Bully

For the family activity, I wanted to find a movie we could watch. I went through pay-per-view and found 5 worthy movies. We voted on the movies and Bully won.

The Bully Project

After I made popcorn, we sat down to watch the movie. From the opening, where a couple talk about their oldest child, and we find out that he committed suicide when he was 17 because he had been bullied terribly at school, we were enthralled.

It was a very difficult movie to watch. My heart broke for the children. My heart broke for the families. I was also frustrated at some of the administrators that were in the movie. I yelled out loud at them. It was very frustrating to watch such ineptness when children in their care were being harmed both emotionally and physically.

Our children made comments at times that the behavior in the movie would not be tolerated in Gretna. That makes me very happy living in the town that we do. There are openly gay students in the high school. No one shuns them. No one bullies them. There are mean kids, but none that bully. I also think that the middle school I teach at is pretty much free from bullies. There might be a few incidents, but nothing to the extent that the kids in this movie had to deal with especially Alex, who was a 13 year old boy in Sioux City, Iowa.

I am going to look more into the bully project.

Reviews:
Glen and I both thought it was very difficult to watch as parents. He also disliked the principal at the middle school who seemed inept.
Dakota said "it destroyed his faith in human kind".
Alexsei said it was very sad.
Savana liked it a great deal.
Alaric also said it was very sad.

I think this is an excellent movie to watch with your family. It opened up some excellent discussions with our children. I think one of the saddest things in the movie is that some of the parents had no idea what was going on at school because their children didn't tell them. I want my children to always be able to talk to us about anything.

February Recipe Asian Ginger Pork and Fried Rice

We had two snow days this week. I was actually unhappy about it. We will now have to go to school after Memorial Day. Grrrr! I feel exceptionally lazy on snow days as well. Since we were home on Thursday, I made the decision to make the February recipe. Dakota didn't have to work so he would be home for dinner.

I decided I would go with what I could find in the freezer. I dug down to the bottom and discovered pork chops. I checked my refrigerator for ingredients and then looked for recipes on the internet. I had fresh ginger so I decided Asian was the way to go. I found this recipe, Asian Pork Chop. I made it exactly as printed except I had bone in chops so I had to cut the bone out.

I made a very basic fried rice recipe. It involved white rice, eggs and green onion. I did add soy sauce and garlic otherwise it would have been very bad. But it is such a basic recipe that many ingredients could be added to make it more interesting.

I had some asparagus left, so I roasted that with oil and soy sauce.

This was the finished product. I am sorry we didn't have any good beer to have with it.

Reviews:
Glen liked everything.
I liked everything.
Dakota liked the meat and rice. He does not do asparagus.
Alexsei liked the rice. She thought the pork was too gingery. She doesn't like pork.
Savana liked the rice. She was also not fond of the pork.
Alaric didn't like anything. He ate one bite of pork but found a green onion on the meat so that ruined him eating any more. He wouldn't taste the rice because it had egg in it. And, of course, he won't touch anything green.

I will make the rice again, probably not the chops unless we grill them. We couldn't grill Thursday night because it was snowing.

February Book

As in past years, I went until almost the end of the month to complete my 3 tasks. I finished my book first. Thankfully, I picked an easy read. I had grades due on February 20 so that cut into my free time. I was on the wait list for Janet Evanovich's "Notorious Nineteen". The latest book in the Stephanie Plum series. These books are a quick read.

I loved the series when I began reading it back in 2004. Stephanie was fun. The books were fresh. Lula was a hoot. Grandma Mazur knocked caskets over. After 19 books with little or no character development, the series is running out of steam. I stopped caring about the love triangle. Will Stephanie pick police detective Joe Morelli or the mysterious and oh so hot, Ranger. I used to like when he said, "Babe." Now I want to knee him in the groin. It is leaning toward Joe which is the only direction that makes sense.

This book at least had some funny moments. I don't think I laughed at all during the last two. The most fun was the Tiki that Stephanie took from an FTA that she failed to capture. The running theme in her books. Even though the FTA is supposedly easy to catch, Stephanie and Lula fail in over-the-top ways every time.

Briggs the midget security guard added to the humor in this book.

Cars blowing up, someone trying to kill Stephanie, Lula and Stephanie eating lots of bad food, eating at her parent's house, feeding her hamster. It is a tired series. Like most fans, we are begging and pleading for this series to end. Marry Stephanie and Joe and call it good.

January Recipe

For January, I went Asian. Dakota and Alexsei had been begging for orange chicken. (They love the stuff from Panda Express.) And Dakota wanted Pad Thai.

I scoured the internet for recipes and looking at several different ones, found one for orange chicken and one for pad thai that I thought would work. On January 6, I began the Part 1 of my January New Year's resolution. I had shopped for ingredients at HyVee and didn't find exactly what I needed so I decided to make do. When Alexsei saw the canned bean sprouts I purchased for the pad thai, she made the disgusted face and suggested skipping that ingredient. So I did.

The recipe included a great deal of prep. Asian food always does. Lots of chopping. I also made Asian inspired mushrooms and asparagus so that was more prep. Cutting mushrooms and snapping asparagus stems.

Coating and frying the chicken in the wok was extremely time consuming, and I made a lot because leftovers are always good. I kept it warm in the oven while I worked on the pad thai (I also doubled that  recipe.). When things got crazy, Alexsei made the orange sauce, because stir frying the pad thai was constant work.

Got the vegetables in the oven. Everything was ready and then the plating began.

This is what the final product looked like.

Reviews:
Glen loved everything.
I loved everything.
Dakota loved everything but the asparagus. He especially loved the mushrooms and would now like to try pad thai in a restaurant. He also spiced it up with hot pepper flakes. A boy after my heart!
Alexsei liked everything especially the orange chicken. She also thought the pad thai was a bit too spicy.
Savana liked the orange chicken and the vegetables. She thought the pad thai was too spicy. She was very fond of the mushrooms.
Alaric didn't like anything.

Alexsei and Dakota have already requested that I make orange chicken again. I will. Just not as much. But it will be a recipe in our new cycle. I always like finding something new to add into the rotation.

These are the recipes.

Pad Thai
I could not find tamarind so I went with the change on the recipe. I thought it was too limey so I would add less next time. I also did not put in the canned bean sprouts. I would like to find fresh bean sprouts.

Orange Chicken
I followed this recipe exactly, but I doubled the recipe. It took a long time to cook all that chicken!

For the asparagus and mushrooms, I used baby asparagus and button mushrooms. I cut the stems off the mushrooms. (When I remade the mushrooms, I cut them in thirds.) I tossed the mushrooms and asparagus in soy sauce, olive oil, garlic (2 minced cloves), salt and pepper. I roasted them at 425 for 10-15 minutes.

Henry Doorly Zoo

In January we all went to the zoo. We went on a Saturday that was unseasonably warm for the month. It was surprisingly busy for January. I am sure many people wanted to see the cubs, and the warmer weather encouraged people to go out. Plus there were people in Omaha for the U.S. skating championships.
The main reason we went was to see the new lion cubs. They were born on December 29. They were just less than a month old when we saw them. We probably spent an hour watching them. They have a second female in with the cubs and the mother. She helps tend the babies. While we were there, the 2 moms were trying to bathe the cubs. It was fun to watch them try to escape and then just give up and let the bath happen.

The pictures come courtesy of this blog.

We also went into the butterfly house. We discovered that Alaric is afraid of moths and butterflies. He was trying to dodge them as we went through the house. I don't blame him for not liking the other insects, the giant cockroaches, beetles, etc.

We also went through the Jungle, the aquarium and the Desert Dome. It is nice to go through the exhibits when they aren't crazy busy. We actually got to spend time looking at some of the animals. The best addition to the aquarium is the jellyfish displays. I don't know what the fascination is about jellyfish, but I could sit and watch them for a long time. I love the upside down ones. What's up with that?

We finished with The Kingdom of the Night. That is probably my favorite exhibit at the zoo. I love seeing the nocturnal animals especially the swamp.

I recommend a visit to the Henry Doorly Zoo if you come to Omaha. You will not be disappointed.

January Book

In January, at Alexsei's insistence, I read the Dennis Lehane book "The Given Day".

This is my review from GoodReads:
I enjoy Dennis Lehane's books. I really enjoyed this one. I love historical fiction. I learned many things about post World War I America that either I had forgotten or never learned about. The story takes place in Boston like most Lehane books. The main family is the Coughlins. The father is a police captain and his son Danny is a beat cop. Younger son Connor is a lawyer. The main characters are fairly well developed. Intermixed with all of this is a side story about Babe Ruth. Not sure why that got added to the novel. I enjoyed the baseball part of the story, but it felt a bit forced.
Good Reads

I plan to read "Live by Night" the follow up to this book in March. I just ordered it from Amazon.

Year 3

Three years ago I made this New Year's resolution. I would read one book a month, make one new recipe a month and do something educational or inspirational with the children. The first year I made it to July. Last year I think went to June. This year I am going to blog my experience to see if that will keep me on track. The most difficult endeavor is doing something with the children. Their schedules throw wrenches in the plan especially with Dakota working. This will take pre-planning on my part.