Keith's Posts

Ohio - 50states.com

In finalizing this “Lessons Learned” arc of blog posts, I wanted to end where I grew up:  Ohio.  Blame it on time, as well as changing perspectives and needs in life, but these five were a lot harder for me to come up with than the ones for Oregon and Colorado.  Don’t get me wrong, though–I loved the surroundings I grew up in, and have a lot of family who love living in Ohio still.

So, without further ado, here are the five lessons learned from living in (and growing up in) Ohio.

LESSON 1:  Lake Erie is pretty impressive

I did live in a lot of different places in Ohio, usually near farms.  My Dad and Mom (OK, stepmom, just so you don’t get confused) always lived near Lake Erie, though.  As one of the five Great Lakes, it’s obviously a huge body of water with a large shoreline.  As a kid, I loved going across the bridge that takes you over Sandusky Bay, which is off Lake Erie, out to Marblehead.  When you’re in Marblehead, you can check out the lighthouse there and just get this really

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Colorado - Snowshoeing Skyline

Following up on my previous post (Five Lessons Learned from Living in Oregon), I thought I’d continue in that vein by looking at where I previously lived–Colorado.  For three of those years, I lived with the wife there, but for the other five, I was on my own.

There are some great things that you can find in both Colorado and Oregon–a general friendliness from a lot of people, lots of places to go enjoy nature (hiking and biking especially), and even Voodoo Doughnut (their bright pink boxes are HIGHLY visible in the airport).  We’ve enjoyed living in both states, and I’ve talked to multiple other people who have enjoyed or would enjoy living in both places too.

As a clarification before you read any further, these “lessons” aren’t anything like, “Things I’ve learned about life from living in location X.”  They are, instead, the lessons of what is good and unique in the different places that I’ve lived.  There are, of course, many more than I could list here, but these are my biggies.

With that explanation done, here are my five lessons learned from living in Colorado.

LESSON 1:  There are fantastic views

I grew up in Ohio, where there really aren’t mountains.  Sure, we’ve got some hills, but the highest elevation there is 1,550 feet.  Colorado, in comparison, has fifty-eight (!) mountains

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Bakery-Style Muffins, Topped

Author’s Note:  I originally included projects in my previous posts as an incentive to keep me writing on this blog.  It’s felt like these are starting to distract from the post content, so the projects will now be included BELOW the main post content.

The wife and I moved here five years ago from Colorado.  Yes, five years ago, we lived in a state with bigger mountains, higher altitude, and more sunny days.  Of course, it also didn’t have quick access to the ocean, as many deciduous trees, or Blue Star Donuts.

Those differences show the blessing of living in multiple places over a lifetime:  You get to experience what the pluses and minuses are of each place.  What better way to share this with you all than to write a list of five lessons learned from living here in the Pacific Northwest?  Sounds good to me.

So to jump right in:

LESSON 1:  It rains here.  A lot.

People tend to picture Seattle as an extremely rainy city, but it and Portland are pretty darned close in how much rain each gets per year.  Within the five years we’ve been here,

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RECENT PROJECT

When I was single, one of my favorite things to try baking was cheesecakes.  I used to travel around a lot, and thus ate out quite a bit at different restaurants.  One of the desserts that almost every restaurant has is some variation of cheesecake, and I thought, why not try do this at home?

In the long run, I haven’t made a lot of cheesecakes (let’s say 20 or so), but I did end up finding one from the Kraft food magazine that was really good.  I couldn’t find the exact recipe on their site, but if you use this one and replace the mixture of 1/4 cup sugar and blackberries with two cups of strawberries, it’s the same recipe.

THE BAKE, AND THE RESULTS

I hadn’t made the recipe for probably six or so years, which is a side effect on our one kiddo’s then-allergy to dairy.  How did it turn out after all that time?  I did remember that the recipe seems a bit sparse with the crust, so I bumped up the graham crackers to 1 3/4 cups and the butter to 5 tablespoons.  OK so far . . .

Then on to the batter.  There’s something about when the sour cream and eggs get added, and it gets all glossy, that it just starts looking awesome.  OK at this step too.

Cheesecake Batter

Then finally, to let it bake, put the nice little topping mixture across the top, bake a little more, and this is what comes out.

It’s not perfect by any means (nor is my photography at this point, for that matter), but taste is the ultimate judge.  I let the wife try a bite first and she was really happy with it.  So happy that she took another chunk out of the piece we were sharing, at which point I moved the plate so I could eat some.  Love only goes so far, after all 🙂  I liked the taste, so I let the oldest try it (he enjoyed it) and the wife gave the youngest a bite.  At 1 year old, our youngest ate his piece and walked over to the table, waving his little plastic spoon at the cake to try and reach far enough to get some more.  With those kinds of reactions, I’m calling this bake a winner.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

I talked in this earlier post about getting a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back when I was a kid.  I loved playing that thing–you got Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, along with the light zapper, in the package.  Back then (believe it or not, kids) you could also go to Blockbuster and rent other video games

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Molten Cake OK

RECENT PROJECT

This week’s project was again from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book (p. 334, to be exact).  Amongst the many baking projects that I haven’t yet honed my skills on, molten chocolate cakes (or Fallen Chocolate Cakes, as the book calls them) are at the top of my list.  Last time I made them they were basically a cake texture, with a little dollop of something that was still kind of a cake texture in the middle.  Not exactly appetizing.  So this was a redemption bake for me.

The first part of the process went well, meaning I didn’t break the glass bowl that I stacked on top of a pot of water to rig up a double boiler.  I’ve never tried that approach before, and

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Fudgy Chocolate Brownies

RECENT PROJECT

This week’s project was Fudgy Chocolate Brownies from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book.  First off, I only got this cookbook recently as a late birthday present (thanks, Mom and Dad!).  Flipping through it, I love that it has not only the what to do to bake something, but pointers like why the recipe works well and how to perform different techniques.  So fun stuff, and I don’t even get paid to say that since I have no connection to Cook’s Illustrated whatsoever.

OK, back to the project–technically, it’s the Fudgy Triple-Chocolate Brownies (under the “Fudgy Chocolate Brownies” heading) that I made.  Why?  Well, I hadn’t had or made brownies for a while and they just sounded good.  I mean, who doesn’t like brownies?  So in went the bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa powder (plus some other non-chocolate ingredients) and out came a batch of brownies, as you can see from this top view.

Fudgy Chcolate Brownies Top View

Those three holes at the top are from the cake tester, and not some weird chocolate-burrowing insect.  I couldn’t quite determine the fine line between “nice and fudgy” and “overdone”, so I tested a couple times and added on a few minutes of baking.  The brownies came out, well, fudgy and chocolaty just like the recipe’s name implies.  The use of bittersweet chocolate provides that bit of bite that is both different and enjoyable.  Here’s the head-on view after coming out of the oven:

Fudgy Chocolate Brownies Head-On View

One thing that annoyed me was that my brownie, after cooling, had all these lines and crinkles along the top, rather than being perfectly smooth.  The cookbook’s picture certainly hadn’t been that way when I glanced at it, and then I checked again:  Between how they cut the brownie and where they focused the camera, their brownie didn’t LOOK like it had the same top features that mine did, but closer inspection revealed that, sure enough, they were there in the picture too.  Ego not as deflated as before?  Check.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

This post is a little more personal than my previous post about why the wife and I budget, as it’s strictly my viewpoint.  As I described in that earlier post, when it comes to Mary and I’s perspectives, I’m definitely more of the “saver” in the marriage while she’s typically the “spender”.  That leads some people to ask, “Have you always been that way?”, and “Is it always a good thing?”  Well, here come the answers.

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Catapult Tower for Knights Prison Rescue

FLASHBACK PROJECT (NOT QUITE SO RECENT)

Way back in 2015, the grandparents (my parents) got our oldest son one of those big bags of Mega Blocks for Christmas.  When I say “big”, I’m not talking, “Oh, there are 25 blocks in this bag.”  No, this was the 150 blocks First Builders bag.  As a one-year-old at the time, he didn’t quite get what all the blocks were for.  As he toddled towards the age of two, though, he and his Daddy (hooray for that being me!) built garages to house other toys, castles to peek through to poke Daddy’s nose, and towers that have dared to reach for the sky.

But then, once he reached two, it happened–he discovered LEGOs.  Of course, he didn’t start by seeing LEGOs meant for his age range in the store.  Nooo, instead, he discovered some boxes of LEGOs that I’d never put together:  The Kingdoms Prison Tower Rescue and the Special Edition Knight’s Kingdom King’s Castle.  Then he got excited.  Then I got excited, because he was excited.  LEGOS!  My kid’s getting into LEGOs and . . . THIS . . . IS . . . AWESOME!  And thus began our project, which was building these two magnificent sets of medieval goodness, which funnily enough leads into the topic for today–perfect!

TOPIC FOR TODAY

The Tower Rescue set is the smaller of the two sets at 365 pieces, and given that my son was only two years old, seemed like the best set to start with.  It was amazing to watch him when he first saw all the pieces that were in the box:  Not just squares and rectangles and semicircles of different colors, but doors and a princess and a catapult and fire!  This was one of those incredible moments when you get to see the world open up before your child and share in the joy and wonder that they experience at seeing something new that they never even expected existed.

OK, so I am an engineer, and as such like to have a logical approach to things.  What does the engineer do?  Goes right for the first instruction book, to see where to start.  What does the two-year-old do?  Dives right in!  That’s when I discovered it’s possible to simultaneously laugh and be shocked and internally lurch towards telling your kid, “That’s not how you do it!”  The great thing is that this was one of those rare instances where, when I tried to get my son to settle down and check out why I was looking at the instructions, he listened.  We checked things out, took a look at the LEGO people, and got started building the first part of the set:  The tower with a catapult platform (below).

Catapult Tower for Knights Prison Rescue

Catapult Tower for Knights Prison Rescue

Without going through the play-by-play, here’s the grand summary:  My son surprised me because he did really well.  He figured out how to put things in place, and even the right places, based on the pictures and my pointing and guiding.  He was super happy to make the catapult tower, and really focused on the building of it.  I feel I underestimated what he, as a two-year-old, could do without assistance.  But he blew me away, and so there’s the first lesson learned by me:  If you give your kids a chance, they’ll show you just how amazing they really are.

Once we had finished building the catapult tower, we took a break because neither he nor I was ready to build the whole set all at once.  That’s when I gave him my lesson and words of wisdom:

Look at this tower.  Do you see how amazing you did at this?  This is just one part of the whole set.  When you look at a house, or any building, after this, don’t worry about how to build the whole thing all at once.  All you have to do is focus on building the part you’re working on right now, and you can worry about the other parts once you get to them.

See, I don’t want my kid to look at the Eiffel Tower or the Sydney Opera House or even really cool treehouses and feel like he could never make something so incredible or cool-looking.  I want him to be in awe of beautiful creations and buildings, yes, but I want him to know that he can make such things, too, one part at a time.  I want him to dream without boundaries, and make those dreams into incredible realities.

We did end up finishing the Kingdoms Prison Tower Rescue, and it’s just as awesome as it looks on the box (below, left).  He loved playing with the gate, moving the knights around, rescuing the princess, and raising and lowering the portcullis (by hand–he’s snapped two pieces of string that were meant to raise it and lower it using a turnstile).  After a couple days, we started working on the other set, which is an incredible 869 pieces (see below right).  Starting that set gave me a final lesson learned:  Even when your kid does amazing with one set of LEGOs all the way from start to finish, at two years old, his patience and ability to focus runs out at some point.  My son’s now happily trotting the second set’s knights around on horseback, merging the king and wizard figurines to make an all-powerful, shiny-crowned wizard king, while I’m assembling most of it.  According to the instructions, of course.

Completed LEGO Prison Tower Rescue

Completed LEGO Prison Tower Rescue

Incomplete portions of Knight's Kingdom King's Castle

Knight’s Kingdom King’s Castle, In Progress

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Chocolate Raspberry Torte from Top

RECENT PROJECT

This one’s an oldie but a goodie, as I’ve heard my parents say.  I’ve made the chocolate raspberry torte from Kraft Foods (recipe here) several times before, and it’s a nice dessert.  If you’re looking for a restaurant-quality torte made with fine ingredients and leaving a silky, sweet taste on the tongue–well, you should look elsewhere.  If you’re just wanting some chocolate, a bit of raspberry flavor, and (even more chocolate) whipped cream, then this will serve your purpose.

Like a lot of Kraft Foods recipes, this one’s pretty easy.  Mixing of the batter was super easy, and then you just stick it all in a springform pan and let it bake.  It comes out of the oven looking something like this:

Chocolate Raspberry Torte in the Pan

Once you release the spring, you take the torte and flip it over onto the cooling rack per the recipe.  Just to give you an idea of how big my torte ended up being, it was about 1/2 of a Juggernaut high:

Chocolate Raspberry Torte Inverted

That’s right, because when you’re a real manly baker, you measure things using X-Men characters.  For those of you who want something a little more ruler-friendly, it’s about 1.25″ high, as Juggernaut is 2.5″ high.  And yes, Juggernaut is totally rocking the bad guy look–though it’s somewhat spoiled by his one arm missing after being twisted repeatedly by a three-year-old.

What did the final product look like?  Mine ended up a little different than the picture on Kraft’s web page, which is fine by me.  I’ve got a little lighter frosting, and I laid out the chocolate pieces in a way that makes them look like a reef with raspberries (instead of fish) swimming between the chocolate rocks and coral.  I skipped the powdered sugar called for as a topping in the recipe as, quite frankly, this is one darned sugary treat already.

Chocolate Raspberry Torte Finished

The verdict?  The wife isn’t a huge fan of raspberries, so this wasn’t a winner for her.  Our oldest really liked it, but he only had a little bit as, like I said, it’s quite the sugar bomb and we really value his not running around his bedroom on a sugar high when he should be sleeping.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

Just like I enjoy the chocolate sheets or panels on top of that torte, I really like seeing solar panels on the tops of houses.  There are a lot of different reasons, from many different perspectives, why I think solar panels are a good idea.  Personally, the wife and I were blessed with a gift, and an incredible set of financial reimbursements in Colorado, that allowed us to install solar panels on a previous home; they were fantastic, and reduced our electric bills to almost nothing for much of the year.  But that personal experience is just that, personal, and so I wanted to dig a little deeper here to indicate why I think they are great for everyone.

Please note that I’m just hitting the highlights in this post; each one of these points could be several pages of details on its own if you really start digging (or if I want to write about them in a future post–say, that’s a great idea . . .)

THE ENVIRONMENTAL REASONS

I really think of these as the “tree-hugging hippie” reasons for getting solar panels, but if that offends you, just go with the “environmental” reasons.  These are the pretty obvious ones, including:

  1. Solar panels, along with wind turbines, are what most people think of when they hear “clean energy”.  They generate power from the sun, meaning you’re not requiring power from a plant that uses coal, natural gas, or another resource to generate power.
  2. Solar panels do have an environmental footprint to create them, but long term they are created, installed, and ready to go for 20 to 25 years, depending on where they’re installed.  One of the “gotchas” on this that I found out when our panels were installed is that the inverter, which converts the DC power from the panels to AC power for the house and grid, will likely need replaced after 10 years.  It’s not the same as paying for the whole system again, but it’s not cheap either.
  3. Once they’re no longer working efficiently, you can recycle them (Author’s Note:  I will admit that I’m in the dark as to how much of the equipment is recyclable, or what the cost and requirements are.  Another idea for a future post.).
  4. Solar panels can help you go off-grid, if that’s your desire.  You do need to add in a battery or batteries to keep the excess power you generate so that you can have power overnight or for heavy-use times.

THE ECONOMIC REASONS

The economic reasons for installing solar panels go hand-in-hand with the tree-hugging hippie, I mean environmental, reasons, so let’s jump right into them:

  1. You pay one time for the panels (and a bit more later for a new inverter), so assuming you’ve got enough panels to cover all your electricity usage you’re effectively paying for that electricity up front.  Even with this, you’ll still have to pay the basic connection/management fees to your electric utility, so your bill will be low but not zero.  Additionally, and this is another negative, the upfront cost is by no means trivial–I’ve seen quotes of $6,000 for small home installations up to about $30,000 for larger homes.
  2. You also avoid the increases in the cost of electricity for the life of your panels, as you’re not having to buy any from the electric utility.  Over 25 years, even small increases can add up, so not having to pay for them is great.
  3. If you are connected to the grid (and most people are), and you generate excess power, your electric utility will reimburse you for that overproduction (at least in the few states I’ve looked at).  With our panels in Colorado, the reimbursement was at a wholesale rate; other states such as California require that the reimbursement be at the market rate, which is even better.

THE PATRIOTIC REASONS

The environmental and economic reasons for getting solar panels were what I was already familiar with, and so they were easy to write.  There are several other reasons to install solar panels, though, that fall outside of those two categories.  While I cringe a bit at calling these “patriotic”, it’s actually the best term I can come up with for these items that others have written about that I hadn’t really considered–but strike me as just as important in the short term, and perhaps even more important than the other reasons in the long term.

I believe that buying local to your area or country is important.  The reason is that, if I am constantly buying goods of the same quality from another country because I can save say 10% or so on each of them, then I had better be comfortable telling all my unemployed neighbors who used to make those same products that my saving a couple bucks was more important than their job–and I can’t do that.

This holds true even for solar panels, which are a big-ticket item, but if you’re able to afford solar panels in the first place then why not also support your country’s (in my case, America’s) manufacturing employees at the same time?  There’s potentially more incentive to buy American panels lately as well, as President Trump imposed a 30% tariff in January of 2018 on all imported “crystalline silicon solar photovoltaic (PV) cells and panels”, with that tariff dropping 5% per year for the following four years (see this article).  While foreign and American companies could respond to this is several different ways, ideally it means that American panels start to look like a better buy for American consumers.

Now, it’s fair to ask, are there actually American manufacturers of solar panels?  According to this post, there are several in locations from as varied as Ohio, to California, to Mississipi, to Texas.  Just think, you have a variety of choices, and potential cost savings, by buying panels from any of these places in the U.S.!  It is true that, as pointed out in this Bloomberg article, buying U.S. panels won’t create as many U.S. jobs as the installation and maintenance of those panels creates, but every job (and neighbor) counts.

If the jobs argument doesn’t really ring a patriotic bell for you, then consider this:  The U.S. electrical grid has already been hacked.  You can look at both the New York Times article here and the NBC L.A. article here for details, but I’ll give the short version:  Russian hackers targeted U.S. utilities, as well as aviation and manufacturing targets.  It’s possible that, given the access they gained, they could have taken remote control of the utilities and caused mass blackouts.  The access (at least from the hack the New York Times article describes) was gained by hacking the networks of contractors who work with the utility companies, going through the software those contractors provide, and then tricking the utility’s operators into giving away their passwords.

So what do solar panels have to do with this?  Here’s my long-term view:  Solar panels allow each household to generate their own power.  Connecting a battery to those solar panels allows you to completely disconnect from the national power grid if you want, avoiding the impact of any hacks to the grid.  Even if you don’t completely disconnect from the grid, you are prevented in the near-term from losing power completely if a power plant goes down.  The really long-term view is that, by generating and temporarily storing their own power, households then alleviate power companies from the burden of having to build new power plants, even allowing them to offload their oldest and least “clean” plants.  With such costs out of the way, the power companies could then focus on upgrading their infrastructure such that they greatly reduce their risk from future hacking attempts, and allow more robust and flexible integration of variable clean energy sources.  I’ll admit that these long-term views are very idealized and simplified, but they are absolutely possible.

A BRIEF CONCLUSION

It’s my hope that this post showed you some of the reasons why solar panels represent a great investment for environmental, economic, and patriotic reasons.  There is also a list of reasons why solar panels don’t make sense for some people, some of which I described in this post (namely, cost) along with some I didn’t (average temperature in your region, sun exposure of a home, latitude, etc.).  As I mentioned at the start of this post, this is just the highlights, and there are many more pros and cons to dig into, including this interesting article that talks about the good and the bad of California’s recent mandate to install solar on all new homes.  Take what you’ve learned, think about it, and make your own slightly-more-informed argument about solar panels.

Thanks for reading this post, and I hope that you’ll come back to read future posts!

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RECENT PROJECT

My favorite thing to bake is bread.  Yes, yes, I know that there are many other flavorful and magical things to bake, from sweet desserts to succulent casseroles to hearty pies.  Yet, the smell of bread baking and, in particular, fresh from the oven is unique in the feeling of warmth and joy it gives me.

The bread book that I use most (and I’ve referenced before) is Bernard Clayton’s “New Complete Book of Breads” (2003).  The book was a gift from a friend, and I’ve found the instructions very clear, the notes useful, and the breads (almost always) exceptional.  Recently, I made the Molasses Wheat Bread (pp. 99-101), as I’d never made a bread that included molasses before, and I’d done few whole-wheat breads in the past.  The really fun thing about this bread is that, before the second rising, you take each of the two loaves and twist it two or three times.  I wasn’t too aggressive with my twists, but I did get the nice top that you can see in the picture below.  The bread was great when it was warm, and only my oldest son didn’t like the reheated pieces (his loss, the wife’s gain).

Molasses Wheat Bread, as viewed from the top

Molasses Wheat Bread, as viewed from the top

TOPIC FOR TODAY

It’s a bit shocking when you go along in life, just working and taking care of the family, and then you pause for a moment and take a look at yourself in the mirror of your own mind.  While there are positive things you might see about yourself in that mirror, it’s far easier to find pock marks and scars that you didn’t even realize were there.  For me, during a recent glance at the mirror, I realized something that truly bothered me:  I’ve become a homebody.

Although I think most people know what a homebody is, for the sake of a common definition, I’ll put it this way:  Someone who is primarily interested in doing activities at home, and who avoids doing things familiar or new outside of the home.  I suppose this could be based out of fear, or laziness, or something else.  So how did it happen for me?

I grew up exploring the areas around wherever we were living quite a bit; sure, I spent time indoors, but I also checked out the forest, or the cemetery, or the river plenty.  Then, as I entered high school and began to work and be more selective on what I did and with what people, that exploring just kind of–faded.  It was simply too much work, or moreso took too much time, to go and have adventures.  Staying in and surrounded by all the things I could have fun with close at hand was so much, well, easier.  And more comfortable.  And safer.  Eventually, that easiness, comfort, and safety became the overriding factors in decisions about what to do each day, and turned into the padded chains that kept me at home.

As with most times we’re simply doing what’s comfortable, it took something significant for me to stop and look in my mental mirror.  In this case, it was my Grandma dying.  Like I’ve heard others say, it was a tragedy to lose her, but at the same time a blessing that all the pain she had or could have had was done, and those conflicting feelings were mixed up in all sorts of other complicated feelings that go along with being a family.  When she passed away, I had a chance to look at my Grandma’s life and what I’d observed about her behaviors that I did or didn’t want to be true in my life.  And what do you know, she was quite the homebody too.  She did some volunteering, but she was far more often at home than she was out doing things.  In the same vein, my Mom is still very involved in volunteering, and has jobs, but she is not really a traveler at all–more of a volunteer and explorer within her well-known realm.  And do you know what this homebody thought when looking at other homebodies?  I don’t want that to be me!

You see, in spite of all the great things you can do at or from home, I realized that the vast majority of great times in my life involved getting out of the house and doing things.  I might think with a groan of having to load up bikes to head out to the local bike trail, but then I remember the wind on my face, the sun on my skin, and the thrill of riding down an open path with a gorgeous view.  While I may hate the time and expense of planning a trip to another country, I remember how blessed we’ve been to be able to take such trips (well, trip), the awesome people we’ve met, and the incredible things we’ve seen.  I may feel like Anger from Pixar’s Inside Out by the time we get things packed, the kiddos into the carseats, and through weekend traffic to go wherever we want to hike–but then, I remember how much I like the exertion of hiking around, enjoy being in amidst trees or on top of mountains, and revel in being with my family in a quiet pocket of nature.

Taking those happy memories into consideration, and realizing I’m not always strong enough to get myself out of this rut of staying at home, I flat-out told my wife she’s going to have to force me into some outdoor activities:  hiking, biking, or even *gulp* camping.  We won’t be able to get out all the time, and I’ll let that feed my homebody inclination, but when we do go out I’m going to do my very best to find that lost explorer that I know is still somewhere inside of me and let him roam free once more.

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Swiss Cheese-Potato Bread

RECENT PROJECT

This week, we are celebrating one family member no longer having a dairy allergy!  For those of you who haven’t had to deal with any type of food allergies, this may seem like a shrug and “That’s great.” is about the right response; for those of you who have dealt with food allergies of any type, you know how much of a relief and happy moment this is.

In celebration of this moment, a cheese bread seemed like an appropriate choice of project.  I chose Swiss Cheese-Potato Bread, again from Bernard Clayton’s “New Complete Book of Breads”.  I didn’t quite know what to expect as I’ve only done a couple cheese breads in the past, and none with potatoes in them (well, instant potato flakes).  Turns out that this bread, which you bake in a tube pan, is really not too tough.  The only thing that you’ll see is that, in the image below, the cheese on the outside tended to float to one side.  Fortunately, on the inside, it is evenly distributed.

Swiss Cheese-Potato Bread Top

This bread cooks up really nicely on the bottom as well, as shown below, and you can even see the little pockets of cheese when you view a slice.

Swiss Cheese-Potato Bread Slice Bottom

Swiss Cheese-Potato Bread Side

The most important part is how it tastes.  All members of the family, including the one formerly with a dairy allergy, really enjoyed it–a crispy outside, a nice soft inside, and tasty pockets of Swiss cheese.  With such a positive response from the judges, this is one I plan on making again sometime.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

When I was a kid (a long time ago), like most kids, my Mom would have/let me go over to other kids’ homes to play.  There wasn’t much of a condition, or a communication, that I was aware of before I went over; it was just my asking, “Is it OK if I go over to my friend Johnny’s house?” and, if the answer was yes, I was on my way.  My Mom knew who my friends were and generally what they were like, so it wasn’t a big deal.  It likely made it easier that we lived in a relatively homogeneous community, with a lot of the population being of the same race, roughly the same socioeconomic status, the same religion, and similar perspectives on life.

Now, fast forward to my being married, and having two boys of my own.  We live in a location that is quite diverse, with people from all races, social and economic statuses, religions, and perspectives that we’re around both personally and professionally.  We’re grateful that we and our boys can experience this diversity, while at the same time knowing it means the kids will encounter many different ways of living and different views when they go over to friends’ houses, just as their friends will experience our perspective on life when they come over to our house.  A pastor at one of the churches we used to attend talked about this, and said point blank that there are friends’ houses that he and his wife are OK with their kids going to and friends’ houses that they’re not allowed to spend time at–not because they don’t care about the friends, and not because of a family’s religious beliefs, but because they know which people will care for their kids in a way that aligns with their values, and which ones won’t.  This isn’t an approach that’s tied to that pastor’s faith, either, or a church environment in general–it’s just good parenting.

As our boys begin entering the age when they’ll ask and be asked more to go over to friends’ houses to play, we know that one of the best things we can do before saying “Yes” is meeting the friend’s parents, talking to them, and maybe spend time with them when our kiddo first goes over there to see how they handle watching out for their kid and ours.  Now, the reverse is also going to be true:  The friends of our boys have parents who will also likely want to talk to us before they let their kids come over to play so that they can understand who we are and what we’re like before giving the thumbs up.  That physical and verbal interaction is critical to building confidence, but what if we also had something that was like a statement of values for visiting friends?  Something that told them, “Hey, this is what we’re like and how we’ll treat you in our house”?  These questions are leading the wife and I to building a “What You Can Expect in Our Home” guide.

So what do you put in a “What You Can Expect in Our Home” guide?  That’s what we’re working through right now, and why this post is just Part 1.  We want something that will be short, easily understood, and hit up major points while leaving lots of room for those conversations between us and other parents to take place.  Here’s what this looks like right now:

  1. Short:  The guide can only be 1 page, or 2 if we’re printing it to be read from a few feet away.
  2. Easily understood:  We want people to just be able to look at the guide and go, “Oh, OK, I get what you’re saying here.”
  3. Hit up major points:  We want to hit up only the major points so people don’t get bored before they finish reading through the guide, and so that we can get across the things that are most important to us and our home.

What would be in that major points list for us?  I expect it will change between this post and when we get to Part 2, and it will dramatically change as the boys get older, but some of the big points we already know of are (in no particular order):

  1. Allergies:  We’ve been through our share of food allergies (though one less now!), so we’ll be very upfront of what we have in our house and what we can do to keep our home safe for others with food allergies.  Similarly, we’ll let people know what pets we have for those with animal allergies as well.
  2. Food:  We’ll explain what our mealtimes are and what’s available outside of those mealtimes (since we’re more than happy to share what we have, but we’re not an all-day cafeteria or a candy machine).
  3. Toys and games sharing:  We’ll talk about how we ensure sharing of toys and games will occur, both for their kid and ours.
  4. Discipline:  And following on to sharing, the ways in which we’ll resolve conflicts.  As a preview, there are ways we discipline our own kids that I’d never do to other kids–that is their parents’ job.
  5. Home boundaries:  We’ll share about what areas, and things, the kids will have access to and what they won’t.
  6. Religion:  We’ll share what we believe, but that we don’t talk to kids about it unless they specifically ask.
  7. When we’ll call:  We’ll let the parents know what things we’ll call them for.
  8. Safety to and from our house:  Some may argue that it doesn’t allow kids to demonstrate their freedom, but to me it’s more of a respect thing to let other parents know we’ll walk their kiddo to and from our house to ensure they get home safely.

There are a few of those that might fall off the list, and a couple more we could add, but those really do represent our major points we’d like to communicate to other parents when their kids come over.

Once the wife and I have our guide developed, I’ll share it on here so that you can see what we ended up with.  Like I said before, the guide is meant to just hit the major points and allow room for more conversation between families so others can feel comfortable saying to their kid, “Yes, you can go over to their house to play.”

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