Jill, Derick & the Kids: Moving On!!

[QuinnInND]

6 hours ago, Sew Sumi said:

I can't stand mushrooms either, although I can tolerate them on pizza.

My husband is the same way. 

[latetotheparty]

1 hour ago, Jynnan tonnix said:

I adore anything mushroom as well...I made some last night for a "munchie dinner" while Mr. Jyn, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter were over to watch the Patriots game (well, granddaughter doesn't exactly watch the game at 9 months, but I suspect than in another year she will probably have a better grasp of football than I do to this day - so I get to play in the kitchen while they watch).

This was one of my favorite stuffed mushroom recipes, which I adapted from an appetizer pizza recipe, and is also great on baguette slices or whatever...saute thinly sliced onion with butter, salt, pepper and finely chopped fresh rosemary (though I find that a good sprinkle of poultry seasoning works just as well or better), adding in a bit of sherry toward the end and letting it cook down. Fill precooked mushroom caps with onion, then top with gorgonzola or other blue cheese and return to oven until cheese is melty.

I love what sherry does to a dish. I’m 

[awaken]

The ads I keep getting on this thread are for     Mug shots and arrest warrants!

[Love2dance]

9 hours ago, ChiCricket said:

I guess I'm the only person who hates mushrooms? Something about their texture grosses me out. 🤢

(I obviously have food issues)

Raises my hand. I don’t like mushrooms in any form...marinated, sautéed, in salads, etc. Mr. Dance, however, loves them, so he gets every morsel if we are out to eat and they are in my order.

[ChiCricket]

1 hour ago, latetotheparty said:

I love what sherry does to a dish. I’m 

drunk?😊

[queenanne]

9 hours ago, Annb67 said:

BeePaw looks like he wants to pop someone in the face. I feel ya BeePaw. 

I voted it as a scowl myself.  lol.  "Wait, you're going to take my pic---"

[Jynnan tonnix]

7 hours ago, ChiCricket said:

drunk?😊

Laughed out loud at this, but really am curious as to what the rest of @latetotheparty 's sentence was going to be :)

[latetotheparty]

OMG stupid iPad added an extra word!  Not drunk!  (Alas) 😄

[Mindthinkr]

17 hours ago, Christina87 said:

Come to NC!!! We have a teacher shortage, and people are easily able to stay home and then come back in a few years. Unfortunately, we have the teacher shortage because we are 49th in pay, don't allow unions, basically sign all our rights away to be employed, don't have tenure, don't have masters pay, and can be fired at will without cause. We also don't get compensated for any after school events we do, and teacher assistants can't even get comp time. Music teachers don't get comp time for any of our after school rehearsals or concerts because "it's part of our job." We also have a horrible pay scale for admins, and a lot of them are making less than teachers  

Sounds like a paradise, doesn't it? 😜

Just wanted to add that in my daughter’s area they don’t have the funds to pay for school bus drivers. They have assigned every teacher and assistant a two week time slot that they have to drive a route. This means getting the correct license (on your own dime), getting up extra early to begin the route at 5:30 am and not getting home until 6 pm after the bus is returned and cleaned for the next day. No extra pay, comp time or anything else for this extra little responsibility. I find that this is totally taking advantage of the teachers who then have to go home, work on their teaching plans, grade papers and then try not to collapse of exhaustion at 8 pm. (In my daughter’s case there is also dinner to be cooked, sports to ferry the children to and for others it also means finding extra childcare at their own expense.) 

P.S. Who washes and dries their mushrooms? I use a damp paper towel to remove any visible dirt because washing makes them slimy. 

Edited January 15, 2019 by Mindthinkr

[McManda]

12 hours ago, Totally said:

That’s what we call grilling ... I thought broil had something to do with boiling or oil😳

Boiling and oil is deep frying.

[dariafan]

20 hours ago, Jeeves said:

A decent recipe, but a horrible photo. Can't she put them on a *clean* white plate to photograph them? Or clean the random bits of stuff off the green surface before she takes the shot? Yeesh.

Presentation is everything 

I honestly hope she pulls her hair back when making her #habdmade “ food”

[galaxychaser]

1 hour ago, Mindthinkr said:

Just wanted to add that in my daughter’s area they don’t have the funds to pay for school bus drivers. They have assigned every teacher and assistant a two week time slot that they have to drive a route. This means getting the correct license (on your own dime), getting up extra early to begin the route at 5:30 am and not getting home until 6 pm after the bus is returned and cleaned for the next day. No extra pay, comp time or anything else for this extra little responsibility. I find that this is totally taking advantage of the teachers who then have to go home, work on their teaching plans, grade papers and then try not to collapse of exhaustion at 8 pm. (In my daughter’s case there is also dinner to be cooked, sports to ferry the children to and for others it also means finding extra childcare at their own expense.) 

P.S. Who washes and dries their mushrooms? I use a damp paper towel to remove any visible dirt because washing makes them slimy. 

I wash and peel my mushrooms. My favorite veggie. I put them in everything.

[QuinnInND]

1 hour ago, dariafan said:

Presentation is everything 

I honestly hope she pulls her hair back when making her #habdmade “ food”

I don't think any of the Duggars pull their hair back when they're making food. Every time they show them making anything, it's hair everywhere. After all, they can't show off how "Godly" they are when their hair isn't on display for everyone to see. 

[Picture It. Sicily]

Jana tied hers back in her bread photos. Jana's bread post is everything Jill's recipe posts aren't. 

[Christina87]

8 hours ago, Mindthinkr said:

Just wanted to add that in my daughter’s area they don’t have the funds to pay for school bus drivers. They have assigned every teacher and assistant a two week time slot that they have to drive a route. This means getting the correct license (on your own dime), getting up extra early to begin the route at 5:30 am and not getting home until 6 pm after the bus is returned and cleaned for the next day. No extra pay, comp time or anything else for this extra little responsibility. I find that this is totally taking advantage of the teachers who then have to go home, work on their teaching plans, grade papers and then try not to collapse of exhaustion at 8 pm. (In my daughter’s case there is also dinner to be cooked, sports to ferry the children to and for others it also means finding extra childcare at their own expense.) 

P.S. Who washes and dries their mushrooms? I use a damp paper towel to remove any visible dirt because washing makes them slimy. 

This is just totally outrageous and disgusting!!!!! I wonder what happens to coaches who coach three sports. I guess they get the joy of driving the last two weeks of the year, when the sports are done. That is absolutely the worst thing I have ever heard. Why can't they at least get comp time? Of course, all the teacher workdays are probably capped, so they can't take them off, but they could at least use them on snow days! At a minimum, they should say snow days are free days off for teachers in exchange for the bus driving. Also, what happens on a day a teacher's sick during their time? It's not like regular bus drivers, who know other experienced drivers to fill in. I never thought I would hear a worse idea in education than the ones I had experienced, but this takes the cake! And two weeks is so short that by the time you learned the route, your stint would be up. Not to mention that absolute lack of control the rotating teachers would have over the behavior on the bus! Most of the writeups we had at my school were actually bus related. Imagine having teachers on there who don't know the students, don't have seating charts, and are unsure how to handle some of the situations. It's so hard as a beginning teacher, because you don't know what's "normal," and what to let them get away with. For instance, I let the kids write on my board my first year, thinking, "it's not a big deal. What harm could it do?" They would write me cute messages, and I'd smile and erase them at the end of the day. Then, it turned into chaos. I went through sooooo many sets of markers, as the kids stole them, they dried up, or the kids purposefully broke them. They started erasing what I had written, and sometimes added mean things directed at another student. I also learned that no other teacher let their students do this, so it branded my class as the "lenient, anything goes" one, which led to discipline problems later on. With teachers changing on the buses every two weeks, they won't know what behaviors are normal and which ones need to be stopped, so discipline will be unbearable! Worst idea ever. 

[GeeGolly]

9 hours ago, Mindthinkr said:

Just wanted to add that in my daughter’s area they don’t have the funds to pay for school bus drivers. They have assigned every teacher and assistant a two week time slot that they have to drive a route. This means getting the correct license (on your own dime), getting up extra early to begin the route at 5:30 am and not getting home until 6 pm after the bus is returned and cleaned for the next day. No extra pay, comp time or anything else for this extra little responsibility. I find that this is totally taking advantage of the teachers who then have to go home, work on their teaching plans, grade papers and then try not to collapse of exhaustion at 8 pm. (In my daughter’s case there is also dinner to be cooked, sports to ferry the children to and for others it also means finding extra childcare at their own expense.) 

P.S. Who washes and dries their mushrooms? I use a damp paper towel to remove any visible dirt because washing makes them slimy. 

There's no teacher's union fighting this? Those poor teachers!

[Ohiopirate02]

36 minutes ago, GeeGolly said:

There's no teacher's union fighting this? Those poor teachers!

Teacher's Unions are practically illegal on North Carolina since teachers are not allowed to strike.   

[DangerousMinds]

1 hour ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

Teacher's Unions are practically illegal on North Carolina since teachers are not allowed to strike.   

If all the teachers decided to do so, what would the school district do? Sure they could fire them all but then what?

[Ohiopirate02]

19 minutes ago, DangerousMinds said:

If all the teachers decided to do so, what would the school district do? Sure they could fire them all but then what?

In theory all the teachers would be arrested and possibly fired for going on strike.   I really don't see a massive statewide strike ever happening because of the politics of all the different counties in the state.  Striking would give too much ammunition to the GOP at the state level.   They would slash the education budget in a heartbeat and with their veto-proof majority nothing could stop them.  

[Christina87]

It really is that bad in NC. We literally have zero rights. I quit because my principal could just fire me because he doesn't like me, and he threatened to do it. He told me he would give me developing (lowest score on the evaluation) even though he knows I'm doing proficient work because he didn't like me and there was nothing I could do about it. Plus all the contracts are for one year only, and they're the same contrasts you would have gotten as a first year teacher back in the days of tenure, when you would have moved to a better contract after three years. He gloated to me that I could never get tenure, so he could do whatever he wanted. I would rather quit than have a firing on my record! Conveniently, he also cut chorus (shows how much he cared about my program!) so thankfully, that meant I could tell people that's why I wasn't working there anymore. I'm so glad I can put "budget cuts" for why I left on my job applications, and my AP is my reference and will back me up!

I am sooooo glad I left too. My friends from there all say it's been a horrible, stressful year, and several of the best teachers have been targeted, and are leaving mid-year! It's just shocking how he has run it into the ground. He also expects them to do a ton of extra work for no more pay, and calls them lazy and threatens them if they don't do it perfectly. I can't even imagine the environment being MORE stressful. Every day going to work from about march to June of last year, I cried all the way there and felt like I was lying down in the middle of the interstate, just waiting to get killed. I felt stupid driving there, like prey just seeking out a predator and lying like a buffet in its path. It felt like an abusive relationship I couldn't leave. He called me in so many times after school to yell at me about dumb stuff (like when he heard we played a game in drama class where the kids pretended to be annoying, and he thought that was "not nice"), and I'd go home crying, often having to cancel social events, or even not go home for some weekends that I wanted to! Because teachers have NO rights in NC and principals have absolute power, this can happen. I even went to HR with a ten-page letter of all the policies he had broken, and HR insisted I just "didn't understand" and "misunderstood" everything he did. My friend's mom worked for a large bank and got a $30,000 settlement out of a bully  boss, but you get NOTHING as a teacher in NC but the door hitting you in your rear on the way out. 

I do not miss that at all. Even after talking to my friend about how stressed they are, I felt palpable anxiety for at least an hour or so! It's like PTSD, I tell you!

haha maybe we ought to take this to small talk, but y'all...education in NC is in a horrible condition!

Edited January 16, 2019 by Christina87

[floridamom]

I truly am shocked reading here about the working conditions for teachers in NC. I thought we had federal labor laws that protected employees? I'm appalled. How could the state/local government allow this to happen? What about the school board? This should be illegal in every state of the union. 

[frenchtoast]

6 hours ago, Christina87 said:

haha maybe we ought to take this to small talk, but y'all...education in NC is in a horrible condition!

Yes please! It's fascinating but the discussion of education/teachers in the various states should continue in Small Talk please. 

[Barb23]

On 1/14/2019 at 2:27 PM, ginger90 said:

 

Derick's head looks like he belongs on a JibJab card.

I've made spaghetti pie a few times & it's pretty good. I haven't compared my recipe to Jill's which is actually Cathy's recipe (hence the absence of cream of whatever soup.)

ETA:  please seat me with the non-mushroom eaters.  The stuffed mushroom recipes always look so good but I just can't with the mushrooms.....

Edited January 17, 2019 by Barb23

[Westiepeach]

I make a spaghetti pie, but mine is actually good... no Cream of Gac soup. All fresh ingredients in my version!

[latetotheparty]

1 hour ago, Westiepeach said:

I make a spaghetti pie, but mine is actually good... no Cream of Gac soup. All fresh ingredients in my version!

Mine too!

[Oldernowiser]

I’ve been married for thirty years. In all that time, I have NEVER referred to my husband as my “hubby.”

Makes my skin crawl.

[latetotheparty]

5 minutes ago, Oldernowiser said:

I’ve been married for thirty years. In all that time, I have NEVER referred to my husband as my “hubby.”

Makes my skin crawl.

I hate “hubby” with a passion. It’s so 50s. And not in a good way. 

[Sew Sumi]

1 minute ago, latetotheparty said:

I hate “hubby” with a passion. It’s so 50s. And not in a good way. 

My MIL got married in 1954. She has NEVER referred to my late FIL as her hubby. I got married in 1994 and can say the same. 

I suspect Jill doesn't see "wifey" as ironic, either.

[Mollie]

On 1/14/2019 at 9:27 PM, ginger90 said:

 

I guess we may all assume that Derick's law school grades were pitiful. If he made it to the top 1/2 of his class, he would have boasted about it.  Instead, he says nothing. 

[dariafan]

12 hours ago, Oldernowiser said:

I’ve been married for thirty years. In all that time, I have NEVER referred to my husband as my “hubby.”

Makes my skin crawl.

You also aren’t stuck in a teenage girls mindset :) 

12 hours ago, Oldernowiser said:

I’ve been married for thirty years. In all that time, I have NEVER referred to my husband as my “hubby.”

Makes my skin crawl.

You also aren’t stuck in a teenage girls mindset :) 

[jukie]

21 years and nope never called him hubby, mind you I used to call him Honey waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back you know when you used to gaze into their eyes & be lost dreaming of being whisked away on a white stallion galloping along the oceans edge with your hair flowing behind you......1 month into the relationship I called him by crude names (nothing endearing) & he would sit on the couch, fart and scratch and here we are 21 years later.

Edited January 17, 2019 by jukie

[Natalie68]

On 1/14/2019 at 12:38 PM, Christina87 said:

Come to NC!!! We have a teacher shortage, and people are easily able to stay home and then come back in a few years. Unfortunately, we have the teacher shortage because we are 49th in pay, don't allow unions, basically sign all our rights away to be employed, don't have tenure, don't have masters pay, and can be fired at will without cause. We also don't get compensated for any after school events we do, and teacher assistants can't even get comp time. Music teachers don't get comp time for any of our after school rehearsals or concerts because "it's part of our job." We also have a horrible pay scale for admins, and a lot of them are making less than teachers  

Sounds like a paradise, doesn't it? 😜

Sounds to me like NC needs to do something about this big time!  I am guessing you don't write the help wanted ads for teachers there.  HA!  I don't know why ANYONE teaches in NC if its that bad.  Education is so important and why there hasn't been a huge uproar from the parents is confusing.  All I know is if I went to school to become a teacher and had loans etc that needed to be paid off, this and other states like it would be the last place I would choose for employment.  That sucks for the teachers and the kids.

On 1/14/2019 at 5:54 PM, Jynnan tonnix said:

I adore anything mushroom as well...I made some last night for a "munchie dinner" while Mr. Jyn, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter were over to watch the Patriots game (well, granddaughter doesn't exactly watch the game at 9 months, but I suspect than in another year she will probably have a better grasp of football than I do to this day - so I get to play in the kitchen while they watch).

This was one of my favorite stuffed mushroom recipes, which I adapted from an appetizer pizza recipe, and is also great on baguette slices or whatever...saute thinly sliced onion with butter, salt, pepper and finely chopped fresh rosemary (though I find that a good sprinkle of poultry seasoning works just as well or better), adding in a bit of sherry toward the end and letting it cook down. Fill precooked mushroom caps with onion, then top with gorgonzola or other blue cheese and return to oven until cheese is melty.

YUM!

[Henri205]

Mushroom lover!  Although tend to stuff them with turkey sausage and other veggies....the sausage may negate the veggies. We don’t have them often. 😒

And spaghetti pie can be good. Lose the cream of sodium soup, make a nice marinara with tofu or ground turkey, onions garlic and green peppers.  Use Neufchâtel cheese with chives between the spaghetti ‘crust’ and the sauce. The crust is easy cooked spaghetti mixed with an egg or two, Parmesan, form a crust and bake til crusty and golden.  Then add the sauce and maybe some fresh mozzarella. Bake until golden and then broil (grill for my British friends) for a crust. Let it sit a bit and serve with a salad. Enjoy. It is good. 

[libgirl2]

16 hours ago, latetotheparty said:

I hate “hubby” with a passion. It’s so 50s. And not in a good way. 

I might call mine "hubby" tonight and see what he does. 

[Christina87]

4 hours ago, Natalie68 said:

Sounds to me like NC needs to do something about this big time!  I am guessing you don't write the help wanted ads for teachers there.  HA!  I don't know why ANYONE teaches in NC if its that bad.  Education is so important and why there hasn't been a huge uproar from the parents is confusing.  All I know is if I went to school to become a teacher and had loans etc that needed to be paid off, this and other states like it would be the last place I would choose for employment.  That sucks for the teachers and the kids.

YUM!

You are so right! Sadly, I don't think most parents know much about it, and we have a legislature that just doesn't care. I remember that they cut masters pay and tenure the year I started teaching, and I thought there was no way that bill would pass. I was like, "lots of members of the legislature have moms, sisters, wives, etc that are teachers. Certainly they won't vote for this!" To my surprise, it passed, with no sign of being repealed anytime soon! We had a protest in Raleigh in may, but it did no good. It's just awful. Makes me really lean towards never going back!

[Natalie68]

13 minutes ago, Christina87 said:

You are so right! Sadly, I don't think most parents know much about it, and we have a legislature that just doesn't care. I remember that they cut masters pay and tenure the year I started teaching, and I thought there was no way that bill would pass. I was like, "lots of members of the legislature have moms, sisters, wives, etc that are teachers. Certainly they won't vote for this!" To my surprise, it passed, with no sign of being repealed anytime soon! We had a protest in Raleigh in may, but it did no good. It's just awful. Makes me really lean towards never going back!

That is just so sad!  Kids need a good start and schools won't be able to attract the best teachers and are pushing teachers that care out because they don't see the value.  Teachers have to do so much more than teach.  I never understood why childcare folks and teachers are paid so little.  Mind boggling!  

[ginger90]

New blog post:

 

 

Easy Potato & Kale Soup

Jan 17, 2019 | Recipes | 0 

I love soups with kale and that are easy to throw together! This soup is creamy, flavorful and has a little bit of spice to it, but it can be toned down by decreasing the amount of red and black pepper. Both of my boys eat this soup like the recipe says, but they did comment about it being a little spicy.

1 pound ground turkey

1 T Italian seasoning

1 t. red pepper

2 t. black pepper

1 t. sage

3 T. garlic

1/2 stick butter (1/4 cup)

6 cups whole milk

1 quart chicken broth

4 medium potatoes, scrubbed, diced

1 onion, peeled, diced

4 cups kale, chopped into bite sized pieces 

salt (to taste)

In 5 quart pot, cook ground turkey, Italian seasoning, red and black pepper and sage. Add remaining ingredients (except kale) and bring to a boil, then turn to low and simmer 20-30 min., until potatoes are soft but not mushy. Add kale and cook another 10 min. Add salt to taste. Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/231287/sausage-potato-and-kale-soup/

 

[beckie]

The recipe says her boys will eat that soup? And I didn't realize Sam was talking yet. 

[Albanyguy]

3 minutes ago, beckie said:

The recipe says her boys will eat that soup? And I didn't realize Sam was talking yet. 

And he was able to tell her that it was too spicy? 

I don't believe for a minute that she "loves kale" or that she makes this soup regularly for "her boys". She probably heard someone say that kale is healthy and trendy, so she went looking for a recipe to "adapt". This soup actually looks a lot better that the crap she usually posts, but I thought that a 1/4 pound of butter was a bit too much (a couple of tablespoons would have been enough). I checked out the recipe she linked to, and sure enough the original recipe didn't contain any butter at all and called for low-sodium chicken broth. Good job adapting there, Jill.

[awaken]

Real food again!  What’s gotten into Jill?

[MrsClaus]

21 hours ago, Sew Sumi said:

My MIL got married in 1954. She has NEVER referred to my late FIL as her hubby. I got married in 1994 and can say the same. 

I suspect Jill doesn't see "wifey" as ironic, either.

Wifey will always be a Judy Blume book to me.

[latetotheparty]

Hey Jill!  Olive Garden called. They want their soup back. 

[QuinnInND]

Ugh. 

[Christina87]

No way!!! Derick got takeout!!!!!! He really went above and beyond!!!!!!!!

If she had explained WHY this was special (I.e. They're poor, they're on a diet (ha!), the sushi place is waaaaay out of the way) I might buy it, but it's just Jill with pitifully low expectations, as always. 

No way!!! Derick got takeout!!!!!! He really went above and beyond!!!!!!!!

If she had explained WHY this was special (I.e. They're poor, they're on a diet (ha!), the sushi place is waaaaay out of the way) I might buy it, but it's just Jill with pitifully low expectations, as always. 

[galaxychaser]

I am going to make that! I have all the ingredients in the house. Except no butter. 

[cmr2014]

30 minutes ago, QuinnInND said:

Ugh. 

You know I was just going to say this looks good, but no.

My initial thought was that even though it was takeout, they had plated it nicely, and had at least made an effort. Then I looked closely and saw the reflection of the clear plastic lids on the plates. The takeout place did a nicer job of plating and presenting their food. Jill and Derick couldn't even be bothered to take the lids off before taking a picture.

[Sew Sumi]

Typical Jill composition.

[DangerousMinds]

She just took a recipe right off the AllRecipes site!

16 minutes ago, Sew Sumi said:

Typical Jill composition.

It is so painful to read!

[Bayarea4]

I don't know why, but it grinds my gears when married women with children talk about going on a "date night." Hey Jill, guess what? You're married. You're not dating. You've never dated. You don't even know what dating is. And eating takeout food at home isn't a "date."

/rant

[JoanArc]

10 hours ago, awaken said:

Real food again!  What’s gotten into Jill?

Jana's getting attention!