Kitty Carolers

Who loves Christmas? Kitties love Christmas!!!

It took a little while to get Buttercup warmed up, but she can't resist a little "12 Days of Christmas."



Monkey wasn't about to pass up her 15 minutes of fame... We find her soprano tones to be especially nice this time of year. Enjoy!



Merry Christmas from Richard, Reenie, Buttercup, Monkey, and Scout (who prefers not to sing)!

Kitty Christmas Costumes

Okay, I can't pass up a cute kitty costume, especially when they come with two pieces! Target had a couple cute Christmas options, a reindeer and an elf. The elf costume was a little too hard to keep on the kitties, so we took turns with the reindeer hat.

Buttercup was very cooperative with the hat. Isn't she cute?

Scout is not thrilled with the costume. Doesn't she look like Robin Hood?

Monkey observes the shenanigans from the safety of the tree.

Richard demonstrates the hat for Monkey. She remains unconvinced.

Decorating for Christmas

Last year we got a new pre-lit Christmas tree, which was soooooo much easier than having to string all of those lights! Since this tree was a couple feet taller than our other trees, the snowman decorations didn't seem to fill it up. So this year we decided to combine two trees into one. We now have a snowman / bird tree. I think it looks pretty!

We decided to keep the more delicate ornaments up towards the top, and the softer ornaments on the bottom. Well, it's a good thing we did....

(Scout is in the background, and her "new toys" in the front...)

(Scout wonders, "Why would they put my new toys all the way up here?")

Monkey's new trick

Who said you can't teach an old kitty new tricks? (Be sure to turn your volume up to listen)

The Happiest Place on Earth (and it's not Disney World!)

Last weekend Mom and I took a shopping mini trip to Columbus. It's hard to believe, but Mom has never been to a Penzey's spice store. You better believe this was high on our list of priorities.

Hi, Mom! We're about to go into Penzey's!!!!

Penzey's... The happiest place on Earth!

If you've never tried Penzey's spices, don't wait! Visit their online catalog. They really are the best.

Learning to share

The kitties have officially learned to get along. Not only do they play together, but they have finally learned to share.

Monkey and the Blustery Day

Now that our deck is all done (thanks, Trevor!) the cats love to look out the door and watch the leaves blow around. Today is fairly windy, so there's lots of action.

Monkey loves to watch the swirling leaves

Dinner Date

Hey, there's the happy vegan!

Last night we headed out to meet Dave and Julie for our reservations at Vegiterranean, Chrissy Hynde's vegan restaurant in Akron.

It was so nice having a dinner out with friends and the guys were relatively up for the challenge of trading their meat and potatoes for an all-vegan dinner.

Dave and Julie

We started with a zucchini appetizer that came with a horseradish dip. Really yummy. For dinner Julie opted for the sampler of side dishes. We all tried her order of "Chrissy Fries" and all wish we had ordered them. Dave ordered one of the specials (they had a really long list of specials, all seasonal and sounded great) which was a portobello gnocchi.

Richard ordered the Italian fritto chicken and I ordered the risotto. Both were really good, but I'm really glad I ordered the risotto rather than ordering one of the meat-substitute dinners.

The restaurant was pretty overall very nice and trendy and we can't wait to go back. The only drawback were the tables, which were tall tables with stools. Next time we make reservations I'll see if we can get a normal table.

Richard's "chicken"

My risotto

The highlight of the evening was the dessert, something which I rarely order when we go out to dinner because there are never any good options for me. The waitress listed lots of really yummy options, but let's face it, she had me at "Tiramisu!"

Ta da!

The dessert was really quite good and hard to believe it's vegan. Even Richard thought it was better than the tiramisu he ordered at Macaroni Grill.

We'll definitely being going back the next time we have something special to celebrate.

Our new house guest

Meet Monkey, our new "house guest." You may have known Monkey (a.k.a. "Monchichi") by another name, but we thought it would be best to give her a new identity as part of the kitty witness relocation program.

She was a little cranky at first, but who could blame her. Now she and Scout get along very well, but she's still taking time to warm up to Buttercup. She has officially made herself at home and has found a favorite place to hang out. We're thinking of getting her a little smoking jacket, ala Hugh Hefner.


It's hard to get good pictures of her where she doesn't look like a demon kitty because her eyes are a very light blue and always reflect lots of light.

We'll keep you posted with pictures of our new house guest. We're trying to get some video of her "meow" because it's just hysterical. It's such a wimpy sound from such a pudgy kitty!

Another Belated Birthday Bash Blog

Last Sunday the "Bingo Bunch" (minus John, who was away at a movie con) ventured (at 60 miles an hour) to West Virginia to celebrate Dad's birthday and the best way we know how: supporting the economy of another state by placing our money in the pockets of casino owners. Woo-hoo!

We started out in high spirits, wearing our lucky clothes. Mom took the picture, after a brief training session on how to take digital photos. Not bad, Mom!


Richard and I ran through our budgeted slot machine funds fairly quickly, but Dad and Jen did relatively well (in our world, that's either breaking even or coming home with a few extra bucks).

Here's our self-portrait at the end of the day (since Mom wasn't there to snap the picture). Sorry, I covered the flash with my finger, so we're looking a little orange. Or maybe that's what happens when you spend a Sunday afternoon among smoking gamblers...

Itty Bitty Birthday Kitty

Okay, I have to include one picture from Scout's first birthday party last month, only because it was so hard to take it...

Don't worry, not kitties were harmed in the taking of this picture!

Belated Birthday Bash Blog

I'm sorry I haven't blogged in so long, and I'm only a little sorry about the alliteration in the title...

Earlier this month we celebrated Jen's birthday. Mom and I were joined by Joanne (all the way from Illinois!) for a weekend getaway.

On Saturday, September 6th we headed up to the Cleveland Heights area to see the Vatican Splendors exhibition at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Since it was the weekend for the exhibit it was pretty crowded. The highlight was the gift shop at the end of the tour, complete with Vatican Splendors shot glasses. Too funny!

After the tour we headed out to Legacy Village for shopping and lunch. Now, if you know Jenny at all, then you probably know how much she despises "birthday productions" at restaurants. Let's see how the Cheesecake Factory likes to celebrate birthdays:

And let's see how Jenny reacted...

Oh, she loved it! Don't let her tell you any different :-)

After lunch and shopping we headed back to our hotel for more celebrations. If you want to know which birthday we were celebrating, you might want to take a closer look at this picture:

Happy birthday, Jenny Bean!

Chicago Vacation

I know I've been neglecting posting to the blog, but we've both been so busy that the time has gotten away from us...

A couple of weeks ago we drove out to Chicago for a visit with my Grandma and while we were there we spent several days downtown..

The first day we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. We thought we would just spend a couple of hours there, but we ended up spending half of the day. There are really so many things to see, it's hard to fit it all in.

The highlights include the U-505, a German U-boat on display that you can tour. It used to be outside, but they brought it inside a couple years ago:

One of my favorite exhibits I remember from my childhood is still there: Baby Chicks!

(Chicks, man!)

On the way home our GPS took us on a somewhat scenic route. I'm pretty sure we went way out of the way, but I started to get excited when I started to see street names I remember. We were pretty close to my old neighborhood, Evergreen Park, so we drove my our old house on Homan.

It was hard to believe this was the same house I grew up in, it has changed so much!

When we started heading back to Grandma's house, we passed one of Richard's favorite things:

A comic book store!

Richard got a really cool Green Lantern baseball cap. He was pretty happy!

On Wednesday we headed back downtown to visit the Art Institute:

The museum is undergoing lots of construction and several galleries were dark. But we were able to see some of our favorite impressionists.

What? Another Comic Book Store???

After a interesting (lousy) dinner at a downtown pizza place, we headed over to the Oriental Theater to see Wicked. It was an incredible show (and even made up for the less-than-stellar dinner!)

A very nice passer-by offered to take our picture when he saw us trying to take one of our many self-portraits. This one turned out much better than the one we tried to take!

On Thursday we spent most of the day downtown. We spent the morning exploring Millennium Park, home of the famous "Bean" sculpture. I had no idea what to expect and was really shocked at how beautiful it is. The reflection of the sky and skyscrapers is something not to be missed.

The Bean is a tourist magnet. Really cool!

After Millennium Park we hopped on one of the free trolleys to head over to the museum campus where you can visit Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum of Natural History. We went to the aquarium and spent lots of time at the dolphin exhibit.

When we were there the Blue Angels were practicing their maneuvers, getting ready for the air show that weekend. It was almost like seeing the show for free (and less crowds).

Then we headed over to the Sears Tower. It was fun, but I think we were getting our fill of the crowds by that point. We headed down to a restaurant in the tower and chilled out before heading back home.

We did so much more on our trip and will look forward to heading back to the windy city. I couldn't get over how much the downtown has changed since I lived there. For a large city the people were all so friendly and we felt very safe wandering around. (Well, everyone was friendly except our waiter at the pizza restaurant!)

It was so nice spending time with my Grandma, and we enjoyed our visits with Mike and Lynn, and Maureen, Mike, and Anna. Thanks for making our trip so memorable!

In praise of Kingsolver

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm now a huge fan of Barbara Kingsolver and am so happy to have been exposed to the locavore movement after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I haven't gotten to the point of stalking Ms. Kingsolver, but can't help but find more information about her most recent book. I find myself re-reading portions of this book and wanting more.

Tonight the Fireside Readers Book Discussion Group will be discussing the book. There are many links to information about this book:

Kingsolver discusses the book in a radio segment, "The Ethics of Eating," from NPR's Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett. (Thanks, Joyce, for forwarding this link to me, this was fantastic!)

I've also found a link to a recent commencement speech by Barbara Kingsolver. Her 2008 Commencement Address at Duke University doesn't offer any new insight into the book, but I found it to relate in some ways...

Finally, the publisher offers a reading group guide, in addition to the vast amount of information offered on the author's book website.

Even more SQUASH!!!!

So yesterday I had another armload of squash. Considering I had just finished making a new zucchini recipe, that bunch made its way into work to be shared....

Here's the recipe I made yesterday morning, adapted from one of the recipes found in Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. (Out of a chapter aptly named "Zucchini Larcency"!)

Even more seasonal recipes are available on the book's website at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Recipes.html.

DISAPPEARING ZUCCHINI ORZO
¾ lb pkg orzo pasta (multicolored is fun)
Bring 6 cups water or chicken stock to a boil and add pasta. Cook 8 to 12 minutes
1 chopped onion, garlic to taste
3 large zucchini
olive oil for sauté
Use a cheese grater or mandoline to shred zucchini, sauté briefly with chopped onion and garlic until lightly golden.
thyme
oregano
¼ cup grated parmesan or any hard yellow cheese
Add spices to zucchini mixture, stir thoroughly, and then remove mixture from heat.
Combine with cheese and cooked orzo, salt to taste, serve cool or at room temperature.

I used a couple zucchini and one yellow squash... It was really quite pretty all grated in the bowl:


I, of course, left off the cheese. Instead of using fresh herbs, I used Penzey's Italian herb seasonings. Here's the final product:


I'm thinking my recipe turned out a little dull, so next time I might switch things up a little by adding either some black beans or tofu... Also, I ended up draining the liquid that formed when cooking the zucchini. It gave off quite a bit of liquid and started getting soupy. But give it a try and see what you think!

I couldn't find tri-color orzo, which would certainly make this a very pretty salad.

In a previous post I described a wildflower I was trying to identify. After some poking around online, and extensive keyword searching using the Google Image search, I have identified the mysterious plant!

It's called Jewelweed, sometimes called spotted jewelweed or orange jewelweed. There's lots of information about it on Wikipedia.

It's funny how you can find tons of information on something, as long as you know what it's called!

You might ask, "So what keyword combination finally helped you identify the plant?" (Okay, you probably wouldn't ask that unless you're a librarian or spend way too much time online... But I'll tell you anyway!) I finally found an image after searching for:
"wildflower yellow orange spotted."

Voila!

Spotted Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis)

More Squash!

For my birthday this year Richard paid for a subscription to a local farming CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Each week we can take a short road trip out to Marshallville, Ohio, and pick up locally grown organic produce from Katona's Country Garden.

This week was my first pickup and we received a bag of mixed lettuce, cabbage, basil, parsley, onion, hot peppers, potatoes, and MORE ZUCCHINI!

Between my squash and the zucchini from the farm, I had a couple pounds to work with for dinner. Earlier on Saturday I also visited the farmer's market and picked up some really nice garlic (among other things!)

I adapted a recipe from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors: Cooking and eating from America's Farmers Markets, "Penne with Green and Gold Zucchini and Ricotta."

The recipe calls for a cup of ricotta and freshly grated parmesan (which I omitted to keep it vegan), but Richard added some grated parmesan cheese to his own dish.

I started with the yellow summer squash, zucchini, and pattypan. I cut them into strips:

The recipe calls for either marjoram or basil, and I had basil on hand from the farm. It also calls for 3 cloves of garlic, which I had on hand from the farmer's market.

When I popped out the cloves from the head of garlic it was so fresh and pretty!

I sauted the squash in a pan for about 7-8 minutes, then tossed in the chopped basil and garlic. I then seasoned with salt and pepper.


Here's the final product tossed with the cooked penne pasta! I served it with Italian bread with olive oil with seasonings. It was very easy and very yummy!

Belated Birthday Bash

This weekend we headed out to the Massillon Great Escape theater to a movie to celebrate my birthday. The girls went to see Mama Mia while the boys opted for the more masculine Bat Man.

We all enjoyed our movies, but I think the guys were especially pumped with the Dark Knight. Both agreed to see it again with the girls!

Mama Mia was a very fun movie to see and left us in good spirits. Then we headed out to Rockney's for dinner.

Look how happy everyone looks... Maybe that has something to do with the table of 25 little leaguers who just walked out the door!

Summer Squash Solutions

I know I'm not the only person walking out into the garden and coming in with an armload of zucchini and summer squash...

Here's a picture of yesterday's harvest:

What's funny is that my friend Sharon has a mysteriously similar picture on her blog at:
http://holdermans.blogspot.com/2008/07/cookout-at-jeph-bretts.html

Does everyone have a bowl of squash on their kitchen counter? I guess the difference is what you do with all of that squash! When life gives you lemons you make lemonade. And when life gives you zucchini, you make... Pizza!


Believe it or not, you don't even miss the cheese. I just grilled the squash in a grill pan and placed it on a pizza made from refrigerated pizza dough and jarred sauce. Dinner is ready in a half an hour!

Weed, Wildflower, or Wonder?

Out along our street-side hill there's a bunch of bushes, weeds, and wildflowers. There's one particular plant that appears this time every year and I'm not sure what it is. Is it a lovely wildflower, an invasive weed, or yikes... poisonous? Do you know what it is?

The flowers range from yellow to orange and are tubular in shape. Perfect for hummingbirds or butterflies, I would think...


They also have these delicate little spots...

If you know what it is, please leave me a comment! Thanks!

Bud, Brian, and The Bat

Most every place you work has its pest problems, and for the past couple of years the college has been dealing with occasional bats in the library.

So last week when we heard some angry bat squeeking above the library shelves it shouldn't have been much of a surprise when a fairly large bat started swooping around the library. So when you've got a bat in your library, who ya gonna call? Bud and Brian!

Now, when you watch the video, you unfortunately can't hear the bat's opinion of the events. If bats could speak profanity, you bet this one would have been using some four-letter words! There's also one point in the film when I dive behind the copy machine... Trust me, the bat was big, and he was mad, and if he was flying around your face, you would take cover, too!

Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: No bats were harmed in the making of this video...

Dinner experment... Garlic Scapes!

This past Saturday was opening day at the Massillon Farmers' Market. I went with Mom and we picked up a few things: garlic, onions, squash, and honey. My one splurge item was a package of garlic scapes.

What are garlic scapes, you ask? The lady at the market explained that it's part of the garlic plant that sprouts above ground and can be cut and used when it's still green and curly. She recommended using them in a stir fry, but after some poking around on the web I found that most people use them to make into a pesto.

Here's an image I found on the web, since I didn't snap a picture before making the pesto:
http://www.pbase.com/mitzi/image/30882112

They are very pretty and look like thick chives with a closed blossom at the top. You cut off the blossom tips before using them. If left in the ground the scapes will open then turn brown.

For the pesto I simply processed them in the food processor with olive oil. I didn't add any cheese to keep it vegan, then Richard added his own shredded Parmesan cheese.

Here's what the pesto looked like tossed with farfalle pasta:

That's the bright green pesto in the bowl in the background, and we tossed it with the pasta, toasted pine nuts, and Richard added cheese.

How did it taste? It had a spicy garlic taste, but much more subtle than straight garlic. I thought it was fairly rich. Richard topped his with a balsamic grilled chicken breast.

I think I'm still a basil pesto girl, but this was a nice change of pace. A very successful experiment!