Chicken Breast

Disclaimer: this is me getting on my soapbox, and I won't get off. Now, I'm not some crazy girl that wants to be a vegetarian (I LOVE meat.). BUT something's up with our food. Have y'all seen Food, Inc.? Just an incredible, interesting documentary. I've got a friend at church whose cousin is one of those chicken farmers. She says, yep, that's how it really is. And I somehow remember my grandfather saying, when I was young, "The chicken will kill us all one day. They grow 'em too fast and too big." I was terrified and didn't know what that meant. But I tucked it inside my memory. He's a very educated, vegetable-growing pharmacist. Now I know what he's talking about.
I've only really been cooking since I was a senior at Lipscomb. Since that short time, I've watched the chicken breasts that I buy grow and grow. Well last night topped it all. I got my boneless, skinless breasts on sale for $1.79/lb. I was cutting the fat off, and could NOT get over the size of these breasts! We're way past double D here. I had to take a picture to show the monstrosity of it. This is ONE chicken breast. The past year or so I've had to fillet them because of their size. And it got worse in the next package! I had to quarter one sucker!!
So, what's a girl to do? The nearest whole foods type place is over 1/2 an hour away. Not real eager to "run to the store." Do I save chicken for special occasions and get the "organic," $6.99/lb chicken??? I'm afraid my beloved government is letting me down.

Pumpkin Time!

Back in September I was telling my students about all the exploration we got to do in Kindergarten. I told them about all I did with apples- taste testing, baking, sorting, investigating. They were quite jealous. They begged me to do that for them. I preface my next sentence with this: I loooove my students and this age. However, I miss Kindergarten. In 5th there is so much pressure for them and tests. We have to rush through everything to get to everything. I miss the discovery of K. I have no time for exploration if I am to teach all they need to know. I did agree, though, to do something fun with pumpkins when the season came. It needed to be Math related, so we measured, weighed, estimated/counted seeds. We had a great time!
This is our intern, Amber. She was with us a couple of days a week for the past 3 months. =)