sisters how far away the food is up to a distance of about 15 kilometers. For good measure, they can also allow for the fact that the sun moves relative to the hive by about 15 degrees an hour and correct for this when they pass on the information. In other words, they have their own built-in global positioning system and a language that enables them to refer to objects and events that are distant in space or time.
German scientists in the early part of the last century called this ability of bees to learn the time of day when flowers start secreting nectar and visit the flowers at appropriate times Zeitgedächtnis, or time-sense. But the species of flowers in bloom, say, this week, is likely to be replaced by a different species at a different location next week or the week after. The bee needs a flexible, dynamic appointments system that it continually updates, and it has evolved an impressive ability to learn colors, odors, shapes and routes, within a time frame, quickly and accurately.
While the initial dance by a returning scout bee informs her sisters of the location and distance of food plants and the quality of their nectar, bees that visit the food source learn to synchronize their behavior with daily floral rhythms, foraging only when nectar and pollen are at their highest levels. At other times, they remain in the hive, conserving energy that otherwise would be exhausted on non-productive foraging flights.
Although most animals, including humans, cannot sustain long-lasting periods of activity without circadian rhythms, honeybees have developed a marked flexibility in their circadian rhythm that depends on the job they are doing. Whereas a particular circadian determined behavior is usually fixed to a certain phase of the cycle, in honeybees the circadian rhythm is dependent on the job the bee is doing.
Adult worker bees perform a number of tasks in the hive when they are young, like caring for eggs and larvae, and then shift to foraging for nectar and pollen as they age. However, if the hive has a shortage of foragers, some of the young nurse bees will switch jobs and become foragers. The job transition, whether triggered by age or social cues, involves changes in genes in the honeybee brain; some genes turn on, while others turn off.
April 30, 2009
Countdown to Cinco de Mayo!
Next Tuesday Angelenos will celebrate the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo. Translated from the Spanish as the “fifth of May”, this holiday originally commemorated the Mexican army’s surprise 1862 victory over the French army. Nowadays, we enjoy Cinco de Mayo in Los Angeles as a time to celebrate Mexican culture and heritage. There are happenings all over, but nowhere feels as festive as Olvera Street, the birthplace of the city of Los Angeles. Stroll and shop along the plaza and don’t forget to get a freshly made churro from the little cart facing the main plaza. Even if you can’t get down to Olvera street, Cinco de Mayo still provides a great excuse to explore our Mexican-inflected city, listen to a little mariachi and eat wonderful food.
Let’s face it. L.A. would not be L.A. without Mexican cuisine, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. Imagine our city with no pan dulce, no crusty bollilos, no tamales, no moles, no chiles, no salsas, no frijoles refritos, no guacamole, no burritos, quesadillas, enchiladas or tacos. Imagine no warm corn tortillas. A eeeh!!! It’s frightening to think about.
Calm down and instead, let’s imagine a fiesta! Our students already make a mean guacamole and parents should let them show off their finest recipe for the whole family. You don’t have to spend all day in the kitchen either. Match some homemade guacamole with fresh tortilla chips, add a roasted Anaheim pepper and shredded cheese quesadilla and a spoonful of black or pinto beans and you have a meal that everyone, Mexican-american or not, will devour with gusto. For the more adventurous cooks out there, below are two interesting recipes – one very Cal-Mex and another very “Baja”-- which appeared recently in our local papers. Salud!
Eggplant, Zucchini, Pepper Enchiladas
Note: Dried ancho chiles are available at Latino markets and in the Latino food sections of grocery stores.
Ancho sauce
4 dried ancho chiles
3 large cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican
3/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt
Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles and place the peppers in a glass bowl. Pour boiling water over to cover by 3 inches and let them soak until very soft, about 30 minutes. Drain the peppers and place them in a blender with the garlic and oregano. Strain the soaking water and add 1 1/2 cups to the blender. Puree until smooth. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a clean, shallow pie plate; season with salt and set aside.
Enchiladas and assembly
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium red pepper, cored, seeded and cut into 1/2 -inch dice
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt, divided
1 medium white eggplant, peeled and cut into 1/2 -inch dice
2 long, slender zucchini, trimmed and cut into 1/2 -inch dice
2 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Corn oil – enough to reach 1” depth in a 9” nonstick skillet
3 cups grated Monterey Jack cheese
12 (6-inch) corn tortillas
Chopped lettuce and radishes
Crema or sour cream (optional)
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil a 13-by-9-inch baking dish. Coat the bottom with about 2 tablespoons sauce. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, onion and pepper. Stir in about one-half teaspoon coarse sea salt. Cook, stirring often, until soft, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the eggplant and zucchini and the remaining one-half-teaspoon salt. Cook until soft, 10 to 15 minutes longer. Stir in the oregano and cumin and remove from the heat.Heat about 1” oil in a 9-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low. With tongs, sweep 1 tortilla through the hot oil just long enough to coat and soften (about 10 seconds). Lift it out with tongs and drain off excess oil. Dredge it through the chile sauce to coat, then lay it into the prepared pan so that half the tortilla extends up the side.
Spoon about 2 tablespoons vegetable mixture down the center, then top with about 2 tablespoons cheese. Roll up to enclose the filling and turn the seam side down. Repeat this process with the remaining tortillas and filling. Spoon any remaining sauce evenly over the assembled enchiladas. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.
Bake until the tortillas are soft and the cheese is melted, 20 to 25 minutes; do not over-bake. Serve hot, garnished with chopped lettuce and radishes and a drizzle of crema, if desired.
Tuna Tostadas with Chipolte Mayonnaise
Chipotle mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 large egg
1/4 rounded teaspoon salt
1/2 cup light olive oil
1 chipotle chile
Put lemon juice, egg and salt in a blender. Slowly start blending the ingredients, adding oil little by little, until the mayonnaise is thick and you have added all the oil. Add the chipotle chile and blend in. Makes three-fourths cup. You will have some left after making the tostadas.
Tostadas
1 1/2 cups oil (for deep frying)
8 (3-inch-diameter) corn tortillas
2 leeks (about 1 cup sliced)
2 teaspoons olive oil
Salt
10 ounces sashimi-quality tuna, sliced one-fourth inch thick then cut in half, if necessary
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 Hass avocado, peeled, pitted and cut into eighths
1/4 cup chipotle mayonnaise
Heat the oil in a deep skillet to 350 degrees. Fry each tortilla until crisp, about 2 minutes. Drain between paper towels. Set aside.
Slice the leeks (white part only) into one-fourth-inch-wide julienne. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over very low heat. Add the leeks, sprinkle with a little salt and cook until soft but not browned, about 5 to 7 minutes.
Marinate the tuna slices in the soy sauce and lemon juice for 2 minutes. Drain.
Spread 1 1/2 teaspoons chipotle mayonnaise on each tostada. Divide the tuna among the tostadas. Top the tuna with the leeks and add a slice of avocado to each tostada.
Let’s face it. L.A. would not be L.A. without Mexican cuisine, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. Imagine our city with no pan dulce, no crusty bollilos, no tamales, no moles, no chiles, no salsas, no frijoles refritos, no guacamole, no burritos, quesadillas, enchiladas or tacos. Imagine no warm corn tortillas. A eeeh!!! It’s frightening to think about.
Calm down and instead, let’s imagine a fiesta! Our students already make a mean guacamole and parents should let them show off their finest recipe for the whole family. You don’t have to spend all day in the kitchen either. Match some homemade guacamole with fresh tortilla chips, add a roasted Anaheim pepper and shredded cheese quesadilla and a spoonful of black or pinto beans and you have a meal that everyone, Mexican-american or not, will devour with gusto. For the more adventurous cooks out there, below are two interesting recipes – one very Cal-Mex and another very “Baja”-- which appeared recently in our local papers. Salud!
Eggplant, Zucchini, Pepper Enchiladas
Note: Dried ancho chiles are available at Latino markets and in the Latino food sections of grocery stores.
Ancho sauce
4 dried ancho chiles
3 large cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican
3/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt
Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles and place the peppers in a glass bowl. Pour boiling water over to cover by 3 inches and let them soak until very soft, about 30 minutes. Drain the peppers and place them in a blender with the garlic and oregano. Strain the soaking water and add 1 1/2 cups to the blender. Puree until smooth. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a clean, shallow pie plate; season with salt and set aside.
Enchiladas and assembly
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium red pepper, cored, seeded and cut into 1/2 -inch dice
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt, divided
1 medium white eggplant, peeled and cut into 1/2 -inch dice
2 long, slender zucchini, trimmed and cut into 1/2 -inch dice
2 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Corn oil – enough to reach 1” depth in a 9” nonstick skillet
3 cups grated Monterey Jack cheese
12 (6-inch) corn tortillas
Chopped lettuce and radishes
Crema or sour cream (optional)
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil a 13-by-9-inch baking dish. Coat the bottom with about 2 tablespoons sauce. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, onion and pepper. Stir in about one-half teaspoon coarse sea salt. Cook, stirring often, until soft, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the eggplant and zucchini and the remaining one-half-teaspoon salt. Cook until soft, 10 to 15 minutes longer. Stir in the oregano and cumin and remove from the heat.Heat about 1” oil in a 9-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low. With tongs, sweep 1 tortilla through the hot oil just long enough to coat and soften (about 10 seconds). Lift it out with tongs and drain off excess oil. Dredge it through the chile sauce to coat, then lay it into the prepared pan so that half the tortilla extends up the side.
Spoon about 2 tablespoons vegetable mixture down the center, then top with about 2 tablespoons cheese. Roll up to enclose the filling and turn the seam side down. Repeat this process with the remaining tortillas and filling. Spoon any remaining sauce evenly over the assembled enchiladas. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.
Bake until the tortillas are soft and the cheese is melted, 20 to 25 minutes; do not over-bake. Serve hot, garnished with chopped lettuce and radishes and a drizzle of crema, if desired.
Tuna Tostadas with Chipolte Mayonnaise
Chipotle mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 large egg
1/4 rounded teaspoon salt
1/2 cup light olive oil
1 chipotle chile
Put lemon juice, egg and salt in a blender. Slowly start blending the ingredients, adding oil little by little, until the mayonnaise is thick and you have added all the oil. Add the chipotle chile and blend in. Makes three-fourths cup. You will have some left after making the tostadas.
Tostadas
1 1/2 cups oil (for deep frying)
8 (3-inch-diameter) corn tortillas
2 leeks (about 1 cup sliced)
2 teaspoons olive oil
Salt
10 ounces sashimi-quality tuna, sliced one-fourth inch thick then cut in half, if necessary
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 Hass avocado, peeled, pitted and cut into eighths
1/4 cup chipotle mayonnaise
Heat the oil in a deep skillet to 350 degrees. Fry each tortilla until crisp, about 2 minutes. Drain between paper towels. Set aside.
Slice the leeks (white part only) into one-fourth-inch-wide julienne. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over very low heat. Add the leeks, sprinkle with a little salt and cook until soft but not browned, about 5 to 7 minutes.
Marinate the tuna slices in the soy sauce and lemon juice for 2 minutes. Drain.
Spread 1 1/2 teaspoons chipotle mayonnaise on each tostada. Divide the tuna among the tostadas. Top the tuna with the leeks and add a slice of avocado to each tostada.
April 16, 2009
Earth Day at Odyssey!
On April 22nd Odyssey will celebrate Earth Day. Teachers Aaron Bergman and Jessica Bilandzija are spearheading all the day's activities and encourage parents and family members to come and lend a hand. Volunteers are wanted and welcome! Take a look at what will be going on:
Urban Garden
Even a concrete urban jungle can produce fruits and vegetables. Come and see how, and even help to make an urban garden here at Odyssey! Come ready to get down and dirty.Meet directly in front of Room 2.
Compost Demonstration
Composting saves landfill space and the products have great uses in gardening, and it’s more than just making a big pile of food scraps! Come and see how composting is done at Odyssey and how you can do the same at home.Meet in front of Room 2, near the compost bins.
Tree Planting
Outside sources are donating trees to Odyssey, but it’s up to us to make sure they take root in good soil! Show the ultimate in tree friendliness and come help plant a tree to make Odyssey a richer place for us all. Come prepared to get down and dirty.Meet on the west end of the north field, near the swings.
Story of Stuff
4-8th grades www.storyofstuff.com We buy things all the time, but where do they come from and were do they go? The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute video that talks about the ecological, social, and political implications of living in a consumer world. Discussion to follow. It’s probably a bit too much for the wee ones.Meet in Room 2.
Compostable Pots
(Every student must bring a cleaned milk carton, the kind that comes with cafeteria lunches. They must all also have the tops cut off.) Come learn how to make a pot for plants that can be put directly into the ground. Learn about eco-friendliness as well as reusing materials in a creative way.Meet on the middle school patio in front of the music room.
Trash Sorting Relay
The winners will have to be quick on their feet and also understand the difference between what is reusable, what is recyclable, and what is junk.Meet on the west end of the north field, near the swings.
7th and 8th Grade Earth Day Science Fair
Every student in the 7th and 8th grades investigated, performed, analyzed, and reported an experiment of their choosing. Most of their experiments have nothing to do with Earth Day BUT they are excited to share with audiences how to go about investigating questions experimentally. Meet in Room 3, Mrs. Khalsa’s room.
Decorate Brown Paper Grocery Bags www.earthdaybags.org
Raise awareness and spread the word about Earth Day! The Earth Day Groceries Project has grown over the past 15 years to 1200 participating schools, and Odyssey will be one of them. Students decorate a grocery store’s brown paper bags and return them for distribution during Earth Day. It’s a simple, profound, and personal way to spread awareness about Earth Day. Meet in the Art Room.
Computer Lab Games
The EPA and the State of California have many age appropriate websites for young earth day celebrators. Learn about Earth Day related topics through games and webquests.Meet in the Computer Lab.
Urban Garden
Even a concrete urban jungle can produce fruits and vegetables. Come and see how, and even help to make an urban garden here at Odyssey! Come ready to get down and dirty.Meet directly in front of Room 2.
Compost Demonstration
Composting saves landfill space and the products have great uses in gardening, and it’s more than just making a big pile of food scraps! Come and see how composting is done at Odyssey and how you can do the same at home.Meet in front of Room 2, near the compost bins.
Tree Planting
Outside sources are donating trees to Odyssey, but it’s up to us to make sure they take root in good soil! Show the ultimate in tree friendliness and come help plant a tree to make Odyssey a richer place for us all. Come prepared to get down and dirty.Meet on the west end of the north field, near the swings.
Story of Stuff
4-8th grades www.storyofstuff.com We buy things all the time, but where do they come from and were do they go? The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute video that talks about the ecological, social, and political implications of living in a consumer world. Discussion to follow. It’s probably a bit too much for the wee ones.Meet in Room 2.
Compostable Pots
(Every student must bring a cleaned milk carton, the kind that comes with cafeteria lunches. They must all also have the tops cut off.) Come learn how to make a pot for plants that can be put directly into the ground. Learn about eco-friendliness as well as reusing materials in a creative way.Meet on the middle school patio in front of the music room.
Trash Sorting Relay
The winners will have to be quick on their feet and also understand the difference between what is reusable, what is recyclable, and what is junk.Meet on the west end of the north field, near the swings.
7th and 8th Grade Earth Day Science Fair
Every student in the 7th and 8th grades investigated, performed, analyzed, and reported an experiment of their choosing. Most of their experiments have nothing to do with Earth Day BUT they are excited to share with audiences how to go about investigating questions experimentally. Meet in Room 3, Mrs. Khalsa’s room.
Decorate Brown Paper Grocery Bags www.earthdaybags.org
Raise awareness and spread the word about Earth Day! The Earth Day Groceries Project has grown over the past 15 years to 1200 participating schools, and Odyssey will be one of them. Students decorate a grocery store’s brown paper bags and return them for distribution during Earth Day. It’s a simple, profound, and personal way to spread awareness about Earth Day. Meet in the Art Room.
Computer Lab Games
The EPA and the State of California have many age appropriate websites for young earth day celebrators. Learn about Earth Day related topics through games and webquests.Meet in the Computer Lab.
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