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Randi Weiner has been covering Rockland education issues since 1998.
An Ohio native and 1976 graduate of Bowling Green State University, she covered local government, marine issues, business, police news, courts and schools for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan before joining the Journal News in 1989. Her local assignments included early morning rewrite and police news for the Commuter Final, and covering Ardsley, Elmsford, Tarrytown and Irvington government, police and schools for the Reporter Dispatch and the Tarrytown Daily News from 1989 to 1996. In 1996, she transferred to the Rockland Journal News, where she edited the Crossroads Page and wrote a history column for two years before moving to education coverage.
She has earned writing awards from the Associated Press, the Michigan Press Association and Harte Hanks Communications, and was lead writer for a runner-up Best of Gannett award-winning story in 2001.
She has tended bar and danced in a beledi troup, sat on the boards of two community theaters and earned a best supporting actress award for amateur stagework in Ohio. She currently plays mandolin with the Shamrogues, Connecticut’s largest Irish band.
Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband, Dave, and has three children.
E-mail Randi Weiner at rcweiner@lohud.com
When my children were very little, we used to keep their bottles filled with water. On the rare occasions any of the babes went to bed with a bottle, it was filled with water.
These days, all three of them — who range in age from 16 to 23 — still turn to water before anything [...]
I had long known that frozen grapes make great snacks—practically calorie-free provided you don’t eat bunches and bunches of them—but I didn’t realize that frozen blueberries are just as nice. Although now I come to think of it, that may have been mentioned here before.
My husband and oldest went blueberry picking last weekend and came [...]
I’m not a big fan of blueberries, so when my husband and eldest decided to go blueberry picking over the weekend, I sent them off with secret hopes they were too late for a good harvest.
They brought back two nice containers of fruit, one of which immediately got washed and frozen and the other sent [...]
Today (July 7) is my youngest daughter’s birthday. She turns 16.
Several of her friends have held Sweet 16 birthday parties, but most of them have been a family dinner out with a few friends or a sleepover, nothing fancy. Thankfully, she and her friends are pretty low-key as a rule.
So in deciding how to celebrate [...]
I had the oddest feeling this past weekend of being Tom Sawyer.
My youngest and two of her girlfriends went strawberry picking Saturday, then came back and cleaned what appeared to be 20 pounds of berries, laughing and working in concert.
I mixed up a batch of shortcake dough and let the girls do the kneading, rolling, [...]
And we’ve planned a family trip to the pick-your-own strawberry farm for this weekend.
It’s not my family, though. It’s my youngest and three of her friends who apparently have never picked strawberries before.
My oldest, rolling her eyes at dinner last night when we were discussing the details, said she was happy to beg off. Picking [...]
To listen to my three offspring, the mere whiff of a mushroom anywhere near the spaghetti sauce is cause for concern.
The mushrooms might (horrors!) end up in with the tomatoes and peppers and onions and whatnot. That would make the entire dish inedible, contaminated by fungus (you know, mom, the stuff that grows in the [...]
My in-laws visited over the holidays and one of them sat in my seat at the table.
I don’t know when our family got assigned seats. It might have been after the oldest graduated from a high chair to a real chair, and we put her across from her dad because that’s where the high chair [...]
Eventually, my oldest will move out of the house and into her own apartment. She’s been gainfully employed since January but living at home to save money.
Our basement is filled to the brim with the kitchen gear and other things she brought home after she graduated from college a year ago, all of them bought [...]
My youngest had a classmate visiting Friday afternoon and the pair of 15-year-olds decided to do some baking.
They had been talking in school and the friend seemed astounded that we make jam every spring and have fresh applesauce for dinner whenever I happen to have the time to peel a half-dozen Granny Smiths. So my [...]
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As most parents soon discover, feeding a family is rarely that easy, whether its nursing a fussy newborn or trying to get a hot meal into a squirming toddler (or attempting both at the same time.) And that's not even the days when work runs late, the main course burns, or your adventurous little sushi eater announces from now on she will only eat food that is pink. As parents ourselves, we've been there, done that, even learned a few tricks along the way. And we're pretty sure so have you. Maybe together we can make eating together as a family -- gulp! -- fun again.     Hema Easley has been a reporter for The Journal News since July 2002, first covering municipal government and then nonprofit agencies, women's issues and the South Asian and Muslim community in the Lower Hudson Valley. In her previous job, Hema was a correspondent for the Associated Press in South Asia. She lives with her husband and two sons in Orange County. Katie Ryan O'Connor, a Journal News editor and 35-year-old mother of three, never quite appreciated the work that went into feeding kids until she had to do it herself as a mother. If she had a food-and-kids philosophy it would be something like this: try your best to offer as much healthy food as possible, but sometimes fruits just have to be counted as vegetables and there are far worse things than chicken and spaghetti. Again. Tracey Princiotta, a 37-year-old mother of one, loves to cook, bake and eat, and is relieved that her son appears to be equally willing to chow down -- even if it's baby food and formula right now. Despite her husband's intense aversion to vegetables, she has high hopes of nurturing a true chowhound who will try everything at least once. And if all else fails, she's not above sneaking veggies into other foods. Marcela Rojas has been a municipal reporter with The Journal News since January 2003. She is a native of Putnam County and grew up eating Peruvian food. She didn't realize until she was 13 that rice did not come with everyone's meal. After several years of living in Los Angeles -- where she grew a fondness for Thai food -- she returned to Putnam County where she now lives with her husband and daughter. Zyla (rhymes with Lilah) just turned 1 in March and, so far (her mother is pleased to note), loves to eat everything. Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, a Journal News reporter, started her career as a journalist in 1999 after graduating with a master's degree from New York University. Before joining the paper in 2006, Swapna worked as a municipal reporter for the Home News Tribune in New Jersey, and took a baby sabbatical to care for her two children, now ages 7 and 5. She has currently outsourced feeding her children and husband to her mother, who is visiting from India. Her friend and colleague Katie O'Connor, informs Swapna that she wouldn't mind being fed Indian food by her mother, too.
 Amy Vernon, a 39-year-old mother of two was fortunate that she, her husband and sons lived with her mother-in-law for the formative years of the little guys' lives. Now, even though she has her own home, she instilled a love of oatmeal in the boys. And whenever she's in town, she helps make sure the guys are well-fed. Randi Weiner has been a reporter with The Journal News since 1989, having covered police, government and schools in Westchester and in Rockland. An Ohio native and 1976 graduate of Bowling Green State University, she worked for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan before moving east. She has tended bar and danced in a beledi troup and sat on the boards of two community theaters. She plays mandolin with the Shamrogues, ConnecticutÕs largest Irish band. Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband and has three children. |
Copyright ©2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties in New York.
