When we adopted our third cat Winnie she was not socialized having been born in the wild and feral until she was 3 or 4 months old. She'd been adopted out and returned to the rescue league twice and when we took her home they told us to put her in the smallest room in the house and keep her there until we were able to pick her up. She stayed in the downstairs bathroom some months and when I could pat her a bit we let her out. Gwen has never accepted her and they have an ongoing battle for the position of top cat that doesn't seem like it will ever end now that we are several years down the road. When Winnie did come out Gwen proceeded to pee on the heater vent in that room in order to establish her dominance of the territory. It's never an issue in the warmer months but as soon as the heat comes on we must be vigilant. I know this is only her instinct but it's difficult not to get really frustrated with it. Last year went went the whole winter with no incidents of any kind which made us a bit lax this year so of course she slipped in and left her mark, several times. Here's my new arsenal of odor fighters and cat deterrence. I know cats despise the scent of citrus so I found an orange oil based room spray and hope that liberal use of this will make the bathroom a very unpleasant place for her to be. I discovered that the baking soda and orange cleaner do a fabulous job of eliminating the odor should she happen to slip in there again.
On yesterday's todo list was making a new batch of body butter to fill a special request. I'm not quite done tinkering with the recipe but it's been a great success so far and has been very helpful for my extremely dry skin. I also wanted to try out some new recipes I'd found for a lavender scented foot butter and some cuticle cream scented with Egyptian geranium (sort of a floral scent). The new recipes seem great so far but I need to find some bitsy containers to subdivide my batch.
Jason pretty much always claims to like whatever I have cooked and if there's ever been something he didn't like he wouldn't admit it. Last night's dinner, however, was a big hit. He said it could be served in a restaurant which is something I've heard on only a few occasions. I used this recipe to make my pumpernickel bread which turned out well though it really could have risen a bit longer.
Salmon Nicoise
salmon filets
arugula
1 preserved lemon
pitted nicoise olives
1/4 cup chopped green onions
1 1/2 tablespoons minced shallot
juice of a lemon
1 tablespoon good quality olive oil
salt and black pepper to taste
Season the salmon with salt and pepper and pan fry until just cooked through. Chop the preserved lemon discarding any seeds and stir together with olives, onions, shallot, lemon juice, olive oil and seasonings. Serve salmon atop arugula drizzled with the olive mixture.
After reading Kathy's post about a visit to Debra's Natural Gourmet in Concord I finally gathered the impetus to trek out there and visit myself. I've been to the quilt shop across the way several times but never quite found the time to investigate Debra's. I especially want to try the quinoa with fruit Kathy mentions and I am now armed to do so. Jason picked up some Muesli for himself and I also snagged some fixin's for pumpernickel bread.
Early last week I made pork chops with arugula and roasted pumpkin but we only ate about half the pumpkin and the rest sat in the fridge waiting for me to find a use for it. On Friday I baked up some delicious pumpkin bread using this recipe. I also had some pistachios in the freezer that really need to move on so I added those. It seemed a bit much for my bundt pan so I put the overflow in a round cake pan and left that one unglazed.
Yesterday morning Gabby thought she'd go set next to Gwen on her bed only to be denied quite vigorously. I decided perhaps Gabby would be happier with green bed if I moved it where there is less foot traffic and that seems to have done the trick nicely as they are both camped out, each on her own bed, napping peacefully this morning.
