I keep dreaming about the first day of school. This is an annoying phenomenon for a number of reasons (e.g. that I specifically prepared my entire first day of school plan during post-service in order to avoid the nightmarish situation of realizing I had no plan, which seems to be the recurring theme), but perhaps the most annoying reason is that it's not time to go back to school yet. I don't report for in-service until (I think) August 18, although I can't remember if that's a for-sure thing, and I haven't gotten an email to remind me otherwise. I'm not ready to go back quite yet.
In some ways it feels as though summer hasn't happened yet. I have spent most of it staring at my laptop, researching, writing, and reading BuzzFeed listicles to avoid writing. Even on vacation, when I told myself that I could quit after I had produced two pages of thesis material, I still feel like I spent most of the time on my laptop. I read only three books for fun, which, given the fact that my favorite vacation pastime is sitting out on the dock at my grandparents' lakeside cabin and plowing through a book a day like I'm eleven years old again, is truly sad. I find myself already longing for next summer, when I will be able to read fun books to my heart's content because I will be done with grad school.
Here's what I read, cooked, and created in the month of July.
What I Read
The Impossible Knife of Memory, Laurie Halse Anderson (★★★★)
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (★★★★★)
Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, edited by Stephanie Perkins (★★★)
Whole Novels for the Whole Class: A Student-Centered Approach, Ariel Sacks (★★★★★)
Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody (★★★★)
Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits, Donalyn Miller (★★★★)
Understanding to Kill a Mockingbird: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents, Claudia Durst Johnson (★★★★)
If you want to hear the rationale behind my rating, head to my Goodreads for full reviews.
What I Cooked
We came back from our vacation with a gallon of genuine Vermont maple syrup, courtesy of my husband's grandparents. As great as it is to have a gallon of maple syrup, it does take up quite a bit of fridge space, so I am trying to find more ways to incorporate it into our diet. I couldn't find an old recipe I used to use for maple pork chops with pecans, so I went looking for something similar and found this.
I do love a good pork chop recipe, and this one delivered. It had nothing weird in it, and the gravy/sauce/whatever you want to call it was delicious. The recipe was not super well written, but I managed just fine.
I have never made a potato salad before in my life, but this one from the July issue of Real Simple looked good, and its looks were not deceiving. I thought it was kind of weird to be frying garlic chips on my stovetop, but they did taste good, so I suppose it wasn't that weird.
Another Real Simple find, this recipe seemed like the perfect summer sandwich. I ended up making my own fried onions because I could not for the life of me find them at my local grocery store and I refused to ask for help, but I suppose it was worth it because they really were a great addition to the sandwich. Although my first attempt at the sandwich was somewhat lacking, a few tweaks improved it: carving out part of the bread so it wasn't so dense, cutting the tomatoes into pieces rather than slices, and generously topping them with Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle spice blend were all game-changing moves. Mitchell absolutely loved it and told me he wouldn't mind if I served this every month. If only tomato season lasted that long.
What I Created
Chapters 2 and 3 of my thesis
Sixteen days left until I defend my thesis. One month left until I really do go back to school. I hope August lasts forever.