chicken and may day

food experiment of the week... roasting chicken! i've been into the idea of roasting whole birds (and otherwise being involved in more steps of getting the food to my plate) to have more of a connection to the food, and save money. i also threw in some sweet potato, carrot and onion, in a bath of orange juice, honey, oil, cumin and garlic. mmmmm. and, now i'll have lots of bones and junk to make more stock! i froze the chicken scraps and will make stock after i save some more veggie scraps... should have been doing this all along!

other lesson learned: next time, roast veggies longer while carving chicken. or cut them smaller.













in other food news, i made more bread last weekend. this time i did the full recipe so it made 2 loaves. i froze one, and reheated it today. turns out reheating in the toaster oven was not a good idea - the top got a little burned. maybe next time i will make 3 or 4 smaller loaves. it is best in the first couple days anyway.



in other, non-food news.... drum roll please.... i'm going to be in the May Day parade!

A parent/board member and teacher at my school were interested in organizing some kind of action as a response to the recent killings of three young people, all transgender and of color.


Ideas of a march or other demonstration eventually turned into joining a part of the MayDay parade called Change of Heart, which urges us to take responsibility for making change in society.

Today I went to rehearsal for my section, along with 4 students and their families. Come see us next Sunday! (details)

We also did an anti-hate teach-in at school on Thursday. All the classes address the issue in an accessible way for the students - so the middle school students learned about these recent crimes and discussed the intersection of race, gender, and sexual identity issues, while in kindergarten and first grade we teamed up to read this beautiful book, talk about valuing all people, and decorate posters of a kid-friendly version I did of the Declaration of Human Responsibilities (which inspired our MayDay section) ... good guidelines for everyone! Here's the text of the posters:

We value everyone. Every person is important.

So, we should...
1) Treat everyone well (No matter how they look, dress or talk, where they come from, or what their family is like. Families are groups of people who love each other.)
2) Take care of each other
3) Not do things to other people that we would not like done to us
4) Respect life
5) Solve conflicts in a peaceful, non-violent way
6) Protect animals and the environment
7) Be fair and tell the truth
8) Do our best

UPDATE: Dinner of champions! (FYI... i take all these photos with my laptop, which is why they are on the weird side of lighting and framing... i am not trying to be artsy or anything.)