Cats, Sheep, & Penguins

At ten months and two weeks today, they’re such a far cry from the little alien-looking night monkey creatures that invaded our lives last year. Being responsible parents, they’ve been neutered, although the ethics of that surgery were debated until we read an excellent book by Anitra Frazier, The New Natural Cat: A Complete Guide for Finicky Owners. It goes over all of the biological, hormonal, and emotional changes that are going on in your little kitten, and the very good reasons for spaying or neutering her or him. There are no good reasons, other than professionally breeding your cat, to keep your kitten reproductively intact. Ms. Frazier has a host of good advice which she dispenses readily, most of which we were already following, either by our own common sense, having learned from years of living with cats, or from our wonderful vet (she makes house calls).

Without further ado, here are current pictures of our sleek and shiny teenagers, complete with attitude.

Well, there’s no Leon here (ten points if you get the reference), but certainly Mojo and Teazyka, weighing in at 2 pounds, 6.0 ounces and 2 pounds, 4.6 ounces respectively as of 9:23 am August 20th. Mojo has “made friends” with Harry (throws himself into Harry’s face so Harry runs away) and gets licked by Tigger and is scaring the bejezus out of Pye. She’s so upset that her asthma is back. In spades. It’s time for the Prednisone again, I think. We fed her atop the dining room table tonight; she hissed at both babies, then Harry. I put them to bed while I was working; they were throwing themselves at their door, so I let them back out. They’re wreaking havoc somewhere, and I need to get to sleep. I’ll post this quick and edit in the morning if need be. Gratuitous cuteness:

Looking more like cats, here are some pix of the boys slowly passing out after fun and frolic last weekend. Look closely and you’ll see that Ivan Rumpelteazer is slightly darker than Yevgeny Mungojerrie; each now weighs about one and a half pounds.

Our friend Martha sent an e-mail a last month explaining:

I responded to a loud meowling out my kitchen window. She stood there plaintively, a petite grey and black striped cat with yellow eyes on my ten dollar ikea chair. When I opened the window she leapt up, meowling more loudly. I let her in the basement-  she was probably pregnant and too clean to be one of the cats who lives behind us.

And I went to bed- it had been a long day.

Early Saturday I went downstairs to find kittymom had made it through- she came out and drank some water after two days. Her litter (i thought there were three of them) were tucked under the tub and I could only hear their squeaks.

It turns out there were eight tiny mewlers (donner, blitzen, oh- wrong story) in that litter; although I’m told the young mother clearly knew her way around the neighborhood and cared for her babies, after seven days, she disappeared without a trace.  Rather than call the FBI’s missing person’s unit, Martha and her husband Jim carefully cut into their bathroom wall and extracted the hungry little buggers.

Lysa and I had been talking about adding  another cat to our furry tribe, so we promptly sent a response to say that we would be thrilled to adopt one. Last night we drove out to Queens and met Martha, Jim, and their next door neighbors, all were exhausted from meeting the demands of eight diminutive despots. Through photos and e-mail, Lysa had more or less determined which one she wanted and upon her arrival it promptly fell asleep in her arms, sealing the deal.

Social obligation precluded an immediate retreat, and the time we spent believing we were enjoying the company of friends, food, and drink became the perfect opportunity for another of the sneaky little bastards to fall asleep on me. Fortunately we escaped before being talked into a third.

Now we’re the proud parents of two adorable fuzzy mutant Felinae/Lorisidae cross breeding experiment. If you can’t picture a loris, think of a bush baby (Galagidae) or aye-aye (Daubentoniidae); if you have no idea what such creatures are, just think of little wet nosed night monkeys, or look at the photos below.

I’m on Ravelry (natch!), and I’m a member of 39 groups, one of which is Knitters For Obama, which, at 7:14 pm on Earth Day 2008 has a total of 1234 members. The Knitting With Hillary group, by stark comparison, has only 183 members. Our group has organized a “call to service” effort; we’re knitting baby bonnets and bibs to be donated to NICUs in upcoming primary states in honor of The Gentleman From Illinois. For whatever reason, I cannot for the life of me get the NICU T-Bonnet to print, so I’m making simple bibs. I found the perfect buttons today at Flying Fingers in Tarrytown, NY (my favorite LYS). Posing with the newly sprouted hosta, here are the four I’ve finished, ready to be Priority Mailed out to North Carolina tomorrow. As to the yarnover eyelets on the red one top right; yeah, I thought about that halfway through. Eyelets? On a bib? Not too savvy. But cute. What do you think?

It’s finally gotten nice enough outside to stand in front of the grill for a protracted period of time. Not that we didn’t grill in November, but that was slow-cooking, and burgers? Burgers demand attention. I went down to Cole’s Market to exchange our second tank of propane (we like to keep one on deck), and to Whole Foods for some fresh meat and Zomick’s Bakery Challah rolls. I decided on a ratio of 1:1 beef and lamb. Adding in my special ingredient, I mixed the meats together, shaped them into normal-size patties (I’m wont to make giant burgers, Gary always tells me to scale it back) and brought them out to Gary.

They sizzled as they hit the grill, the fat dripping down onto the “flavorizer panel” below. Soon enough, they were ready for eating.

Little things often make a world of difference. At least they do in the baking world. I changed several things to avoid a repeat of the Best Christmas Cookies debacle of last week. Issue one: the ambient temperature, which was a balmy 70˚F (21.11˚C) at my sister-in-law’s house, was a little chillier at 64˚F (17.77˚C) here at home. Issue two: using a hand mixer v. mixing by hand. I suspected that using a hand mixer made the batter a little too fluid for the cookies to roll out right, and this time, my dough set up nicely when popped in the freezer for thirty minutes. I didn’t need to re-flour the parchment paper on my work surface, nor was it necessary to refreeze the dough halfway through, as it was at my SIL’s. The cookie cutters sliced through the dough quite sharply, and the silicone spatula I used was thin enough to get under the cookies without distorting them. Issue three: no shortening in the icing. All I used was a cup and a half of confectioner’s sugar, three tablespoons of half-and-half, a tablespoon of vanilla, and Wilton Paste Colors. I made up eight ramekins of the sugary stuff (black, brown, violet, rose, red, yellow, leaf green, and white) and used tiny paintbrushes instead of butter knives in order to frost with precision. Check out my results!

Growing up Jewish, you’d think I never had occasion to bake Christmas cookies with an elder. Not so! My mother and I used to bake all sorts of shaped cookies; she had a special recipe and made her own icing, cutting the tips from plastic baggies to frost the cookies. I’m hungry to continue the tradition with my new family. Gary and I picked out some large copper cookie cutters from Chef Central: a sleigh , a gingerbread man , a nutcracker , a train, and a car with a Christmas tree on top (my favorite), as well as a set of twelve copper cutters in a smaller size. I’ve tried several recipes, even fashioning one myself out of two that looked promising, with varying results. The recipe I created rolled out perfectly, but tasted way too floury. I also made them too thick, with the resulting cookies resembling Mongo from Shrek . Going back to an old standby, I tried Cook’s Country’s Best Christmas Cookies. The sour cream adds a discernible delicious tang that wasn’t present in the other cookies. However, you must remember to keep the dough cold, otherwise it gets too darn sticky. When I made these at my sister-in-law’s house on Christmas Eve, I worked with a floured marble work surface and marble rolling pin, even with these however, the dough got too warm too fast (their thermostat is set at 70˚). I did not have access to parchment paper, it’s what I’ll be working with when I try these at home. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since I first had Guinness stew at The Ginger Man I’ve wanted to know how to make it. Recently I’ve pursued this goal in earnest, and I’ve come close enough to invite some friends over for a tasting. With the stew we’ll be serving fresh bread made with beer and gruyére cheese (baked by my lovely and talented wife, Lysa), and of course Guinness Draught. To help pique the anticipation of tomorrow’s dinner, I’m posting an image of a recipe test I did this week. The Ginger Man version I’ll be attempting has much more liquid, but the ingredients won’t change; the test version was also a bit light on the beer as Lysa favors Guinness not so much as I.

Nearing the close of our first year in our new house, we’ve grown a bit wiser in the ways of energy costs, so when the time came to purchase holiday decorations, I didn’t hesitate to get something I’ve been wanting for some time: LED Christmas lights. Whereas the traditional strings of 50 mini lights consume 20-25 watts and last roughly 2,500 hours, our strings of 60 LED lights consume only one watt and should last for 50,000 hours. In fact, because our indoor tree is not near an electric outlet, we will be using only LED lights this year: our white Christmas shall be green. I’d like to eventually add more lights, but so far we have two strings of 60 LED lights along the top of our porch, and two strings of 60 pine cone LED lights around the tree. Lysa has mentioned that she likes those animated deer lights, but I’m not sure that’s the direction we want; I’m finding it tough to fight the urge to string enough lights to blind passing planes. One thing that I hadn’t realized until after stringing up the lights and viewing them from down the street– LED lights produce brighter, more intense color than minis.