Sunday lunch

The weather is lovely right now, so we decided to have lunch in the garden. (But the summer is coming, I'm afraid! We've already had a few hot and muggy days, and such days strike fear into the hearts of all in South Florida.)

I was enjoying the debut of my brand new petticoat, and Andrew enjoyed the double helping of burgers.

The dog and cat are still in the "getting to know you phase," so they can sit together in the same room, but only when the dog is restrained and the citronella spray (used to communicate to Ada that she's been bad) is at the ready.
The cat, of course, is well-accustomed to spending the day tied to a string.

A Styling St. Patrick's Day

We had dinner guests on Saturday night, and I was feeling a bit lazy, so I went with old standbys - homemade pizzas. One was topped with goat cheese and olives, and one with eggs and truffle oil. The nice thing about inviting new people to dinner is that you can serve them food you eat every week and they think it's something new and different. One of the guests had the foresight to bring green food coloring, so that we could celebrate St. Patrick's Day. I enjoyed how festive the water glasses were, but I'm happy he didn't add the food coloring to the pizzas.

I'm still in love with panna cotta. It uses gelatin, which makes it non-vegetarian, but dissolving sugar and gelatin into whipping cream is the work of only a few minutes. And who can fail to be impressed with solid cream? This recipe called for fruit and candied almonds.

Meet Ada

The number of mammals in our house has spiked recently, but we are taking steps to bring the population back under control. Why the spike, you might ask? Well, (sadly) we have another rat in our cupboards, but (happily) we have also adopted a dog.

Meet Ada, named for Ada Lovelace:

Answers to frequently asked questions:

• She's a two-year-old mutt, rescued from the street. She's very lovable, and a bit timid right now. She does not appear to know any commands yet.
• We got a dog because I wanted one, and after weeks of discussion, Andrew weakened. As I'm not one to let an opportunity pass me by, when he said "Yes" to the dog on Sunday morning, I made sure we were at the shelter by Sunday afternoon.
• The cat and dog have only met through screen doors, and so far they're not too friendly.
• We start training classes on Saturday morning. And although my father thinks it would be fun, we have no immediate plans to teach her how to ride on the back of a motorcycle.

Introducing Irulan*, kitten nemesis of Phi the cat

Not pictured below: the cup that shattered when she jumped on the counter, the now-broken seashell that turned out to be a poor toy, or the multiple cups of water we've tipped over her in an effort to explain that kitchen tables are not for walking on.

*Bonus geek points for anyone who knows the origin of her name.

Kitten in the house

Several weeks a ago, a half-grown gray kitten ran into my office, jumped up on to my desk, and started taking a bath. After a few inquiries, my coworkers determined that she didn't belong to anyone, and he was adopted by the postdoc who works next door.

Tonight the kitten came for a visit, as we'll be catsitting for the next few days. I haven't taken care of a kitten in about twenty years, and I forgot how they think. My cat, twelve years old, is still pretty active and likes to play with the laser pointer or chase geckos. But kittens think if anything might move, it should be moved. She has unearthed things from under the bed, scattered catnip over the entire surface of the kitchen floor, and jumped on to the kitchen table no less than a dozen times. (Prompt removal from said table does not seem to have an effect.) She has shimmied under the couch, behind the freezer, and even (momentarily) crawled into the refrigerator while I was putting something into it.

I am enjoying the kitten visit and I will enjoy the peace that descends at the end of the kitten visit.

Birthday fry-up

Andrew is a big fan of the full English breakfast, known around our house as a "fry-up". It's the meal he requested for his birthday, so I served him this plate:

Fried potatoes, fried eggs, fried (veggie) sausages, and fried tomatoes. Not pictured: fried bread.

He also got homemade (fried) donuts.

Then he reacted as expected: he took four antacids and lay down on the floor in misery.

Cooking all at once

I'm back! I mean that figuratively and literally, because I just returned from Los Angeles. I'll spare you the boring details, but I was dreading January because of the amount of work I had scheduled. And it lived up to my expectations. This week I finished up a stretch of working 18 days in a row, and rewarded myself with a three-day weekend.

One thing that helped me through the many work days was a new menu-planning tool, Once a Month Mom, which provide menus for 30 days of cooking, to be done in one long day. (I was relieved to find that there's no official requirement that you be a mom - maybe they think childfree women have so much free time they'd never do freezer cooking? And men, don't they cook?) The most important thing for me is that they provide seasonal menus, and they tailor to diet (gluten-free, vegetarian, etc) and to family size. I have to tweak some of the recipes, because I use a bit more whole-grain flour and a bit less cheese than they usually call for. But I'm surprised to find that I can cook about 10 meals in a span of three hours.

I've made meals from the website: roasted tomato soup, zucchini fritters, veggie burgers, and muffins. Then I've tweaked my own: instead of making one pizza, I quadruple the recipe for sauce, dough, and cheese, and then freeze all those ingredients separately. I made the winter squash soup recipe from the website, but served it on top of pasta with roasted nuts, because we like pasta more than soup.

I'm not sure that I would want to have every single meal come out of the freezer. But if this shifts about 75% of the cooking (and clean-up) to the weekends, then that's about perfect right now.