rainbow cupcakes

"pleeeeeeeeeaaaaasssseeeee bachshaw!"

That's what I heard last week from my elementary students. They were desperate to make cake during English class.

And I, being a complete sucker for my students, baking and their pleas- promised that we could.

I even pinky promised Mongolian style.

And so we tackled cupcakes on Tuesday- measuring and stirring and dripping and cracking eggs.

To add to the fun I brought food coloring and let them stir the colors into the cupcakes.

Rainbow-colored fun was just what this English teacher ordered.




a happy class and colorful cupcakes to boot. An A+ in my non-existent grade book.

fried veggies

lightly fried collection of all sorts of vegetables- snap peas, corn, cucumbers and some onions that were supposed to be onion rings of sorts. Not quite so, but they still tasted oh so good anyway.

random delicious carbs

pita bread- a favorite that we used to put homemade veggie patties in (corn and bean variations)

everything bagels- with all sorts of good stuff baked inside and sprinkled on top. Then used to make egg, bacon and fried pepperoni breakfast sandwiches. Best bagel sandwich ever.



Carbs are good. All the time. Especially in the pita bread and bagel variations.

a mongolian version of mexican casserole

The little American food store here got a new container shipment a few days ago. This is like an every few months Christmas day for us. We usually just walk around the tiny little shop and look at all of the food we won't buy because the prices are too expensive. And exclaim things like, "Ah! Look at that [insert food item we can't usually find here]!"

But this time around we did find some reasonably priced tortilla chips and salsa. (Chips and salsa, oh how we have missed you!) So Hol and I have been planning Mexican themed meals with our finds :-)

Our version of a Mexican casserole began with a layer of tortilla chips:

And some corn mixed with tomato sauce and garlic.

Diced tomatoes, onions, red and yellow bell peppers and rice

More crunched up tortilla chips on top

And some hunks of cheese to melt on top

There are no finished pictures because we were too hungry to wait for photographic evidence :-) The casserole was a good substitute for real Mexican food (or Tex-Mex for that matter).