Pumpkin Sage Stuffed Shells

This post was created in partnership with Wolf. All opinions are our own.

It’s time to reclaim the kitchen, folks. You may have seen my recent trip to Madison, Wisconsin to visit one of our favorite brands to work with, Wolf. Why do we have a soft spot for the brand? Because just like us, Wolf is passionate about growing a passion for cooking. For the past few years, Wolf has put together quite a few educational and inspirational resources on how to cook more (like this really sweet video, which makes me tear up because I’m so passionate on the subject).

This recipe and post are part of the #ReclaimtheKitchen initiative. The goal is to demystify home cooking by sharing actionable tips, tools and techniques to help you reclaim your kitchen. To do this, we’ve created a cozy fall recipe that is adaptable and can work for a dinner with friends or even a vegetarian Thanksgiving main dish: pumpkin sage stuffed shells! The shell filling is gooey and cozy, savory pumpkin mixed with ricotta and Mozzarella cheeses, with a bit of fresh sage thrown in. The stuffed shells are baked in our Quick & Simple Marinara, which compliments the filling without overwhelming it. It’s an impressive, showy vegetarian main dish that’s perfect for feeding a crowd. While it takes a bit of time to assemble the components, stuffed shells are fitting for a celebration or a pitch-in table. Best of all, our stuffed shells recipe illustrates a few tools (or “tricks”) that are important for reclaiming the kitchen.

Trick 1: How to make a quick marinara

For those of you who don’t have a go-to marinara sauce, here’s one that’s tasty and takes about 25 minutes. What’s the point of making your own marinara? There’s nothing quite like the flavor of a fresh batch. (However, if you’re in a time bind, there are a lot of high-quality marinara sauces out there these days, so don’t be ashamed!) The tricks to our quick marinara:

• Canned tomato puree: it has a bit of built-in tomato paste, and the sweetness helps to balance the acidity of the tomatoes
• Shallots: they have a more delicate flavor than onions and require less sauteing time
• Garlic: ok, that’s really our trick to anything!
• Olive oil + butter: The creaminess of butter helps round out the sauce flavor without simmering for hours

Trick 2: How to salt pasta water

If you’re not an Italian grandmother, you may not know this secret. First of all, make sure to salt your pasta water! Why? It results in tastier pasta. Second, salting your pasta means quite a bit of salt: the water should actually taste salty. Typically if we’re filling a huge pot, we’ll use about 1 tablespoon of kosher salt. Don’t worry, you won’t actually consume this much salt, as it disperses into the water.

Trick 3: How to quickly wilt greens

For these stuffed shells, we’ve used a trick we picked up a few years ago. Instead of cooking our spinach on the stovetop and dirtying yet another pan, we’ve used the boiling water from the pasta to wilt the greens. It only takes a few seconds. Simply place the spinach leaves in the pasta colander and pour some of the boiling water from the pot over the spinach. Even about half the water from the pot should be enough to entirely wilt the spinach. Then remove the spinach and finish draining your pasta. (You’ll squeeze out all liquid and roughly chop the spinach afterwards.) If you’re ever using spinach or greens in a pasta, this is a nice way to cook it without dirtying a pan. (We’ve also used this technique to cook red peppers in these Peanut Noodles with Napa Cabbage.)

Trick 4: How to quickly chop sage

This trick can be used for any leafy herb or green. The method:

1. Chiffonade the leaves. This means stack the leaves, roll them up, and then thinly slice them. Watch this video.
2. Lay the thin slices together and slice them the other way, resulting in a fine chop.

We hope you enjoy this stuffed shells recipe! For more on #ReclaimtheKitchen, head to the Reclaim the Kitchen website.

And if you’re looking for ideas, we’ve got lots more vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes.

Pumpkin Sage Stuffed Shells

 

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by: a Couple Cooks

Serves: 6 to 8

What You Need

• 12 ounces jumbo shells
• 1 recipe Quick & Simple Marinara (below) or purchased marinara
• 5 ounces baby spinach leaves
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 1 cup Mozzarella cheese
• 15-ounce can pumpkin puree
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1½ tablespoons finely chopped sage
• 1½ teaspoons kosher salt
• Fresh ground black pepper
• 1 egg
• ⅔ cup shredded Pecorino or Parmesan cheese, for garnish

What To Do

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
2. Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Boil the shells until al dente, according to the package instructions.
3. If you're making the Quick & Simple Marinara, start it now (see below).
4. When the pasta is done, you'll use the boiling pasta water to wilt the spinach. To prepare, place the spinach leaves in the colander. Once the pasta is al dente, remove from the heat and pour over enough boiling water to fully wilt it. Place the pot back on the stove and use a spoon to remove the hot greens to a bowl, then drain the pasta into the colander. Return the pasta to the pan with a drizzle of olive oil to prevent sticking. Squeeze out all the water from the greens using a paper towel, then chop it roughly.
5. To make the filling, combine the chopped spinach with the ricotta, Mozzarella, pumpkin puree, chili powder, nutmeg, sage, salt, and several grinds of black pepper in a medium bowl. Taste, and adjust seasonings as desired. Then stir in the egg.
6. Spread some of tomato sauce across the bottom of a 9 x 13 and 9 x 9 pans. Fill each shell with the filling, then arrange them in a single layer in the pan: 24 shells in the 9 x 13 and 15 in the 9 x 9.
7. Top each pan with shredded Pecorino or Parmesan cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the filling is warm.

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Quick & Simple Marinara

 

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by: a Couple Cooks

Serves: About 4 cups

What You Need

• 2 large shallots
• 4 medium garlic cloves
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 28-ounce can tomato puree
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• Freshly ground pepper

What To Do

1. Mince the shallots and garlic. In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil and butter over medium-low heat. Add the shallot, garlic, and basil and gently sauté, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Pour in the tomato puree, kosher salt, and several grinds black pepper. Bring to a bubble, then reduce the heat and maintain a low simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. (If you have more time, you can simmer a few minutes longer to develop the flavors.)

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Washington Wine Country with ALDI

This post was created in partnership with ALDI. All opinions are our own.

“Why do we drink wine?” Wine glass in hand, I was in the middle of Washington wine country with a group of experts. Marveling at the tangled grapevines against the purple-blue sky, we were talking philosophy. “When someone is born, we toast; they graduate, we toast; they get married, we toast. Wine is part of human tradition.” The speaker went on to list a few more reasons, but I was stuck on the first, getting a bit teary thinking of toasts in my own life. When Alex and I brought our son Larson home from the hospital 8 months ago, we popped a bottle of champagne. A few weeks later when we finished our cookbook manuscript, a toast. When my sister tied the knot on a sun-drenched beach last year, a toast. For many, wine is part of what it means to be human. And I’ll admit: that’s why I drink it. I’m not a connoisseur; I just love to celebrate life’s moments with wine.

A few weeks ago, ALDI invited me on a trip to Washington wine country for behind-the-scenes look at how some of their private label wines are made. ALDI has been selling wines since 2003, and they’re quickly becoming well regarded. Here are some highlights from what I learned–and of course, some wines to taste!

Wine country…in a nutshell

One of the main things I took away from the trip was simple: Washington wine country. When I think about wine in America, I think of California. However, southeastern Washington is an emerging region that is producing more and more wine each year. This is where all of ALDI’s Washington-sourced private label wines are made. It’s incredibly dry country, actually considered a desert. The difference in temperature between day and night (which balances the fruit’s acid and sugar), the sandy, silty soil, and the strong winds that form the skin of the fruit are just some of the features that make this land perfect for growing grapes. After spending some time in this region and tasting the wine it has to offer, I’m excited to bring this less explored region to light.

Onsite in the vineyards, I also grew to appreciate the care and passion necessary to make wines. Precept Wine is the wine company that hosted us; they own and manage the vineyards and wineries where many ALDI wines are made. During one meal, I chatted with Hal Landvoight, the head winemaker for Precept. He told me about how he used to be in the IT industry, and then developed a passion for drinking wine. He made a career jump into winemaking, and hasn’t looked back since. Wine nerd? All the way. As you may know, I love discovering people’s passions and what they “nerd out” about. Being around self-proclaimed wine nerds was an incredible experience, to learn the intricacies of not only how wine is made, but how it’s best served and paired. Every single person I met at Precept was incredibly passionate about making the best wine possible.

In terms of sustainability, Precept is deeply committed to caring for the land. They spray the vines only if absolutely necessary using non-toxic sprays, get compost from a local dairy, use organic fertilizers, and use drip irrigation systems to conserve water usage. They’ve learned that in order to keep doing what they love, they’ve got to care for the land that makes it all possible.

And how could I leave out wine tasting? One thing I realized along the way was that one component that affects the flavor has nothing to do with the wine: it’s the experience itself. The moment we landed in wine country, we went up to a high point for a champagne toast, surrounded by vineyards. In the bright sunlight, we watched David Oldham from Precept saber a bottle of Brut, slicing the entire top of the bottle off! We all giggled and once the next bottle was open, we filled our glasses and toasted in the open air. Being surrounded by beauty and community, the glass of cold bubbly filled my stomach and heart.

Another favorite flavor moment was when Hal had us taste the difference between two Cabernet Sauvignon wines made with grapes from the two vineyards we visited. The first one was dry from the first moment you took a sip, and the second dry after swallowing. When “experts” tell me I’m supposed to taste cherry or plum or sandalwood in a wine, sometimes it’s very difficult to actually discern it. In this case, the difference was exactly what he described. And then, he proceeded to mix the two wines together! He had us try it again, and this time the flavor was rounded out and nuanced. This, he said, is the reason to mix grapes from different vineyards or varietals: it makes for a more complex flavor. Tasting takes time and experience, and the more you taste wine, the more you’re palate is able to discern.

Finally, community. As I mentioned, wine is all about community: dining together, toasting together, and sharing life together. Having this experience with freelance writers and wine makers and sommaliers made me appreciate the communal aspect of wine even more. Together, we ate dinner around a big table in our dining yurt and wandered through a winery discussing the intricacies of the process. We heard real live people from ALDI talk about the moment when they met Precept at a vendor fair and realized they were passionate about the same thing: making the best quality wines at affordable prices for the every day person. Everything about the trip was better and more fun because we were learning and tasting and laughing together. And that’s the thing I love most about wine: the way it brings us together.

That first glass of Brut

And the view

Hal from Precept

My partner in crime, Bev Cooks

The idyllic setting

And the wines

Alex and my approach to food is this: We’re creatives. I guess you could call us foodies. We love high-class dining and sophisticated food and wine. At the same time, we typically save that for special occasions. On the regular, we like real, humble, delicious, approachable food. (In fact, that’s why we wrote our cookbook, Pretty Simple Cooking.) So when it comes to wines, we look for wines we can pair with an everyday dinner. That’s why we love ALDI wines: they make wine drinking accessible and affordable, making it easy to try new wines.

Since 2013, ALDI has worked with Precept Wine to develop private label wines for ALDI shoppers. The current collection of ALDI exclusive wines produced by Precept includes five award-winning varietals. Several are best buys with scores of 87+ points. In November, ALDI will unveil six additional wines with 90+ scores, available for a limited time! ALDI wines range in price from $5.99 to $14.99 per bottle. (Points are awarded by the Beverage Testing Institute.)

Core Wines

These wines should be available year round at most ALDI stores. Here are a few that I tried:

• Crystal Creek Cellars Riesling (88 points) $5.99 – This one is on the sweeter side, but the finish is dry. It’s perfect for sweeter wine drinkers (I personally prefer a dryer Riesling, but this one was drinkable for me!). Honeysuckle, apricot and bright pear flavors layered with refreshing acidity and balance. Pairs well with Asian cuisine, chicken and seafood.
• Crystal Creek Cellars Chardonnay (87 points) $7.99 – If you don’t like oaky Chardonnay, this one’s for you. To me it almost tasted like a Pinot Grigio. Aromas of Granny Smith apples and layered notes of pear, toasty oak and a hint of vanilla. Pairs well with roasted chicken, fettuccine with alfredo sauce or seafood.
• Maison de Joie Brut Sparkling (89 points) $11.49 – If you know me well, you’ll know I’m a big fan of bubbles. This one was lovely! Inviting aromas of apple and peach open at the front, leading to a light-to medium-bodied palate and a round effervescence. Pairs well with shellfish, strong cheeses or apple and walnut salad.
• Crystal Creek Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon (86 points) $9.99 – This Cab was straight-forward and a very drinkable red. Fruit-forward aromatics of black cherries, followed by ripe plum and velvety mocha notes with soft, approachable tannins. Pairs well with grilled red meat, wood-fired pizza, or dark chocolate.

Lot Series Wines

These new limited release Lot Wines should be available at select ALDI stores starting November 1, 2017. The Lot Wines have a more complex flavor profile. They’re perfect for those interested in expanding their palate or exploring emerging wine regions.

• Lot Series Reserve Malbec (92 points) $11.99 – This wine just received a Gold Medal BTI rating! If you know me, you’ll also know I’m a Malbec girl. Washington Malbec is a unique new way to enjoy this traditionally Argentinian varietal. Black cherry and dark plum aromas and flavors are followed by a long finish with hints of vanilla and smoke. Pairs well with grilled red meat or wood-fired pizza.
• Lot Series Grande Brut (91 points) $13.99 – This wine also just received a Gold Medal BTI rating! Again, I’m a huge bubbly fan, and this one hit the spot for me. Lot Series Grande Brut is created in the true Méthode Champenoise winemaking style and aged a minimum of three years in the bottle. Delightfully effervescent with green apple and citrus flavors followed by a dry finish. Pairs well with poultry, seafood or spicy foods.
• Lot Series Cabernet Sauvignon $9.99 – If you can find this Cab, I’d absolutely check it out. Vibrant cassis aromatics and blackberry flavors followed by a long, velvety finish. Pairs well with grilled red meat or wood-fired pizza.

You can find these wines at your local ALDI; use this store locator to find a store near you. Let us know if you try them out; we’d love to know your thoughts!

Since this post is about wine, we’d also like to pay special homage to California wine country, where massive wildfires destroyed vineyards and wineries in Napa Valley. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who lost treasures they’ve been cultivating for decades.

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When Coaching Teachers Has Curiosity As Its Primary Goal

Three Ways Parents Can Make Digital Media a Positive for Young Kids

Digital technologies have added a new element of anxiety to family life for many parents. A lot of kids now have access to mobile devices, which brings up parent concerns that kids aren’t learning to interact with people, spend too much time on devices and no longer play outside. Often parents are most concerned about their young children spending time on devices because they know the early years are a crucial time for a child’s brain development. But at the same time, parents are often just as addicted to technology as their children, constantly checking phones for news, work and fun. The discussion around the best way to handle mobile devices is a good one to continue, but Sara DeWitt of PBS Kids Digital says some of parents’ deepest fears could be holding them back from seeing the potential of digital technology.

Fear #1: Screens are passive. While some activities on devices are passive, not all are. DeWitt describes games she tested that had kids pretending to be the animals they saw on the screen. And, when adults shut off the device kids continued pretending to be animals. Even better, they remembered many of the facts they’d learned in the game as they were flapping their arms. “The digital technology prompted embodied learning that kids can now take out into the world,” DeWitt said. And moving while they learned helped kids remember the science facts about the animal they imitated.

Fear #2: Digital games waste time that kids should be using to learn. Again, there are digital products that don’t offer much learning potential, but increasingly researchers are interested in the data behind game play. A group of UCLA researchers wanted to know if the back-end data from a Curious George math game produced by WGBH could predict preschoolers’ scores on a standardized test. They found that even though the game was not built to assess math, the choices a player makes while playing says a lot about cognition. The researchers could predict how different kids would perform on the standardized math test by analyzing how they played the game. DeWitt wonders if advances in this field could reduce in-class standardized testing. Could they give a more nuanced picture of a child’s cognition and areas of growth that teachers could use to direct learning?

Fear #3: Screens isolate. Research around digital media and parenting shows that kids learn a lot when their parents interact with them about the digital media they are consuming. The back and forth conversations that have always been a bedrock of child development still hold true, but digital technologies can add content to those conversations. And kids “love to play with their parents,” DeWitt says. They don’t want to compete with a device for their parents’ time.

“Kids are living in the same world we do, the world where grown-ups check their phones 50 times a day,” DeWitt said. Rather than being scared that all digital devices are bad for children, she encourages parents to raise their expectations of media, consume products responsibly, and to look for the positive qualities of technology, which has undoubtedly changed how people interact with one another already. Check out DeWitt’s TED talk to learn more.

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How Seeing and Using Gestures Make Ideas More Memorable

A teacher stands at a white board in front of her fourth-grade class and begins teaching one of math’s most fundamental concepts: the meaning of an equal sign in the middle of an equation. This is not easy. Young students tend to think of the equal sign as the endpoint of a problem. Now, instead of the usual 8 + 4 = ?, they are asked to ponder 8 + 4 = ? + 6. Mastering this concept will open the door to algebra and higher math.

Almost any teacher giving this lesson will instinctively move her hands in predictable ways, pointing to the equal sign, sweeping her hand toward the left side of the equation and then sweeping it toward the right. She might hold both hands palms-up in a balancing gesture to suggest equivalency.

Now imagine the teacher giving the same lesson, using the same words, but with her hands flat on her desk or arms at her side. Turns out, her students will be much less likely to grasp the concept.

Susan Wagner Cook, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Iowa, has conducted numerous studies with scenarios like these – both with live teachers and with animated avatars (see video). Whether it’s a lesson in math, foreign language vocabulary or science, the result is the same: kids learn better with gesture.

“Gesture seems to help build understanding across really abstract things and really concrete things – numbers, words, a whole bunch of stuff,” Cook says.

Why this is so is not entirely clear, but gesture seems to lighten the load on our cognitive systems. Cook has shown, for instance, that if you ask people to do two things at once — explain a math problem while remembering a sequence of letters — they do a far better job if permitted to gesture while explaining.

Research suggests that when we see and use gestures, we recruit more parts of the brain than when we use language alone, and we may activate more memory systems – such as procedural memory (the type that stores automatic processes such as how to type or ride a bike) in addition to our memory for events and experiences.

Cook is among a cadre of researchers who study learning in the context of “embodied cognition” – the theory that our thoughts are shaped by the physical experiences of our body. According to this view, even when we think about abstract ideas, our brains link them to concrete, physical things that we experience through our hands, our senses and other body parts.

Studies that use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other brain imaging techniques provide fascinating evidence for embodied cognition. For instance, when we hear verbs such as lick, pick and kick, they activate parts of the brain associated with the tongue, the hands and the legs, respectively. When we read about a happy event, there is greater activity in the nerves and muscles that control smiling.

One of the more remarkable findings in this field is that people who get Botox injections to reduce frown lines actually take longer to read sad and angry passages right after the injections than before, although there is no change of pace for reading happy tales.

Arthur Glenberg, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, one of the authors of the Botox study and many others on embodied cognition, is applying the theory to help struggling readers succeed.

For more than a decade, Glenberg and colleagues have been developing systems that allow novice readers to physically simulate the content of books to enhance their understanding. The latest version is an iPad-based system called EMBRACE in which children can move characters and props around on a touch screen to bring the text alive. Unlike some multimedia picture books in which bells and whistles can distract from the story, the EMBRACE actions are tightly aligned with the text. If the story says that a farmer puts a pig in the pen, the child can slide a finger to do the same. If the text explains how blood flows from the heart’s right ventricle to the lungs, the reader can make it happen onscreen.

Glenberg has tested this system and an earlier version called Moved by Reading with struggling readers, including kids with learning disabilities, and has found sizeable increases in comprehension. The kids begin by acting out what they are reading — with support from a teacher or from the EMBRACE programming. Later they learn to simply “imagine” the physical actions.

The approach works across a variety of content areas — including story problems in math. In a 2011 study with 97 third- and fourth-graders, kids trained in the method solved 44 percent of math problems versus 33 percent for those in a control group. The trained kids were also much less likely (38 percent versus 61 percent) to mistakenly use irrelevant information in their calculations.

Word problems are notoriously hard for many students. “Kids sort of give up on trying to figure out what the meaning is and go right to playing with the numbers,” Glenberg explains. What the embodied approach does, he says, is help them develop “a sensorimotor representation” of the math problem. It “forces you to imagine the situation and that makes doing the math much easier.”

The same is true in reading. Many kids are able to sound out the text, but don’t actually understand it. This is particularly true of English language learners, Glenberg says. He has been testing the EMBRACE system for such students in the U.S. and in China. In a 2017 study with 93 native Spanish-speaking children in Arizona, he reports a “large positive benefit in story comprehension.” An enhanced version of the system offers some basic support in child’s native language.

A big question about the approach is whether kids who learn to read on this platform can make the leap to reading fluently without its support, internalizing the habit of picturing the story in their mind’s eye. Glenberg is in the process of studying this.

Using our bodies and gesture to teach is something parents and preschool teachers do instinctively (just think about rhymes like the “The Eensy-weensy Spider”). But work by Glenberg, Cook and many others indicates that the benefits can go far beyond preschool and extend to teaching advanced and abstract concepts.

Cook’s quick advice to teachers: “Use your hands. Make sure you don’t always have your smartboard controller in your hand. And if the students have their backs to you, it’s not as good.” She hopes that her work with gesturing avatars will eventually improve digital instruction, much of which makes poor use of body language.

As more and more of education comes to depend on technology and virtual instruction, it will be vital to capture under-appreciated aspects of human interaction that engage both body and mind.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our newsletter.

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Courage To Change: What It Takes to Shift to Restorative Discipline

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) has become well known in the charter school movement for getting low-income kids into college. But KIPP schools also have a reputation for strict discipline and classroom management practices that require conformity. Over the past decade, many KIPP schools have been shifting their strategies, moving from strict no-excuses style discipline to restorative practices. There’s a recognition among educators in the network, and outside of it, that kids need opportunities at school to practice the social and emotional skills that will help them be resilient after they graduate.

KIPP Summit Academy in San Lorenzo, California has been leading the way in this effort. The school began shifting to restorative practices seven years ago and now they’re seeing the academic and social results of that work. Teachers spend significant time and energy planning activities that push students to talk about difficult or emotional subjects, like friendship — a hot topic in middle school. They’re trying to help students build an emotional toolbox, so they have the language to discuss conflict when it arises.

It’s been a long hard road, but one that has worked well enough that all KIPP Bay Area schools, and many in other regions as well, are making the shift. But implementing restorative practices doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a long, deliberate process of shifting mindsets among educators, parents, and students. And it doesn’t always go smoothly at first.

“The way most of us grew up in education was that the teacher knew everything, the student knew nothing; the teacher gave directions, the student followed directions; the teacher talked, the student listened,” said Ric Zappa, director of school culture for KIPP Bay Area Schools. He led the changes at KIPP Summit Academy and is now helping other school leaders making the shift. He knows how hard it can be — he’s been there.

This fifth and final episode of the second season of the MindShift podcast takes us inside two KIPP schools: one has already made the transition to restorative justice and has all the staff and students on board. The other is just beginning the shift and running into snags along the way.

Restorative discipline practices are becoming more common in schools around the country, but what does it take to do it well? Listen and find out on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.

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How School Leaders Can Attend to the Emotional Side of Change

During his work consulting with school leaders around change strategies, psychologist Robert Evans has found it tremendously important for leaders to understand that for many people, change — at least at first — isn’t about growth or capacity building or learning; it’s about loss.

“All of us respond to a change that someone says or does not because of what it is, but in terms of what it means to us,” said Evans during a keynote speech at the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston.

“Resistance to change is normal and necessary,” Evans said. “If you are part of some big change in your school and you aren’t expecting resistance, there’s something wrong with your plan.” But he also points out that resistance can be overcome when leaders understand its source and empathize with teachers.

It’s rare for anyone’s first reaction to a call for change to be all positive. Much more often those pushing for change don’t realize that they are devaluing everything colleagues hold dear. Sometimes the call for change makes people feel like everything they’ve been doing up to that point has been wrong and bad for students. Worse, it can sound like a devaluation of how the teacher learned and, by extension, those who taught her. That’s a personal loss. Educators react negatively when they are asked to change not because they don’t want to do what’s best for kids, but because they feel bereaved.

It doesn’t help that education is full of tensions. Teachers are supposed to prepare students for the future, but by default they have to teach the past because they haven’t yet experienced the future. And, while innovation may be the watchword, there are many good qualities inherent to school that educators don’t want to lose.

“It’s a conservator’s occupation,” Evans said. “Tons of what we do in school are about values that don’t, we hope, change. It’s not just about things that do change.”

These tensions inherent to the system mean that what educators most need is not constant change, which can be off-putting and stressful if sustained for too long, but creativity. There is value in much of what schools currently teach, but there’s also plenty of room for creative teaching strategies to reach all students.

CHANGE BEGETS CONFLICT

One of the most difficult things about leading change in schools, according to Evans, is that there often aren’t clear structures to deal with conflict or disagreement. Leaders usually try to sell change as though it will be good for everyone, but that isn’t true. At first, there are winners and losers. In other professions people hash out these types of conflicts, addressing them head-on, but that’s rarely the case in schools. The maxim, “it’s not personal, it’s business,” doesn’t work in schools because teaching is a very personal profession.

“In school, everything is personal, which is how we want it,” Evans said. Many of the most powerful aspects of school community, relationship-building and support develop out of a work environment that is, and must be, personal. “But when it’s only personal it’s very hard to talk about, is it working out, is it not working.” The result is a lot of conflict avoidance.

Evans draws on the work of Roland Barth, who describes the difference between congeniality and collegiality. Barth says congenial relationships are personal and friendly. Positive interactions with colleagues are a crucial part of why teachers come to school each day. And congeniality is a requirement for the even more important, and elusive, collegial relationships that indicate the educators in the building are working together.

“If you take the congenial out of the school, you strip it of all the connective tissue that makes it a decent place to be,” Evans said. “But you can be the most congenial school in America and not talk about teaching and learning.”

Evans acknowledges that creating a school culture that encourages productive conflict, the hashing out of ideas and differing opinions, is particularly hard because the qualities that make someone a great teacher — nurturing, extending beyond themselves, pulling out the best in people — are not typically the characteristics of someone who is skilled at adult conflict. And yet, Evans encourages change leaders to think about structures that allow adults to disagree constructively. Without a forum for disagreement, grumbling about change moves underground and can undermine the whole project.

But no matter how productively colleagues can disagree or how much they work to improve, schools are only one part of the achievement puzzle. Evans wants education leaders, policymakers and the public to be aware that educators can only change so much about a child’s life. What happens outside of school and at home is as important, if not more important, for educational outcomes than anything within the control of teachers.

“The correlation between money and scores is tighter than it has ever been,” Evans said. How well students will perform on standardized tests is much more correlated to income than what school they attend. “It’s possible to be a school that’s doing lots of really amazing things for kids and see slower progress than anyone who is busting a gut hopes for.”

While Evans doesn’t pull punches about the challenge of effectively leading and implementing lasting changes in schools, he has seen it happen. He’s well aware that most school leaders have an “overloaded change agenda,” and that they are trying to implement it on a ridiculously short time line. He advises leaders to choose one big thing to change at a time, and to think carefully about what other things will compete for colleagues’ time.

COPING WITH THE HUMAN SIDE OF CHANGE

Evans shared several tips on how to manage change.

Have a set of non-negotiables. There will always be resistance from staff, but when they understand what is negotiable and what isn’t, it’s much easier to move on and actually start making change. “As long as people imagine that if we keep talking about this it won’t really happen, they don’t have any motivation to do anything,” Evans said.

Change requires the deft use of both pressure and support. Without pressure no one will change; without support all the resistance will go underground, where it often lives in schools. Getting buy-in is important, but it can’t hold up action. “Buy-in is an end state, not a beginning condition,” Evans said. “The bigger the change you want to promote and the more loss it will cause, the less likely people will voluntarily bereave themselves to get into it.”

Evans cites a headmaster he worked with at an elite private school who struck a good balance between pressure and support. The headmaster decided that in order to attract more students the school would start a mini-term between semesters, but he wanted staff input on how to do it well. At first all the meetings focused on whether they should do a mini-term, but the headmaster quickly stepped in and made it clear the school was implementing the change — that was a non-negotiable.

“Almost all of us would rather work with someone who disagrees with us, but who is clear, than with someone who seems to agree with us, but isn’t clear,” Evans said. That’s why it’s important for the leader to draw clear lines and then back them up. He also noted that far too often the people tasked to lead change in schools don’t actually have the authority to apply pressure, which isn’t fair or effective.

Leaders need to tell teachers they are asking to change what, how and why. Evans has watched many leaders explain what staff will be expected to do and how they will do it without offering any explanation of why it is important. “The why is far and away the most important because this is what bears on the motivation of people,” he said. However, it’s also what causes loss, a necessary condition to begin making change. Evans advises leaders be direct and honest about why change is imperative, but to do so in ways that don’t demonize or humiliate those who are experiencing a loss. Leaders can’t let them off the hook, but they can be respectful.

Recognize that flexibility is required. Evans likes to cite a retired school superintendent from Massachusetts, Matt King, who says there’s a difference between problems and dilemmas. Problems can be solved, but dilemmas are revisited. The issues educators face in schools are more akin to dilemmas than problems with easy fixes.

“Most things we’re trying to fix in American education were once the solution to something else,” Evans said. The issues are often cyclical and require patience. And, because the work is difficult and stressful, it’s even more important that change leaders celebrate small successes and compliment staff along the way.

“The evidence is clear that the most productive, the most successful, the most engaged and happiest people are those who have someone who cares about their development, and people who get to do every day what they’re best at instead of dwelling on what they need to change,” Evans said.

A positive school climate helps teachers feel like change is possible. And when school leaders can help teachers build on their strengths, instead of only remediating weaknesses, everyone will feel more competent and able to continue pushing for change.

Robert Evans in the author of two books, “The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation” and “Seven Secrets of the Savvy School Leader: A Guide to Surviving and Thriving.”

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Anxiety Is Taking A Toll On Teens, Their Families And Schools

Anxiety is increasingly becoming a serious issue for American teens. Sixty-two percent of incoming freshman surveyed by the American College Health Association said they’d experienced overwhelming anxiety the year before, up from 50-percent in 2011. High school counselors and parents are increasingly aware of the problem, especially when teens are so anxious they don’t want to go to school.

While teens from many backgrounds experience anxiety, it’s often the more affluent families who find the problem most baffling. Adults aren’t surprised when teens from poor neighborhoods feel anxious about safety or home dynamics, but  it can be harder to understand what’s going on with kids who seem to have everything going for them.

In his New York Times Magazine article, Benoit Denizet-Lewis follows several teens from this group in an effort to understand what anxious teens are feeling and the treatment options available to them. Often their anxiety stems from feeling they aren’t in control of their futures. Denizet-Lewis writes:

Teenagers raised in more affluent communities might seemingly have less to feel anxious about. But Suniya Luthar, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University who has studied distress and resilience in both well-off and disadvantaged teenagers, has found that privileged youths are among the most emotionally distressed young people in America. “These kids are incredibly anxious and perfectionistic,” she says, but there’s “contempt and scorn for the idea that kids who have it all might be hurting.”

For many of these young people, the biggest single stressor is that they “never get to the point where they can say, ‘I’ve done enough, and now I can stop,’ ” Luthar says. “There’s always one more activity, one more A.P. class, one more thing to do in order to get into a top college. Kids have a sense that they’re not measuring up. The pressure is relentless and getting worse.”

Denizet-Lewis goes on to write that many people assume teens feel this stress because of helicopter parents who do too much for their kids. But that assumption may be faulty. Some psychologists are saying the adolescents they see are driving themselves crazy, and many parents don’t know how to help. Denizet-Lewis writes about one teen, Jillian, whose mother struggled with how to treat her:

“The million-dollar question of raising an anxious child is: When is pushing her going to help because she has to face her fears, and when is it going to make the situation worse and she’s going to have a panic attack?” Allison told me. “I feel like I made the wrong decision many times, and it destroyed my confidence as a mother.”

Young people like those profiled in Denizet-Lewis’ article are struggling mightily against their own worst instincts, but perhaps the larger question here is about the messages they are receiving from the world around them. How can educators and parents help kids understand there’s more than one “right” path and multiple ways of being successful in the world?

Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?

Alarmed, Jake’s parents sent him to his primary-care physician, who prescribed Prozac, an antidepressant often given to anxious teenagers. It was the first of many medications that Jake, who asked that his last name not be used, would try over the next year. But none seemed to work – and some made a bad situation worse.

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Vermont Dairy Country with Stonyfield

This post was created in partnership with Stonyfield. All opinions are our own. For giveaway details, see below.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” -Margaret Mead

It’s easy to look at the quaint red barns and grazing cows dotting the rolling hills of Vermont and think everything’s just “perfect”. From the outside, it appears to be. But a change is underway: only 800 small family dairy farms remain in Vermont today, down from about 20,000 just fifty years ago. It’s a difficult business, getting harder every day. But there might be some hope for many of these farms: organic. It’s a loaded word, but it can be a win-win-win-win for small dairy farmers–and for consumers. A few weeks ago, Stonyfield brought me and a group of fellow food and healthy living influencers to Vermont dairy country to give us a taste of what an organic dairy farm looks like. Here’s a recap of our trip.

A farm story

Julie Wolcott and her husband Steve own Green Wind Farm. It’s as picture-perfect as can be: a big, rough wood barn, an 1820’s farmhouse, and rolling hills for acres. Against the fire-red leaves of the trees just starting to turn, there are cows: rich brown, beautiful dairy cows.

What stood out about Julie, among other things, is her deep love for her cows. Each of them has a name, chosen based on a theme for the family: like constellations or woman singers. The cows actually have best friends: other cows that they eat with in the fields and try to get the spot next to in the barn. And there are absolutely “bossy cows” who rule the roost. As we walked with Julie through her fields, we learned her deep care for soil health and the forages that her cows graze on. You are what you eat, and she wants the absolute best for these cows.

Julie’s dairy farm used to be conventional, and she just transitioned to organic with the help of Stonyfield. Her reason? Sustainability for the future. Conventional dairy farmers can have a hard time making ends meet because the price for conventional milk is unpredictable. In contrast, the price for organic milk is higher and more stable. Making the move to organic could help her farm to stay around for the next generation. And it’s not just financial: it’s also better for the soil to avoid the use of harmful pesticides, and better for the cows’ health. The goal of organic is happy, healthy, stress-free cows.

Many farmers are skeptical of transitioning to organic. So was Julie, at first. But she told a group of us, as we stood huddled under ponchos in rain boots in front of her barn, “All my ideas against transitioning to organic were baseless. You need more patience with organic, but the cows are able to resist disease.” One of the other farmers we visited later in the day agreed: his vet bill for his dog was more than for their entire herd of organic cows.

While the weather was gray and dreary, the rain added a certain charm to the day. Julie invited us out of the rain into the warmth of her rustic farmhouse, where her family had prepared a literal farm-to-table brunch with vegetables from Julie’s garden. A frittata with greens and feta, a colorful pile of roasted vegetables, and fresh-baked bread and butter crowded my plate. I washed it down with a warm cup coffee swirled with fresh cream that tasted like the most earthy, nuanced flavor I’ve ever tasted. And of course there was plum gingerbread cake for dessert. As we sat around the table, I felt connected to the land and the people in a way that I still can’t quite describe in words.

(Scroll down for more, after a short photo essay.)

Organic: a win-win-win-win

That evening, we met another couple: Peter and Diana. Together, they purchased a conventional dairy farm that was in ruin, Philo Ridge Farm. Their hard work has transformed it into a beautifully restored, functional organic farm that’s also a space for community events and education. Around a large, candle-lit table in their farmhouse cellar, we dined with them and met another special guest, their friend and Stonyfield founder Gary Hirshberg. (You may have heard his recent feature on the podcast, How I Built This.)

Gary has devoted his life to the idea that sustainable ideas can and do work. He started Stonyfield with the notion that an organic yogurt business could help to clean up the planet and save family farmers. The company is now 30 years old, and he’s proven his thesis: that a business that does good for the planet and good for our health can also make money. As an entrepreneur and fellow world-saver-wannabee, I find this idea endlessly fascinating.

It was around this table that we discussed the win-win-win-win of organic. Instead of a win-lose or a lose-lose, organic dairy has many positives. To distill it down to the most basic, here are the wins: 

1. It’s better for the Earth. Organic soil captures and stores more carbon, helping to mitigate climate change. (A cool video about this.) Water quality and biodiversity are also improved and preserved.
2. It’s better for the cows. Organic cows are happier and healthier, requiring less vet visits than conventional cows.
3. It’s better for your health. Organic products are higher in antioxidants than conventional! They also have less pesticide residue.
4. It’s better for the farmers. Since the prices for organic milk are higher and more stable, organic dairy helps small family farmers survive.
5. It tastes better! And here’s an additional win: organic dairy tastes better! The flavor is nuanced, earthy, and real.

The only downside to organic: it costs a bit more for the consumer. This is something Gary and other thought-leaders in the organic movement are trying to improve. The more people decide to buy organic, the more the prices can become more approachable for the everyday consumer. Currently, organic food is only 5% of total US food sales. How can we increase that number? For me, once we understand the wins, the extra investment can become worth it.

It’s difficult when you’re in the grocery, comparing prices between organic yogurt cartons. But for me, that extra 1 dollar is something that’s worth it. It’s worth it for the win-win-win-win. It doesn’t have to be every time, and every product in your cart doesn’t have to be organic. Simply consider buying organic when possible. And maybe, buying organic when possible can be a small step in the direction of making the world a better place.

Giveaway

We’re giving away 3 months of free yogurt! You’ll get coupons to stock up on all sorts of Stonyfield yogurt. To enter, leave a comment below on about your thoughts on organic dairy—which of the wins are most compelling to you? For an extra entry, follow us on Instagram and tag a friend in the comments who might want 3 months of yogurt. US only. Giveaway ends Friday, October 27 at 8:00 am. Winner will be chosen at random.

 

A Couple Cooks - Recipes for Healthy & Whole Living

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10 Easy Ways to Lose Weight by Not Going to the Gym

A Guide on Vacuum Attachments

Cleaning your carpet isn’t the sole purpose of a vacuum cleaner. In fact, there are several attachments to choose from and each one plays a different role. Here are some examples:

 

Image Source: Flickr

Crevice Tool

With its skinny shape and angled tip, this one gets into the tight spots: corners, along baseboards, around radiators or vents, between sofa cushions, and more. You can also use it for cleaning refrigerator coils or de-linting the inner workings of your dryer. Source: GoodHousekeeping

Dust Brush

A dust brush attachment typically has a circular brush head and is especially effective at picking up dust and particles without scratching surfaces. It works particularly well on window blinds, shelves and wooden surfaces. Source: ABowlFullOfLemons

Upholstery Brush

This extension resembles the vacuum brush but its bristles are more brittle and quite long, making it ideal for working on carpets. Similarly, it is essential to force soap and cleaners into furniture and carpets to get rid of all dirt, odor and stains.

Where it is used: This extension is helpful when getting rid of stains from furniture or shampooing your carpets. You can also use it to remove debris from your couches and armchairs. Source: VacuumsGuide

Stair Cleaner Attachment

Stair cleaner attachments come in many different styles. But most feature a wide, pivoting opening at the end of an extended hose, allowing you to clean around moldings while keeping the standing vacuum at the bottom of the stairs. Source: ApartmentTherapy

Bare Floor Attachment

Extend your vacuum’s usefulness to the kitchen or your hardwood floors. A bare floor attachment allows your vacuum to handle jobs on surfaces it may not have been designed for. The standard vacuum function is for carpets and a bare floor attachment becomes necessary should you want to use it otherwise. You will never have to use a broom again once you get a bare floor attachment. Source: Ebay

Keeping your carpet clean provides great benefits for you and your family. Call us today!

The post A Guide on Vacuum Attachments appeared first on Curlys Carpet Repair.

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Pumpkin Goat Cheese Baked Gnocchi

 We’re better together. I’ve started doing a bit more public speaking on business, creative entrepreneurship, and networking. One thing I like to discuss is Scarcity versus Abundance. The scarcity mentality is a belief that there’s a limited amount of resources (money, opportunity, recognition). In this mindset, everything becomes driven by fear. It’s difficult to be happy for other people’s success. On the other hand, the abundance mindset is that there’s enough to go around for everyone. People with this mindset see others in the same arena as friends instead of foes, and are genuinely happy for their successes. Author Stephen Covey summarizes this well in his famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (which, though it was written in 1968, is highly applicable today):

“The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life. People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit—even with those who help in the production. They also have a hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people…They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. 

The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth or security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in the sharing of prestige, recognition, profits and decision-making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity.”

It’s interesting, with the scarcity mentality: why is it such a natural first instinct for many humans? Perhaps because as Covey says above, the abundance mentality flows from a deep inner sense of personal worth or security. And finding that inner security can take time to build. For me, I’ve found the easiest way to cultivate the abundance mentality is to be around other people who practice the abundance mentality.

This pumpkin goat cheese baked gnocchi is a recipe I brought to a potluck recently. The event was for a group a friend and I started called Indy Women in Food. We created this group under the notion: We are better together. It’s a group of women entrepreneurs working in food in the greater Indianapolis area. Instead of competing with each other, the goal of the group is to lift each other up: to encourage one another, spread the word about our achievements, and collaborate on shared passion projects. In short: it’s to practice the Abundance mentality in action. And you know what? Being around others with the Abundance mentality makes it 100% easier to mirror yourself.

The world of food blogging is another place where the Abundance mentality is part of the culture. Instead of a feeling of competition, “We are better together” is the mantra of this community. Food bloggers and influencers are some of the most generous, encouraging people I know. So it is only fitting that this pumpkin baked gnoochi was created for a virtual party with dozens of other food blogs to celebrate fall. Or really, to celebrate pumpkin recipes! It’s a Virtual Pumpkin Party hosted by Sara from Cake Over Steak, who I’d nominate as an incredible practicer of the abundance mentality. (In particular she’s been an encourager of our podcast from the beginning, which has been a huge support to us.) Sara has organized over 90 blogs to post pumpkin recipes on the same day. To see the entire list of pumpkin recipes, head to the  Virtual Pumpkin Party page.

Sometimes you stumble upon things that are accidentally better than you bargained. This pumpkin baked gnocchi turned out better than I was hoping. Of course, Alex and I stand behind all of the recipes we post in this space, but this one has become a favorite. Gooey gnocchi drenched in savory pumpkin sauce with creamy pockets of goat cheese is like a cozy fall hug. (Hygge, anyone?) We’ve made it quite a few times already, and I find myself sneaking bites from the pan after I think I’m done. We hope you’ll find it as tasty and cozy as we do. And if you’re looking for more pumpkin recipes, here are 93 more. Because we are better together.

Looking for pumpkin recipes? 

Who’s not looking for pumpkin recipes in the fall? Here are a few of our favorite pumpkin recipes we’ve made:

• Pumpkin Spice Cashew Energy Bars
• Pumpkin Pecan Baked Steel Cut Oatmeal
• Pumpkin Pecan Parfaits
• Pumpkin Scones with Maple Cream
• Pumpkin Pie Mousse Shooters
• Pumpkin Spice Almond Butter

Did you make this recipe?

If you make our pumpkin goat cheese baked gnocchi, we’d love to hear how it turned out. Leave a comment below or share a picture on Instagram and mention @acouplecooks.

This recipe is…

Vegetarian. For gluten-free, find gluten-free gnocchi.

Pumpkin Goat Cheese Baked Gnocchi

 

Print

by: a Couple Cooks

Serves: 4

What You Need

• 3 garlic cloves
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 15-ounce can pumpkin purée
• 1½ cups vegetable broth
• ½ teaspoon chili powder
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ cup Greek yogurt
• 16-ounce package gnocchi, plain or whole wheat
• 4 ounces goat cheese
• 2 teaspoons fresh sage, thinly sliced (about 5 medium leaves)

What To Do

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
2. Mince the garlic. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-low heat; add the garlic and sauté for 1 to 2 minutes, or just until the garlic is fragrant but not browned.
3. Carefully add the pumpkin purée and broth to the skillet and stir to fully combine. Add the chili powder, nutmeg, red pepper flakes, kosher salt, and several grinds of black pepper. Cover and bring it to a high simmer, bubbling constantly. then cook for 10 to 15 minutes until thickened. Once thickened, place ½ cup of the sauce in a small bowl and mix it with the Greek yogurt, then add the mixture back to the pan and stir to combine. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.
4. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Once boiling, add the gnocchi and boil until the gnocchi float, about 2 to 3 minutes. Drain in a colander.
5. Place the gnocchi and finished sauce in a 9 x 9" baking dish. Top with dollops of goat cheese and sliced sage. Bake 15 minutes until bubbly.

Notes

Sauce inspired by Budget Bytes

3.5.3226

 

A Couple Cooks - Recipes for Healthy & Whole Living

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Black Cat Cupcakes

Treat someone with these kitty cat cupcakes for Halloween. They’re decorated with cookies and candy, making them a purrfectly adorable spooky sweet!

Chocolate cupcakes are the way to go for these. You can use this recipe.

Frost the cupcakes with chocolate frosting and then dip the tops in a small bowl filled with black sanding sugar to give them a shimmering coat.

Such a sweet face with those big eyes and that bright yellow button nose.

Oh those. The noses are simply candy corn inserted into the cupcake so only the yellow shows.

And the rest of the feline features are easy, too.

Kitty cat recap:
Fur coat: black sanding sugar
Button noses: candy corn
Ears: chocolate wafer cookies, cut into triangles
Mouths: Jumbo confetti sprinkles, pink would make them look like tongues
Whiskers: Orange jimmies
Eyes: Gumdrops, rolled flat on wax paper and cut with a teardrop cookie cutter
Pupils: Black M&M’s attached to the gumdrops with melted white candy coating as glue and then dotted on top, too.

Super sweet. Super Cute!

Hope you enjoy and have a Happy Happy Halloween!

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