Stewpot Boy

Kitties!

Scouty here.

This is hard to admit, but I'm mellowing as I get older; I let Mommy get Dangerously Close* to me these days, especially if I know she's got something yummy in hand--lately it's been canned mackerel--and she approaches me slowly with the bowl held out where I can see it.

Still, there is NO Touching allowed.

Not now, and not ever!

The possibility of becoming the main ingredient in Scouty Stew is just too great...I just know the treats are to fatten me up and make me all tasty and stuff.

So I keep my lasers ready, just in case.

Happy Caturday!

XX  Scouty  XX

*under a meter!

Deliciousness

Kitties!

The Baby here.

Daddy made chili.

I got hamburgers!

There was some desire by others to have a nom or two...but I was having none of that!

Oh...

Well.

 I was full, anyways.

Happy Thursday!

XX  Bibby  XX

Fragrant Friday

Kitties!

The Baby here.

Yesterday Mommy got a bug up her butt the urge to cook!  When the cool weather arrives she fires up every available burner and both ovens on at least one of her days off and cooks and bakes and sautes and simmers her fool head off.

So, after she concocted a  huge VAT of soup, baked bread, roasted squash and garlic bulbs, and made quiche the house was pretty fragrant.  Daddy called Mommy the Stinky French Chef.  (I'm fairly sure it was a compliment--ed.)

Needless to say some of the stink settled on my furs.

hmmmmmm...I actually don't taste bad at all; in fact Mommy's cooking tastes pretty darn good!

And I think I just found a chicken soup spot--must investigate...

*licketty lik lik lik*

Oh yeah.  Chicken for sure!

Happy Friday!

XX  Bathing Bibby  XX

CATserole Cooking

Kitties!

Today we have a recipe--for CATserole.

It's pretty easy, just two steps:

Place one (1) cat in the Oven

Bake at sunpuddle temperature until done, or elebenty hours.

Serve warm.

Happy Wednesday!

XX  Hot John  XX

Feline Cuisine

"Terrine au Tuxedo"

Serving suggestions?

Happy Wednesday!

XX  Sauteed Salem  XX

Kitchen Inspector

Kitties!

Maui here.

Mommy was doing kitcheny-type stuff so I was duty bound* to perform Quality Control checks.

Hmmmm, this whole grain mix requires further analysis...

Mommy: Maui!  Get outta there!

Curses! 

Cat Inspection, foiled again.

Happy Caturday!

XX  Maui  XX

*by Cat Rules.  You know what they are.

Mommy's New Toy

Kitties!

Mommy killed yet another inexpensive dehydrator a couple of weeks ago, so she decided it was time to open her stingy wallet pull out the big guns and buy a real one.  After all, she does chikkun treats for us weekly, as well as jerky for her and Daddy, and banana chips, nuts, tomatoes...and all the lemons off our tree.  Around here a dehydrator gets quite the work-out.

The Chikkun Inspector worked diligently on the maiden run.

And here it is, all loaded up and ready to go!

Mommy gets a little queasy with the smell of dehydrating chikkun (she is crazypants) so Daddy set up a spot in the garage with a fan to waft the stink delicious aroma outside.

...six hours later... 

Et voila! 

Crunchy, chewy, toofy-cleaning chikkun snax.

8-10 pounds of titz makes about a gallon and a half of treats, enough to last us about ten days, more or less, depending on whether or not we can get the lid off the ceramic treat jar!

Which would never happen, right Maui?

Happy Caturday!

XX  The Katnip Lounge  XX

pee ess:  Mommy bought an EXCALIBUR dehydrator.

Snuggling with Sheebie

Friends and Kitties!

We're joining the Sunday Selfie Blog Hop:

Sheebie here, with a kinda-sorta snuggling selfie.

As you can see, I never lack for feline company.  

I'd like to apologize for not commenting on as many blogs as often lately--the pure-D fact is that I'm burned out.  Don't worry, I'm not considering stopping blogging because I'm incapable of shutting up but I wanted to let y'all know that we still make the rounds and enjoy reading every day.  

Thanks for all the nice comments on my yoga post!  I'd like to encourage all of you to give it a try sometime, even if you have a disability you can benefit from seated poses either on the floor or in a chair.  What I'm doing is the result of a year of practice and I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I'd be capable of the flexibility I've achieved--not to mention the wonderful feeling of mental centeredness that lasts far beyond the actual routine.  Scott practices regularly as well which helps him cope with his arthritis.  He uses a series of DVDs put out by a yogi named Peggy Cappy, and she is great; each pose/asana has variations according to your physical ability.  (She has stuff on YouTube, check it out!)

Scott and I have gone back into the kitchen and have been chef-ing up a storm lately.  Neither one of us cares for restaurant--or even prepared--food any more (flatus, anyone?) so out of self-preservation we've re-divvied up the household chores and I've made time to bake and cook.  It's funny, I wander into the kitchen thinking I'm "just going to do thus-and-such" and HOURS later I stagger out, laden with loaves, meals, and sides.  Scott, who up until recently was indifferent to my cooking (he used to be the chef) is now actually requesting certain dishes!  It's very fulfilling to prepare something nourishing for someone you love.  Even if it's yourself--we all have to eat.

On that note, I had a request for my pretzel roll recipe and it's at the end of the post.  I've  tweaked it a little to suit our taste, but the unaltered recipe can be found HERE--as well as lots of other excellent cooking ideas.  I find they are best eaten the day you make them (they take about 2 hours start to finish) or frozen then zapped in the microwave.  We always have some in the freezer, they are our go-to for sandwiches.

So, you have your instructions for the week:

1. stretch

2.  eat well

3. love yourself

Happy Sunday!

XX  Sheebie  XX

WHOLE WHEAT PRETZEL ROLLS

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
1 packet active dry yeast (2-1/2 tsp)
2 tablespoons coconut oil (or other fat)
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup baking soda
Pretzel salt or coarse ground sea salt, for sprinkling

Directions:
In a small saucepan, heat the milk, 1/2 cup water, sugar and molasses to 105 to 110 degrees F. Add to the bowl of a stand mixer. Sprinkle the yeast over the water mixture and wait 10-15 minutes until the yeast blooms.

Combine flours in a mixing bowl.

Add the flour mixture to the bowl with the blooming yeast, and then add in the coconut oil. Mix on medium speed until the dough has come together and is smooth and elastic in texture and pulling away from the sides of the bowl, 5 to 7 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured cutting board and form into a ball. Cut into 12 equal pieces. Using your hands, roll each piece into a ball and place onto a lightly floured surface. Cover with a dish cloth and let them rest in a warm place for 12 to 15 minutes.

Once rested, flour your work surface again and form the balls into flat discs, about 3" across. Place back in the warm spot and let rest for another 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place one oven rack high and one low. Line 2  baking sheets with silicone mats or parchment paper.

In a large pot, bring 8 cups water to a boil, and then add the baking soda. In batches (3 or 4), place the discs in the water and cook for 30 seconds on each side.

Using a slotted spatula, remove the buns and place onto the prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle with pretzel salt as they come out of the water to ensure the salt sticks. Then cut 3 diagonal slits on top of the bread, not too deep.

Bake for 10 to 13 minutes, rotating between the top and bottom racks of the oven halfway through the cooking.

Enjoy!

Our Delicious Dinner

Kitties!

Here is what we're getting for our Thanksgiving dinner:

NOT!!!

Instead, Daddy will grill us a chicken, and Mommy made bread stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, pretzel rolls, buttered carrots, cole slaw, fresh cranberries, and a from-scratch cherry pie!  Mommy works half a grave shift Wednesday night (four hours) so she did all the prep ahead of time--which means we've already had many many many opportunities for taste tests and impromptu quality control.  One of the rolls *may* have gotten a paw print pressed into it...

Happy Thanksgiving to all our pals in the USA, and our buddies around the world!

We're so grateful for your friendship.

Happy Thursday!

XX  The Katnip Lounge Kitties, Mommy and Daddy  XX

Sheebie Snax

Friends and Kitties!

My folks bought me a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer last year for my 50th birthday, and I absolutely love it.

 I bake about every ten days, keeping us in bread and cookies, rolls and challah.

Recently I made a batch of bagels, and they were delicious--but ugly as sin--I had some engineering hurdles to leap with forming the little suckers.  The second batch turned out way prettier, and even better tasting.

I made both plain and poppyseed.

Scott claimed to be uninterested in my bagels, but he changed his tune as soon as he saw the fresh cherry-blueberry jam I had made to go on top!  I made 16 bagels and they didn't last out the week...and I'm here to tell you that I was not the lone consumer...turns out Scott was more bagel-friendly than he thought!

I used THIS BAGEL RECIPE borrowed from my friend Patty over at Broken Teepee.  She blogs quite a bit about food--and books!--and I've yet to make something from her site that's been less than wonderful.  I made her Pretzel Rolls last Thursday for sandwiches and they were gone before I could get photos!  No worries though, I'll be making them again, and soon.

I have a mixer, and I'm not afraid to use it.

Happy Sunday!

XX  Sheebie  XX

Sunday with Sheebie!

Friends and Kitties!

It's been quiet yet busy around here, and due to a) a lack of any cohesive story line, b) snappy segues, and c) laziness, I'm gonna post a list.

1.  I started yoga classes to help stretch out my back and I think it's helping.  The class is very low key, all adults, and lots of fun.  What's nice is we all get a printed sheet (homework!) of what to practice during the week which helps jog my memory--I find it hard to remember poses when I'm busy clearing my mind.

d.  I did two nice bike rides last week.  I had a wee tad of trouble on one hill but pulling over and puking took care of it.  Next time I'll gear down sooner and chug less water all at once!  Spring has sprung here in Las Vegas with highs in the 80's and lows in the upper 50's at night.  It's just glorious outdoors, except for my allergies.  I'm allergic to pine and olive tree pollen and they're blooming like gangbusters right now.  Thank goodness all I get are itchy red eyes and not the sneezy chesty type reaction; a few eye drops and I'm good to go.

Z.  Both my immediate supervisor and manager got promotions, so I'll be getting a new boss.  I have a couple of candidates in mind and have been prodding encouraging them to apply.  I qualify for the job, and I'd be good at it except for the fact that I'm so non-politically correct that I'd be down in Human Resources within the first 25 minutes of acceptance.  I have a hard time with stupidity and there's a couple of dead weights around here that--well--let's just say I've volunteered to dispose of the bodies.  

There's one individual in particular I'd be more than happy to work for so I wish them the best of luck.

7.  Our tomato plants have blossoms!  Scott put in several varieties of cherry tomatoes for us to try this year.  It gets too hot too soon to do the big ones, they split.  He has to spray some sort of magical sexy blossom elixir on the flowers in order for them to bear fruit as there aren't any natural tomato plant pollinators out this early.  There are plenty of bees but apparently tomato blossoms are stinky and they don't like 'em; instead they're all in the arborvitae partying drinking the sap off the stems.

@.  The kale is doing well, too.  As is the catnip!

14.  Sparkle's Human and Quill's Mom came over for an afternoon last weekend, and we had a wonderful confab together, talking cat-talk and a thousand other subjects.  The Horde (sans Scouty and CC) was very gracious and welcoming, with Tarty Salem whaling about for a good hour on the dining room table much to everybody's enjoyment.  Especially hers--what a ham.  

A large ham.

5.  The Park Across the Street is coming along nicely.  Joining the Horned Toads is a new giant animal (shrouded by a tarp, dammit) which is some sort of lizard, the bocce ball court is about done, and the curb for the horse corral was poured last week.  Nothing that photos would do justice to, but the whole complex is really starting to take shape.

q.  I've been making bread at home in my new Kitchen Aid Mixer, and I swear I'll never buy bread again.  Home-baked is just so freakin' good!  I bake on Wednesdays and Scott and I have bread-n-butter, fruit, and cheese for dinner.  Delicious.  I've used my mixer for several batches of quick breads and to shred cabbage for cole slaw and smush up apples for applesauce and boy was that ever easy--I have decent knife skillz but nothing near as fast as those slicer blades.

elebenty.  Scott has a new hobby, he's taken up tie dying and so far his shirts are Far Out, Man!  As soon as he gets confident enough to make shirts to order he will be setting up a store, he enjoys it that much.  I think it's great--he is so creative with color.  It just goes to show that being red-green color blind doesn't prevent you from using the full palette.  I often wonder just how he visually perceives things.  Photos of his work to come...

So, that about wraps it up...have you done anything new and interesting lately?

Tell me in the comments!

Happy Sunday and Have a FUN Week!

XX  Sheebie  XX

Sunday with Sheebie--Old Fart Edition

Friends and Kittehs!

Sheebie here, at last.

I took some time off blogging for my Half-Century Birthday, and a wonderful time was had by all--my parents, Scott, the cats, and most importantly, me!  Because it's all about me, really.  At least around my birthday.

I flew down to Tucson to visit my Mom and Dad and Shadow--who has turned out to be the most comically athletic cat--and got to be a kid again for four days.  It was totally relaxing.

Mom cooked some tasty seafood meals (and a bean soup that was a bum-burner, heh heh) and there was cake and coffee every afternoon.  Very civilized.  Of course there were desserts, too!  Dad and I did not officially compete in the Slowest Dessert Eating contest but secretly I was keeping score, and I won, every single time.  I admit, I may have had an edge because I asked for humongous servings.

Scott sent me a lovely floral arrangement.  I LOVE flowers!  Because of our elebenty-teen cats I can't have flowers at home so they were a real treat.  Shadow wasn't in the least bit interested (although the balloon intrigued her) so we didn't worry about the lilies. 

Mom baked me three TWO cakes!

One of them didn't bake right...for years Mom has used the same Angel food cake mix with nary a problem, but the past couple of cakes have poufed up uncontrollably, run over the pan and charred.  Ugly.  So...we decided to try the high altitude adjustment of adding cornstarch--they are at 3000 feet--which was an Epic FAIL.  As soon as she inverted the cake to cool it plopped out of the pan onto the counter, an unbaked mass of white goo.  Mom almost cried she was so mad!

Fortunately, I had the batter bowl as consolation.

While I pigged out, Dad and Mom convoed a back up plan, which was a second cake.  Yellow, with thick chocolate buttercream frosting. MMMMmmmmmmmm

My birthday was saved!

Of course, I was royally entertained as well as stuffed to the gills.  Mom took me shopping and I got a couple of pairs of pants at a boutique I like, some shirts at Kohls, and I went with both the Peeps to visit some friends of ours and see their new house, (which was gorgeous) and next-door neighbor Bill came over for dessert one evening and we had a lovely long visit.  We also hit a cool housewares store where Mom found a new cake pan, which led to--you guessed it--cake numero tres!  There was one Angel food cake mix left in the pantry and we decided to Take our Chances with one last try...

...which was a resounding success!

You should have seen us, sitting on the floor, peering through the oven window with a cookie sheet at the ready, waiting to catch any spillage.  It was hysterical.  

"Is it gonna go?"  

"I think it's OK"  

"Uh oh...the other side looks suspicious"  

"No, I think it's fine"

"Holy crap get the pan she's gonna blow!"

*scrambling*

The Inspector was, as usual, on duty.

When I got home I had a surprise waiting for me from Scott: 

He had pimped my ride made my car into a Hello Kitty edition!

I love it.

Mom and Dad gave me some money for achieving my advanced age (nice!) and I bought a KitchenAid mixer, which I have already used a bazillion times. 

OK, six times.

What is with my photographer?  Must he take such unflattering shots?  And what in the HELL was I doing?

Thank you!  I love my mixer.  

I also ordered some extra attachments, slicers and graters and such to support my mostly vegetarian lifestyle.

You-know-who got the box.

There's a TON of other stuff to tell y'all about related to this post, but I'll save some for next week.  Plus I have cool park photos; the lights are on!

Happy Sunday and have a Great Week!

XX  Sheebie  XX

Cooking with Daddy

Hi Kitties!

Salem here.

The other day Daddy did a little roadwork on our skyway ramps. He put the blue ramp up, tilted the red ramp down, added the little in-between boards (soon to be sisal covered) and put the Cat Tree on the dresser.

Then he made chicken enchiladas!

Let me digress...Mommy does Not cook. She can, but only for survival purposes. And kitties, let's Face Facts. Daddy cooks WAY better than Mommy, AND he hands out lots of tidbits while he's doing it, too!

Back to the enchiladas.

Daddy lightly fries the tortillas before he stuffs them. He does the frying on the Catio to keep the smell (and grease) out of the house.

Naturally I had to help!

Do you see me?

peekaboo!

I was particularly interested in the Crisco...
mmmmmm, grease!



...it was pretty tasty!
lip-licking good



Daddy took the skillet away when he saw what I was doing.

RATS!



And he shooed me away while he fried tortillas.

I'll lick the butter next...

However, I did get some of the chicken and cheese filling!

Kitties, helping to cook is FUN!

Have a Great Monday!

XX Salem