10 minute read
Food
Maggie Seidel
Hailey Bieber Rebrands Bruschetta As Pizza Toast
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Maggie Seidel | Editor Emeritus
Ingredients for two pieces of Pizza Toast:
2 slices of sourdough bread
1-2 tablespoon(s) of butter dash of Himalayan pink salt
¼ cup Rao’s tomato basil marinara
Fresh basil & tomatoes
Drizzle of olive oil
¼ cup mozzarella cheese
Shredded Parmesan cheese to garnish Hailey Bieber has reinvented pizza for us all to enjoy per her recent TikTok video that featured “Pizza Toast.” Videos of recreations of this recipe have flled the app since her post, and I enjoyed taking inspiration from Bieber’s recipe to create this simplifed version of Pizza Toast which can serve as a tasty and warm after-school snack or an appetizer.
Directions:
Toast your sourdough bread then butter.
Top your toast with marinara sauce and then sprinkle mozzarella cheese on top.
Place fresh basil and tomatoes on toast, and add a dash of salt and pepper.
Bake toast on a pan for approximately six minutes at 350º.
Once warmed and the cheese melts, take out of oven, add basil, seasonings, and Parmesan cheese to enjoy!
Maggie Seidel
Strawberry Frosting Cupcakes Prove To Be Cupid’s Perfect Treat
Easy, delicious Valentine’s Day themed frosting
Cleo Kilpatrick | Sports Editor
First rinse your strawberries and cut the tops off. Then stick them in a food processor or blender. Blend the strawberries until smooth. Next strain the strawberries into a bowl to remove the seeds from the mixture. Then put your butter in a bowl and use a mixer to beat the butter until fluffy with no clumps. Next add in vanilla extract and salt, mix together. Then add in small amounts strawberry puree. After, add small amounts of powdered sugar. Beat on low until Strawberry Buttercream Frosting Recipe: Ingredients: 12oz strawberries ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract ¼ teaspoon salt 4-5 cups powdered sugar 1 cup (2 sticks) room temp unsalted butter
Decorations: ½ cup semi sweet chocolate chips
Strawberries
Sprinkles
Cleo Kilpatrick
Cupcakes can be enjoyed for any time of the year, but are especially fitting for Valentine’s Day!
thick and smooth. Make sure your have cupcakes cooled for about an hour before frosting. After frosting put chocolate covered strawberries on top add a couple shakes of sprinkles and volila your cupcakes are ready to eat!
Multiple Popular Bubble Tea Shops Put To Ultimate Review Test
Tea tested from Sencha, Kung Fu Tea, Tiger Sugar
Allyson Jay & Lilly Anderson | Managing Editor & Contributing Writer With the rise of boba tea and boba shops, we wanted to explore the most popular ones in the Twin Cities: Tiger Sugar, Sencha, and Kung Fu Tea. We tried a milk tea or a fruit tea from each shop and
Allyson Jay compared the flavor of the drink and the tapioca pearls. All drinks were ordered in the smallest size offered and at 30% sweetness. First, we tried the newest location, Tiger Sugar. Starting with their signature milk tea named “Black Sugar Boba + Pearl Milk with Cream Mousse”. It earned a well deserved 10/10. The flavor of the tea was similar to a milkshake and had the decadent creaminess of most coffee drinks and a sweet hint of caramelization. The tapioca pearls were soft, flavorful, and smaller than typical, enhancing the drink from a 9/10 to a 10/10. The only note we have is that with drinks with brown sugar and extra cream, it can become a bit rich, but we still definitely recommend trying this drink. Next, we sampled a Blake classic: Sencha. We tried the royal tea latte and mango green tea. The royal tea latte was very bland and the tapioca pearls were flavorless and rough compared to the very smooth pearls at Tiger Sugar. To clarify, the milk teas from each shop except for Tiger Sugar were regular milk teas without extra toppings or brown sugar flavoring or syrup. Taking that into consideration, Sencha’s royal tea latte earned a 5/10. On the other hand, the Sencha mango green tea was excellent and got a 8/10. This is due to its pleasant mango flavor and refreshing taste, but like the royal latte, the pearls were only mediocre. Finally, we tried the Kung Fu Tea mango green tea and signature milk tea. The mango green tea was our second favorite, receiving an 8/10, because of its vibrant mango flavor, right amount of sweetness, wonderful balance of the green tea and mango, and the softness and chewiness of the tapioca pearls. Continued on Blakespectrum.org
CROSSWORD PUZZLE
Zoe Florida | Staff Artist
ACROSS: 2. day and night during equinox 4. when spring will come if the groundhog does not see his shadow 8. person with excessive fondness for flowers 11. celebration the start of spring corresponds with 13. scallions aka 14. vernal meaning 15. ancient building facing where the sun rises on the first day of spring DOWN: 1. spring allergies cause 3. first season of the month until the 16th century 5. goddess of spring 6. what makes day longer than night in spring 7. start of spring below the equator 9. natural disaster more prevalent in spring 10. Japanese Blossoms 12. North American bird associated with spring
MARCH WUZZLES
Allyson Jay | Managing Editor
FEATURES | THE SPECTRUM NEWSPAPER | MARCH 10, 2022 | 16 MS. MÅÇ: Å jøürñëÿ øf ËXPLØRÅTÏØÑ
Mackenzie McIlmail shares family background, heritage
Julia Zhang | Business Manager
Currently, Mackenzie McIlmail teaches Gender Studies, AP European History, and AP U.S. History. McIlmail’s mother’s side of the family is from Sicily and Portugal. One line on her mother’s side goes back about 500 years in the United States, primarily around Rhode Island. Her father’s side of the family has roots from Northern Ireland and Scotland. She also identifies as Jewish, which is also another important aspect of her identity. McIlmail comes from an Irish family in which women did not graduate high school, but men were allowed to. Her grandmother had to quit school after tenth grade. McIlmail remarks, “ironically, now my job is teaching tenth graders. I think about that a lot, that I am doing what my grandmother and my mother could not have imagined at my age.” Growing up in a
Submitted by: Mackenzie McIlmail McIlmail traveled to The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. She elaborates, “I am standing in front of a miniature version of Second Temple Jerusalem. I travelled to Israel as part of an educational trip and then had the opportunity to meet some of my husband’s extended family.”
McIlmail overlooks Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland from the terrace of an apartment. McIlmail shares, “The pipes burst in our bed and breakfast that we had booked, and so the owners generously let us stay in this gorgeous apartment overlooking Arthur’s Seat.”
Submitted by: Mackenzie McIlmail McIlmail takes a selfe in Ashton Lane in Glasgow, Scotland. McIlmail describes it as “a cobblestoned backstreet in the West End of Glasgow. It is full of pubs and restaurants.” military family, McIlmail moved very often, primarily around the United States. She has been to almost every single state and attended many different schools. When asked to elaborate on her experience as being part of a military family, McIlmail reflected, “[g] rowing up in a military family gives a perspective about the real world ramifications of political decisions politicians make. I think students sit and read a history text about a war and the people who serve in those conflicts are faceless and nameless. And these people have families that pay a real price for that. When I read about historical events, it is easier for them to come to life. I exist in a world in which historical events have shaped my life. The First Gulf War, the Iraq War, and 9/11 have profoundly shaped who I am as a person.” McIlmail also observed that growing up in different places introduced her to a variety of perspectives and life skills. “Growing up in a military family makes you flexible; I feel more comfortable meeting new people and I feel comfortable having to figure out my way in a foreign country. One of the nice things to say about the U.S. military is that it is incredibly diverse. I grew up in areas in which I was not the prominent identity. I was lucky that I got to meet people from around the world and get diverse perspectives at a very young age. It helped me recognize my own privilege and at the same time be empathetic to people who don’t have the same privilege.”
These experiences did not stop after McIlmail’s childhood. Before McIlmail came to Blake, she lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she taught at an international boarding school. McIlmail recalls that initially, “I was very skeptical. I had moved from Brooklyn, New York, to this sleepy town. Only thing I knew were the civil rights sit-ins.” However, she “found a city that had multiple HBCUs, historical black colleges and universities. I found a city that had a thriving Jewish population with three synagogues. It had the friendliest, most down to earth, outgoing people and it was more progressive than I thought it was going to be.” Addition-
ally, McIlmail added that living in Brooklyn “had a huge impact as well” with its energy, diversity, and culture. Parts of McIlmails’ heritage have influenced her travels. Specifically, she mentioned her trip to Scotland, explaining, “When I went to Scotland a few years ago, the idea was to visit family and do some sightseeing. I had done an extensive amount of genealogical research going back to 1700 in Ireland.” As a result of her research, McIlmail was able to trace her family from Ireland to Scotland. She explained, “[a] lot of Irish people didn’t have tangible skills, so they would move to Scotland to work on textile mills. I had the street address where my family lived in Scotland, the address of a factory. I had death records, birth records, marriage records.” During her trip, McIlmail took
a train from Glasgow to a small town her great grandfather had emigrated from and was the first McIlmail to go back. McIlmail also brought up her trip to Israel, where she met her husband’s Israeli family. Her studies of Israel influenced the way she took in everything around her. She noted that “[a] s a historian, it was difficult to walk through the country and not constantly have this microfiche run through my head of all the histories that I knew. I’m seeing architecture and thinking about what time periods and I’m seeing food and thinking about the influences of other countries.” McIlmail pointed out that what stuck out to her was
how long the history is. “It’s not even year zero, it’s millenia upon millenia, which we really only have some knowledge of. I think it expanded my worldview in terms of how complicated history is.”
Aside from living in a military family and studying history, McIlmail’s identity itself shapes her worldview: “As a Jewish woman I tend to see the living impact of history. It feels ever-present in Jewish rituals, holidays, and memories. It still has very real ramifications for the way I interact with the world and the way I interact with my students. That can be a positive or a negative. There’s a famous
quote from James Joyce, ‘History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,’ where you are just being haunted by it.” Her Jewish identity and to a certain extent her Irish identity has such an emphasis on social justice and learning from history, which is what motivated her to pursue teaching.
Submitted by: Mackenzie McIlmail