Whipped Sweet Potatoes with Bananas and Honey and a Chili-Lime Pecan Glaze

Everyone,
I was looking for a different sweet potato dish to make for Turkey Day and couldn't find anything that stood out. I came across a sweet potato with banana and honey recipe from Tyler Florence, but it had no spices in it and seemed boring. I jazzed it up with spices and invented a chili-lime pecan glaze for the top to give it a little kick.

They just came out of the oven and they are AMAZING. Since I added virtually everything, I'm considering this one an original. Let me know if anyone tries them!


Spiced Whipped Sweet Potato with Bananas and Honey
with Chili-Lime Pecan Glaze

Ingredients

• 4-5 medium sweet potatoes, scrubbed
• 2 bananas, unpeeled
• 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tsp Kosher salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• dash red chili powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• optional orange zest

topping
* 1/2 bag pecans
* 1/2 stick butter
* 1/8 cup honey
* 1/4 tsp ginger
* 1/2 tsp cinnamon
* 1 tsp red chili powder
* 1 lime

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Prick the sweet potatoes all over with a fork, put them in a roasting pan and roast for about an hour, or until soft. Toss the bananas into the pan and continue roasting for 10 to 15 minutes, until both the bananas and potatoes are very soft. Remove the pan from the oven but don't turn the oven off.

When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, scoop out the flesh into a large mixing bowl. Peel the bananas and add them to the bowl along with 1 stick of the butter, and the honey. Season with salt and other seasoning and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until everything's well combined and the mixture is fluffy. If it is a little dry, add a tiny bit of milk, but it shouldn't need too much. Spoon into an oven-proof serving bowl and smooth the top.

For the Pecan topping:

In a skillet, melt the butter but do not let it begin to bubble yet. When melted, add the honey and turn up the temperature to medium heat, so the mixture begins to bubble. Once bubbling, add the pecans. As the mixture begins to cook down, stir in the spices and add the juice of the lime. Cook the mixture down until you get a nice pecan glaze and remove from heat. Taste the topping to see if it needs more acid or spice, but it should be just about perfect.

While it is still hot, drizzle it on top of the potatoes in the pan and then return pan to the oven and bake an additional 7-10 minutes, to set flavor.

Serve warm and enjoy!

the new semester

starting this new semester was so much easier than the first one-- i mean, duh, i already know the school and kids, etc, but the planning process was better, too.

every day i learn how to do this just a bit better. thinking back now to my first day is amazing. i have changed so much already.

we have one day left until mid-winter break and i am soooooo ready. in fact, i told the students in one of my harder-to-manage classes "look guys, in a few days i'm going to be in seattle, snowboarding and happy, and i know you guys have plans too. let's just get through the end of this week in one piece, okay?"

thinking about going back to seattle makes me so happy-- i miss it. i miss my friends, i miss the green and the mountains and the water. i know that i'll try to be back there sooner rather than later. i am already thinking about end-of-summer plans for the pacific northwest. i have some friends doing a portland-seattle-vancouver tour that sounds kinda dreamy.

one more day. its all i can do to not just pee myself with excitement.

almost halfway done with my first year...

taking some time to reflect on my first 4 months of teaching, now that i'm two days away from school starting back after xmas break, thinking about my experiences thus far.

i definitely love teaching and for the most part, i love my students, but part of it seems, as ruth would say, a little too "downstream" for me. the analogy there is something to the affect of if you were downstream of a powerful river and you noticed that people were systematically needing to be rescued from drowning because of a weak spot in a bridge upstream, would you stay there and fish each one of them out, or would you move upstream and fix the bridge?

after a dream i had the other night in which i went to law school, i checked my status with the Law School Admissions Council (the LSAC) and was delighted to see that my membership (and LSAT scores) does not expire until October 2009. this got me thinking on a whole train of thought that led me to the idea that i could apply for fall of 2010, just before my scores, etc, expire, and try to get into law school. many years after the first go around, i have come back to the idea that i might be able to help serve, and save, more people if i work more upstream. i think that my work in politics, activism, and now education, have pointed me in the direction of the public service area of law. i will complete my master's degree by the spring of 2010 and would be ready to enter law school after that.

also, i miss seattle very much. i am so looking forward to my visit in february!
i am realizing that while brooklyn (and NYC) are great, with lots to offer, i need more in my life to feel balanced and happy. i need to be around more scenery. i need to be closer to the great outdoors (the very indoor-oriented texan in me can't believe this, trust me), more dependent on a bike and less on a train, able to play rugby, buy groceries at a big store, be around people that appreciate the greatness of family pizza night.

i was looking into the UW law school and i think that my admission packet could get me in-- lsat is in the accepted range, gpa is good, plus will have a master's degree and some service experience behind me. UW also has a fellowship in public service law that, if you're accepted, will pay for all your school and a few internships in exchange for 5 years public service work post school. i think that sounds great and i know a friend-of-a-friend who is on the board that accepts people into the fellowship. :)

right now, i just wish i were writing this entry from the Fuel on 45th st.

miss you all!

notes on the election

here is an excerpt from a letter that i sent to K the day after the election. i posted this email to her from my phone while enjoying happy hour at a bar, waiting for a date. it was perhaps the happiest hour i have had in a very long while:

I am slightly tipsy and writing this on my iPhone so apologies if it does not come out right.

I can't even really describe how I feel right now. I think it is just starting to sink in.

I did not really do much by way of celebrating last night I think mostly because I am way gun shy after the last time around, if that makes any sense. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop...

School today was crazy. All of the students were exhausted from staying up, but also high from happiness. In my first class of the day I had a girl stand on the lab table and jump up and down dancing, screaming Obama! Obama! at the top of her lungs. While it was disruptive of the lesson plan, I decided to let them process. This is a huge deal for us all, especially a bunch of black kids from bklyn. Far be it for me to deny them their joy. I told them I would count to three and they could holler as loud as possible for 30 seconds.

Later in the class the dean came by and said he heard there was a commotion in the room. I pretended I knew nothing :)

I wish you would have been here to document the whole thing. You would have done a better job for sure.

letters of apology

i got letters of apology from three out of four of my 11th grade boys that were involved in Thursday's altercation. they were very sweet and very thoughtful-- most of them said things to the affect of "i know that i need to grow up and take some responsibility for my actions" and "now is the time for me to get serious and take care of business". all of the boys said that they respect me as a teacher and that they appreciate my understanding and the fact that i care.

it makes me feel good that they recognize that even if they were "defending our class", that their actions contributed to the chaos.

maybe in some strange way all of this mess will bring us closer together as a class.

the mason dixon line

within the first five minutes of 3rd period, i knew it was going to be hard. two of my 10th graders came into my science room, plugged up the back sinks, and then turned the water on full blast and ran out of the room. when i noticed the floating garbage in the sink and the pounding water i realized what had happened.

then within the first 10 minutes the same two 10th graders came back into class (they should have been at lunch) and burst into the room, yelling and swearing at a handful of my 11th grade boys. i managed to kick them out and lock the door from the outside so they wouldn't bust in again.

ten minutes later, i was just starting to lecture when the door opened. someone from my class opened it from the inside (it was locked) and not two, but seven of my 10th graders rush into the room and begin fighting with my 11th grade boys. all in all it was 12-15 boys rioting in my room. desks pushed, chairs flipped, on the counters, on the floor, punching, shoving, shouting.

it took four teachers and two deans to get them to calm down. the offending 10th graders immediately tried to run off, as if no one would notice, while i lost it in the hall.

my adrenaline was on high speed and it was hard for me to not try to get more in the fight to bust it up. like a protective mother i wanted to keep people form hurting my kids, except they were all my students. i might have been hit in the melee, i'm not sure. my whole body is sore and i am exhausted.

in fact, i'm going to take another nap. i'm dead.

that old familiar feeling...

the itching feeling inside my ears, the hot flashes, the tickly throat--
i am getting sick.

after a particularly hard thursday and friday, its no wonder that now my body chooses to get ill-- my defenses are completely worn down at this point. since the beginning of school i have done a great job of holding everything together, but the end of this week was totally exhausting.

thursday marked what was probably my worst day at school-- a fire drill during my 2nd period class set my lesson plans off-kilter, then my 10th graders (read: evil children) locked me in my classroom. actually, it is someone else's classroom, but they stole the door handle off the inside of the door as they came in to class. this left the handful of tardy students locked out from the outside, and left me and the rest of the class locked inside. after trying to get them to give up the handle, i told them that it was the stupidest thing they could do to lock themselves in the room with me, because not only was no one going out the window (we're on the 7th floor), but they were now stuck in a room with a very pissed off teacher.

after about five minutes, the handle came skittering across the floor and i let the rest of my class in. we got nothing done that period.

then, the period directly following, i returned to my own classroom to teach what is my largest 11th grade class. there were a few students from the previous class lingering in the room and about 10 of my students settling in when my door jams. i have been after maintenence to fix it for two weeks now, as its been getting progressively harder to open, lock, etc, but this time it just stuck. no one could open it from either side and chaos ensued. the kids in class didn't want me to let the loud kids in the hall in ("Miss, this will be the quietest this class has ever been!") and the kids in the hall were shouting as if they'd been intentionally locked out ("We have to bust the door in! Tamika, let's use your head!"). I tried calling the office from my cell (no answer) and it took 20 minutes for maintenence to show up to start dismantling the door handle completely. in the melee, half of the kids locked out just decided to leave. once we finally got the door open, again, we got nothing done.

fabulous.

i think i might be the only teacher in history to get locked in their own classroom twice in one day.

friday was rough too, more so for personal reasons than school reasons, though i had the evil 10th graders again. they made me crazy-- in the middle of class they decided to stage an impromtu dance party, knocking over desks and chairs and making a dance circle. i just watched.

these kids are hard to deal with-- they're the bad group of the 10th grade and they have no respect for anyone. i have to constantly watch them or they'll steal things (and i always teach them in other people's classrooms), they write on anything they can get their hands on, and they're constantly yelling at each other.

they're also very homophobic, which is great. if i had a dollar for every time they called someone or something else gay, i could retire.
yikes.

i am in the process of figuring out how i am going to deal with them next week.

its saturday, i'm exhausted, and getting sick. thank god for rosh hashanah this week.

You can stand under my umbrella.

Like the umbrellas that litter the tracks of the d train line,
I am tired from a long day's work, fighting forces of nature bigger than me,
and I lay here, a little broken.
Not broken beyond repair, but I have outlived my five dollar life span,
have done my best to shield against the driving rain and gusty winds
and at the time when I need just a little fixing,
I am tossed away with yesterdays free newspaper and an old gum wrapper.
So loved in times of panic, so lost in times of sun,
this is the life of a five dollar umbrella.

things that i have learned

1. urban kids are way obsessed with piercings and tattoos. they will ask you about them over and over, usually while you're talking about something else.
2. they will do anything to get what they want. i got more compliments on my hair and my tie on the day of my first test than i have the entire time here
3. they do not understand why you drink so much water
4. just because someone takes notes and does the work does not mean they understand
5. sometimes the kid who does nothing in class will ace your test
6. sometimes it is better to ignore their misbehavior than to address it. the less time you spend yelling, the better
7. they care so much about what other people think of them, that if you make it uncool to talk, they'll finally shut the hell up.
8. candy works wonders
9. they are gayer than you think
10. they will act like they hate you in class, but they love you in the hallway.
11. they desperately want your approval, even when they tell you they don't care
12. sometimes, it is just better to let them sleep

A week and a few days

Looking back on my first full week, plus a few days, has been a great tool thus far. My first week went better than I had expected, in retrospect. I was prepared for the worst and for the most part have been pretty lucky with the students I have and the great faculty I work with. My surprise of the year came when I found out that in addition to my 16 periods of earth science, that I would also be teaching 3 periods a week of “literacy support” to 10th graders. Essentially, my school is trying to prepare the 10th graders for the litany of Regents tests they’ll have this year as best they can, and for some reason they think having an 11th grade science teacher working with them three hours a week is going to help. Fortunately for them I was a liberal arts major in college, not a science geek, and have a pretty healthy amount of opinions and tactics at hand to help get kids more involved with reading and writing. They have been by far my most challenging group—I think there was something wrong with the water the year they were born because the 10th grade class at everyone’s school seems to be the worst. Still, no one is threatening to pee on my desk, which means I’m better off than some.
Looking forward to next week and the week after, as I am getting exponentially more comfortable with this as time goes on.

My last Sunday...

... this is the last Sunday I will have where I am not required to do anything for school, probably until xmas break, if not until next summer.

and what am i doing with my time?

slept 'till noon, made a late pancake breakfast, waiting for food to settle before hitting the gym. i straightened up my room a bit, hung up some school clothes, and in general have just been lazing about. tomorrow is labor day, so i have one more day to prepare for class on tuesday, but at this point, i am feeling a bit like i know so little about what this week will look like that there isn't much i can do at this point but try to relax and take a few deep breaths.

i plan on prepping materials for next week this week, so i am ahead of the game.
i do have to create a curriculum for my new elective that i was assigned to teach, a three-day-a-week school skills class for 10th graders. we're not giving homework in this class, so i believe that i'm going to focus on literacy and real-world topics in science. i am going to start them off with an excerpt from "the world without us" and go from there. i'd like for us to read "fast food nation" as a class and discuss the reading group topics suggested by the publisher. these kids have a very intimate relationship with fast food and i would like for our class to examine that a little deeper.

would also like to read "stiff" by mary roach, because kids like that gross stuff and its easy to read, and science-y. we'll see how that goes.

on another note:
sarah palin? really?
insulting.
its as if mccain thinks that any woman will do. this woman is the harriet miers of the 2008 election-- totally unqualified and wet behind the ears. mccain just took the reasoning out of any "obama isn't experienced enough" argument because your VP pick is supposed to be someone you believe to be ready to lead as president should you keel over and die, which is more likely to happen to mccain in the next four years than anyone else.

what an f-ing joke.

wait, this might be random

i tested it again, just to see what happened, and got this

Movie Reviews

this might all be a fluke.

in other news, while at a bar on the lower east side tonight, i ran into heather matarazzo, the actress who became famous for her role in the dollhouse, and who was a reoccurring character in season 4 of the l word. in case you don't remember, she played stacy merkin, the journalist who jenny lovingly referred to as "the vagina wig". if you're unfamiliar with the reference, just google the word "merkin" and you'll see why.

she is much skinnier in person than i thought she would be.

this blog's reading level

came across this website, via the slog (www.thestranger.com/blog), where it will test the reading level of your blog. as it turns out

Movie Reviews

i am a little disappointed. i am a high school teacher after all, and should be working to increase the literacy of our youth. how am i supposed to do that when the reading level of my own blog is at junior high? i suppose i should start using more five-dollar words.

creativity strikes

jaclyn is out of town until saturday, so i have some more free time on my hands than usual. plus, i am not taking any more classes until the beginning of september, so right now my agenda is full of teaching, still, and working out. in the interim, i picked up these plain white slip-ons at payless for $9.99, and then gave them my own brooklyn flavored design. for some reason i can't figure out how to get the photo reversed, so for now you get the mirrored image, but you get the point. they're pretty sweet. i have a few ideas for another pair, in a very small size 7, for jac when she gets back. i don't have enough space to do a map like the one on the left, but perhaps something reminiscent of that design will do...

hope you are well.

for the love of cheap masala sauce and frozen naan..

... i would trek across the world and back, or so it seems. okay, so maybe not across the world, but definitely a long f-ing way to go to get food from heaven, otherwise known as trader joe's.

normally i set aside time in my schedule to make the trip to tj's. not just because its not close, but because the lines can be insane and the shopping trip can take an hour just from the time you're in line to pay to when you get on the train.

unlike seattle, where there are at least three different tj's that i've been to, there is only ONE in new york. that's right, the biggest city in the united states has ONE trader joe's. this particular tj's is located at union square, which on a good day is about a 3o-40 minute train trip, with only one transfer, from my house. if i'm going on a major stocking-up excursion, the distance is worth the price and the good food i have here at home.

so yes, in the one tj's in all of new york, they have all of the wonderful foods i came to love in seattle, but also have their own wine store (a separate entrance and everything, for many many kinds of two buck chuck, among others) and people inside flagging you down into lines for the check out. today was a slow day-- i only waited 15 minutes, but i have seen the lines snaking around the entire inside of the store. and i thought that the queen anne tj's on a sunday was insane.

today was "get two of everything" day for me, since i don't make it into manhattan all that often. turns out that two peanut butters, two soy milks, two bags of frozen veggies, two pizza crusts, etc, gets very heavy very quickly. not only that, but my basket kind of had a noah's ark theme going on, two by two.

the man who rang me up managed to fit everything into just three bags, but my goodness, they were the three heaviest grocery bags i have ever carried. i looked like a total fool trying to walk through union square back to the train, trying to get on/off the train, and trying to walk home. but now i have cupboards full, and hopefully won't have to go back to tj's until september, when they open the one that is coming to brooklyn...

a year later

almost exactly one year ago (one year and just a few days),
we lost one of the best, brightest, sweetest, most sensitive stars in our universe,
samuel mccrow.

i remember so vividly where i was one year ago, and i remember so vividly where i was when sam left us.

i know that sam would have wanted us to live as freely and as vividly as he did-- he would have told us all to seize the day. i also remember the way that he hugged his sisters when he said goodbye and the twinkle he got in his eyes when he said that he loved them.

i miss you-- the world, the universe misses you, sam.

has it been one year already?

love, always.
10/3-8/4

the rain in spain

...stays mainly on the plain...

in new york, in the summertime, however, it goes all over the place. today has been a day full of thunderstorms and weather drama, culminating in a great sideways wind, which while it thankfully has dropped the temperature outside a good 15 degrees, has also blown some of the rain in my open window.

oh well, like i said, at least its cool.

school has been going well. i gave my first test last thursday and it went over about as expected-- the kids that show up and participate in class did well, the kids who don't, didn't. tomorrow begins our last unit of summer school, astronomy, which the kids voted on as what they wanted to cover in class. i am hoping that since they got to choose, they'll have a little more ownership over the material. plus, there are lots of cool photos in the slide show. who doesn't think that galaxies are beautiful?

i am trying to come up with more creative/fun assessments to do in class besides the typical quiz format and for this unit i have conceived of a MySpace profile for each planet, which the students will create and then share, and a classification game where i have them sort profiles of "space junk" into categories based on the new definition of a planet by the IAU. this is the offending development which kicked pluto out of our solar system, but its a fun exercise.

outside of teaching, school has been going well, though my classmates and i are all obviously in the place where we are ready to be done for a bit. we have stopped listening to each other when we speak in class and there is so much eye-rolling that happens when we're talking, its amazing that we ever get anything done. one of my classmates, mike, said after a particularly frustrating day, "i have kind of had it with this class for a while. i mean no offense, but i see you guys more than i see my wife."

i am lucky to not have that problem. not the wife problem, because for many reasons that is not possible, but the not-seeing-your-significant-other problem. having jac in class with me is a great help, not only because we reinforce our resources and our learning by being in the same boat, but its built-in face time. the bad part is that i sometimes feel like we spend all day together, but don't really get to see each other, if that makes any sense. still, we've been doing a good job of spending time together when we can, but still managing to get work done.

rugby has been going well, though since i have been teaching and having to prepare class materials, etc, its been harder to want to practice until 9:30 at night after having been in school all day, and to still think about preparing for the next day in class. as we speak i am taking a break from making my lessons, which will hopefully catch me up until wednesday. we'll see how that goes.

here, for your consideration, is a very funny picture that i included in a recent slide show. enjoy.

update, overdue

last monday was supposed to be my first day of professional development at my high school, where i will be in the fall. professional development (PD, for those keeping track) is supposed to be the time when teachers sit around and plan for the next year, addressing areas that need improvement, etc.

i show up at 9:05am, thinking i am a few minutes late, and notice that there were kids roaming the halls. funny, i thought, summer school doesn't start until tomorrow. no matter, i'm sure i am in the right place.

next thing i know a secretary is whisking me into a classroom, hands me a manilla folder, and says "here are your attendance sheets. have fun."

wtf?

as it turned out, the school district only sent my school one science teacher, even though they requested two, and so, ta-da! i have two summer school classes.

by the time i got to my classroom and got my bearings, it was 9:13 and school starts at 9:15. fabulous, two minutes to prep.

i search frantically for anything i might use and find the white board and the chart paper are my only allies today. i have nothing planned, since i thought i was supposed to be observing, not teaching, and don't even have any interesting labs or anything leftover from class with me either.

fun times!

as the kids roll in, i'm desperately trying to think of a strategy for today's class, remembering all the things that we've been taught so far in our SAF sessions: don't turn your back on class! have your materials ready! don't write out all the notes at once! make friends with the janitor!

thankfully my classes are small, usually about five kids show up on any given day, and i only have two periods. they are also in "credit recovery" and not Regents prep, which means i get to make up the curriculum and don't have to bore them with Regents prep questions all the time. i surveyed their earth science interests and have decided on a curriculum which focuses on the dynamic earth (properties, equakes, volcanoes, tsunamis), weather and climate, and astronomy. in four weeks. yee-haw.

the days got better as i had more time to prep, but i was still writing my lessons the night before all last week. got a bit of a head start today by taking care of monday and tuesday's lessons, but still... i keep telling myself that this is all just great practice for the fall. on top of all the other stuff i have to work on for university classes.

hope that wherever you are, you're not writing summer school curriculum.

What is done, is done.

I took the Earth Science Content Specialty Test (CST) yesterday.

The CST is the test that you must pass in order to teach in your subject area and yesterday's exam was the only one that will give me a passing score before the school year starts, which means if I didn't pass, I don't get to teach until I can pass the test again, in December.

While I don't think that I aced it, by any means, I think that the immersion program work and the loads of studying I have done on my own payed off. Similar to what Justin says about "P equals M.D." in terms of medical school classes, in my case, I only need that 220/300 score to make it. Anything above 220 is just gravy.

The testing ordeal itself was a bit of a nightmare-- I was home by midnight the night before, ready for my six hours sleep before waking up to trek to Coney Island for the exam. Then, just as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I had forgotten to print out my exam ticket needed to get in to the test. No problem, I thought, I'll just use my roommate's printer, easy.

I have never seen a printer go so bananas before. From the instant I turned it on, before I'd even told it to print anything, it began sucking in every piece of paper in her paper tray, diligently printing one line of wingdings on each page before spitting it out. Oh my God, is this really happening?

I tried turning it off, unplugging it, etc, and every time I hit that power on switch, the same madness.

I live in Sunset Park, where there are no FedEx Kinkos around (hell, I don't think I have seen a Kinkos since I left Seattle), so I began to panic. I texted a ton of my classmates to see if they could print it for me, and all of them were either taking the test in Manhattan or were already asleep, which is exactly where I wanted to be.

In the end, I took the train to Jac's house, where she let me use the printer, and then crashed out for my official 3.5 hours sleep I got by the time it was all said and done. I know that NYC has public transit that gets you almost anywhere, yadda yadda, but at night, it takes FOREVER. Its normally about a 35 minute trip for me to get to her house (take the D two stops, walk to the G, take that three stops) but Friday night, it was about 1.25 hours. Ugh.

Yesterday after the test I came home and passed out for about two hours before getting up and playing a 7s tournament on the lower west side of Manhattan. My team didn't win, but I had fun anyway. One of the best games we played was against the New York Women's 7s side. The NY Women are the Premier Div 1 team here in NYC. That means that they're really, really good. They routinely make it to the top three in nationals. There was no Premier bracket in this 7s tournament, so they brought their A side to the "Social" bracket, which was where my team was playing. We played the NY Women's B side at Rockaway last month and beat them, but these A side women were totally different. Not only that, but I was playing with the Lions B team, which was even more of a skill-level deficit. I am happy to say that despite all of this being stacked against us, we only were beaten 5 tries to 1. For a team that had such a skill level advantage, being able to hold them that far, and to score against them, was great. I made some really great tackles against their VERY tall back line as well. Fun fun fun.

Back to reading about adolescent literacy for my professional development sessions. Yay.