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Hibernation Rejuvenation

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Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods. It has been translated from the original Ursus Textish.

Bart Blackberry2

H’lo, Bart here.

I feel like I’m waking up. And I was just in the middle of a beautiful dream – I looked up and there were all these tiny cardboard boxes floating down towards me – each on on a separate parachute. I couldn’t tell for sure what was inside – but each one seemed warm and smelled delicious!

That’s how I knew it was a dream. Nothing in the woods is warm and delicious in mid-March.

But the forest is coming to life. I know I’m not alone – There area few subtle signs and a lot of hunger out there. Since hibernation began I’ve lost some weight, so I’m always famished. The problem is, there aren’t enough picnics happening right now. That’s where I really get lots of food because people are such slobs. It’s nice there are some things a bear can count on. But for some reason, this is a time when campers in the woods are not eating as much as they’re drinking – kind of a disappointment for me. What’s with that? All I know is it has something to do with a Saint and Snakes and Shamrocks.

It’s very confusing because I’ll sometimes see a flash of green in the roadside ditch and I think some berries might be coming out – but when I get there all I find is a bunch of emerald trash and some bottles – each with a bit of fizzy green stuff in the bottom.

Ugh.

And even though I’ve had bad luck with bottles lately, I drink it anyway because I need the calories. And then I fall asleep again. When I wake up, I feel worse than before.

It’s not supposed to happen that way! You’re supposed to feel great when you’ve had enough rest. I guess it has something to do with the green drinks, but what can I do? There isn’t much food in the woods right now, unless somebody organizes a massive popcorn drop. Call out the National Guard – they need some experience parachuting supplies into the forest. Rice Krispie Bars would be OK too. Or pies. Pies would be very nice.

Hey – I think that’s what my dream was about! I’m finding out what every hungry wild animal knows. It pays to be a pest. Does it pay in pies? Pehaps!

Your pal,
Bart

I assured Bart that the National Guard will not do a Pie Drop in the woods. The state got a little budget forecast relief a few days ago, but not enough to justify the kind of extravagance he imagines. Still, a breakfast of pie from the sky would be better than guzzling the backwash from bottles of green beer.

What’s the worst breakfast you’ve ever had?

68 thoughts on “Hibernation Rejuvenation”

  1. Hey Dale…I’m still waiting for you to start broadcasting again. I’ve kept quite a collection of your shows on my mp3 player. I never tire of any of them.

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  2. Good morning. It is kind of hard to screw up breakfast. The kind I have these days is very simple, but I like it. Coffee, fresh fruit, toast with peanut butter and jam, and maybe some yogurt. When making breakfasts on campings trips there have been a few nearly failed attempts at making pancakes. However, those pancakes were served with brown sugar on them and that pretty much covered up the bad cooking effort.

    I would say some of the breakfasts I have had in restaurants were not very good because they were loaded with greasy stuff including big servings of sausage or bacon, fried eggs, and butter soaked toast. Actually there was a time when I liked that kind of breakfast. In England they often served broiled chunks of tomato for breakfast which doesn’t seem like a breakfast food, but I thought thought they were good. Those sausages they call bangers, in England, often aren’t too wonderful.

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        1. i founfd the tradition of bangers and a good irish breakfast made me appreciate brown bread. pub lunch was my meal every day over there. breakfast and or dinner not so much. the beer was good and the whiskey wasnt too bad either. might try that for breakfast if i spend an extended visit again some time

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  3. I did a lot of solo parenting in those years when my erstwife was flying all over the world negotiating publishing contracts. Once Kathe took off on a long trip at just this time of year. I told Molly, who of course had been a Dr. Suess fan, that the first breakfast I cooked for her would be a Dr. Suess special. The idea was cute, and with a little food coloring it was easily done . . . but has anyone else ever eaten Green Eggs and Ham? In my experience, food that color is decomposing and going to mold. As that stuff sat on our plates it had a look that would have given Bart the Bear pause. And he eats roadkill.

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    1. One year for April Fools Day, my mom made us pancakes that had been colored with food coloring. Unfortunately, at least two of the four kids could not eat them – I was one of them. I just sat there and looked at my pancakes, took one bite, and couldn’t eat any more. Since my mom couldn’t send us off to school with no breakfast, she made us un-dyed pancakes, but she was infuriated – probably because she had to go to the work of making more pancakes. Contrary me, at school, I bragged that my mom had made us green and purple pancakes for breakfast.

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      1. I’ve never added food coloring to pancakes. I have added two round ears to pancakes to make them look more or less like mickey mouse.

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        1. When Teenager was much younger, we used to color the pancake batter different colors and then dribble the batter onto the grill in the shape of letters – usually our initials. And we have some forms that you can pour the batter into — flowers and hearts. Lots of fun.

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        2. A far cry from, and a whole lot more fun than, the era where you didn’t play with your food.

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        3. A traditional sleep-over breakfast at our house is pink pancakes. We have made green pancakes for Christmas, purple pancakes (which were sorta grey-ish, but Daughter didn’t mind), but so far not blue pancakes.

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        4. This morning Hans surprised me with green, and I mean mint green, poached eggs for breakfast. “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” he proclaimed as he proudly ,set the plate in front of me. They were startling to look at, but perfectly edible. “I had to mix the food coloring myself to get the green” he told me, “I mixed blue and yellow.” Mad food scientist at work. I didn’t tell him that the food coloring has been sitting in the cupboard at least ten years, I had better throw it out before he decides to do something else with it. If this is the last you hear from me, you know what happened..

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        7. Update to the green poached eggs. After breakfast I went into the kitchen, and there, sitting on the kitchen counter were two large, I’m guessing 1 liter bottles, of food coloring. Hans had not used the food coloring I had in the regular small bottles that you buy for household use, but rather two large bottles bought from a wholesaler when he still had his furniture-making business. These bottles have been sitting in the basement for 14 years, and by the looks of them, have spent considerable time in his wood shop before that. If I had any life insurance, I’d think he was trying to kill me. How long does it take for ill effects of such stuff to manifest itself I wonder?

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    2. Remember The Odd Couple? In the movie, Oscar identified the green food in the fridge as “It’s either very new cheese, or very old meat.”

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  4. Morning all. I’m with Jim — it’s pretty hard to mess up breakfast for me.

    However, when I was in China to pick up the Treasure, there were five other families traveling with me and we were on a “group” package. This meant that for every meal we sat together at the same table and the food appeared. No ordering, no menus, no buffet. Food was dreadful – nothing fresh, most everything swimming in grease, big bottles of warm beer (it was the summer of `95 and it was SO HOT – the last thing you needed was warm beer). Anyway breakfast was just as dreadful – they would bring out 3 or 4 kinds of fried bread and none of it resembled toast. One morning they brought out oatmeal (just to our table – noticed that none of the Chinese had this served to them) and you literally had to fight it out of the pan into your bowl. Completely inedible.

    So I suppose you can mess up breakfast, but you have to go to the other side of the planet to accomplish it. On this side of the planet, I took a page from MiG’s book this morning and made scones for breakfast!

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  5. Greetings! For some reason, oatmeal does not appeal to me. That gluey mass of gray with chunks is just …. not right. I’ll eat it, as I’ll eat just about anything, but it really has absolutely no visual appeal. Another disgusting breakfast is a McDonalds Egg McMuffin. I love them and eat them only very occasionally, but the thought of what goes into McDonalds food is a frightening thought. I always find it interesting when people state, “but that’s not breakfast food” when they see someone eating an unusual dish in the morning. Breakfast foods are a very cultural phenomenon and more of an ingrained habit. Some cultures have fish and cheese for breakfast, yes? Who makes these rules for breakfast foods anyway? As long as it’s nutritious and healthy, that should be the guiding principle. And unfortunately, most American breakfast foods do not fall in that category.

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    1. Oatmeal should not be a “gluey mass of gray with chunks.” If that’s what your oatmeal looks like, something is wrong. Have you tried steel-cut oats? They are easy to cook on the stovetop, but my favorite way to enjoy them is a baked version with apples and some other things in them. They are not gluey or gray.

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      1. Yes, I do like steel cut oats and prefer them on every level. Even so — even good regular oatmeal I make for my husband (it’s his absolute favorite breakfast) is still gluey and gray and not visually appealing. Tastes great with the right topping — but still gluey and gray. Just sayin’ ….

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        1. Well, when I was a kid, I wasn’t a fan of oatmeal either. I found that putting lots and lots of brown sugar on it made it quite edible.

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  7. I think the worst breakfast I’ve had was probably a cinnamon roll that was not bad in itself, but notable for the lack of coffee to go with it. The ground coffee beans were available, but there was no means of heating water to brew it. A cinnamon roll with a glass of water just seems wrong.

    Happy St. Urho’s Day, all.

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  8. Don’t know about worst breakfast I’ve ever had. I agree with Jim that it’s limited how much damage you can do to breakfast foods. Of course, what constitutes breakfast food depends on where you are. I remember as a kid, my dad got the notion that we should try øllebrød, and old Danish dish, and he proceeded to make it for us. It’s a gruel-like soup or porridge made of stale rye bread and malt beer!
    http://smagsloejer.dk/2012/10/god-gammeldags-ollebrod/
    My sister and I both hated it, so that experiment was short lived.

    On another occasion my mother discovered cottage cheese. She had no idea what to do with it, but figured serving it spread on a slice of toast couldn’t be all bad. She was wrong; we hated that too.

    I’m a rather adventuresome eater, so I happily partake in whatever the locals eat when I’m visiting someplace else. That has exposed me to some rather odd foods. One of the more strange offering on a breakfast buffet in Nanchang, China, was breaded and deep fried chicken feet. Didn’t figure that out till I had eaten several, not bad, just strange from my perspective.

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    1. I happen to like cottage cheese on toast, but with a few shakes of cinnamon-sugar, but I’m sure as a kid I wouldn’t have.

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  10. my breakfast yuck meal was also in china. the buffets are wonderful and full of many things unknown. as a veggie i have to ask if the thousand year old egg has any meat in it. it looks so suspicious but it is wonderful the different roots and parts of the plants they offer is interesting with pickled and fermented stuff that gets you reacting tastebudwise than you expected but the memorable on was the hard boiled egg that was crunchy and turned out to be a partially developed chink inside the shell which is a real delicasy to them but against the rules for me and kind of sheesh moment with a squinty eyed head shake in the repulsion of the thought. taste was fine just like a hard boiled egg but the crunch still resonates

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    1. That doesn’t sound good, tim, even to me, a carnivore. I know would never have made it as a contestant on whatever the reality show was that often had contestants eating live grubs and the like. The mere thought of it makes me gag.

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  11. I don’t know about the worst breakfast either. It’s a hard meal to wreck, but then I’ve never been to China.

    I described my current breakfast to someone at work yesterday. She was polite and just said that it sounded strange. I’ve been making smoothies starting with kale or spinach; blueberries, raspberries or strawberries; peanut butter, soy protein powder, chia seeds, ground flax seeds, agave’ nectar and almond milk. I like them. I think they’re nutritious and they keep me from getting hungry.

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    3. when you say you start your smoothies with spinich add grounfd flax and agave you gotta know youre gonna get a raised eyebrow or two you damn hippy. sounds delicious in a diet for a small planet kinda way

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  12. Like most Baboons, I find breakfast to be a pretty un-mess-up-able meal. Breakfast also makes a very fine supper, IMO.

    As a morning person though, I am a devoted eater of breakfast, so I can safely say that the worst “breakfast” I have ever had was on those rare occasions when there has been NO breakfast.

    Proving once again what a Hobbit I really am:

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  13. My home computer is down again, so I am not hibernating-I only have computer access at work. I hope to be on line early next week.

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  16. I think Sugar Pops (they started calling them Corn Pops when sugar began to get a bad rap) would have to be right up there, and all the other super sweet things that pass for breakfast cereal. … of course, as a kid I loved ’em.

    I’m reminded by PJ’s “stale rye bread” of something my dad used to eat for breakfast occasionally called kavring. His family’s version (this would be Norwegian) was made by dipping half a dried rye bun into boiling water a bit to soften it, then melting butter on it and pouring on a little milk. I’m sure I tasted it once and said “no way”, but now I think it sounds kind of interesting.

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    1. There was a time when we purchased some of those sugar filled breakfast cereals mainly because our kids liked them. I can’t remember which ones were favorites, but they definitely had lots of sugar. I think frost corn flakes that were coated were sugar was one favorite. I liked them myself. We don’t have any those around the house now. We do have granola which I eat occasionally for breakfast. It has a lot of good grains, nuts, dried fruit and also some cocoanut flakes in it. It is sweetened with honey and maple syrup so it might come close to being as sweet as some of those sugar coated cereals.

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  17. Seriously, baboons, can we let St. Paddy’s day come and go without any Irish music on the trail? I think not:

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  18. A breakfast beer on the right morning can be a good thing…when it’s all you have in the house, not so much. I also recommend against the peanut butter & jelly sandwich with a wine cooler style breakfast (the week after graduating college – all that was in the house post-graduation party was a few bottles of wine coolers in a sweet berry flavor and makings for PB&J…not especially nutritious, and not the way to start a day, even when you’re young and foolish).

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  19. WordPress is seriously snubbing me. Turns its back on me every time I approach it. I guess we will not be going to the prom together.
    Has no one mentioned the joys of cold pizza?
    Breakfast is not a good time for me right now. The FDA lowered the maximum dosage of my sleep med (Zolipidem/Ambien) to half of what I have taken quite successfully for a few years. It seems a few women had accidents in the morning and blamed the drug. A study showed some women retain a measurable quantity of the drug for more than 8 hours.Not men. But for all it is now half of my dosage. I have experimented: half dosage is for me the same as taking nothing. Very problem sleep for me equals high pain, fuzzy head, angry, and depressed. The similar choice is about to be treated the same way it seems. You do not want to hear from me right now.

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      1. Here is the thing. Dr. called and told me he was changing the prescription. I was to get 30 5-mg pills. But target gave me 30 10-mg pills and told me to take half a pill a day instead of giving me 15. It is tempting tempting. But I have to cross this deep valley sometime. (I gather the drug comp’s have not caught up with making 5-mg units)

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    2. WordPress is messing with me too – when I first get on I can get the youtube boxes to show pictures and the button for “play”, but after I post or refresh, it’s nothing but a black box… some error dialogue box flashes briefly, something about incompatibility.

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  20. Cold pizza? One of the gifts of the gods…however, having just settled in for the evening after a dinner of corned beef and cabbage, I’m not sure those dishes served cold would be as delightful as a cold slice of mushroom and green pepper with extra cheese…

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  21. Evening–
    Friday night is pizza night at our house. Daughter is gluten free so she gets her own pizza while Kelly and I order an extra large. Cut into square pieces and if I do it right, will give me breakfast until the following Friday morning.
    I’ve never met a cold pizza I didn’t like.

    And can’t really think of a bad breakfast.
    As a kid I ate cold cereal most every morning. And only got suckered in by the toy in the package a few times. Mom didn’t like it when I suddenly switched to ‘Lucky Charms’ for the toy. A lot of Cap’n Crunch, Quisp (once for Christmas, Kelly bought me a case of Quisp) and sometimes Kix or Trix and for a while it was Honeycombs. And I really liked Honeycombs. But it seems like they changed something and they never tasted right after that.
    Dad ate Shredded Wheat and sometimes Grape Nuts. Curious, I don’t remember what Mom ate. Huh.

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