Another week in a row, we have a special guest teaching us something new. One of our software developers, Scott Windsor, brought in his wife, Jane-Anne Egerton, to teach us how to make beer bread. Doesn’t that just have a good ring to it? Beer bread — the best of both worlds. Along with teaching us how to make bread, she’s also taking some photography classes at Photographic Center Northwest. If you want to take a look at her current work, check out her site at Venomous Swan.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups white flour
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 warm 12oz bottle of warm (room temperature) beer
• 4+ tablespoons butter

Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients
2. Pour in the bottle of beer
3. Mix the ingredients together until the batter is wet
4. Pour the mixture into a greased pan
5. Pour melted button on top of bread
6. Bake for 30-45 minutes at 375 degrees

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Do you want to teach us something? We’d love to invite you on one of our Fridays to help us learn something new! E-mail me at joseph@teachstreet.com.

We are happy to present our new Help Center. We’ve added a host of new features that keeps content fresh, and allows you to search for answers and contribute your own comments and expertise. Not only that but we’ve added graphics and tutorials throughout to enhance your Help experience.

Here’s What’s New!

1. Search Now you can search all of our Help information by keyword or question to get what you need quickly.
2. Top 10 Questions Check out these common questions to find answers easily.
3. Help Resources The place to find all your answers and make your own comments including:
   • FAQs for teachers and students;
   • Tutorials and how-to presentations;
   • Troubleshooting and Known Issues to solve common problems;
   • Ideas where you can make suggestions and tell us what you think.
4. Submit  Requests Create and track your support inquires.

Come see for yourself today!

We would also like to give a shout out to Zendesk for providing a wonderul platform that was easy to implement and looks beautiful.

Getting ready for Halloween? We were lucky enough to have a guest teacher come in today to get us in the mood for Halloween. Elizabeth Romatz, a Psychology graduate student at Seattle University, taught us how to make entertaining brain shots for your upcoming Halloween costume party. It was great to learn bartending skills at the office, even only for just one shot. Here’s how to make this tasty concoction below:

Ingrediants:

• 1 1/4 oz. Peach schnapps
• 3/4 oz. Irish Cream
• Splash of grenadine

Instructions:

1. Chill all of your liquors before making this shot
2. Pour in your peach schnapps into a shot glass
3. Slightly tilt the shot glass and pour the Irish Cream so it hits the glass before touching the schnapps
4. Splash the grenadine on top and watch the braininess ensue

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Do you want to teach us something? We’d love to invite you on one of our Fridays to help us learn something new! E-mail me at joseph@teachstreet.com.

Ingrid Albrecht self portrait

Last week, I had one of those unexpected pleasant surprises after picking up the phone and getting to meet a new TeachStreet Pro member, Ingrid Albrecht. Ingrid is a Chicago painter and watercolor teacher and she’s offering a fantastic assortment of first-time painter and watercolor classes in the Chicago area in the coming weeks.

For other aspiring Pro Members, you really should check our her profile — she not only uploaded a great looking banner (that incorporates one of her paintings) but has also added 3 showcase listings, more than 20 reviews from past Chicago art students (twenty plus!), has great classes (with prices ranging from $170 to $285) and is enabled for TeachStreet payments. I especially like her description, that talks about how her grandmother got her started painting at age 4 — it’s always great to hear how people’s passions were ignited. If you’re in the Chicago area and have had a hankering to learn how to watercolor and/or paint, Ingrids Originals would be a great place to start!

Yoga very well may be the most accessible and versatile activity. Over the years I’ve enjoyed chatting with people I know about their routines and have come to find that there are several different motivations for practicing. My sister-in-law joined a Prenatal Yoga class (she was in labor for a mere hour and a half – I would not give yoga all the credit but her healthy physical condition surely helped). A friend of mine with a rare degenerative arthritis does a very gentle yoga every day to relieve his back pain. My boss regularly attends a hot yoga class to detox, exercise and take an hour to shed the demands of her daily life.

If you’ve practiced before, even once, you’ll know how wide-ranging the benefits are as well. By allowing your thoughts to focus on synchronizing breath and movement you can achieve clarity of mind. A regular practice can greatly improve posture, strength and, of course, flexibility. A simple Sun Salutation can be the perfect series for warming up:

At TeachStreet one of our heavily browsed subjects is Yoga. We know that people love it. If you are looking for a Yoga Teacher Training Certification, a beginning Hatha class, a hot class or an intermediate flow class. To find a variety of classes and skill levels in your community click this link to explore your options: Yoga on TeachStreet . Namaste.

Are you looking to take tennis lessons from a real tennis coach? If you are, Stephen is definitely not your guy. But if you’re looking to have some crazy fun on a tennis courth which involves pelting your opponents with tennis balls — he’s your go-to-guy. Stephen Travieso is the creator of a game called Xtreme Tennis, widely famous in the Baltimore area and wanting to slowly grow here in the Northwest. Here are the rules for Xtreme Tennis on TeachStreet.

If you walk by a tennis court and see someone running across while a person is trying to pelt them with a serve, you know what’s going down — XTREME TENNIS!

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Do you want to teach us something? We’d love to invite you on one of our Fridays to help us learn something new! E-mail me at joseph@teachstreet.com.

I was very fortunate to learn the basics of knitting from my grandmother. She abandoned knitting years ago for the pleasures of quilting – so she had to really work hard to remember the difference between knitting and purling (two different way of working your stitches to create different textures), and we had to reference her 1960s knitting book to learn casting on (casting on is the method of getting the yarn onto the needle so you can actually begin knitting).

Much to everyone’s chagrin we are diving into the cold months again. But the one thing I keep hearing from those of us dreading the winter is that there is something very appealing about cooking soup, snuggling in with a book and taking up our KNITTING again!! If you’re looking for introductory classes or if you are thinking about stepping up from scarves to the intimidating shawl or sweater you can find a great knitting class in your area on TeachStreet.

Browse TeachStreets kntting classes and articles and get a move on that hat, scarf or pair of socks you’ve been dreaming about making – http://www.teachstreet.com/c/366

Our CTO, Daryn Nakhuda, takes time away from his computer screens to teach us how to draw — his way. I’m not sure how many art classes he’s taken before, but judging from the video — I think it may have been a couple years…or more. Although, his story telling is always funny. Maybe he should provide public speaking training or even a comedy class to pass down his quirkiness. I know I’d be in line for that one.

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Do you want to teach us something? We’d love to invite you on one of our Fridays to help us learn something new! E-mail me at joseph@teachstreet.com.

To top off this nice summer we’ve had here at TeachStreet, Jenn taught us how to make some tasty chocolate covered strawberries. You have to love cooking classes that don’t need a stove or oven, especially since we don’t have those in our office. If you need reason to impress a special someone or just want to prepare a “nice summer time treat” — you have to try this out. It’s super easy and simple.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries:

Ingrediants:

• Strawberries
• Chocolate (semi-sweet or dark)
• Milk
• Wax paper

Instructions:

1. Heat your chocolate either under a double broiler, or TeachStreet style (in the microwave)
2. Mix in a tiny bit of milk after the chocolate has melted
3. Wash your strawberries and dip them into the melted chocolate
4. Make sure you swirl the strawberry to get it all covered in chocolate
5. Place on a sheet pan/plate lined with wax paper
6. Put the chocolate covered strawberries in the fridge until chocolate has hardened

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Do you want to teach us something? We’d love to invite you on one of our Fridays to help us learn something new! E-mail me at joseph@teachstreet.com.

Photo by ndm007

We’ve been getting a good amount of our community looking for test prep courses in order to prepare themselves for the upcoming school year. For a lot of high school juniors and seniors specifically, they’re aiming to ace their SATs for college applications to get into college next year. If you haven’t registered for the test, go check out College Board for the most recent SAT test dates.

There’s a lot of ways to improve your SAT score, and it deals a lot with preparation and surrounding yourself with a good support team. There’s a good amount of great SAT tutors and SAT Prep organizations you can connect with. We’re actually working with some great partners nationwide to provide our community with a greater selection of test prep courses to choose from like Kaplan Test Prep, among others.

If you want to learn more about how you can improve your SAT test scores, here are some great articles to get some great tips:

• Some SAT Basics: Thinking About the SAT Strategically
• College Bound: Boosting Your SAT Vocabulary
• What You Did Not Know About the SAT Exam
• 8 Questions to Ask a Potential SAT Tutor
• Five Tips for the SAT: How to Pass Through the Gateway to College