Recipes

 Note: I was asked to contribute some recipes for the English department's monthly newsletter. I decided to go for humor with mine.

Jeremy’s Favorite Recipe: 

Zatarain’s Jambalaya with sausage. Do what the box says, but add double the meat. Butter is optional, but adds a nice extra flavor.

Side note: Even though Zatarain’s says to just add one type of meat, you can use multiple meats and multiple boxes of Zatarain’s if you have lots of people to feed (or you want to have leftovers for the week). It’s still just 25 minutes of cooking after it comes to a boil, no matter how much you put in the pot.

More side noting: Eat with a spoon, because it’s much easier to just shovel it into your mouth than to mess with a fork.

What Jeremy eats on cold days in December:

Heat up chunky chili with beans, add Frito’s (or off brand Frito’s or similar cracker-like item), and add mixed shredded cheese. I call it Frito pie. At Sonic you can ask for this, even if it’s not on the menu. They’ll even put it in a tortilla like a burrito, if you really get aggressive about it over the loudspeaker.

Side note: Stay stocked up on chili in case of issues during the pandemic. Target will ship you boxes full of cans of chili, if needed. You can just stack them up all over the place and tell your family not to complain, because they’ll be thanking you if the apocalypse finally arrives.

 

Jeremy’s Go To Snack

Bread. Just bread. Notice those hot dog buns are about to expire? Just eat them. You don’t need to put hot dogs in them and it’s better than just throwing them away later. As with most recipes, butter is an option, but not necessary when you’re in a hurry.

Side note: If you become a regular eater of just bread, you may find yourself wanting to buy the butter-flavored bread options at the store or even Hawaiian sweet rolls.

 

Peace!

The Joy of Creating Online Book Talks

 Note: I submitted this article for the monthly English Department Newsletter. This blog post includes an updated graphic.

https://www.youtube.com/user/jeremyfee 

For over a month now, I’ve posted a YouTube video each day. Teaching virtual classes with students I never see in person stole away one of my greatest joys of teaching – holding books up at the front of the room, enthusiastically telling students about them, and passing them around the room for people to decide if they would like to read them. My book talks died out in the virtual environment. I tried. I used the Goodreads.com website to show books and shared it on my screen to talk about the books during live sessions, but it felt less than ideal. Thus, around Halloween, I decided to start posting online book talks through YouTube (usually around 5 minutes long).

 

In addition to posting videos that could inspire my students, I found a really friendly community of people called #booktube, as well as authors who share writer’s craft videos and call themselves #authortube. The booktubers mostly post reviews, reading updates, book hauls, “To Be Read” (TBR) lists, and “tag” videos in which they answer questions and tag one another to answer the same questions. The authortubers often debate traditional publishing versus self-publishing issues and they answer questions with their inside information from their own successes and failures. Interacting with these communities has felt like being in heaven, but I must warn you my TBR list doubled in size in the last month.

 

The combination of these creative activities, along with participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and Nonfiction November, has sparked a creative renaissance in my mind. I find myself not only reading more, but writing more as well (as evidenced by me writing this article).

 

Remember, every day is a good day for a book talk. Peace! – Jeremy

 

P.S. If you visit my YouTube channel, feel free to check out the Latino Club Cinco de Mayo festival videos from 2014 to 2019 and a video of the old LHS building’s final moments as what was left of the building collapsed down into a pile of rubble and dust (featuring screams of horror from Bessie Alexander).