Pictures and assorted ramblings...

Went out to the meat lab and bought some more beef bacon, tenderized round steak, and summer sausage. Mr Hairball wanted to try the summer sausage so I got some of that. There is one really nice meat science professor who usually waits on us when we go out there and I always think of him as Dr. Bacon. *grins*

The round steak will be used for chicken fried steak, the beef bacon is for our Saturday brunches, and the summer sausage will be for Mr. Hairball's "party trays". He loves to make up a plate of munchies like olives, cheese, nuts, crackers, some kind of processed meat, etc... and calls it a "party tray".

I made a simple chicken stir-fry earlier in the week. Mr. Hairball doesn't like most cooked vegetables so he fished out all the chicken and ate that with some of the rice I made. He said it was good but, I sure wish I could get him to eat more cooked vegetables. He will eat small portions of certain roasted vegetables so in the summer, I pretend I'm Ina Garten and make roasted green beans or asparagus.

I'm tried out my 'new to me' bread machine, and it seems to work just fine. Mr. Hairball has requested that I make him some cranberry walnut bread so that is on the plan for next week. I'm thinking again about saving up for a grain mill as I've read about how freshly ground flour is more nutritious and that items made with such flour are mighty tasty.

We only have one piece of cake left so I think the next thing I bake will be Chocolate Dipped Orange Butter Cookies from Joanna's Kitchen. I ran into some good sales on butter so I'll use some of it up on some cookies.

Now from what I've been told, I should already be in the fetal position sobbing hysterically about the "birthday of doom" that I have coming up on 01/20/2009. The thing is I am as they say in my neck of the woods, "ornery" and just plain refuse to waste time gnashing my teeth about getting older as there is not a blessed thing I can do about it. You either get older or you die and I'm not ready to jump off this merry-go-round just yet. Every year I live I'm hopefully a little bit smarter than I was the year before.



There was a big sale on canned soup at the grocery store today. I had coupons so I really stocked up. I think 74 cans of soup should last us quite a long time! I also stocked up on peanut butter and frozen veggies. Knowing that I have lots of stuff squirreled away in the pantry and in my little freezer, means that I don't have an excuse to eat out on those nights when I'm sick or just don't feel like cooking. I think of it as "budget insurance" since stuff from my pantry or freezer is much cheaper than ordering pizza or going through the drive-through.



My MIL gave us an aerogarden for Christmas. Mr. Hairball is the gardener. One day we will have a real garden but, this is nice if you are in an apartment like we are.


This is the cat we adopted back in February of '98. She was pregnant when we adopted her.Twelve hours later, she had six kittens. It was a wild time trying to corral the kittens so that they didn't destroy the apartment while we were out. We found homes for the four boy kittens and kept Momma Cat and her two daughters. Sadly one of her daughters died in June of '08. Here's a picture of her. She is dearly missed.




This one is nicknamed Momma Cat Junior (MCJ) because she fawns all over Momma Cat just like Chester did to Spike in the old Merrie Melodies cartoon.

Tree for Two Scene
Uploaded by thadk

Momma Cat also smacks MCJ with her paw when she's had enough of her being in her face. I feel bad for MCJ but, it is also really funny as Momma Cat just has this look of complete exasperation on her face.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!