Coming in like a lion...

Meet Dave, who represents St. Paul firefighters for the month of March. The calendar benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Autism Society of Minnesota.

I'm always pleased to turn the page to March. It's still winter in these parts, but new snow usually melts fairly quickly in March, the sun is noticeably warmer, and days are growing longer. It's also my birthday month, and spring training is underway in major league baseball. Life is good.

What's cooking?

Ask me what's new since I've retired, and this is my first answer:

I'm cooking.

I've mentioned (or boasted) before that Peter has done all the cooking during our 25-year marriage. My mom taught me some of the basics and as a teen I baked cakes and cookies, but in the years that I lived alone I lived mostly on frozen dinners and popcorn. I used to joke that my most frequently used spice was popcorn salt.

Peter and I share equally in our full-time Wild Rumpus Daycare for Grandkids. Outside those 40-plus hours each week, he puts in another 40 hours for his business. It made sense that when I retired I would take over cooking dinner (he still does breakfast and lunch weekdays when the kids are here).

Nobody expected that I would be a good cook. In fact, I think we both expected that I'd hate every minute I spent in the kitchen and that I would rely heavily on prepared meals (we used the newer bagged ones as an interim solution and quickly began referring to them as bags-o-crap). And indeed, it took me a while to figure out where to look for inspiration. Our cookbooks had little appeal and my ancient box of recipe cards holds a wide and wild variety of things I'll never make. Time to build a new collection.

I was hungry for a couple of Peter's favorites, so I started with chili and chicken-vegetable soup. Then I tried a few recipes posted by people I follow, and I paged through a year's worth of a cooking magazine we no longer receive.

And guess what? I've managed to provide tasty, balanced meals that we both enjoy. Some of them - pork chops, pork loin, lemon chicken, salmon - have been downright delicious. I have enjoyed planning the menu, shopping for the ingredients, and preparing the food. I can usually manage to get the salad, vegetable, starch, and main course ready at the same time, although once in a while I ask Peter to drain the noodles or top off the salads while I finish a sauce. Dessert usually consists of fruit and a little ice cream - or Girl Scout cookies - though I did make pudding using one of the lovely vanilla beans I received in a giveaway from The Good Cook. I've also been making blueberry and lemon-poppyseed muffins, because Augie loves them.

In other words, I've been much more ambitious than I expected to be, and we've both been happy with the outcome. That's important - and a huge relief - because I only enjoy doing those things that I do well. If my early efforts had bombed, we'd be back to bags-o-crap and retired life wouldn't be nearly so much fun.

So, got any great recipes, cookbooks, food sites, or food bloggers to recommend?

Not just for ballet anymore

Ballet tutus are all the rage. Little girls wear them everywhere, and makers of kids' clothes now fashion tutu skirts for daily wear. A year ago, I bought one for ViMae at Target for a dollar or two. Then I made an elaborate one (which, it turned out, was so poofy that it ends up a twisted mess). She got a couple of different ones for Christmas. And now, ta-da, a tutu swimsuit! Her mommy couldn't resist. If I'd seen it first, I couldn't have resisted, either.

So here she is, modeling it at swim class, accessorized with the cast she is wearing to immobilize a broken foot. Did that stop her from swimming? Not a bit. The cast is waterproof, and it doesn't slow her down much, in water or on dry land. And yes, she really does have a left arm; she's just reaching back to adjust her tutu.  (I stole this photo from her mom's site because I couldn't resist.)

Swimming with the clownfish

Nemo and his dad

Some weeks ago Peter and I watched Finding Nemo with the kids. I had forgotten how stressful the movie is, as a little ocean-dwelling clownfish takes on hostile species as well as natural and man-made barriers to find his tiny son.

But the successes of small fish against daunting obstacles have inspired imaginative play on the part of Augie and ViMae.

Today we were all sitting on the bed. At first the bed was a boat surrounded by water. We pretended to catch a series of fishy types.

Augie: "I'm reeling in a killer whale, better watch out."

Vi: "I'm reeling in a sting ray, don't let it sting you." (Throwing self on bed) "I'm crushing it."

Augie again: "I'm reeling in a clownfish. He's telling jokes." I burst out laughing. He continues: "Too many jokes. Throw him back." Clearly Nemo and his dad have no special privileges here.

After a while, the kids decided to "dive into the water." Augie gave instructions: "We'll swim through the jelly fish but stay on top so they can't sting us. Then swim through the wall of bubbles, then race to the...." By then he was talking faster than we could follow. And they were off, leaping off the bed and swim/crawling as fast as they could across the room, down the hall, and back. They'd clamber aboard the bed/boat and immediately scramble off again.

It's interesting to see how the struggles and successes of a couple of clownfish and their friends can empower children's imaginations.