For Christmas this year, I was considering some special gift that involved Berta and I as a couple, rather than (really, in addition to) single for-her gifts.  While I was looking through the West Chester Night School catalog, I saw their couples cooking classes and knew that I had found the right thing.

The couples cooking classes take place at the Kitchen Workshop in Paoli.  It's a store-front location, with all of the available floor space dedicated to cooking classes.  There is a kitchen area with a large island and many cutting boards.  In the back is a large dining table for guests to eat at.  And the walls are covered with cooking books of all types, apparently given to Art, the owner of the place, as gifts - that he doesn't seem to need - and put out in the Workshop on sale for $5 each.

Last weekend was the first of two classes that I registered us for, a cajun cooking class.  We were the first to arrive, having planned to meet at the Workshop separately due to our proximity to the place from work.  There, we were provided glasses of wine or tea, and allowed to mingle with the other chefs-to-be until the class was ready to start.

We didn't get to learn too much about the others attending the workshop, but what little we learned, we liked.  It's odd that when you come together for a one-shot workshop like this, you never really expect to see the people again, and can both relax about being who you are and not really making an impressive impression.  Or maybe I'm thinking too much of it.  Still, I'm amused by the thought of this casual intimacy.  After all, we were all slicing up food that we would eat later in the evening.

And that's mostly what we learned to do: slice up food.  I find recipes easy if they work, and there are very few recipes that I've made that failed because of the recipe itself.  But what was new that I learned from the class were a few preparation tricks that I can use in the kitchen.  Particularly, the information that Sandie, our teacher, conveyed about knives was interesting to me.

We don't really have good kitchen knives at home.  Most of ours are the serrated edge kind that tear your food up.  I suppose if I've been getting the job done this way for this long, it can't be too bad, but the knowledge we gained about honing knives, their handling, and how you can use a single knife of a certain kind for practically anything you do in the kitchen is useful and has me wanting to look for a similar knife to use in our kitchen at home.

There was also some useful information about vanilla extract, which you can make on your own at home just by putting some vanilla beans into a bottle of vodka.  We also learned a quick way to grate garlic with a knife and some salt that doesn't use an impossible-to-clean garlic press.  Lessons were a little light on learning not to chop your fingers off by curling your fingers in.  I think this is a completely unnatural way of holding something to cut, and will likely never learn to do it right now that I'm in the habit of doing it incorrectly.

Thankfully, none of the five dishes that we prepared for our cajun cooking lesson contained any fingertips from knife accidents.  We made green peppers stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon, a chicken/andouille sausage/shimp jambalaya, red beans with rice, andouille succotash, and bread pudding with brandy apricot sauce.  Of these, I think I liked the jambalaya best, but everything was good.  The red beans had a nice kick to them.  I didn't think I would like the succotash, being what it is, but it turns out when cooked in this style, it's pretty good.  The bread pudding was tasty too, but as Berta pointed out, this recipe is mostly the same as the one we use for our Christmas stuffed French toast, just with brandy and apricot jelly added instead of cream cheese.  Still, tasty.

After we all chopped up our ingredients, threw them in various pots, and finished cooking, we sat at the dining table and ate the food.  It was delicious.  After dinner, we talked about various topics, as if at a large dinner party.  Like I said, it was a nice no-pressure environment for casual talk, over the setting of food.

Probably the best part of the whole evening - certainly worth a separate mention - is that they had a couple of nice ladies there to clean everything.  If you get a container dirty, they clean it.  Cutting board?  Wiped off.  Knives?  Cleaned.  And all the dinner plates go to them to be rinsed and placed in the dishwasher, so there was virtually no cleanup on our part.  Everyone commented on how nice it would be to have that at home.  This will likely be the cause of many home-chef's confusion over why the experience at school was so much better than when they tried to reproduce it at home.

In all, it was a great time.  We didn't learn a whole lot in the way of "Cajun Food" (apart from Cajun being kind of like the people's food versus Creole, which is more aristocratic) but the little tips were well worthwhile, and the company - both Berta and the other couples - was certainly worth the adventure.

On a mailing list to which I still subscribe (registered users only), a message was recently posted about pre-testing programming aptitude. Being a programmer myself, these topics always amuse me, and will no doubt be the focus of at least 10 minutes of our next work lunch.

In particular, the ensuing discussion focused on whether it's easy or difficult to teach programming. The focus was perhaps more concerned with whether programming skills are important at all in comparison to problem solving skills, and the difficulty of teaching those. Being that one of the better sessions I attended at BarCamp Philly revolved around the curriculum required for community college computer classes to produce employable programmers, and the difficulty of finding programmers in the marketplace with any skill, I have much interest in this topic.

But rather than discuss any of that, I have a good story...

I may have mentioned in one of the prior ten years of blog postings that I was a gifted student in school. "Gifted" in the sense that I had special classes once a week, and generally did a lot of pushing on the doors labeled "pull".

In the upper grades, our "assignments" in the gifted program involved visiting elementary school gifted classes and imparting some of our venerated teen wisdom. Our victims: The second grade gifted class of East Ward Elementary School.

We had quite a few good field trips with the younglings, including one to the zoo, which is a completely different experience when you're a teen in charge of a group of 2nd graders that may be collectively smarter than you. But this post, "Peanut Butter Programming", has to do with a particular unit with those kids on programming.

The 2nd grade DEEP (Downingtown Educational Enrichment Program - the gifted student program) teacher was one I knew from when I went through the program. She had prepared her students for a programming lesson by asking them to form two groups and collaborate on written instructions for creating the universal 2nd-grader food -- the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.

Not really being told exactly what they were in for, we Seniors stepped in. In was just two of us, myself and one of my better friends, Derek. We were selected from the senior gifted class to do this assignment because of our experience with computers.

At a desk in front of the class we were presented with the components for assembling the PB&J sandwich; a butter knife, several slices of bread, and a jar each of peanut butter and of jelly. I went first.

"Take the jelly," read the first kid from their list of collaborated instructions. I took the jar of jelly.

"Put jelly on the knife." Hmm. Someone left the lid on my jar. I attempted to put the jelly on the knife. The jar just wouldn't stay.

The class shouted a chorus of, "No! No!" So instead, I attempted to force the knife through the lid of the jar. Once again, "No! No!"

The unwrapping of the bread also became an issue. The teacher took this "three strikes" opportunity to tell the students that they failed to create a list of explicit instructions that would result in the creation of the simplest of 2nd grade foodstuffs. She encouraged the second group to take a few moments to revise their script, and then Derek stepped forward.

There's something to be said about friends who are this cool. I think I find myself with a lot of almost highbrow intellectuals these days, people who have good thinking skills or recall, but have no creative synthesis. Derek was obviously gifted, and had no creative roadblocks.

The lesson ended with Derek shoving a surprisingly complete peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his pants pocket and running out of the classroom. "Take the sandwich" was the next to last command before eating. Had they simply optimized their code, Derek wouldn't have had peanut butter in his pants for the rest of the day.

What is the point of all this, anyway?

I agree that there is a distinct separation between learning to write code and learning to solve problems using code. And while I think problem solving is important, teaching it's application - whether it's by writing C++ or listing step by step PB&J recipes - is perhaps equally so.

Remaining for future fireside chats: Why I think you can't teach a programmer to be "great", how we might do better to succeed at striving for great programmers, and the magic of the elementary DEEP classroom, which is home to posters of feudal castes, diagrams of unimpeachable problem-solving processes, and a chart by the door detailing the procedure to follow in case of a tornado, even though tornadoes don't frequent our region.

Abby's in second grade this year. On the refrigerator we have her school lunch schedule posted, in a December-festive black toner on red paper.

The lunch menu is in the form of a calendar, with each day's lunch options listed in the date blocks. There is always a choice of different food options that would satisfy any 2nd-grader.

For a while, Abby was eating nothing but hot dogs. They usually have multiple choices for main entrees, and she never wanted to eat what she calls "first choice". Instead, she'd just choose the hot dog.

The way school lunches work now is more interesting than when I was in elementary school. The school seems interested in making sure that each kid gets a balanced diet. They combine this desire with some technology to make it happen.

We put money in an account for Abby to pay for lunch. At the same time, we set some basic preferences about how that money can be spent; whether she can buy ice cream in addition to lunch. She goes to the cafeteria and gives the cashier her account number, and they verify that her order is in compliance with school rules and account settings. It's sort of "big brother", but at least we don't have to worry about her not getting the right food at lunch.

Prices have changed a bit since I was in school. Almost double. But still, a whole lunch for $2 is pretty darn cheap. If you could do that at a restaurant, even if just for the kids, that would be great.

I've been offering some of my most valuable educational advice to Abby over the past year, and I think the number one thing that I tell her is also the number one thing that will help her be most successful. Cheat.

I think that many people miss this lesson in school, mostly because they don't teach it. It's one of my personal aims to make sure that Abby gets these important lessons early. For example, it's always important to question everything; teachers are often right but can be wrong just like anyone. And one of the more important of the important lessons is that you should cheat.

You might be concerned that I'm teaching Abby to copy answers from her classmates' papers. When Berta first heard me telling Abby to cheat on her homework, she was a little anxious and confused. I guess some explanation is in order.

When I tell Abby to "cheat", I tell her to read her homework sheet; to read her test. It's interesting how many people miss this most simple key to getting ahead in school - just read the page, often the answers are right there in front of you.

In first grade, the answer is as easy as which direction an "h" faces. In high school, the answer is as easy as which of the multiple choice items doesn't contradict the others. In college, the answer is often rooted in the question itself.

So I tell my kid to cheat. I was reminding her just tonight that the answers that fit in the blanks are at the top of her homework papers, all spelled right, all letters going the right way, all letters in the correct case. If that gets her ahead, I hope she learns to cheat even more.

Abby has been home with me for the past two days because the teachers a Downingtown Schools can't come to an agreement with their administration over how much money they should be making. We're lucky that Abby is very low-maintenence and that I'm able to be "at work" with her at home so that there's someone to keep an eye on her. Still, this teacher's strike is absolutely absurd, and I'll be happy to wait out the full state-allowed 23 days of strike to see a reasonable agreement reached - one that likely doesn't assent to the teachers' demands.

The teachers are asking for raises over 5 years totalling 23.75%. The board is offering them 18% over 4 years. It seems like a large gap, but think about this: It's an 18% raise in pay. That's higher than the average cost of living raises here. It's more raise than I've seen in 8 years. It's more than generous, but apparently it's not enough. An opinion article in the Daily Local News expresses my sentiments quite well.

The DASD board makes some great points about what is reasonable in terms of what the district can afford. Primarily, the surplus money that the teacher think they should have access to is a capital surplus. It's a fixed amount of money that won't renew after it's all spent, meaning that salaries would have to drop back when it's gone or people will be fired.

The incoming money needs to be spent on developing new schools as our area is booming in growth. Hundreds of new homes are being built in our district, and those families will need schools. As a result of the expansion, our district is $309 million in debt; debt that makes any surplus unavailable to teacher salaries. And yet, the district offers a generous increase, because they know that the taxpayers value their teachers.

This isn't a race to be competitive with neighboring districts for salary. The district is offering what it can. I don't see that the teachers' union is being fair with their demands. The only way to offset increases to their salaries would be to raise taxes even more, which are already $1200 per year more than any neighboring district.

And to put this all into a final perspective, this isn't about teachers not getting adequate benefits or poor treatment, which was the cause of the advent of unions. It's about teachers simply thinking they should make more money. Well, you know what? Maybe they should. But they don't. Anywhere. Should thinking that you should be making more money entitle you to it?

Pennsylvania leads the nation in school strikes. In 2005, there were more strikes in Pennsylvania schools than in all other states combined by almost double. This is in spite of Pennsylvania being in the top ten states for average teacher salary. That's a sorry situation to be in.

No, I'm happy to wait out the strike. I know it's an inconvenience for most of the families in our district, but the alternative would be more of a hardship, and certainly not in the best interest of our kids' educations.