My dad taught engineering and both my sister and my brother grew up to be engineers. When I was a kid we sat around the dinner table talking about Einstein's theories and solving mathematical equations. That explains why I became a musician and a cooking show host. As much as I enjoyed our dinner conversations, I'd rather spend time with my crayons than Fermat's Last Theorem.

Thirty years too late, I just discovered a new computer game we could have all played together. Crayon Physics Deluxe ($19.99) is a wonderful marriage of crayons and physics by Petri Purho, a Finnish computer science student.




All you do is draw pictures and then the laws of physics are applied to whatever you've created. Draw a hill with a ball at the top, for example, and the ball will start rolling down the hill faster and faster. Draw a bucket of water on a door above your sister's head and, well, you get it.

Purho, who won the 2008 Independent Games Festival Grand Prize, has worked some fun problem-solving into the program, as well. Want to move a ball to a certain area of the game? No problem, just create the right mechanisms to do it yourself. Think of it as a giant virtual marble maze or puzzle. Check it out, it's amazing.

Speaking of marble mazes, my kids and I just saw the modern upgrade of that old marble rolling game. Q-ba-maze ($20 and up) uses snap-together blocks with built in channels for your marbles to roll down. Some blocks go straight, some turn, some drop off and some split into two channels. Or, drop a whole handful of marbles in at the same time and It's like a giant Plinko game. Very cool.

Welcome to Dishing it Out, ParentDish's weekly food column. Rob Barrett is a dad who knows his way around the kitchen; his web site, Cooking For Dads, provides simple video recipes for dads (and moms!). You can read all the Dishing it Out posts here.

Apparently President-Elect Obama likes his pizza. Of course, who doesn't? It's one of the great American ... Italian... well, it's a really great food. If you're going to let your kids stay home and watch the inauguration on Tuesday there's no better way to celebrate this historic, and uniquely American, event than to have a Make Your Own Pizza party. It's so easy and much better than ordering out and it's my family's favorite meal.

All you do is make up a bunch of dough (really easy), lay out different toppings, and have each person go through and put on their pizza just what they want. You can have fresh, homemade pizza out of the oven in under an hour. We like to use traditional toppings like sausage and pepperoni but also enjoy different options like shrimp, carrots, or bacon and using pesto instead of a traditional sauce. Experiment, try something new.

Watch the video or follow the recipe below and celebrate the amazing transition of power of the most powerful country in the world, from one man to another, without a shot being fired. A very rare occurrence in the history of the human race. God bless America.



You can find part two here; shopping list and full recipe are after the jump.

Up here in Minnesota we have a mess, a real mess. And I'm not talking about the slushy, salt covered roads. During the elections back in November, nearly equal numbers of Minnesotans wanted Republican Senator Norm Coleman and Democratic comedian Al Franken as their senator.

After two months of counting and recounting, the final tally is 1,212,431 for Franken and1,212,206 for Coleman. A difference of 225!

On election night Coleman won with 621 votes. Now Franken, who appears to have benefited from some questionable vote counting -- never counted votes, double counted votes -- is ahead. The Coleman Campaign has taken the fight to the courts. (Something the Franken Campaign was also expected to do if they came out on the losing end.) What we really needed was a re-vote. This was a tie.

This is an example of a ballot thrown out by one of the campaigns. In Minnesota a ballot is only to be excluded when the intent of the voter is not clear. But if either of the campaigns challenged it, the vote wasn't counted. Can you tell the intent of this voter? (Click here to see the challenged ballot and the reason for the challenge.)

Let's remember that our kids are watching how we grown-ups handle a fight this close to call. We need to be advocates for fair fighting. We also need to teach our kids at some point it is better to be wronged than continue to fight to show you're right. If Coleman drags this out to much longer, he runs the real danger of appearing like a a sore loser. Franken's gloating will probably ensure that we Minnesotans will send him packing to New York (where he lived until just recently) after just one term.

A 0.0077 percent margin of victory out of 2.4 million eligible voters isn't a big margin, but it is still a margin. Set the right example, guys. Sometimes it's better to just stop fighting, pick up your ball and walk home. How do we want our kids to react when they lose a close game?

(Full disclosure, I did some music for Coleman in 1993 when he was running for St. Paul mayor and Franken was an-almost guest on Cooking for Dads.)

Welcome to Dishing it Out, ParentDish's weekly food column. Rob Barrett is a dad who knows his way around the kitchen; his web site, Cooking For Dads, provides simple video recipes for dads (and moms!). You can read all the Dishing it Out posts here.

It's that time of year again when otherwise normal men and women lose all their inhibitions and paint their faces the colors of a local football franchise. (Remember Seinfeld's David Putty?) Apparently, in January and early February there are two sets of cultural norms, one for everyday life and one for football games.

I love football (although the Vikings are already out of the playoffs). But I don't paint my face. I also don't get a group of my friends together, each paint a letter of the team's name on our bellies and lift up our shirts when the TV camera falls on us. Call me old fashioned. But if you want me on a Sunday afternoon, I'll be in the big chair downstairs half watching the game and half unconscious. There's a subliminal sign over my head -- Please Don't Disturb.

As much as I love watching football, I enjoy getting a group of friends together to watch big games, especially the Super Bowl. (Of course, we don't watch the game as much as the commercials.) Here are some easy ideas for snacks and appetizers to make for those big testosterone laced events.

(During the making of this video we had some problems, but just like in real life, you have to press on. See if you can find the mistake.)


You can find part two -- the onion rings -- here.

Parents should never have to bury their children. It's supposed to be the other way around. So we always grieve a little harder when a mom and dad have to plan their son's or daughter's funeral. Our hearts and our prayers go out to John Travolta and Kelly Preston on the death of their 16-year-old son, Jett.

The family had been vacationing in the Bahamas over the New Year when Jett, according to some reports, suffered a seizure and hit his head in the bathroom. Attempts to revive him failed. Ms. Preston had earlier shared the news that Jett suffered from Kawasaki Syndrome, a little known illness that involves the swelling of arteries which can lead to seizures.

As a father who held his daughter while she died, I know first hand how devastating this time can be. When there's no target for blame, sometimes anger can be directed inward. 80% of all marriages fail when a child dies and depression can linger for years.

Let's keep the whole family in mind, including Jett's sister, Ella, and the extended family as well.

Source

Welcome to Dishing it Out, ParentDish's weekly food column. Rob Barrett is a dad who knows his way around the kitchen; his web site, Cooking For Dads, provides simple video recipes for dads (and moms!). You can read all the Dishing it Out posts here.

It was a simple cheese plate and some french bread, oh, and some red wine, but it brought me such joy. I was flying Air France out of Paris and they brought around this plate with 3 different kinds of cheese, some crackers and a small loaf of french bread. It was just a blast and the French table wine was a perfect companion. I sliced my cheese, poured my wine and settled in for a relaxing flight, a big smile on my face.

On the return flight 3 weeks later a curious thing happened. Both Rich (a friend flying with me) and myself were held up at the gate as the crew jockeyed around the seating. We joked, "Maybe they're bumping us up to first class." When the time for boarding came, sure enough, Rich was bumped up to first class but I was sent back to coach. Rats. I sure could have used some good food and a big seat for the next six hours. When they came around with the cheese plate I was bummed. I stewed about what Rich was getting up in first class and how close I had been to getting it as well. This time the cheese plate brought me no joy, no blast and for sure no smile.

Celebrity chefs and dads Mario Batali and Tony Bourdain recently sat down over a glass of wine to discuss their changing ways. This wasn't just two dads having dinner, though; it was an episode of Serious Eats' popular Chewing the Fat series. But this conversation was about more than food.

Both alleged bad boys of cuisine, Bourdain and Batali talked about their evolving priorities now that they are fathers. Bourdain, the outspoken host of Travel Channel's No Reservations, pointed out his acknowledged loss of dignity while changing poopy diapers and dancing in his underwear singing the songs from Elmo. His world view has inexplicably changed ever since that first little cry. As Bourdain puts it, "You definitely lose your heart for certain acts of thoughtless cruelty." It seems even the hardened exterior of leather wearing, globe trotting chefs can be melted by the warmth of a little heart.

This is a strange phenomenon among men: having children releases some new pheromone or subprogram in our brains that changes the way we think and, hopefully, the way we act. While this isn't as universal as women would hope, it is very common. I experienced it. I remember dangling from a cliff the first time after I had children, some thing I had done numerous times before. For the first time in my life, I had second thoughts about what I was doing. What was this strange feeling I was having? My wife later informed me it's called responsibility. I think you can see both these chefs having the same thoughts. As we know so well this time of year, sometimes a baby changes everything.

If men like these guys can change and soften, it makes you wonder what effect diaper changing would have had on world history What if every dictator had to change diapers and dance while singing children's songs before they could go to war? The world might be a very different place.

You can catch these two newly-responsible dads on their respective travel and food shows; Bourdain's No Reservations begins a new season January 5th at 10 p.m. ET on the travel Channel and Batali's new show, Spain -- On the Road Again (which he co-hosts with mom Gwyneth Paltrow) airs on PBS.

Source

Welcome to Dishing it Out, ParentDish's weekly food column. Rob Barrett is a dad who knows his way around the kitchen; his web site, Cooking For Dads, provides simple video recipes for dads (and moms!). You can read all the Dishing it Out posts here.

This was not a meal for picky eaters. There were no forks, no napkins, and no plates. Just one communal serving dish with rice mush, some kind of carpy fish (heads included) and some oily sauce. And it wasn't just this meal, it was almost every meal I ate in Chad over the last 3 weeks while doing some music recording in the middle of Africa. While the tribal music I recorded and the people groups I worked with were amazing, the meal traditions were a little different.

For Chadians, meal time is important. It has very little to do with getting food into the system and everything to do with community, bonding, respect and spending time together. To refuse to eat a meal with someone is a big insult. We would gather for a meal and someone would take around a bowl with a bar of soap and a pitcher of water. The whole table would wash their hands before any food was served. We ate with our hands, balling up some rice in our right hand before dipping it in the shared bowl of sauce. (You would only eat with your right hand - very, very important as the left hand is reserved for more unsanitary practices.) The guest would always be given the best cut of meat, in most cases the gizzard. I had enough gizzards the last 3 weeks to last me a lifetime. I'll tell you the truth, I've done a lot of work in Africa and even I had quite a time getting used to eating with double dipped fingers.

While the food was different and the eating style wasn't one that I would recommend, the placing importance on meal time as a family event is one I wish we all could do more. Most of us do it on the big days like Christmas and Thanksgiving but let the vicissitudes of life (my mother-in-law's favorite saying) get in the way of eating together most normal days. The thought of someone running off to hockey practice or dance during the middle of the Chadian meal was beyond comprehension. This was meal time and the family came together.

There was another upside. There was only one dish to wash.