When Bella moved from daycare to kindergarten last year, I truly believed that we could make the public school system work for her. My parents did it for me, advocating with the school district to find me the additional challenges that I needed and always making sure that I was in the right place and was not bored. We started with asking the school to evaluate her for first grade, and we should have known something was wrong right then. At first the kindergarten teacher, not a new recruit to the school system, said that wasn’t something they did and the principal was confused when we asked her about it before school started. The school system’s policy on this is very clear, that we have to make the request and they will perform an evaluation and the decision has to be made in the first 30 days of school. When we sat down with them to review the evaluation, the teacher was obviously put out that she had to do this work. Her speech was rushed, she didn’t want to be in the meeting, and while she had a few complimentary things to say about Bella, the bulk of what she had to say was how unready Bella was socially and because she couldn’t follow directions or do everything a kindergartener needed to do at the end of the school year.

Even speaking as someone with an obvious bias, I can say that Isabella has always been bright and creative. We’ve tried to encourage that as much as possible, such as finding science enrichment classes for her or getting her tools like a Leapster Tag so that she could learn to read on her own. Now she loves her chapter books and would spend all night reading if we let her. She always has a half a dozen little art projects going on. She asks questions constantly so she can understand what is going on around her. It’s sometimes hard to remember that she’s only six years old. But she’s also very stubborn. She’ll put her foot down and refuse to do things, especially if she doesn’t fully understand why it’s needed. She also loves to test her limits with everyone.

Even though I know with absolute certainty that if Bella was put in first grade she would have adapted to the environment within a month, I didn’t press the matter with the school. It was obvious they did not want to move her, and I did not want to create an adversarial relationship with them from the very start. We decided to take a “wait and see” approach and continue to help Bella with the few missing skills at home. From a selfish point of view she was now staying in a half-day kindergarten, heading off on the bus at 11 AM and returning at 3 PM, with nothing to eat at school but a milk break (where the kids get to pick chocolate milk). Marcy tried to get some lunch into her before she left, but still we would hear about “problems” that tended to be at the end of the day. What do you expect when the kids haven’t had anything to eat for almost 4 hours except a little sugar?

I have no illusions that Bella is a perfect child. Early in the year, in September, she had a problem where she took an item that wasn’t hers from school. We had a lot of things to say to her about this, and it seemed to mostly solve the problem. A couple weeks ago, there was another incident where she took a couple things belonging to other students, but it was only witnessed by another kid (not a teacher), and from all accounts it was a case where they were “found” items (on the carpet without the owner near them) and Bella was trying to do the right thing and return them or figure out whose they were. And then earlier this week, on Tuesday, she took a roll of stickers from near the teacher’s desk and handed them out to her friends in class. None of these things were the right thing to do, and all of them got her in a lot of trouble at home. But I believe the most recent incident was motivated by a bit of a “Mean Girls” incident in the neighborhood last week, and the one just before that she actually had good intentions, she just wasn’t sure of exactly what to do.

Marcy was at the school for something unrelated on Tuesday after school, and was cornered in the hall by Bella’s teacher. The teacher told her about the incident with the stickers, reminded Marcy that it was the third time and therefore a pattern, and proceeded to tell her how Bella would be in in-school suspension the following day. Marcy let her know that we were both available to talk with them at any point, as our schedules are flexible, but the teacher said it would be one to two weeks before they had all the paperwork done (because you know this goes on her permanent record) and could discuss a behavior plan with us. Marcy was floored, and relayed all of this to me. I read Bella the riot act after her karate class and started another round of lost privileges with her. I then made plans to go talk to the principal the following morning. Regardless of how wrong Bella might have been, there was no way I agreed with suspension as a solution to it, in school or not.

I ended up talking to the assistant principal the next day (who, as most parents know, is typically tasked with discipline in most schools), and here’s where it gets really interesting. She explained to me that all she was going to do was have Bella in her office when school started for about an hour to do her work and have a talk. While some might call it in-school suspension, she didn’t see it that way and there was no paperwork or record. Just a chance to give a little shock to the child and reinforce that the behavior was not acceptable (and this I have absolutely no problem with). She also said that she didn’t know anything about two weeks to create paperwork, and that if I wanted to talk about behavior I was to come in any time I wanted. She assured me she would talk with the teacher and find out where the communication issue was, and I relayed some of the neighborhood incidents that might be affecting Bella so that at least the assistant principal would have a more complete picture.

This all painted a very clear picture for us, and it’s clear that the problem was actually some combination of a bad teacher and a bad school. What I predicted at the beginning of the year had come to pass, and Bella was getting into trouble most likely because she was bored and was now being labeled as a discipline problem. The teacher, who after we requested the first grade evaluation we had never felt anything but resentment from, was not doing the right thing by our daughter, and it doesn’t matter whether that was because she was overworked or because she just didn’t care. And the school district is just too large for us to get them to help us solve this problem within the system. When I was in school, the state mandated that the school districts must teach all children to the best of the child’s ability, but now all that matters is the tests and ranking numbers. The official statements that kids in a grade are all at different levels and they adapt to challenge each child were just platitudes that they had no intention of executing on.

We took Bella that morning after I got back to tour a Montessori school. Before we left, Bella asked the following questions:

• Can I learn more math? (Yes, and science and everything else) Yes!
• Is it all day? (Yes) Awesome!
• Is it all year? (Yes, you’ll go there this summer) Awesome!

After we left, having made the decision immediately to move Bella there, we asked her if she wanted to start in 1 week and cancel the gymnastics spring break camp she was going to (at her request), or start in 3 weeks. She immediately told us that she wanted to start going to the new school now.

On the way back to her public school, she told us that she hoped she was in the class with the teacher she spent time with at the Montessori school while we were touring because she was nice and didn’t yell at her. Marcy and I looked each other, and I asked Bella who yells at her. She got very nervous, and we reminded her that she wasn’t in trouble. We asked if it was someone at her public school. She said yes, her teacher yells a lot. If we didn’t know before that we made the right decision, we certainly did now.

This is Bella’s last week in public school. She starts at The Boyd School on Monday, April 2.

Get the following things laid out before you start:

• Turkey fryer (26 or 30 quart pot, depending on how big your bird is)
• A full tank of propane
• Enough peanut oil to almost fill the pot
• Marinade and injector
• Seasoned salt or other rub for the outside of the turkey
• A fire extinguisher near where you will be frying
• A length of 2×4, or a sturdy broomstick

The first step to prepping the turkey is to get it. You can spend the extra money on a Butterball if you like, but we have pretty good luck with a decent grade A turkey. Whatever you get, make sure that it will fit in the fryer pot that you have, with room to spare at the top. For these notes, I’m going to inject the turkey. You could also brine it, if you choose, though I’ve never done that.

Four hours, or so, before you want to eat, unwrap the turkey and remove the “surprise package”. The giblets, neck, etc. Remove the popup timer, if it has one. Trim any excess skin around the neck. If you don’t do this, it will flap and splatter oil, or sear shut. Don’t worry about washing the turkey just yet.

Take the fryer pot and put the turkey in it, on the rack provided. Fill the pot with clean tap water, until the entire turkey is submerged. If the very tips of the legs are still sticking out (the bone), that’s OK. Take the turkey out and let it drain. Use a tape measure to measure the distance between the top of the pot and the water level. Add 1.5″, and remember the number (so your number should now put the tape measure end below the surface of the water).

Take the turkey off the rack and pat it dry. You should have something flavorful to inject the turkey with. We use Cajun Injectors, usually half the turkey with Creole Butter, and the other half with Roasted Garlic. Follow the instructions on the jar to inject the marinade into the breast and legs. Try to poke as few holes in the turkey as possible, but spread it around. Put the turkey somewhere cold (on a tray in the fridge, for example). This will give the marinade a little time to soak in. You could start earlier if you want, but I usually don’t bother.

Empty and thoroughly dry out the fryer pot. About 2 hours or so (depending on the size of your turkey) before you want to eat, Set up your fryer outside, not inside, not in a garage, and not near anything flammable. I can’t stress this enough. It may be cold outside, but just wear a jacket. And whereever you put the fryer, plan on spilling a little oil, or having it splatter. You might want to put some damp newspaper under and around it to soak up the oil (and not create a fire hazard). Put the fryer pot on the burner, but don’t light the burner yet.

Make sure you’ve got peanut oil. Peanut oil has a very high temperature at which it will break down, and it will not adversely flavor the turkey. Trust me on this. Don’t try to use another oil or shortening. It might work, it might not, but peanut definitely works. Fill the pot with peanut oil to the mark from earlier (1.5″ below the water level after the turkey was removed from the pot). Your fryer should have come with a thermometer and a clip, so clip it to the side of the pot so the end of the thermometer is in the oil.

Now you can start the burner. Follow the directions for the particular fryer that you have. Once you have the burner lit, the flame should be almost completely blue. If it’s not, adjust the air shutter. Crank it up as high as you feel comfortable with. It’s probably going to take longer to heat the oil than it will to actually cook the turkey. With 6 gallons of peanut oil, it took me about an hour to heat the oil.

You want to get it up to 400 degrees. We’re not going to cook the turkey at 400, but the temperature will drop when you put the turkey in, so getting it up to 400 is good. I wouldn’t go higher, though. More importantly, now that the oil is on, keep an eye on it. I would suggest always having someone with the fryer. You don’t want the burner to go out, the temperature to go too high, or anything to catch fire.

Once the temperature is close to 400, get the turkey out of the fridge. Pat it as dry as possible with paper towels. The more water is on the turkey, the more the oil is going to boil and splatter when you put it in, so dry is good. Get your seasoned salt and sprinkle it over the entire surface of the turkey, inside and out. This is going to give the skin some flavor when it crisps, so be liberal, and rub it in pretty good. Put the turkey on the fryer rack, and take it out to the fryer.

For this part, it’s good to have two people, so you can both stand back from the fryer. The fryer rack should have a hook that goes with it (kinda like a coat hanger) that hooks onto the top of the rack for lowering it into the oil. Hook this onto the rack, and run the 2×4 or broomstick through it, so you can each hold one end of the 2×4 and stand back from the fryer. You might want to have gloves on as well, just in case it splatters. Hopefully, your oil is up to 400 now. Otherwise, wait until it is.

Do not just drop the turkey into the oil! That’s how accidents happen. Instead you want to lower the turkey into the oil very slowly so that it does not boil over or splatter excessively. Just take your time, and lower the turkey in evenly a couple inches at a time. But don’t go slower than you have to to keep the oil from splattering or overflowing. Once the turkey is completely in the oil, unhook the handle from the rack. The oil should have expanded a little when it heated up, and it should be covering the turkey completely (except possibly for the tips of the leg bones). If it’s not, add a little more oil so that it is.

Start your timer. You’re going to fry the turkey for 3.5 minutes per pound. So a 16 pound bird would cook for 56 minutes. Continue to watch it to make sure there are no problems. You also want to keep an eye on the temperature. Once the bird is in, the temp will drop. It might go down as much as 100 degrees. Keep the burner on high, and bring the temperature back up to 350. Once it hits 350, level it off.

When the time is up, shut the burner off first. Use the hook and the 2×4 to lift the turkey out of the oil. Hold it over the pot for a minute to let it drain, then take it inside and let it cool down for 10 or 15 minutes. Carve it like you would any other turkey, and enjoy. The wings will be a little crispy, but the breast and legs should be perfect. Leave the oil to cool.

After dinner, and after the oil is cold, you have a choice to make. If you’re going to fry another turkey soon, save the oil. It’s good for at least 2 turkeys, provided you filter it a little. Otherwise you can just toss it. Either way, put it back into the containers you got it out of. If you’re going to save it, filter it through a strainer to get all the turkey bits out of it. Clean everything else up and store it properly.

These are my notes, as updated from this Thanksgiving’s turkey. If you’ve got more notes or questions, please post them here. Always looking for more tips.

I’ve been thinking about picking up a Lensbaby for a little bit now. What I’ve heard is that people either love this glass, or hate it. Personally, I wanted a few more options for creative compositions. So I got myself a Composer today, and ordered some accessories to boot. Here’s my first shot:

Looking forward to breaking this out when I go to Fermilab next week.

When we moved at the beginning of the year, we had decided not to put the girls into daycare for the time being. Marcy was not going to be working and we were looking for ways to keep our spending down. As a result we ended up looking for enrichment activities for Bella and found Curiosity Zone. Parents of young kids know it can be difficult to find good activities for children under the age of 5, so their Little Lab program was exactly what we needed. The night when she goes to her “science class,” as she calls it, has quickly become her favorite day of the week. So much so that we immediately signed her up for the entire year after her first day. She learned about geologists, engineers, astronauts, and other professions during the last session, and this time around it’s backyard science, where they’re learning about backyard animals, weather, and other fun things.

I can’t possibly overstate how proud it makes me feel that Bella loves science so much, and I do everything I can to encourage that. We have color crystal kits and prisms for her to play with at home. While she’s tending more towards her dolls lately, blocks and Tinkertoys and LEGO have always been the favorites. I take her to the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center to look at the planes, and her favorite exhibits are the space artifacts. I selfishly don’t want my mother to ever move from the condo she has in Boston because it’s right next to the Boston Children’s Museum. Bella’s imagination and creativity is astounding, and when you combine that with wanting to learn how things work it’s going to take her far.

Partly because of her interest in the space displays at the museum, and partly because I have never been able to see it, we wanted to plan a trip this fall to go see one of the final Space Shuttle launches. Who knows when there will be a replacement program, and there’s something about seeing the Shuttle launch, especially knowing there are people in it, that is more amazing than a rocket launch. The STS-133 (Discovery) launch is now scheduled for November 1st, the day after our planned Walt Disney World trip ends. That, much to my boss’s chagrin, has turned our trip into a 2 week vacation to Florida. We are renting a condo right on the Indian River in Titusville, directly across from the Kennedy Space Center, for the month of November. That way we have somewhere to watch from even if the launch slips by a few days (or a few weeks). Of course, we’ll spend plenty of time at KSC doing tours and seeing all the exhibits as well!

I’m also getting a little treat just for me. Several of the high energy physics labs, including CERN and Fermilab are hosting photowalks for amateur photographers on August 7th. I was able to get into the limited group going to Fermilab (only about 50 people per site are allowed). We’ll get to see one of the accelerator tunnels, the antimatter factory, and a few other sites. I just hope I’ll be able to get some good pictures, since I’m only just picking up the hobby again after a long hiatus. The last time I took any serious pictures was in college.

I would not call myself a black belt with GTD by any stretch of the imagination. After almost a year, I’m just now getting to the point where I am very granular about my actions for computer projects. Where I used to have actions that were essentially “Write all the code for this project”, there are now a dozen actions in a project that are “Add this single function.” Despite that, even when I started up again last summer I had enough written down that I was able to keep track of most of what needed to be done. Especially considering how I was trying to bounce between being a business owner, a homeowner, a father, and a full-time systems engineer, if I didn’t have a single list I would have dropped the ball on everything.

I put off setting up my upper horizons for a while. Actually, until I attended one of David Allen’s excellent Making It All Work seminars. Shame is a powerful motivator, and I spent the train ride into DC doing my weekly review because I knew that I couldn’t face David if I didn’t have that done. That prepared me for setting up my horizons during and immediately after the seminar. At the time, I didn’t think about the horizons that much after I set them up.

It’s surprising to me now that when I sat down to look at the business finances that Friday night in October, how I didn’t think about the horizons directly, but just knew what fit with them. I wanted to be able to spend time with my girls, explore my hobbies, and not spend as much time thinking about work. Dream Dinners was never going to bring in enough money to allow me to quit my job, at least not alone. And the time required was making it such that I had no time for Bella. Not only that, but I was getting short with her far too often. We were pouring every dime we didn’t have into this business, and it wasn’t taking us where we wanted to be. The house was a little less clear, because I know it was a good place to raise the girls. At the same time, we needed to spend so much time on maintenance that there was hardly time for anything else. My daily drive was 90 minutes each way, which meant that when I got home all I wanted to do was go to sleep. And the finances just didn’t add up.

There’s a kind of comfort that comes with making that big a decision and knowing with absolute certainty that you are right. It doesn’t make it easy, but it does mean that there is no second-guessing. The only way to get there is to have a clear map of what is important to you. What your principles are, and a vision of where you want to be down the road in 5 years, 10 years, and beyond.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go review my horizons of focus.

Summer is a particularly tough time for the meal assembly business. Many people take the summer off, and trying to retain customers is difficult. Combine that with the state of the economy and no cash reserves, and that made last summer our first and last. We didn’t actually close our doors under mid-October, but the writing was on the wall. I won’t go into the gritty details, but I will say that we made the decision very quickly, at a point where we could pay our employees, refund or provide food to our customers, and help out some of the other Dream Dinners owners nearby. So we no longer own Dream Dinners in Hagerstown, and that started all of this (unless you count me knocking up the Boss earlier in the year).

Then comes Kaylee Elizabeth. Our second beautiful daughter was born on October 22, and she is as sweet as her sister. I never did think I wanted kids before I met the Boss, but I think being Daddy is the best, and this little Kaylee-bear makes it even better. Life was a little rough for the first few months, as she was colicky and had a bad case of acid reflux. Now she’s cutting her first teeth, working on her first word, and crawling everywhere. She is quite chatty, which is no surprise if you know Bella.

While we were adjusting to life with Kaylee, we were still dealing with the financial implications of closing the business. We had a 10 year lease, a $220k loan, outstanding vendor invoices, and royalties, all of which we had to personally guarantee. This meant that declaring personal bankruptcy was a foregone conclusion. Maybe in the near future I’ll talk about that process a bit, but the wild card here was that we also had over $370k in mortgages on a house that was worth much less. Combine that with a 90 minute commute each way, all the time and money costs of home ownership, and the Boss and I had a very hard decision to make. The bankruptcy gave us a chance to walk away from the house, and we did. We moved back to Virginia, just 8 miles from my office, into a rented townhouse.

Needless to say, this has taken a bit of adjustment. We’ve gone through several rounds of getting rid of stuff that we didn’t need. We still have a garage and a storage unit full of boxes. We miss our big kitchen and yard, but we don’t miss having to take care of a house that was poorly built. Not to mention that it takes me 15 minutes or less to get to and from work. There is just no price I can put on getting back 10 hours a week of my life. Even this close to these hard choices, there is nothing in the world I would trade for 2 hours a day with my girls.

I’ve barely scratched the surface here. There is just so much to talk about, and my head is finally clear enough to do it. Yes, I am still going strong with GTD, and I have that to thank for being able to make most of these decisions and know for sure that I am doing the right thing. Expect to hear more on that soon.

Let’s start with some quick definitions:

Sucrose is what comprises table sugar. It’s naturally occurring (sugar cane or sugar beet), but is typically refined and that is what the white sugar we use so often is. It breaks down to glucose and fructose in a weak acid environment (like the stomach).

Glucose is basically fuel for cells. It can be metabolized for energy by most of your body, including your brain.

Fructose is the other part of sucrose, and can only be metabolized by the liver. Typically, it’s considered a problem as excessive fructose consumption can lead to a host of different problems.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a commercially produced sweetener that contains fructose and glucose. HFCS 55 is 55% fructose and 45% glucose (basically the same as table sugar), and is mostly used in soft drinks. HFCS 42 is 42% fructose and is used in most other foods. HCFS 90 is 90% fructose, and is pretty much just combined with HFCS 42 to make HFCS 55. Food manufacturers like HFCS because it’s cheaper than sucrose.

So why do food manufacturers even bother with HFCS if it’s so similar to sucrose? A small part of the allure is because it’s a liquid, which means it blends easily. But the big part is that it’s cheaper than sucrose. This is primarily due to tariffs enacted in 1977 that greatly increased the cost of imported sugar. Combine that with government subsidies that make it more lucrative for farmers to grow corn and it’s easy to see why HFCS is so popular in the US. If you look at the EU, they have production caps on HFCS and it only accounts for less than 2% of the sweetener production there.

So why do people hate HFCS so much then? Now we get into rhetoric, politics, and some bad science. Everyone’s got studies. Everyone’s got anecdotal evidence. But what’s the truth? One would normally thing that the folks at HowStuffWorks would have gotten this all right, but they seem to be just about as tilted as everyone else. I deal in facts, so let’s take a look at the major talking points and see where they break down:

There’s a direct correlation between the increased use of HFCS and obesity rates in the US. Repeat after me – correlation does not imply causation. Just because two things happened at the same time, that does not mean that one caused the other. I could just as easily show that the obesity rates map to the use of computers, video games, and the increase of “knowledge work”. If this is going to be the argument, you need a causal relationship. Many think that some of the next points provide it.

There was a study that showed that fructose caused mice to get fat. Yes. That was fructose alone, and it was not HFCS. Not the same thing.

HFCS messes with your body’s natural satiety response. There are two hormones responsible for the satiety response. One is ghrelin, which tells the brain you’re hungry. The other is leptin, which tells the brain that you’re full. Glucose triggers the response (less ghrelin, more leptin), while fructose does not. But HowStuffWorks got this one wrong. HFCS has both glucose and fructose, and there have been several studies, including one by Melanson et. al. (yes, I know that’s a CRA website. You can also find it here) that show that there is no difference in the satiety response between sucrose and HFCS. It’s been metioned that PepsiCo paid for part of that study, but it also hasn’t been disputed in the almost 3 years since it was presented.

Fructose is only metabolized by the liver, and the liver can only take so much before it starts making triglycerides. This is absolutely right. However, HFCS is no different than sucrose in this regard. Sucrose is broken down into glucose and fructose in the stomach and small intestine, and from there it’s absorbed. Fructose makes its way to the liver, and it doesn’t matter where it originally came from.

If HFCS really isn’t that bad for you when compared to sucrose, why are we so fat? The problem here is that people don’t want to hear the hard answers. People want to blame someone or something outside of themselves for all their troubles. It’s the CRA’s fault, because they’re pushing this cheap, refined sweetener on us. If we can just get rid of this, we’ll all be healthy. Won’t someone think of the children???

Honestly, I thought I was going to write the other post. I thought I was going to write about the evils of HFCS. Right up until I did my research and took a critical and unbiased (as much as possible) look at the information available. The answer is just not that simple. But I’ve got a few good ideas. I’ll tell you about them tomorrow.

My love of food is more about the social aspects than anything else.  Certainly, I love the taste of a delicately prepared dish.  But if I’m not sharing it with at least one other person, it’s hardly worth the time or effort.  My favorite memories of meals are ones that I shared with a group of friends.  Dinner with a group of like-minded geeks at a Brazillian churrascaria.  Exquisite meals at Victoria & Albert’s and Laboratorio del Galileo with another couple we love so dearly.  And that doesn’t even begin to cover holiday meals and family cookouts.  There’s a reason why, when I’m traveling on business, I can most often be found at a burger joint.  If I’m not sharing a meal, I just want something quick, cheap, and reasonably tasty.

There’s really no wondering why The Boss and I chose to open the business that we did.  Dream Dinners is all about getting the family around the table for a meal.  It’s so incredibly important to do, and so often set aside for a quick meal at the drive-through between sports practice, music lessons, grocery shopping, and collapsing on the couch in front of the TV.  There are a ton of studies that show that kids who eat dinner at the table with family communicate more easily, do better in school, have fewer behavioral problems, are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and are generally more healthy.  Most people don’t realize that until you tell them, and then it seems like it’s so obvious.  We have to make family dinners a top priority, and schedule around that.

Think back to your childhood.  I bet most of us will remember that dinner time was 5 PM every night.  Everyone sat down together, we ate together, and we talked together.  It seems like we take it for granted now, but it’s such a critical part of growing up.  And now we’ve got two-job families, and we feel guilty that we’re not home to cook dinner.  And when we can manage to get everyone home at the same time, it’s hard to manage more than pizza or a bucket of chicken.  It’s definitely better than nothing, but we’re “not doing our best job,” as my Punkinhead so often says.

I put it to you as a challenge.  Make the time over the next week to get the entire family together for a meal, whether breakfast, lunch, or dinner, at least 4 times.  Set at least 30 minutes aside to sit at the table together, outside of what it takes to prepare the meal.  Turn off the TV.  Talk about whatever comes up: work, school, what’s in the news.  For extra credit, involve at least one other member of your family in preparing the meal.