The Spelling Bee of Salt Lake County

Last weekend, I went to see my niece compete in the regional spelling bee.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I am a recovering spelling addict former spelling bee champ and I thought it would be kind of interesting to be on the other side at a spelling bee--the audience.

I know.  It was a weird thought.  And somewhat misguided.  In fact, it wasn't until the morning of the bee that I wondered what I was doing.  Unfortunately, I was expected at the bee (though I'm sure my sister-in-law (here on out known as SIL) would not have held it against me had I chosen not to drive the 45 minutes out there) and so I geared up  and went.

And I was glad to be there.  Not only to support my niece, but more importantly, to people watch.

(It's a skill that's taken years to master, but I LOVE to people watch).

The first thing that struck me was that there seemed to be a lot more girls than boys competing.  Secondly, some people are always late, no matter what.  I mean, your kid won the spelling bee held at their school and now they have the chance to compete to go to the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. but you can't bother to make it there on time at 9 am?  I know it's nerdy and weird and all sorts of other not-so-nice adjectives, but your kid is the best kid in their school at something.  And good spellers are hard to come by, but studies have shown (maybe) that they get paid the more as adults as compared to a Jr. Jazz basketball player or whatever your excuse is for being late.  Perhaps you could put forth a little effort.

I'm just sayin'.

So my niece went totally against my advise and got seated in the #1 spot.

(Actually, they picked it for her and I laughed at the probability of that happening).

(There were roughly 63 people in my bee and 42 in hers.  The probability of us both picking #1 is something like 2%.  Hello.  Welcome to my brain.)

However, she spent a lot of time taunting  asking me why being #1 was so bad.  Like every time between rounds.  And it dawned on me that I wasn't exactly forthcoming in my advice.  It should be noted that in Elementary School, I was SO shy that I peed my pants during the Kindergarten class picture.  And I didn't even have to stand up in front of the entire school and spell words from my memory.  It was because I was too shy to interrupt the teacher and the photographer to ask if I could use the restroom.  This shyness actually extended into high school, though I had learned to control my bladder by then.  But, in sixth grade, when I was standing up in front of a large group of strangers at the district spelling bee, I was still very shy.  And being #1 brought attention to my being that I didn't really appreciate, nor want.

My niece, A., is more like the exact opposite.  She welcomes the attention and #1 suited her fine.

As the bee got underway, it was obvious that these particular organizers have never actually been to a Spelling Bee before.  Ironically, A. stood up for the first word--interrupt--and they had to stop the Bee because no one thought to check the microphone beforehand.  Then 10 minutes later, she stood again to spell the word.  This has both it's advantages and it's disadvantages.  Advantages because you have A LOT of time to think about this word.  Disadvantage because you have A LOT of time to think to think about the word.

I looked over at my SIL and thought I heard her chanting (quietly of course.  This is a spelling bee.)  "please don't get out on the first round.  Please don't get out on the first round."  Ha.  No one gets out on the first word at this level.

Eight kids were sent packing that first round.  Well, seven because there was an "issue"--the first of many "issues" to follow.  It was absolutely heart-wrenching to listen to the kids misspell the words, knowing how much time they put into studying, and walking away after the first round to go sit with their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, friends, neighbors, Primary teachers, bishops.

So the "issue"--Speller #37 stood up and the pronouncer gave him his word: Harmonica.  However, the pronouncer may have pronounced it as "Hermonica" though that's still up for debate.  The speller spelled it as H-E-R-M-O-N-I-C-A, which is obviously incorrect.  However, after the round, the parents went to contest the decision, saying the pronouncer had mispronounced it.  In the same round was another speller who got the word "Postmortem".  He heard "Postpartum" and spelled it correctly. Since that wasn't the word, he was out.  I believe his parents were out in the hall contesting that as well.  So the kicker?  Speller #37 was allowed back into the Bee because the pronouncer supposedly mispronounced the word even though "Hermonica" is not a word, but the Postmortem/Postpartum kid wasn't allowed back in because "Postpartum" was not on the official list and had he asked for a definition, he would've realized he was mishearing the word.

But would he?

While I DID NOT agree with this decision, it's a Spelling Bee, not the Olympics.  Speller #37 obviously isn't going to make it to the final round.  He, in fact, didn't even make it out of round 2.  He had no clue that "Hermonica" was not a word.  The other speller would've had a chance I think and it's a shame that they kicked him out in the first round.  He clearly spent a lot of time studying words and for some mix-up like that to kill your chances, that's a shame.

But again it's life.  You spend a few minutes in disappointment and then you move on.

Unless you were the family in front of us.  In which case, it was the end. of. the. world.  Grandma was shouting how unfair it was.  Mom was holding up the rule book.  They were making snide comments loud enough for the auditorium to hear.

Unbelievable.

But play continued.  It was kind of nice having A. first because that meant we got to sit back and enjoy the rest of the round.  A. correctly spelled "gondola" and "salmonella" before we went to break.  My SIL showed me the list of words the kids were expected to know.  I can't come up with any off the top of my head, but I'd venture to say that 90% of them were words you wouldn't use in everyday conversation as adults let alone as 4th to 8th graders.  And the words "borrowed" from other languages were amazing.

Beautiful, beautiful words.  But I'm glad I wasn't up there trying to spell them.

Yet my SIL knew them all.  And then it dawned on me that during my tenure as Spelling Bee Champ, I had to memorize the definitions because I was 11 and couldn't pronounce 95% of them correctly and my mom wasn't sitting down with me every night to review them.  I might have asked 2 or 3 times, but I did it basically by myself.  And so I memorized the definition so that if I got a word that I had been mispronouncing for the last 3 months, and I asked for the definition because it was so unfamiliar, I'd remember what the word was I needed to spell.

Have I mentioned I'm pretty good at crosswords?

Which seems kind of strange now that I think about it.  And not that my mom wouldn't have quizzed me every night.  She says she's thinks she didn't know about the spelling bee until the day I was in it and I think I was just doing the spelling bee as something to do, and it wasn't until the second to last round of the school bee that I actually thought I could win.

But I digress...

It was at this point in the bee that I jotted down the numbers of the top competitors.  I had the competition short listed down to 12 competitors.  I even had A.'s love match.

So, they started the process up again, and A. went on to spell "Iguana" and "Poltergeist".  It was in the "Poltergeist" round that the kid of the Soccer Mom/Grandma misspelled "aristocracy" by starting it with an "e" instead of an "a".

Ha.  Karma, baby.

There were some more "issues", but nothing noteworthy.  A. correctly spelled "periphery", "allegro", "pasteurize", and my favorite "algorithm".

Math meets Spelling.  Utopia.

"Zephyr", "mercerize" and "charlatan" later, we were down to the top six.  My competitor list was holding up, and I shortened that list down to the top three.  Somewhere in there was the biggest mispronunciation of the morning.  "Hyperbole", pronounced as "hyper bowl".

Seriously, you were the best they could find?

Round 13 started with "anachronism" (last year's champion word), then 14 was "surveillance".  If I was up there, this is the word I would've lost on.  A. finished the official word list with "Salaam" and "rottweiler".  There were still six competitors and they moved on to a random list they had dredged up from somewhere.  A. started off round 17 with "opal".  This round knocked someone out and they were down to the top 3.  A. began round 18, almost stumbling on "uvula", but pulled it off in the end.  Then in round 19, she got the word "addenda".

"Addenda" will be to A. what "haulage" is to me.  A completely obscure word that is never used in normal conversation but nonetheless will be forever etched in your memory bank.

The bee continued on for 3 more rounds before the one person I thought wouldn't make it past the top six took it.  I can't even remember what the word was she won on, but it was pretty impressive.  I've never seen a dad--a lone dad who was probably commissioned to drive his daughter to this event but had other things he'd rather be doing--so happy.  It made me happy that if A. wasn't going to win, at least it was this girl that won.

Not last year's winner--who came in second.  Because, as it turns out, he failed 8th grade and had to retake it, making him eligible for the bee again.  And begs the question, how is someone, who's a spelling bee champion, not pass 8th grade?

Sure there were tears and heartbreak, but A. fought a hard battle and she nearly won. Third place is nothing to snicker at. She still has three years of eligibility left to make it to the National Spelling Bee and I'm betting it's going to happen sooner rather than later.

And it was a great way to spend three hours on a Saturday morning.

No seriously.  It was.

What's For Dinner Wednesday--Country Fried Chicken

This recipe turned out to be a fast fix on a busy night, if you minus the mashed potatoes (though really how much time does mashed potatoes take?).  However, if you're of the boxed or pouched potato persuasion, then you can whip this all up pretty fast.

This recipe just came from a quick google search for Country-Fried Steak.

Ingredients:


1 to 1 1/2 pounds round steak
2 eggs
zest and juice from one lemon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 cup fine dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup fine cracker crumbs
vegetable oil

Trim excess fat from steak.  Pound to 1/4 inch thickness.  Whisk eggs with lemon zest and juice (I just squeezed the lemon and grated some of the peel into the egg), salt and pepper.  Combine bread crumbs and cracker crumbs in a different bowl.  Dip steak into egg mixture  and then into crumb mixture.  Cook steaks in a heavy skillet in hot oil until browned and cooked through.  Turning once.

I thought this was a pretty good recipe for country-fried steak, though next time I'm going to add some spices to spice it up.  The steaks cooked a lot faster than I had expected.  I LOVE country-fried steak with mashed potatoes, so I whipped up some of those and some gravy (though I don't usually like the white gravy that comes with country-fried steak, so I made a brown gravy instead).

I wish I knew of a different way to make it that didn't involve frying the steaks in vegetable oil since that's not the *healthiest* option.  I'll research that for next time as well.  If you have any ideas, let me know.

Acquisition of the Kitchen Aid Mixer

A few years(?) ago, Wade arrived at home with his mom's old Kitchen Aid Mixer.  By old, I mean like 20 years old.  Maybe more.  Who knows.  It's been through a lot.

I, obviously, asked him what he was doing.  To which he replied, "I want to see how much we use one."

We??

A few months later, Kitchen Aid Mixers went on sale and Wade deliberated about getting one.

Really?

Usually, I'm all for new appliances regardless of how often we use them.  But I just couldn't see us dropping that kind of money for something that we (a) already had sitting on our counter and (b) hadn't used yet.

And so we kept mom's old Kitchen Aid Mixer and occasionally shifted it from cabinet to counter top and then back to cabinet.  We'd bring it out to mix some cookies, but not often since we're not big cookie makers over here.

So basically, it was a kitchen ornament.

But then, I started dabbling in cooking and baking and found that this thing is a freakin' life saver!  Especially if you need to knead.  Because, as it turns out, I don't particularly enjoy the whole kneading process.  But I do enjoy the homemade taste that kneading brings.

And aside from having to hold it down to keep it from jumping off the counter when it's "kneading", I'd say it's a near-perfect machine.

Moral:  Buy a Kitchen Aid.  Or a Bosch.  Whatever floats your boat.  Or better yet, take it from your mother-in-law's house and put it to a new use.  Then it's free.  (Though watch out for the cord that's quickly becoming a liability.)

Spiritual Thought Sunday--Be Happy

That's all folks!

Be Happy.

Big Blog plans this next week.  Like how I spent three hours at a spelling bee and the promised post about my acquisition of a Kitchen Aid Mixer and a speech contest I'm entered in on Thursday, so stay tuned.

What's for Dinner Wednesday--Ravioli (with pictures!)

Admittedly, this recipe needs some work, but the basics were there.  Just some tweaks.  But my problem is, I don't know what.  Maybe someone out there has an idea.

This was almost-100% homemade ravioli.  I say almost because did you know you can make your own ricotta cheese?  I had no idea until I started looking around.  And people RAVE about homemade ricotta cheese.  But seeing as I have two young children and a host of other responsibilities, the homemade ricotta cheese will have to wait.

Ravioli Dough

3 cups unbleached white flour (uh...I didn't check to see if my standard white flour was unbleached...)

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup water

1.  Sift flour and salt together.  (I think that's just a fancy way of saying stir them together)

2.  Place flour mixture on a board, making a well in the center.

3.  Drop eggs into the flour well. 

4.  Lightly beat the eggs together with a fork.  (This is a lot easier said than done because said eggs want to run from the nice well you've put them in.)

5.  Continue combining the eggs and flour (hands work best) while also adding the water until your dough sticks together and looks roughly like this:

6.  Knead the dough until it looks like this:

(I used my Kitchen-Aid (story tomorrow about how I came in possession of said Kitchen-Aid) for about 10 minutes.  It's hard to explain, but you'll know when it's done.  And trust me, if I knew, then you'll know too.)

7.  Let sit for 15 minutes

8.  Split the dough into two equal parts and roll out the first ball into as thin as a sheet as you can get.  I am apparently inept at the rolling pin and (a) could not get a uniform shape other than "amoeba-like" and (b) didn't get it thin enough.  Ideally, you want it to be between 1/8" and 1/16" thick.  

Yeah, uh-huh.  Do your best.

9.  Put 1 tsp to 1 1/2 tsp of filling about 1 1/2 inches apart on the sheet of dough.

  

Clearly, my eyes read tsp and my mind saw tbsp.  This was WAY too much filling.  

10.  Roll out the second sheet of dough to match the first and lay over the top of the first sheet.

11.  Press down between filling heaps to seal filling in.  Cut into squares.  (Shhh...that's not a pizza cutter you see on my counter.)

11.  Unfold child from your legs

Note: this is not effective for cooking.

12.  At this point, I trimmed up my "squares" to look more like squares.    

13.  Separate and let dry for an hour before cooking.

Apparently, you'll have better luck drying your ravioli if you turn them over so the other side gets dry too.

14.  Cook in boiling water for 10-15 minutes.  Serve with sauce.

I used ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and spinach for the filling.  It's the same filling I use in a different dish and that one turned out better.  The filling was very bland, but the raviolis themselves had the potential of being really good with the right filling.  Sorta like American Idol this season.  What to do to give it some more pizazz?  My mom suggested Italian Seasoning.  Any other ideas out there? We topped it with cheddar cheese and that seemed to bring out some of the taste.  

If you like the idea of making your own ravioli but don't have the time to go completely scratch, get the won ton wrappers in the fruits and vegetable section at the market and use those.  They're even square shaped already.  Bonus.

Belated Congratulations

Last night, as I was reassembling our closet (hey, look at that: a walk-in closet!) after pulling everything out in a fit of resignation over the small fact that I could not find anything I wanted in there, Wade was lying on the bed looking through my high school yearbook and making...comments.

...Like he looked all that much better or something...

I was half-listening and trying to respond to his rapid-fire questions with answers that I was dredging up from a period of my life I'd rather forget, when he said "I didn't know you won a departmental honors award in English." 

"Huh?" I responded. 

"You never told me about winning this honors award."

"I don't know what you're talking about.  What award?" 

So I put down what I was working on and went to look.  And sure enough, there was a picture of all the departmental honor awardees and listed under "not pictured" was me.  For English.

Which was kind of shocking since my senior year, I had this English class that was sooooooo easy and unchallenging that the teacher would tell me "you know, we'll be working on this until next Tuesday if you, you know, were late coming back from lunch or something."

Which was code for "you're making the other kids feel bad about themselves.  Take the rest of the week off."  Or that's how I interpreted it.  And the teacher didn't bother correcting my intepretation.  Halfway through the year, I switched to a College Prep class that was unbelievably retarded as well, but the teacher wasn't nearly as accomodating. 

Yet, somewhere between these two ladies, I was nominated for an English award.  Which might have swayed my future college plans--had I known about it.

So in the end, perhaps it's best that I'm just finding out about it a 11 years after graduating from high school and a year after receiving my math degree by the skin of my teeth.  I mean, you wouldn't want to major in something that you've proven to be good at or anything.

It sure would've been nice to have it to pad my resumes though. 

However, now I can fully understand my compulsion to correct people's grammar and spelling.  And have a little credibility when I go and write the next Great American Novel.  Look for it in my bio sketch on the back cover--graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor's in Math and also won a departmental honors award in English her senior year of high school.  Sandra is a very well-rounded individual.

Mom is taking me to lunch today to celebrate my award though.  And that's probably all the recognition I would've gotten 11 years ago anyways.  These days, a free lunch means more than it did back then.

Marching Along. Say HII

Yesterday, I was recovering from Olympic Fever and never did post my spiritual thought.  I remembered at 10:00, but by then, we were already engrossed in a movie.  So, I took the week off.  Fire me.

As promised, March's (and coincidently, January and February as well) Home Improvement Ideas are slowly becoming just that--ideas.  HOWEVER, I did manage to change out the front and garage door doorknobs to a pretty shade of satin nickel and replaced the entry light to match the shiny satin nickel.  But, the light is a celestial white while the rest of the house bathes in yellow and now we're at an impasse. Do we return the light and find one with a yellow cast to it, or do we change the lightbulbs of the other lights to match the heavenly glow from the front entry?  I'm kind of digging the celestial look, but how much are those lightbulbs?

I went to replace the hinges and realized I didn't have the right "pattern" or the right hinge pin.  Sigh.  So I returned those and couldn't find the right ones at Home Depot.  Now, I'm going to have to drive into Salt Lake and search there.  Double sigh.

BUT...it's a start.

So what now?  This month, I'm going to hang drapes if it kills me.  Also, we need to replace that hideous chandelier thing that hangs over the stairs.  Wade's thinking track lighting.  I'm a little more hesitant. And the hinges.  Must. Replace. Hinges.  Oh, and the eye hole in the door.

Now that winter is nearing it's end and the cold air won't be as cold as it breezes through our unsealed windows, it's probably a good time to repair the window sills as well. (sarcasm implied).

And, for my birthday, we're getting our first family portrait done.  Well, technically, our third, because the first one was done in a Sears Portrait Studio about 4 years ago and I didn't like the outcome, so I never hung it up.  Same result with attempt #2, done 2 1/2 years ago.  But third time's a charm. We're going with an actual photographer that I'm going to choose and doing it outside somewhere, because that's really more our style than the studio.  So, when that gets done, I'll hang pictures.

Hopefully, by May 1st, I will have moved on from the living room to the kitchen.