I Wuv You to PIECES!

You think you can judge a puppy by the pretty little look in her face?
I've learned this wild face.
It says "I want to jump into the sky and lick your skin and maybe I'll be a little rough with my teeth but I'm a puppy and don't you LOVE this wild face?"
Yep.
Bartlett is doing really well. Today she had her last distemper puppy shot. She has added almost two pounds to her athletic frame. Cranky has proven to be a better disciplinarian than I expected (I trained all the other dogs). He can now walk her through the house, on the floor, to go outside — and back in. It's great that she's getting reliable floor time.
At the vet's today, Bartlett was so excited to see other actual humans that she went a little nuts. We know we have to get busy socializing her with people; maybe tomorrow. Malls, Christmas shoppers, kids. Perfect! She'll be a friend magnet.
Come say hi.

Backyard King Kong

It was just a fluke of lighting. I'd never have noticed this an hour earlier or an hour later.
Portions of my backyard are covered with wood-chip mulch. It's a bit ugly, but it keeps things from growing until we can decide what to do with the land.
Our new little doggie is wild about the mulch, which surprises me. Her predecessor, Bean Sprout, would go to great lengths to avoid walking on the chips; delicate paws and all. Bartlett thinks the chips are a great toilet. Fine with me. I let the wet stuff evaporate, and pick up the chunks with last night's used dinner napkins. She's all over the place out there.
So today I was helping her be a good girl, and I happened to see this King Kong in the chips. Spooky.
I picked it up, put it on a table, and went indoors to get my camera. The gorilla disappeared.
Oh, the wood chip was still on the table, but the ape was gone.
It was all about the angle of the sun.
So I twisted it around, just so, and caught this image.
Then I threw the wood chip into the yard.
Bartlett found it.

Unrolled Rolls

Deliberate deliciousness.
I deconstructed stuffed cabbage rolls. All the ingredients were intact, but the roll-up and the drowning in liquid tomato sauce didn't need to happen.
I remember back in high school when my friend's mom was making a casserole of stuffed cabbage rolls. My mom never made this dish, so i was very interested. My friend's mom helpfully told me that she "slopped" a can of tomato soup over the stuffed rolls. Never mind the verb "slop." It was canned tomato soup that turned me off. Essence of salt and sugar; regardless of the corporate tomatoes.
So, in this case, we cut leaves of cabbage into circles. Cooked an Italian sausage removed from its casing with tomato sauce, onions, a flick of smoked Hungarian paprika, some partly cooked rice. Layered these ingredients in tiny Staub pots, instead of insisting on making nasty leaf packages. Lid on, a tiny addition of water halfway through.
Oh, I liked it so much. I'll probably make it again tomorrow.

When Did This Happen?

At what point in our kitchen-equipment addiction did turkey roasting pans (plus rack) reach the precipitous price of Three Hundred and Fifty Dollars? I don't care if you're discounting it by several simoleons. We are in a precarious economy, you bozos. This is unattractive.
I have an old cast-iron skillet, large (huge, really). I line it with a grill top from a Weber Smokey Joe. It makes a killer roasting pan. Couldn't even tell you the price, but less than 50 bucks, and I get to use the skillet for anything else I want.
There is no way on earth that rack/pan is worth close to $400. Even if that's not what they're actually charging for it. Voodoo economics.
When somebody comes over with that rig and cooks my turkey (and makes really good gravy) and does all the clean up... maybe that'd be worth three hundred and fifty dollars.
Actually, no.
Nobody makes better gravy than me.

What's Wrong With America

I've figured it out. From the standpoint of the conservative fundamentalist Republicans, this country is governed by
Obama bin Biden!
Doomed, people, doomed I tell you.
Ya can't win.

When Soup Goes Not-So-Pretty

Oh, it was pretty enough, I suppose.
And this cropped close-up gives you just a hint of its overall complexion.
When I say complexion, I mean gobs of chopped dino kale floating like kelp in the Sargasso Sea, if the Sargasso sea were made of pureed roasted sweet potatoes, vegetable broth, tofu and a squirt of lemon. Salt, too. Sort of like looking at a pumpkin with a bad skin condition.
But wow, such superfood. Your deep orange component, your deep green component, and your pale soy mush component.
It was tasty, but we probably won't make it again.
I prefer eating roasted sweet potatoes straight from the oven smeared with butter, and I like my dino kale like I like my seaweed salad: once in a while.
Damn, seaweed again.

Soopsoopsoopsoop

We are still having glorious weather in Northern California, but it can't stop me from a seasonal craving for soup.
I love soup.
I love eating soup, and I love making soup.
To my horrified chagrin, Cranky now loves making soup, and he does a good job of it. He didn't even like eating soup when we first met; he thought it wasn't sufficiently food-like.
And to top off the horrified chagrin, Cranky made this cream of broccoli soup with tofu! A New England born-and-raised, Red Sox lovin' man, cooking with tofu.
The soup was rich with several forms of allium, cooked with the broccoli in mere salted water. So simple. Blended with the tofu, drizzled with beautiful olive oil, and topped with some set-aside steamed florets (this was HIS idea).
Eating this soup was biological bliss; my body loved it as much as my mouth did.
And I want soup again today.
We have an almost petrifyingly petrifying idea to try out: Cream of porcini soup. Is this possible? Is it allowed? Shiver.

Best Food Picture

Best food picture I ever took, in a long time.
Cranky made the food, a modern Huevos Rancheros. There's the yellow egg blood in the upper right.
Lots of the food was homegrown, but we don't brag. Ain't growing black beans yet. Red onions and tomatoes, we're proud of.

Snoopy Soupy

Circumstances have intervened. We are not much of a gardening family at the moment.
We are a dog poop family.
But certain robust departments of the garden don't know that, and continue to pour out comestibles.
We have a huge bowl of green tomatoes in the kitchen, ready for roasting and freezing. (The plants themselves came out of the ground today.)
Oddly enough, there is a new eggplant developing on the vine outside. A few jalapeños lurch into adulthood. And we even have three or four pattypan squashes doing their best to mature; if they make it past adolescence I'll be amazed, but I'll still eat 'em.
The most reliable harvest has been a couple of plots we've been saving. Leeks and potatoes. The leeks never reached any kind of admirable girth, but... there they are. The potatoes — well, they've been underground so we had no idea if the crop would come a cropper. (It didn't!)
Anyway, you can guess what kind of soup we had for lunch.
I will brag (yet again) that blended vegetable soups are wonderful with some silken tofu in there. Didn't need any dairy fixin's.
Chopped chives on top, though. Oh, yeah.
Puppy didn't get any.

Fair Weather Friend

We've spent a lot, a LOT, of time on the patio with the new puppy. It seems the safest way to house train her: you pee outdoors, dammit, only! (And the behaviorist at the humane society agreed: prevention is the best policy.)
Luckily, the weather has been fabulous. Fabulous. So we sit out there with our newspapers and books and meals, and the puppy figures out life. Today she figured out we have a huge, loud hound living next door. She hasn't been the same ever since (and I think it's wonderful that she's attracted to dogs, instead of shy).
We've learned to tire her out with chasing and fetching. She's absolutely smitten by her personal, solo explorations of the yard. She loves to come running when we call, because there's usually a half of a dog cookie as a reward. It's working out well.
Oh. And she doesn't beg for human food. I don't know why. She's interested in meat if we're eating it, but that's seldom.
Today she completely ignored the artichokes with a dip of hummus liberally dribbled with good olive oil.
Fine! More for us.

Dog in Focus

I have several shots of Bartlett devouring her rawhide stick (and for you purists, it's a digestible, PC stick). But most of them are out of focus.
This dog is Da Wiggle!
I'm unexpectedly happy about what a chore this pup is. She's a project. And, yet, not. She's what a dog is. A puppy. So normal, so troublesome. So pleasurable.
Today we had some sassy bark time. Wow, what a bitch. Then it devolved into cuddle and romp time. Wow, what a girl!
I'm liking the development.