What Does 2000 Calories Look Like?

It's easier than you might think to rack up 2000 calories, especially when you eat out, and especially when you eat fast food.  Eating healthier, home-cooked, wholesome meals can cut your calorie intake by half, easily!  It also helps if you eat some green stuff... just sayin'.

7 Ingredients Book Project

As a pre-service teacher I spend one day per week in a middle school classroom as a pre-intern. My cooperating teacher (CT) is the teacher I shadow in his/her classroom. This semester, my CT is great. I was blessed with a wonderful CT last semester as well, but this CT has the same teaching style I see myself falling into.

My CT this semester introduced me to a project she created for students to analyze books they've read, and I'm calling it The 7 Ingredients Project.  I think this project is SO AWESOME that I want to share it. 

So here it is:

Book project: 7 ingredients. Students pick a recipe with at least 7 ingredients and/or functions. Each ingredient has a specific role in the recipe (eggs bind ingredients together, preheating the oven heats ingredients up, etc). Students compare 7 ingredients and/or functions to characters and events in their book.

Example: preheating the oven may be compared to an event that moves the plot towards the climax, and eggs might be compared to a character who furthers the plot by bringing two or more characters together.

My CT has resources for her students to look up the functions of different ingredients, and I'll post those as an update to this post when I get them from her.

Food Inc.

If you haven't watched this documentary and you have a conscience, I suggest you watch Food, Inc.  A co-worker suggested this documentary to me months ago and I finally came across it on Netflix the other night, so I decided to sit through it.  It's only been a few days, but I can tell you this film has already radically changed the way I view the economy, food, politics, and many other things.


I think part of this change in view has at least a little to do with my relatively recent changes in spirituality.  Paganism is an earth-centered religion that values all life.  Some Pagans take this to mean that they shouldn't consume meat, however I believe there is a natural life-cycle and a natural food chain, and humans are omnivores, meant to eat both meat and greens.  I eat meat, and I like the taste of meat, but I am also thankful to the animal who died so I can take in its nutrients.

For a long time I was ignorant to the food industry and it's horrifying practices, and part of me wanted to be.  I watched the documentary Supersize Me when it came out and I swore off all fast food except Subway for a month, but I quickly returned.  I heard about PETA when I was in middle school or high school and I was one of those kids that changed it to People Eating Tasty Animals.  I grew up with a grandfather who was a full-time farmer, and I never heard anything nasty about his career or his farm, so I just figured the mistreatment of animals was all a myth created by vegetarian activists fighting for their own gains.  I was wrong.

Not only are the animals being mistreated, but the farmers, factory workers, and butchers are all being abused as well.  These people can't afford to fight these large corporations so they end up getting the shaft and they're stuck either working in unsanitary conditions, in piles of debt, or against their own ethics just to make a small living.

The good news is that there is an alternative.  Buy local, cook more at home, and buy organic.  If this really gets under your skin like it does mine, write to your congressmen and women and tell them this is a subject that you're passionate about and you want change.