Our Well-Read Cat

While Moxie may be a couple weeks younger than Simon (by all guesstimates), and definitely a smaller cat, she was the first of the two to take to jumping to high places, climbing things, etc. Simon would rather just lay around on chairs and look cute, while Moxie's gotta get up and move!

I think she was just trying to find some good reading!?

Oh, and here's a cute pic of Tucker catching some sun while the blinds were mostly closed.

Our Little Tease

It's a real good thing these two are getting fixed in just a week and a half - our little girl's growing up to be a young tease I think!

Look at her - giving out kisses...

And then just walking away! What - no follow through!? TEASE!

Torn from the headlines of todays hottest news...

I like to think I'm here to keep you on top of all the most important events in the world.

I confess - I didn't read the article. But the imagery got my attention...

Paris, thinking to self: "Where can I get me a pair of those!?"

Thanks to Alison...

...for RUINING my perfect image of Britney. Ack!

9th Wonders

Just finished watching tonite's episode of Heroes.

Hopped online to blog and thought about seeing if I could find a picture of Hiro and Charlie together.

Googled "Hiro Charlie" and came up with WAY more results than I expected.

ANNNNNNNNNNND found a kick ass site - www.9thwonders.com - why hasn't anybody mentioned this by now!?

Ok, and now back to our regularly scheduled babble-fest about this week's Heroes!

WOOOOOW!

GREAT "flash back" episode. I sort of don't feel like it was a flashback, because some of it was happening "new" - at least to Hiro.

I feel really bad about the way things worked out with Charlie. If you were in Hiros shoes, and you knew what was going to happen to Charlie, would you still try to save her? I guess you'd definitely NOT want her to go the traumatic way that Sylar took her out, eh?

And so now we know a lot more about Gabriel Sylar. Hm. It seems he's getting his powers from those he kills (or whose brains he eats?!) - something we'd guessed at before, but pretty much confirmed tonite. Very interesting to see his "origin", and why he's so obsessed.

Is it safe to say that the expression "Save the cheerleader, Save the world" is referring to the fact that we don't want Sylar to get Claire's regenerative powers, because with those he couldn't be killed and could go on being a bad guy? (Yes, this deviates from my other theory about how she needs to get close to the guy with the radiation powers)

Sad to see how Nathan's wife lost the use of her legs while he had to watch from overhead. He's still a real bastard!

So we see why Nikki has her dark side... Still not sure if she's really channeling her dead sister, or if it's just a split personality developed from her father's abuse, and taking on the form of her dead sister. Will have to wait and see.

Will be interesting to see how Eden deals with her dark past and wanting to become a better person. Or not.

More with the Haitian!?

I really didn't like Claire when the series first started - she's TOTALLY grown on me!

Nicole at work has been speculating that "Save the cheerleader, Save the world" might not actually refer to Claire, but that the other cheerleader WAS the one who needed to be saved. Boy, that'd be a real problem at this point, hunh?

And what about that teaser for next week!?!? AAAAH! Final episode before the new year?! (Oh well, probably a lot of shows doing that, what with the holiday specials etc) And a hero dies!?!? NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Thanks for listening to me babble - what're your thoughts?!?! Go check out 9th Wonders!

Tucker in the Sun

With the blinds closed most the way, you can see Tucker was doing whatever it took to get some sunshine, including sitting on the birdseed tub (old cat litter tub) that I forgot to put away after restocking the kitty-entertainers, er, bird feeders. Man, that's one desperate cat!

So pretty - this is almost on par with some of the old pics of Notch!

Moxie's just realized Tucker's figured out a good thing!

Maybe it's time to play king of the mountain and overthrown the sun-throne!?

This Little Brett Wii, Wii, Wii'd All The Way Home...

Guess what Brett finally got his hands on this weekend!!! After numerous stops into Toys R Us, we lucked out and showed up shortly after they'd gotten their second shipment of Nintendo Wiis. (Wii? Wii-ii? Wiise?)

Now - has anyone figured out how to unplug their boyfriend from one of these things?

(I'm kidding - while he got in quite a few hours on it yesterday, he's been doing a better job than I would at juggling it and errands, Christmas shopping, laundry, etc)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to some World of Warcraft before How I Met Your Mother and Heroes is on tonite! ;-)

Post-Thanksgiving Play Time

Here's Rick and Carolyn trying to coax Moxie out from under the table to be a little more sociable after we'd cleaned up from the Thanksgiving feast and Brett's family had left.

And here's Brett just being cute... You know you want him - you just can't have him!

Rick taking a rest from trying to lure Moxie

Carolyn and Brett all worked up about something funny...

Everybody loves bread!

In addition to making the roasted parmesian brussels sprouts from Beautiful Homes & Gardens this month, I was in the mood to make homemade dinner rolls to go with Thanksgiving dinner, and their recipe just happened to pop into my view at the right time. So, heck, first time trial recipe #2 for this year's Thanksgiving - let's just throw caution to the wind and risk it all!!

This recipe was a milk-and-yeast bread dough, with a little sugar. After letting it rise, you pat or roll it out into a rectangle and cut out little finger length/shaped "rolls", place them a little ways apart from each other on a pan, and let them rise again before baking.

They turned out pretty good! Sorry - by the time they were done baking I was done taking pictures because it was getting closer to meal time....so no photos of the final product. They sure tasted good though!

I DO have to admit that the finger-shape wasn't real conducive to making little turkey/mashed potato/gravy/cranberry sauce sandwiches mid-meal (nor for leftovers), but I made do! ;-)

Have I mentioned I also made TWO types of stuffing this year? Rick & Carolyn joined us for Thanksgiving, and they're vegetarians - so I took this as a bit of a personal challenge to try to ensure they were also going to have some traditional Thanksgiving foods while not limiting the meat eaters - this was fun! We had a vegetable-broth based gravy alongside the turkey-and-chicken broth gravy, we had the extra vegetable dish (brussels sprouts to go with green bean casserole, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes) and we had TWO types of stuffing - one with sausage and chicken broth, and one with vegetable broth and extra veggies.

I don't really have a recipe for making stuffing anymore, other than buy a couple bags of the prepared seasoned dry cubes, and then realizing those just won't do, and buying some sort of bread to do the job instead. (Yes, I seem to have done this for at least the last three or four years now) This year I used up the remainder of some homemade honey white bread in the fridge (nicely staled), and picked up two small "stuffing bread" loaves from Giant Eagle. These loaves smelled sooooo good with herbs that I was nibbling on bits of the bread as I was slicing it... Yum! Dried it out in the oven the day before Thanksgiving, and then just left them out to finish "staling". Worked perfect.

Both batches of stuffing had the same veggies/fruit, only the vegetarian one had even more carrots, onion, celery, dried cranberries and dried cherries (first time for using the cherries). Good stuff!

Brett's brother Blake claims that, if for nothing else, he loves coming here for the holidays to get the stuffing - glad to hear it's that good!! :) So I let him take home all the remaining meat-stuffing and divied up the vegetarian between us and Rick & Carolyn to take home.

May as well report here about the rest of Thanksgiving - it went off without a hitch. I was surprised at how calm and relaxed and prepared I was this year. The 14+ pound turkey finished roasting a little earlier than expected (what?! you mean we didn't have to sit and wait on it!??!) Trying frozen instead of canned beans for the green bean casserole worked out great and tasted fresher. The roasted sprouts were a hit. No one died from two sticks of butter, nearly all of a carton of heavy cream, and an entire block of cream cheese being dumped into about 8 pounds of mashed potatoes! (Hey, I NEVER claimed they were diet potatoes!) My sweet potatoes weren't as good as Carolyn's baked sweet potato casserole, but that's totally ok, 'cause her dish ROCKED!

The wines Brett's folks brought helped keep people hydrated (and might've contributed to Brett's headache later than nite!)

And we were doing just fine with "just" two pies - my pumpkin pie, and Carolyn's apple pie (last slice is getting eaten tonite!). I do have to admit to being tempted to also making a pecan pie, but we were fine. We had Cool Whip (Brett's request), and home-whipped cream with brandy for the "big kids". (LOTS of brandy - heh heh)

The biggest crisis of the whole event was me "missing" one raw egg from my count after I'd started making pie crust, pumpkin pie filling, and pumpkin bread to use up the remaining pureed pumpkin. Where the hell did that egg go!??! Turns out the pie crust recipe was NOT harmed by having an extra egg in it! Who knew! MIght've even been better! :) (Had to track down the Never Fail Pie Crust recipe online - was going to take too long to track down the family heirloom copy that grandma passed on to mom and me. Good thing it's not a family secret!)

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well!!

I Relish Thanksgiving

So I have a problem.

I sometimes can't make a decision.

Or I worry other people might have preferred "something different" from what I planned to cook.

This is more likely to happen when I'm hoping to impress others, OR when I'm trying to pick between traditional menu items at a special event.

When in doubt - make ALL the options!

Case in point: Thanksgiving (OR Christmas) and cranberries...

I HATED cranberries growing up, but I've really learned to like them. In fact, I like them in a raw 1 bag cranberries, 1 whole washed orange, 1 cup of sugar thrown in the Cuisinart relish, and I like them in a cooked whole cranberry sauce.

But which would our guests prefer?

Hmmm.... I know - I'll go with BOTH!

Oh, and we had a can of jellied cranberry sauce (not shown here) I forgot to open LAST year, and it's still good (for another year - whoah!), so I opened that as well!

Which do you prefer? Hm...maybe you'd rather I make a different recipe. Also. ? ;-)

Glorious Brussels Sprouts

While slicing brussels sprouts for the Beautiful Homes & Gardens cheesey Parmesian roasted brussels sprouts recipe for Thanksgiving, I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures. There's just something about the amazing shades of green running through each little miniature cabbage head! They really invite one to nibble, but they're not quite as tastey raw as cabbage is...

Michele and I were on the phone before I cooked these, discussing the risks of trying out a brand new, untested recipe at a special event, but I'm glad I took the risk! So were Linda (Brett's mom) and Carolyn - they also LOVED the brussels sprouts. Whew! I was concerned - brussels sprouts are one of those items that folks either love or hate, and it seems most hate!

While they certainly weren't a DIET dish, they were definitely a TASTEY one! I felt guilty cooking them down so much and covering them in cheese and cream and onions - I'm a big fan of just eating them steamed with some butter, salt and pepper. But I would definitely make these again - might have to scale down the recipe though...I can't eat two pounds of these guys in a week without falling out of my loving relationship with them!

Why you should be watching Battlestar Galactica!

Ok, the infamous "Apollo's towel scene" is a season or two old now...definitely not new news. But when I came across this pic on line I had to do a little more searching to take me down memory lane. (Btw - this picture is NOT from that episode...)

And that search brought me to the video clip from that episode - you can enjoy it here! :)

For what it's worth, BSG is an amazing series for sooooo many more reasons, so please don't think I'm slighting it in any way. If it weren't for Heroes, I'd have to consider BSG my first choice tv show each week!!!

For Alison's Husband...

Here ya go - not that he was challenging the Oreo thing, I figured I'd offer a little proof! ;-) Those are Oreos all over J'Onn!

What the hell!??!

Here's one I never thought I'd see! Careful Brit - that might be the wrong road to take...

Robin Sparkles

Here it is - the video from last nite's How I Met Your Mother!! "Let's Go To The Mall" could become the new "Save The Cheerleader, Save The World" you hear around the office!!!!

Stuffed pasta shells

Another one of those dishes where I didn't bother with a recipe - just kind of winged it. Cooked up some onion, ground beef and ground pork, and garlic. Added some oregano, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Threw in a box of thawed chopped spinach. Stirred together ricotta cheese, shredded mozarella, more nutmeg, salt and pepper. Then added the meat/spinach mixture, stuffed into shells, put in cookware, sauced, cheesed, baked, yum!

Minestrone

It was cooooold outside this weekend. What better than a nice steaming bowl of homemade minestrone, ready in about half an hour thanks to the pressure cooker! Mmmmm...sooooo good! Leftover pasta, a can of kidney beans and a can of green beans (this felt kind of wrong), a couple potatoes diced up, homegrown swiss chard from the freezer, carrots and onions and garlic and, oh, did I mention? BACON! MMMMM! Good stuff! Especially with a small serving of stuffed pasta shells and a big loaf of bread!