SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A group of men in their 20s in Washington state has posted a Craigslist ad seeking a generic dad to grill burgers and hotdogs for a gathering set for the Saturday of Father's Day weekend in mid-June. 
 
 Qualifications include a minimum of 18 years of experience as a dad and 10 years of grilling experience. The successful dad must bring his own grill, but burgers and hotdogs will be provided. 
 
 Dane Anderson tells KHQ-TV (http://bit.ly/2qLjxGt) that the young men in Spokane don't live with their fathers and, the ad says, none are prepared to fill the role of barbecue dad. 
 
 Additional requirements include talking about dad things like lawnmowers, building your own deck and musician Jimmy Buffet. Payment is food and beer. 
 
 Anderson says several potential barbecue dads have responded. 
 
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 Information from: KHQ-TV, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3082888/ ||||| The Father’s Day Index 2014: Feeling valued 
 
 When it comes to showing Dad how valuable he is, the simplest moments speak loudest. 
 
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 "It's the quiet times," says Jim Lin, a San Francisco Bay Area public relations professional and father of two. "It's when you're riding in the car having a conversation, and they're asking you questions. When a kid is interested in what you do and in your perspective that means a lot. I realize, oh, I matter to him, too." 
 
 [Let Insure.com help you find affordable life insurance now.] 
 
 The true value of dads is priceless, but the value of things dads stereotypically do around the house -- from squashing bugs to fixing leaky faucets -- totals $24,103 a year, according to Insure.com's annual Father's Day Index. The Index is based on a list of common household tasks and associated average wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 This year Dad's value is up 3 percent from last year's index of $23,344, and up 19 percent from 2012. (See all tasks and wages at the bottom.) 
 
 The figure doesn't include any salary Dad might earn from a job outside the house, nor does it include parenting and household duties that full-time stay-at-home dads perform. 
 
 Estimating the financial value of the contributions a parent makes to a family is a key step in determining how much life insurance to buy. When choosing a life insurance amount, it’s wise to consider salary replacement, debt, a family emergency fund, future expenses like college and a parent’s value around the house. 
 
 The valuable moments 
 
 What dads want Dinner at your town's best restaurant 31% A weekend getaway with the whole family 27% Electronics 26% Tickets to a show or sporting event 26% A weekend getaway with your wife 25% Power tools 21% Breakfast in bed 19% Gift card 16% Sports memorabilia 15% Alcohol 13% A weekend getaway with the guys 13% Car care equipment 12% Fitness equipment 11% A weekend getaway by yourself 11% Barbecue grill 10% Cigars 10% Books 8% Room remodel 5% Source: Insure.com, based on an April 2014 survey of 999 dads. Respondents could choose more than one gift preference. 
 
 This Father's Day we wanted to know what makes dads feel valued. We asked three popular dad bloggers, and their answers pointed away from fancy gifts and exotic celebrations and toward everyday stuff. 
 
 For Lin, creator of The Busy Dad Blog, it's often as simple as seeing the household operate as it should or watching his 12-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter play happily outside. 
 
 "It's just knowing I'm providing for them, everything from their physical to emotional needs," he says. 
 
 Fred Goodall of Houston, founder of Mocha Dad, a website focused on fatherhood, is passionate about parenting and encouraging men to become better dads and husbands. 
 
 "I grew up without my father and so I wanted to do things differently for my family," he says. 
 
 Still, like any hands-on dad, he admits it's not always easy. He is the father of two boys, 6 and 10, and a 13-year-old girl. 
 
 "Sometimes as a dad you get a little frustrated," he says. "You may tell your kid something over and over again, and when you're trying to get your point across you wonder, 'Are they even listening to me?'" 
 
 But then his kids will show in words or actions that they've taken his lessons and examples to heart. 
 
 "Those are the moments you really feel valued." 
 
 Goodall also treasures the times when his children trust him enough to share their joys and challenges, whether it's confiding in him about a friendship problem or sharing a favorite song. 
 
 "You have to appreciate those moments when you get them," he says. 
 
 Blogger Trey Burley of Atlanta, founder of parenting website Daddy Mojo, is a stay-at-home father of two young sons. 
 
 "What makes me feel valued is when they do the right thing when no one's looking. It shows the things you drive home with them stick," he says. "They're learning while they're watching you." 
 
 Burley takes care of the kids on weekdays while his wife works, and they switch roles in the evenings and on the weekends when he catches up on consulting work. Acknowledgment from his wife that taking care of the kids isn't easy goes a long way. "It's reassuring that it really is stressing -- that I'm not doing a bad job during the week." 
 
 Showing appreciation 
 
 So how do you show Dad you value him this Father's Day? 
 
 Forget about converting the basement into a man cave. A room remodel came in at the bottom among choices for Father's Day gifts, according to an Insure.com survey of dads. Books and cigars were also among the least popular gift ideas. 
 
 Instead, consider taking Dad out to eat. Dinner at a favorite restaurant was the top choice, according to the survey, followed by a weekend getaway with the whole family, electronics and tickets to a show or sporting event. 
 
 Most dads say they want to spend the day with their kids. Fifty-seven percent prefer celebrating with the whole family and 20 percent say just with the kids. Only 12 percent say their favorite way to spend Father's Day is by themselves and 10 percent say with their wife but without the kids. 
 
 The dad bloggers we interviewed say they don't care about purchased gifts on Father's Day, but they treasure handmade cards and crafts from their children. 
 
 Burley says his favorite way to spend Father's Day is to go out to breakfast with the family at a nice bagel place and stop by the farmer's market for fresh fruit. 
 
 Lin likes to eat and relax with his family and take the day off from worrying. 
 
 Goodall still carries in his wallet a laminated card his 6-year-old son made a few years ago in preschool. As for celebrating on Father's Day, each year he and his wife and kids get their photo taken wearing matching T-shirts. He also makes up a questionnaire and asks his kids to fill it out. He saves their hand-written answers from year to year. 
 
 The Father's Day Index 2014 
 
 Dad's job BLS occupation Hours per week Weeks per year Mean hourly wage Annual value Family finances Accountants and auditors 0.5 52 $31.70 $824 Plumber Pipelayers, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters 2 3 $30.40 $182 Helping with homework Other teachers and instructors 10 40 $26.38 $10,550 Coaching a team 
 
 Athletes, coaches, umpires, and related workers 4 10 $23.35 $934 Handyman Maintenance and repair workers, general 8 6 $20.18 $968 Car maintenance Automotive service technicians and mechanics 2 10 $17.85 $357 Assembly of toys, bookshelves, etc. Miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators 3 10 $15.25 $458 Pest removal (spiders, gross bugs) Pest control workers 1 4 $15.15 $61 Scout leader Recreation and fitness workers 5 10 $14.03 $701 Driving Taxi drivers and chauffeurs 9 52 $13.50 $6,318 Moving furniture Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand 2 3 $13.10 $79 Barbecuing Cooks 3 52 $10.28 $1,603 Mowing the lawn, landscaping, snow removal Grounds Maintenance Workers 2 52 $10.28 $1,069 Dad's 2014 value: $24,103 Wage source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 
 
 More from Barbara Marquand here ||||| My father grew up in a restaurant. His parents owned the Golden Dragon, a sprawling Chinese eatery in Portland, Ore., that offered egg rolls and grilled-cheese sandwiches on its official menu and bitter melon with black-bean sauce and birds' nest soup on its unofficial one. He tells stories of after-school hours spent peeling water chestnuts and washing dishes with his brothers and sisters while the flare of hot woks and the rhythm of cleavers filled the busy kitchen. On New Year's Eve, the kids stayed up all night, serving sweet-and-sour pork and cocktails to mobs of hungry revelers. 
 
 Dad's apprenticeship at the hands of a gifted chef father and savvy manager mother gave him a lifelong love and appreciation of good food and restaurants -- and drove him to stay as far away from the culinary biz as possible. 
 
 By the time my sisters and I appeared on the scene, Dad generally stayed out of the kitchen. His culinary responsibilities were limited to standard dad stuff -- grilling burgers and steaks in the backyard -- and a single indoors task: folding wontons. 
 
 Wontons -- square pasta wrappers folded into elegant little pods around a savory mixture of ground pork, vegetables and sometimes seafood -- are dead easy to make, but there's a catch: there are no shortcuts for folding them the right way. Our hungry family of six could go through a boatload of them in a single meal, but there was no way Mom could fill and fold all of these herself, not with so much housework to deal with and so much childhood misbehavior to monitor. 
 
 So the folding fell to Dad, who brought to the enterprise serious mass wonton-folding chops, courtesy of the Golden Dragon. 
 
 I can still see the setup: It's Saturday (or Sunday) afternoon, and Dad is at the kitchen table. Mom's filling, smelling tantalizingly of scallions and sesame oil, sits in a glistening pink mound in a mixing bowl in front of him. Next to the mixing bowl is an open packet of wonton skins, which Dad keeps covered with a towel so they won't dry out and crack when folded. At his side is a small bowl filled with beaten egg and a kitchen knife (the egg is the glue that holds the wontons together), and somewhere nearby on the table is a baking sheet soon to be filled with perfectly folded wontons. 
 
 By time I got to grade school, I wanted to fold wontons too. I was a bit of a tomboy and seriously into origami, and folding wontons fed both these impulses: Because Dad was the chief wonton folder in the household, I somehow got it into my head that wonton-making was one of those noble masculine arts, like bug-collecting and compass navigation, that would be worth aspiring to. And properly folded wontons are a thing of geometric beauty. By the time I was 8 or so, I'd be sitting beside him, folding away. It made me feel powerful and useful. 
 
 For whatever reason, none of my sisters ever took an interest in wonton folding, so I got to see something they didn't. My parents were masters at keeping up a unified front before us kids, but when it came to wonton folding, this seemingly impenetrable facade ever so slightly cracked. Dad often warned me not to overfill the skins, lest they burst wastefully when boiled in soup or deep fried. Meanwhile, Mom, who grew up on decadent meals Dad could only dream of in his youth, always scolded him for the stingy amount of filling he used. 
 
 "Fred! This isn't the Golden Dragon!" 
 
 It took me a while to figure out how to fill and fold wontons in a way that kept both Mom and Dad happy. The optimal amount of filling had to be small enough not to cause the wrapper to tear or the seams to come loose when folded, but big enough to offer diners a generous meaty bite or two. In wonton folding, as in a functional family life, patience and little compromises are the boring but sure secrets to success. 
 
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 Lee Family weekend wontons 
 
 Mom always made ginormous batches of wontons so she could keep some in the freezer for later. To freeze uncooked wontons, lay them on a baking sheet so they don't touch and put the sheet in the freezer until the wontons are frozen solid. Once frozen, the wontons can be transferred to a freezer bag for storage. On a cold weeknight when you don't feel like cooking, take some out of the bag, allow them to thaw, and throw them into a pot of simmering broth for a comforting dinner. 
 
 I've adjusted the recipe to make a more modest number of wontons -- only about 100. I've also included instructions for the two most common ways of serving them, cooked in soup and fried. The soup recipe serves 2-4; the fried wonton recipe makes as many or as few as you need. Unless you're serving dozens of people, you'll still have some wontons left over for the freezer. Folding all of these will entail about an hour of meditative handiwork for one person, or a pleasant bonding experience for two. 
 
 Ingredients 1 pound ground pork 
 
 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger 
 
 1 clove garlic, minced 
 
 2 tablespoons minced scallions, both white and green parts 
 
 ¾ cup finely shredded Chinese (Napa) cabbage 
 
 2 tablespoons soy sauce 
 
 2 teaspoons sesame oil 
 
 ¼ teaspoon ground white pepper 
 
 2 tablespoons cornstarch 
 
 1 package wonton wrappers (available in the refrigerated or frozen foods sections of Asian specialty grocers or better supermarkets) 
 
 1 beaten egg or ¼ cup water 
 
 Directions Thoroughly combine all the ingredients save wrappers and the egg in a medium mixing bowl. Get ready to fold a wonton: Take a wonton wrapper and hold it in your non-dominant hand. Place about 1 heaping teaspoon of filling in the center of the skin. Using a knife or small pastry brush, wet the edges of the skin with water or egg. The first fold is simple: Fold the skin in half diagonally so that it completely encases the filling. Press the edges together, being mindful to squeeze out any air bubbles between the filling and the skin. Be sure the edges are completely sealed, with no gaps. The second fold tends to throw people. Your half-folded wonton now looks like a triangular turnover, with one perpendicular corner and two "arms" (long, sharp corners). Dip one of the "arms" of the wonton into egg or water. Then pull it toward the other arm and press the arms together so that the top surface of one of them is firmly glued to the bottom surface of the other. The finished wonton should look something like this: Repeat 2-4 until the filling and/or wonton skins are exhausted. (Any leftover skins can be wrapped tightly in plastic and stored in the freezer for use with the next batch. Any leftover filling can be rolled into small balls and dropped into soup as meatballs.) Keep folded wontons and skins covered while you work so they don't dry out. To cook, simply add the wontons to a large pot of vigorously boiling water until they float and the skins look wrinkly. Or use the soup or fried wonton methods below. 
 
 For wonton soup: Heat one quart of chicken broth in a pot until it starts to boil. Carefully place about 12 wontons in the pot along with any meat and/or vegetables you'd like to add. (Mom used wonton soup as a convenient repository for leftovers.) When the wontons float to the top of the broth and look wrinkly and translucent, they're done. Toss two thinly sliced scallions over the soup as a garnish. This amount will serve two people as a lunch, or four people as an opener to a larger meal. 
 
 For fried wontons: Heat about 2 inches of neutral cooking oil (such as canola) in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. When it's hot enough to make a drop of water sizzle on impact, add wontons, one at a time. The number that you can add will depend on the size of your pan, but you don't want them close enough to touch each other. Fry until the undersides are golden brown; flip and fry until the second side is also golden brown. Immediately remove from the oil, drain well on paper towels, and serve hot with sweet and sour or hoisin sauce.
– A group of men in their 20s in Washington state has posted a Craigslist ad seeking a generic dad to grill burgers and hotdogs for a gathering set for the Saturday of Father's Day weekend in mid-June, the AP reports. Qualifications include a minimum of 18 years of experience as a dad and 10 years of grilling experience. The successful dad must bring his own grill, but burgers and hotdogs will be provided. Dane Anderson tells KHQ-TV that the young men in Spokane don't live with their fathers and, the ad says, none are prepared to fill the role of barbecue dad. Additional requirements include talking about dad things like lawnmowers, building your own deck, and musician Jimmy Buffett. Payment is food and beer. Anderson says several potential barbecue dads have responded.