Author Archives: Jane Bretl

noo food, same rool

16 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by in Foodies, Motherhood

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froot loopRemember the old rule, never eat anything bigger than your head?

*?*

It does NOT apply when Grammy makes Froot Loops for breakfast.

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Note to self:  The descriptive product name FROOT Loops gives the big clue that this breakfast cereal can only be “part of a nutritious breakfast” if served with steel cut oats, fresh fruit with antioxidants, a protein smoothie and a Flintstone vitamin chaser.

This young man is having his FROOT with some OJ and a pencil (which has lots of fiber).

*

That’s why we love Grammy.  She’s not a big grump like his mom.

swimming laps

14 Tuesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Motherhood, Photography, seasons

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dsc_0025Ahhh, the zoo in the springtime, for me the best time of year to go.  The summer — not so much:  heat and  humidity don’t mix well with the wafting aromas of african animal feces.  But now, the zoo puts on a wonderful floral show with the daffodils, tulips and hyacinths sharing the grounds with the flowering pear trees, magnolias and forsythias.  Oh, and the animals are more active when it is not stinkin’ hot.

Bonus!

This polar bear was doing laps around her enclosure.  I’m guessing summer in the midwest is not her favorite time either.  We watched her for quite a long time, from two different vantage points; we were fascinated by the methodical way she did the circuit.  The arm strokes were nearly identical on each pass around, and she would touch certain rocks along the back wall in exactly the same place each time.where's the exit?

At the risk of anthropomorphic musing, I could not help wondering what she was thinking or feeling or whatever polar bears do.  Did it bring her comfort, in these artificial surroundings, to go round and round in a pattern?  Did swimming laps work all the energy out of her body that must be pre-programmed into a polar bear’s DNA for survival?  Was she just bored out of her mind?  Whatever the reason, she was still swimming the same loop when we walked by two hours later.

We have not been to the zoo very often in the last few years ever.  Trips to the zoo never ended well when the kids were little, so I became zoo-averse early on.  When I see young mothers now, pushing their strollers with 1…2…3… kids in tow, none of them look like they are having a nervous breakdown.  Huh.  I’ll just say it is so much more fun to take the kids to the zoo now that they are a) ambulatory  b) able to read all the cool information about the animals themselves  c) not obsessed with riding the mini choo choo zoo train umpteen times at $5 a pop.  Other than the Little One being suddenly starving every 100 yards (because there is SO much delicious, affordable food at the zoo and the smell of monkey poo really whets the appetite);  it was a fun day.  We’ll just assume he was growing another inch taller that afternoon.

pet pal finder

13 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in get along like cats and dogs

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Petfinder.com = internet dating for dogs (and cats).

New pets in the news  — you have seen the new first pup Bo’Bama, right? — have suddenly spurred lots of spirited discussion about ways to find a new pet.  Hey, when looking for just the right pal and simultaneously trying to run a (messed up) country, their path seemed as reasonable a method as any.  So this dog did not work out in his first home, and now he gets a really nice house;  it’s all good.  And, none of our business, really.  I think the First Family set a fine example by carefully considering and researching their pet before adopting.

I found our last cat on petfinder.com, a centralized search site for adoptable pets.  I spent many late evenings, when all reasonable members of my household were sleeping, browsing the selection of kittens available in my area.  Petfinder lets you set pet parameters such as breed, age, size, gender;  then gives you the closest geographic matches, most from shelters or foster homes.  I viewed so many little kitten faces, many of them carefully posed by those marketing geniuses at the shelters. After viewing hundreds of cat photos and profiles, I found The One I wanted.  Big D did foolishly ask, given that there might be several thousand cats in our state, why were we driving to Indiana to get a kitten?  But when internet dating, sometimes you make a connection…  OK, so I never actually did internet dating for a human, but I guess it would be the same???

Recently we did another online search for a possible second dog.  Same deal — I was sure we would “know her when we saw her.” Most of the dogs have a little backstory written with all kinds of romantic, enticing details (there are those marketing folks again)… Tabitha the dog likes long walks by the beach and snuggling by the fire on a snowy evening.  Lola the dog likes drinking pina coladas, and taking walks in the rain…  you get the picture.  But it is the eyes of the animal in the photo — that’s the match-maker for me.  This time, we both did the searching, but did not find The One.  It was not the right time for the right dog.  Someday.

So, for now, our pup has her neutered dog pal next door.  The cat is safe from another possible predator.  We will watch vicariously as another family enjoys their new pet.  Welcome home, Bo.  Just don’t chew anything that belonged to Lincoln, or you will be in big trouble, little fella.

easter baskets

12 Sunday Apr 2009

Posted by in Photography, seasons

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My Easter basket always contained a can of ripe olives.

Sure, I was a big fan of the chocolate bunny (hollow or solid), the peeps, malted-milk-ball robin eggs the and jelly beans.  I loved the egg hunt around the house for real, brightly dyed, hard-boiled eggs.  We would usually find almost all of them, which only became problematic a few days later.  But the ripe olives were my favorite Easter treat.  At the big Easter family dinner, there might be black olives in the relish tray along with the carrot and celery sticks;  however I could really only eat five of those in good conscience (one stuck on the end of each finger), since they were for all the guests.  But that was OK — I had a can of my own to eat later.  I think I ate the olives and peeps in separate sittings.

Santa never got the tip about how much I liked olives.  He could have saved the elves a lot of toy-building (and skipped the pink turtleneck) by just leaving me a case of pitted mediums under the tree.  Holiday hindsight = 20/20.

Wishing you a basketful of whatever makes you happy!  I’ll offer tulips for a start.

tiptoe thru the

six degrees of bloggeration

11 Saturday Apr 2009

Posted by in Foodies, good reads, seasons

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For me, one of the wonders of the blogoshere is this ability to find kindred spirits anywhere in the world.  Until very recently, I met people through the traditional walks and walkings of life, made many wonderful friends and interesting acquaintances — but my web of connections was based on where I lived, where the kids went to school; plus fate, luck, destiny, divine intervention and those six degrees of separation.  Along my merry way, I had not yet managed to meet someone who shared my vintage cookbook fetish, cooking contest winner fantasy, librarian aspirations and who is also an accomplished author who incorporated her love of food into her stories.  I did not spend much time thinking about the existence of such a person; but really what are the chances? And even if she did exist, how likely that our paths ever cross??

Viola!  Through fate, luck, destiny, divine intervention, the internet, blogs, and Karen’s trail of bread crumbs, I found such a person!  Does she play the harp?  We don’t know yet!  But just thinking about how wildly random this is makes me think in exclamation points!

The blog Vintage Cookbooks by Amy combines recipes from by-gone eras (the 70’s do count), vintage photos (photographic food styling in the 1950’s is quite amusing), cheeky commentary on culinary choices and… reviews of YA novels.

This is my kind of blog.

So, just in time for Easter dinner, check out her posts on Bunny Breads, and Baked Glazed Hams trimmed with candied orange daisies, and salad baskets with green pepper handles.  I find this so charming; you may be befuddled.  To each their own basket of goodies.

My friend Joan says that we all meet for a reason.  Tell me, have you ever unexpectedly found someone that shares your uncommon combination of interests?  I’d love to hear your list, and your stories…

get them in the game

06 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in good reads, Motherhood

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This just in, and just in time for tonight’s big basketball game — and baseball’s opening day — a new blog that explores sports themed books for kids and teens:  Get In The Game — Read!

Author Lori Calabrese has created this new forum to focus on all the wonderful books that energize and encourage kids to practice sports and reading. Here is an excerpt from Lori’s “About This Blog”:

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“If you think about it, sports and books just go together. The more

children practice, the better they become at sports. The more children

read, the better they become at reading. Both sports and books should

be inexpensive and accessible to everybody. They teach us about the

world around us, and overall, they’re just plain fun! So why not

combine the two? Avid sports fans can read a Sports Illustrated cover to cover, recite the

stats from the morning sports page, and read a program at a game. Avid

readers can learn about a sport, a specific athlete, or sports in other

countries. There are so many ways to incorporate sports and reading.

Make the most of all the resources that are available and waiting for

you: printed books, online books, magazines, etc…. Encourage

follow-up activities involving creative writing skills so your children

can expand on what they’ve absorbed and, at the same time, develop

their own creativity. As you help your kids appreciate the magic of

reading and the value of sports, you’ll find there’s a whole wide world

of fun and fundamentals!“

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sluggers book threeWe’ll be watching her blog to see when she includes one of our family’s favorite sports series — Barnstormers, by Phil Bildner and Loren Long.  The series has just been re-released as Sluggers, but the stories remain as enchanting as ever.  As always with me, it is the emotions behind the sport that hold the greatest appeal.  Long’s illustrations are so evocative of baseball’s golden age gone by…

mom madness

06 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in Motherhood

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Tonight is the final game of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tourney.  Oh, there’s been lots o’ b-ball watching in this house, especially in the man-cave.  It really doesn’t matter who is playing (since the Badgers were knocked out early); we watch virtually all the games anyway, at least in DVR’d speed watch.  I say “we” in a loose sense;  I wander through, bearing snacks, and watch a bit if it is close.  I’ll get sucked in to the experience.  There is such intensity and emotion at the collegiate level, joy and tears and arms linked together on the bench.  I love that part.

Professional sports just cannot compare.  The Professor’s opinion is that the NBA is less interesting because the players don’t make many mistakes;  the game just goes back and forth and back and forth.  I think it is because there is, naturally, less passion for the game.  Rare are the professionals in any field (or arena) that can maintain such a level of emotional intensity.  Their heads would explode after while.  They have to pace themselves for the long haul.  (The NBA season does eventually end, right?   Sometime in June?  When did that happen?)

Plus, in the NBA, their mom isn’t always watching.

I know that the NCAA March Madness games are filled with brilliant moments of athletic prowess, coaching strategy, and tetris-tight teamwork.  It is so exciting when the lead trades back and forth, and the crowd is cheering wildly in that rabid college-allegiance frenzy that reminds us why fan is short for fanatic.  I don’t get as caught up in the game itself, and certainly not in the outcome, as I do in the emotion.  For every spectacular play by the offense or the defense, I see the elation or defeat on the player’s face… and I think of this young man’s mom.  Or their step-mom, or aunt, or grandmother — whoever the woman is that loves this boy like a son, and watches his face while the game goes on all around him.  When there are 10 seconds left in a tie game and the player is at the free throw line, I just about go nuts thinking about how his mom must feel.  My heart is in my throat.  In a fun way.

I realize I may not be a typical sports fan.  I think most people care about how the game ends, and they remember who was the champion, and the final score.  I rarely remember any of those things, even though I had been watching the game very intently.  Perhaps my game score hard-drive is full with other important numbers like the birthdays of people in my 6th grade class.  I think that my interests lie in a different aspect of the game, the one that is the interplay between young people so full of dreams.  And their moms.

april came in like a wall

05 Sunday Apr 2009

Posted by in Writing

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OK, I’m back.  I had an unfortunate, uncomfortable, unforeseen, uncalled-for case of writer’s block.  My magical month of March ended and I was left with April brain showers.  I wandered around the house, unable to get anything else done either.  I banged my head against the keyboard for several days and still… nothing.

snap out of it, goofballKitty said, “WHAT are you doing over here?  JUST WRITE SOMETHING.  Get over yourself, already.”

So I did.  I feel better now.

bon appetit

05 Sunday Apr 2009

Posted by in Foodies, Motherhood

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It is not exactly news to write about what my kid(s) won’t eat.  Every parent has a story, right?  However, some blogs have elevated it to an art form.  At Suburban Bliss, author Melissa Summers has a regular feature called “Did They Eat It?”  She takes clever photos all through the meal preparation process, adds a liberal dose of humor, and tops it off with the comments from each of her (often disgruntled) family members.  As at my house, things rarely go well for her.    Plan, purchase, prepare, have everything be done (and hot) at the same time – ? – and then “they didn’t eat it.”  Sigh.  Perhaps my favorite part is the needlecraft motif header in her blog; a cross-stitch masterpiece that is to me the perfect juxtaposition of old fashioned “clean your plate” with modern parenting sensibilities.

The Professor was willing to eat anything when he was little.  Then came The Little One; he was much more, um, discriminating.  And that’s where I made the fatal mistake as the meal-preparing parent — I let one influence the other and it was a slippery slope down from there to Nitrate Land.  We still make them try new things on a regular basis — I take some amount of perverse pleasure in it actually — following a philosophy loosely based on some mythical research that when one tries a new food at least 20 times, one will learn to like it.  Or at least tolerate it.

The funny blog The Detective Mom had an amusing post recently, sharing a story of her toddler’s foray into salad.  It involves vegetables and the body functions of small poultry.  Sigh again, her kid eats salad!

So, we keep plodding along, throwing new culinary attempts at the wall to see which ones will stick.  The kids will eat more things if they are plain, raw or not touching any other food stuff.  They will eat all the ingredients separately, but not combined.  That’s not all bad.  There are always some healthy things to choose from on the table.  Someday they will eat food that is mixed together, I am confident.  I hear that at the age of three, I ate nothing but SpagettiO’s for an extended period.  Now, I will try virtually anything, and enjoy almost all of it.  (Except SpagettiO’s.)

Recently, The Professor and I were having a spirited discussion about what was for dinner.  I must have had an exasperated look on my face, because he suddenly looked empathetic and said, “Mom, I am really sorry that you have to go through so much effort to try to find healthy things that I will eat.  (long pause)  But it is kinda fun watching you try!”

Sigh.