Cat Blog Day Rolls Around Again

You were expecting to see cats in costumes, perchance? Fie!

Friday is cat blog day. The cats, Thisbe and Annie, have been adversarial lately, and when we came back from Long Island there were bits of fur all over the house, a sure sign of fighting. Of course the fights are always over in seconds.

Thisbe doesn't take kindly to bullying anymore, and gives as good as she gets. I notice that when they are having one of their confrontations (catfrontations in S.O.'s vocabulary) there is a lack of eye contact. One will look daggers and the other will be examining the ceiling, the chair, whatever there is to stare at without making eye contact with the enemy, so to speak.

Yesterday, for us, not the cats I made goulash soup, which is a cool weather fave, and always tasty. I had a pound of cheap thin steak. That and two onions, a green papper, garlic, canned tomatoes, carraway seeds, broth, and one teaspoon each hot, sweet and smoked paprika. Salt and pepper, natch. Most satisfying--not really spicy, but resonant. I added a potato and some chopped carrot, because we do like our veggies.

I made two loaves of bread, my food processor French bread, and it was not a walk in the park. Didn't add quite enough flour, and I had the stickiest, ickiest mess. Had to add more flour and knead it in. This is a no-knead bread, mind you. Sticky hands, sticky food processor, sticky counter--sticky everything. Yuck! Somehow I was able to form two loaves and they rose nicely, considering that I was afraid I also had the water too hot.

Bread is full of landmines. Into the oven it went, and it came out looking like, well, bread, with that wonderful smell. We attacked a loaf with the soup and ate most of the remainder this morning, leaving another loaf for the rest of today.

I really need (knead?) to branch out into other breads. Tonight we're grilling a pork tenderloin with a smoked paprika sauce. Yukon gold potatoes. Salad. Does that sound good or what?

Lately, I've been writing my novel, a speech, assignments for the food writing class, and soon, before Tuesday, an essay about why I am for Obama.

In the meantime, there are daffodils to plant as the weather should be good today. Frost on the pumpkin this morning.

Oh yes! Halloween. We have to carve the blasted expensive ($8.00) orange thing today. I bought candy at the Lindt outlet in Wrentham Mall yesterday. We had eaten the previous batch put aside for Halloween. Shameless, greedy, chocoholics that we are. Bad!

Boo!

Grapeshot

Am I dreaming?

It's been a busy week, no a busy month, and September was crazy, too. The long simmering days of summer are gone and life has come to a boil.

So last night after dinner I was pooped, and with a post-dinner piece of that coffee cake, so comforting, I draped myself on the couch to watch the Red Sox. Ye Gods! Things went to hell in the first inning, and only worsened, until it was 7 zip in favor of Tampa Bay. Significant Other toddled off to bed with the remark that, "when I don't stay up to watch, they always win."

Yeah, sure. I dozed a bit, and woke up with the score still 7-zip and Papelbon was pitching, which means the end is in sight. Ate the last of the Halloween candy, chocolate being so comforting and fell into an apparently deep sleep on the couch.

Awoke and thought I was dreaming, because the score was 7-6, Tampa Bay, and there were two outs, and a man on second and Coco Crisp was batting. Red Sox fans know that there has been bad blood between Crisp and the Rays, rightly so, and how sweet it was, HOW SWEET IT WAS,
when Coco got a hit and tied the game. Wow, was I ever awake!

Thought about waking S.O., and decided that might bring had luck. While the Rays were batting in the ninth, I got ready for bed, and crept back downstairs--by now it was so late the automatic timers had turned off the lights.

The Red Sox got a man on and J.D. Drew batted him in. EVEN SWEETER! Then, of course, I had to wake S.O. up. In Boston, we take our baseball seriously in Red Sox Nation.

So revved up by the excitement and my ill-timed nap, that I had to read some Proust to get my mind and body in the mood for sleep.

Holy freakin' crap, who would have thunk it?

Cat blog day? Forget it. Annie barfed and Thisbe had lovey time and complained about everything. Same old. Same old. The cats are waaayyyy to portly for a hawk or an owl to carry off.

Grapeshot

Halloween Candy Redux

So...we had all of 4 kids here on Halloween. Girls. Polite girls who only took one piece of candy each. Leaving almost two bags for me, because S.O. eschews cheap American candy and milk chocolate of any sort. I had already made some inroads into the Reese's Peanut Butter cups, and I ate the remainder apace. That left the little Snickers bars, which I froze.

I am here to tell you that if you hold a mini-Snickers bar in the warm palm of your hand, it is edible in minutes. This is not a good thing. I have eaten three since dinner time, and we had a full dinner, except for no starch, no dessert. Now there has been dessert. My bad! Although the news today was that being a bit overweight leads to a longer life, and we are ready to test that out. Yes indeed.

My broken ankle has healed nicely. No residual pain or stiffness. I hardly bothered with the exercises and everything seems fine. The swelling has not gone, but I expected that. And I can wear a normal shoe. What I didn't expect was that my foot has turned all weird and scaly and most unattractive looking. The exterior foot. It's like, peeling. I slathered the entire foot with the Body Shop's peppermint foot balm. What happens on the inside affects the outside, I guess.
Anyway, it has been interesting to observe the various colors, huge swelling, and now modest swelling and some peeling. By the way, it's not the cast that itches, it's the healing bone. The cast only prevents scratching. Now you have good usable information about breaking your ankle, and you may also know that I am the kind of person who cannot resist scratching an itch. Ah, so many faults.

I watched "The Big Chill" on On Demand. Cripes, it was even free. What a great movie, and so many stars whose careers were really taking off: Glenn Close, Kevin Klein, William Hurt. Fantastic motown music. Good acting, beautiful setting, lots of conflict, no violence. Drugs and sex of course. Kind of an upscale "Return of the Secaucus Seven." You saw that, of course. Excellent movie. Hard to find.

And now, to bed.

Grapeshot, she of the peeling foot