Eat Teach Blog

Good morning and Happy Father’s Day! Going to head out soon to the Corona del Mar Farmer’s Market, but before I do, wanted to upload some pictures from this weekend. I did a lot of branching out and tried a few new restaurants!

Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza (El Segundo, CA)

Gina and I came here for lunch on Friday. They just opened up this location recently and I was eager to try it. The restaurant always seems pretty busy, the ambience was really nice, and I love woodfired pizza! Unfortunately, I wasn’t too impressed with the food….

We started off with a Meditteranean tapa (appetizer) – Lebni, Soft Cheese. The description sounded like it’d be really flavorful: exotic spices, tomato, evoo, grilled herb flatbread. So we were looking forward to something really delicious. I think when they said “exotic spices,” they actually just meant “a shit ton of cumin.” It was hard to enjoy the food when it was entirely covered in spice. Not an exaggeration:

We also got a grilled chicken and hummus wrap and a garlic chicken pizza to share. Although the presentation was nice, I was, again, not too impressed with the taste of the food. The wrap had the same exact seasoning/taste as our appetizer. And the pizza was dry and I didn’t taste ANY garlic. C’mon Sammy’s – step up your game. I don’t understand why there were SO many people there….

We ate about 1/3 of it and boxed the rest up – never to come back again. Hahaha. Dramatic. But, probably a little bit true. They didn’t leave a great impression on my palate – sorry about it.

Luckily, we had this nice, chilled bottle of wine waiting at home for us. Made it all better:

Yokohama Sushi (Culver City, CA)

After living in Culver City for nearly two years and no longer a resident, I finally tried this sushi place. In my defense, it’s right next to a Subway, so I’ve never had the desire to eat anything else

He’s not posing. He’s just naturally that prim and proper.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything unique – just your regular, average sushi place. Hits the sushi craving, but doesn’t really go beyond that. I’m also not too much of a sushi connoisseur. I did, however, enjoy the chilled sake they had. I think I’m much more of a cold-drink drinker. I think red wine should be served chilled and that sake should never be served warm.

The one thing that did stand out was the Gyoza appetizer we ordered. It was really deeply fried, so I only had one, but it was DELICIOUS. The sesame seed sauce it came with was even more delicious and I wanted to dunk my sushi in that, instead of the soy sauce:

Forage (Silver Lake, CA)

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from dinner here. Probably because I was too eager to start eating. But I can assure you that no picture could really illustrate how AMAZING this food was. I got a plate of 3 sides: an arugula and kale salad with feta and breadcrumbs, a corn salad, and mac ‘n cheese (two different kinds of cheddar and grana padano). Unbelievable. The food tasted better than it looked – every bite was so, so flavorful and fresh-tasting. Apparently, they used to do this kind of “trading thing” with their customers that if customers brought in fresh produce, they would get a discount on their order. They would then use the produce in their future meals. They stopped doing that for obvious reasons…..but I like the idea. I will definitely be going back here for more…

Intellegentsia Coffee (Silver Lake, CA)

Not really a restaurant, per say. But still a notable mention. It’s a really high-end, exquisite taste type of coffee and espresso. Randy and Kent wanted to come here and splurge on a 1/2 pound of their coffee beans, so we all got a drink to end our amazing dinner. I got a soy latte – it was so creamy and delicious. Pretty expensive – and I thought Starbucks lattes were expensive! But it was a nice treat:

Now, I’m done with restaurants for the week. My goal is to be healthy and homemade for the next 5 days! Expect a lot of recipes on the blog this week…..

Just finished my breakfast: Honey Chobani, chia seeds, slivered almonds, and Farmers Market blueberries. YUM!

Now off to the farmers market to buy more fruits and veggies! I love this farmer’s market because it’s literally steps from the beach:

Corona del Mar, Newport Beach (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful fathers out there….my daddy’s gotta work on Father’s Day, but we will hopefully make something yummy for him to come home to.

What are your plans for Father’s Day?! 

The interview yesterday went really, really well! I think it reaffirmed that teaching in an urban school is what I really want to do and what I’m really passionate about. I ended up only having to work with three students (the 4th was absent). They were so respectful and polite and quiet (possibly because the principal and the dean were in the room observing). But I think they seemed to enjoy the adding/subtracting integers game that I created.

Some more pictures with the actual game board:

I think the best part about the interview is that they allowed me to reflect on my lesson before they gave me any feedback. So I got to talk about the activity’s strengths and I got to tell them where I think I could have improved. I really appreciated that because I think that gave me the opportunity to show them that I was aware of what areas needed to be tweaked and targeted. Rather than them just attacking me with what went wrong with the lesson. It seemed like a great school, a great staff, and really supportive administrators. We’ll see what happens!

After the interview, I went to stop by to visit one of my former campers, Jackie (camp name: Spidey). Camper turned volunteer Really hard to think that – makes me feel so OLD!

And then met up with Roxana/Star to grab dinner. She’s moving to Chicago in less than two weeks for Teach for America! So proud of her…she’s been doing City Year   in downtown LA for almost a year and I think she’s going to be a wonderful teacher! We had a really interesting conversation about paraprofessionals in the classroom. It seems like (1) a majority of paraprofessionals and 1:1 aides don’t really have a background or formal training in education and (2) teachers don’t utilize their TA’s or paraprofessionals in the best possible way. It seems like teachers don’t know how (or aren’t willing to) utilize paraprofessionals in their daily lesson plans. Instead, these paraprofessionals (who may often times be really qualified, educated individuals) are off making copies or sitting in the back of the room until something needs to get done. I feel like an effective educator should utilize the extra support and figure out how it would best benefit the students. Perhaps breaking the students off into centers so that they’re all getting more individualized attention? Or having the paraprofessional teach a lesson so the teacher can walk around and assess for understanding. There’s so many advantages to having that extra pair of hands in the classroom – it’s just on the teachers to figure out how to utilize them.

So. among our intense discussion, we also got to enjoy some great appetizers, sushi, and of course sake (peach-flavored apparently). A great night with great company! =)

It was a hard day at work…

I wouldn’t touch that….I’m not a shrimp girl.

California Roll – more my style