On the subject of tomatoes - BF had a potluck dinner/BBQ/party last night and I thought of this thread as I filled my plate with cucumber/tomato/feta salad, pico de gallo and bruschetta topping, all made with fresh tomatoes from a friend's family farm.
I of course left for a couple hours to see the cats - Deko has made exponential progress in terms of coming out of his shell, and seems very interested in Lucy (after Lucy Lawless). Got him to bonk his head into my hand until he got overstimulated and started to kick and bite, and then he flopped onto my lap.
Ordered this cat scratcher/hidey hole yesterday in hopes they will scratch it and not the couch. Also picked up some treats, cause I'm all about bribery. Dreading taking them to the vet and traumatizing them all over again but it must be done.
Allison - take care of yourself, if you have what I had it will hit hard. Get lots of rest. The salsa chicken recipe is simple - put boneless chicken breasts in the slow cooker, I put mine in frozen, about 1 1/4lb, because I've seen that thaws to about 1 lb. Pour in a jar of your favorite salsa on top of the chicken breasts, cook on low for 8ish hours, high for 3-4. I often let it go for 9 when they are frozen, but they are almost always done by 7-8. I try to pick lower sodium salsa, sometimes I dice fresh pepper or garlic and toss in with it if I have time. I shred the chicken into the salsa mix and serve in soft tortillas or over rice, but you can serve the chicken breasts whole as well. Use a normal sized salsa jar, the ones with 10ish servings? I've used less before and added a can of rotel. I've also done this with green chili salsa and a can of rotel, only takes about 5-6 servings of the green with all the liquid in it. Yummy.
Krampus - love the cat scratcher.
Michele - I thought about you last week when I was doing the childcare at the open houses. We were in the media center and the kids were pulling books and leaving them all over, I kept trying to reshelve them because I felt bad for the poor librarian who would have to fix them the next day otherwise.
Last edited by Shannon in ATL; 08-21-2013 at 11:30 AM.
Out of our 10 cats, 3 are orange males and in my experience, orangies tend to be the friendliest sorts of kitties, so I'm guessing Deko will follow that mold!
Remember that some cats are "vertical scratchers" and some are "horizontal scratchers". I do not believe in declawing and with 10 cats we keep scratchers of both types all over and they NEVER touch our furniture.
Shannon - I have never eaten salsa because DH and I both HATE peppers. Do they even make a pepperless salsa?
And question for anyone out there - I just discovered that they sell "Miracle Noodles" the carbless low to almost no cal noodle things - has anyone ever tried them?
Jen~Oh how I wish my cats didn't touch our furniture. I've just resigned myself to think that "we can't have nice stuff because we have pets." Oh, and they have plenty of scratchers and use those, too, but the cats have their own preferences on which piece of furniture they enjoy attacking. Ringo likes both the microfiber couch and the leather couch (I'm hoping when we get our new leather couch we can deter him from using it). Louie likes the left arms of our two living room arm chairs. Weird.
I use Miracle Noodles! I find that you really have to rinse the heck out of them otherwise they have a fairly fishy smell and taste. The thicker ones, like fettucini, are perfect in soups.
Hi there! I introduced myself in the Maintainer Intro forum, but I hope that I can hop on the weekly chat with you all?
I've returned to the 3fc forums after some time away, and I have spent years going up and down the scale and I really, REALLY, want this to be the time I make that round trip. I want to stay at my healthy weight, and I always knew that for me, the hardest work would begin when I got into maintenance! Not that losing the weight isn't also one of the hardest things ever for me to do. But keeping it off has proved even harder!
I hope to learn from you successful maintainers!
Also, I now want to run out and adopt a couple of cats! My husband is allergic, so we only have dogs, but all this kitty talk -- and cute kitty pix! -- has me missing feline company!
Missing Fritz after reading this thread. He lived among my mother's antique furniture for nearly a decade without scratching anything, nor did he scratch any of my antique furniture while visiting. Perhaps this was because he was a tuxedo cat, and so, since he was always dressed in formal wear, he had better manners & some understanding of etiquette? I don't know.
I dreaded coming into the office today, believing I would have to attend a staff meeting, conduct three one-on-one meetings with my direct reports, run a training session for at least an hour, publish two documents and attend an hour-and-a-half business lunch. (I always get a salad with seared tuna on top of it.) But some of this stuff was canceled or moved to tomorrow, and my day is nowhere near as bad as it seemed when I was getting ready for work this morning.
I think Dagmar sends us her weather whens he's done with it: After some crisp days and sleeping with blankets, we've hit the 90s and high humidity today. At least the business lunch was on the waterfront, overlooking the impressive shining white boats of Connecticut hedge fund managers. I wanted to get on a boat and escape.
Allison - where do you buy the Miracle Noodles? No one here - even the local organic store has ever even HEARD of them let alone carry them! And I'm not sure that we'll like them so I'm reluctant to buy off of Amazon because you can only get a large amount!
Mrs. Snark - Welcome! What kind of dogs do you have?
Saef - Whenever I read about your work, I have a mixture of envy and a "thank god that's not me"! It seems so stressful, but as someone mentioned earlier, you must be so so so good at what you do!!
I'm enjoying the blast of heat. We're getting rain tomorrow - unlike a lot of the the rest of the country, we actually need it!
Jen~you can get Shiritake tofu noodles, which I can't tell the difference from Miracle noodles, at most grocery stores (in the refrigerated produce section here, near the tofu). The actual Miracle noodles I get at Amazon--I think the smallest amount you can buy is 6 packages, which is 2 of three different types.
Welcome Mrs. Snark! And a lot of us have doggies as well as cats!
I ended up going home from work a couple hours early today. Came home, read a little and fell asleep for maybe 5 minutes before the phone rang. Darn telemarketers! My right sinus still acts like it wants to be sick, but still isn't really there (and I hope it doesn't go all the way there!).
Tomorrow night I have my monthly Wine Women dinner. I missed last month due to our trip. This one is at a restaurant that I've never been to so it could be fun. Meanwhile, I found another group where you go and the chefs cook for you while you either help or just watch and then after you eat you take all the recipes home to do yourself--a kind of cooking class. I'm tempted to try one of these.
Michele, I followed the fajita chicken burrito and sweet potato black bean burrito recipes from this blog post. The other varieties look tasty, too. I used la tortilla factory tortillas (best "healthy" option available to me) and omitted the brown rice. Not because I don't like it, but I was both too lazy to make it and wanted to fit more veggies in. The only thing I wonder about is the re-heating texture, which is probably dependent on the type of tortilla one uses. I'll let you know when I try them what the texture is. There is a link to salsa crockpot chicken on the "day 1" page, too, but Shannon already posted one that is about the same.
I have never walked the dog in my pj's.
Mrs. Snark, welcome! Don't worry, we talk about our dogs a lot, too. This is the maintaining plus pets forum.
Megan -- I generally *try* to put on regular clothes before heading out with the dogs, but apparently I'm lazy sometimes and believe no one will notice if I'm still wearing my nightgown, lol. You are a better woman than I
Jen -- I have a Westie, a Terrier of Unknown Origin, and -- as of yesterday -- a Mini Schnauzer. We were only supposed to be fostering the Schnauzer, but we failed and wanted to keep him ourselves right away. I can't help it, I'm a sucker for old dogs. I think the Schnauzer is maybe 10 or 11. The Westie and the Tuo are also rescues. So now we have a little rescue pack. I'm a crazy dog lady -- I like dogs even more than I like food, which is saying alot!
Thanks Michele -- I've had fun doing the progress photos, though I really wish I'd picked a less awkward pose, I have a hard time replicating it. It takes real effort to look that uncomfortable and make your hands look like mannequin hands! Hey, did you know you're missing an "L" from your name?
I'm so jacked up on caffeine and lack of sleep (a vicious cycle that it's too easy for me to fall into) that I'm bursting into tears whenever someone asks something extra of me.
I'm supposed to engineer the return of a bathtub and find a new one. NO. We will figure it out with the one we got - there's a couple of reasons we got it.
The paint colours don't work. One hallway is already completely painted so I'm taking that and the other hall as is - too exhausting for everyone involved to change it. Now I regret listening to DH and having him and his pals do the painting. But we will soldier on.
Know how some people take a month to pick a particular paint colour? Well I have to change 3 of mine this afternoon in a 5-minute window. DONE. I don't care that much - just that it's DONE.
Ditto hallway tiles. I was going to go for slate but that involves a special order and measuring and etc. etc. I'm getting boxes of tiles from a chain store tonite that wil do fine. DONE!
AARRRGHHH! And the dog sit starts tomorrow. I am going to dodge DH for part of that and go and finish the kitchen shopping.
On Sunday I'm going to allow myself to sit for an hour and drink a cup of coffee while reading a newspaper.
Dagmar - I think you very much deserve an hour with a cup of coffee and the paper this weekend. Changing paint colors makes me INSANE. What colors are you using? We have all bright colors, they make me feel happy.
Michelle - welcome! I love your blog pictures, I bet it was hard to recreate the pose. And I was greatly entertained by the 'nightgown over shorts' caption with the puppies. LOL
Michele - I had kids in the media center three nights in a row. The first night the librarian had no idea we were going to be there and when she found out she looked scared, 18 of us the first night. The next day she was a little more peaceful up front and thanked me for leaving things nice (I reshelved the books, logged off and shut down all the computers, put the chairs back under the correct tables and stations so she or the janitor didn't have to do it), then when 72 kids showed up she started to freak again. Sadly, she couldn't stay - the principal was in and out though, and she kept on the kids to put the books back in the right place and keep things clean. We restored everything to the right place again. When I saw her Wednesday night she told me that I could hold meetings in her library anytime because I took care of business, unlike most people. Why would someone just leave the library a wreck when them letting us use it was a favor? People.
Oh Megan, I bet you've wogged in pjs down there. We won't tell anyone.
Allison - I'm not sure how I would do in a cooking class. I'm very specific with my cooking and don't do well with people who just throw things into a recipe.
Jen - never seen a salsa without peppers, I think that is part of the definition. Kind of like a gumbo has to have okra?
Krampus - hope Deko is well today.
Saef - I like it when the day is easier than anticipated. It is a nice change.
I lost my Uncle James to cancer yesterday. He was 87, would have been 88 in November. This was his third battle with cancer - he beat it back 25 years ago, then again 15 years ago. When it came back six months ago he said he just didn't have any fight left at 87. My aunt passed three years ago (complications from Alzheimer's) and I think that was part of his reasoning. He said it was time for him to rest, that he had no regrets and was ready to go. He was a good man, the husband of my grandmother's older sister - I didn't know him as well as I wish I had, nor her either, a fact I greatly regret as they were more like me philosophically than a lot of my family. Most of my youth they lived in other places - Saudi Arabia (he worked for 'big oil' all his life), New Orleans, Houston. They moved back to my hometown about the time I went to college and moved away. He made the best fried chicken I've ever had, fixed the only boiled peanuts I would eat, and had a tool chest full of tools he picked up places when he saw them abandoned or thrown away that he restored and put back into use. He lived a good life and will be missed. Cancer sucks.
Dagmar-- your post stressed me out just reading it!
Shannon-- you can come and use my library any time!
I'm so sorry about the loss of your uncle. He sounded like a wonderful man. My only living relative left is my uncle and he is well into his 80s with failing health. I know it is a matter of time for him.
Michelle-- Um, no.... someone once told me (they were also a Michele with one "L") that their mom said she didn't put two L's in her name because then she would have h*ll in her name! So, I think you have an extra L.
You are a sweetie to rescue the doggies. I am an animal lover in the true sense of the word. I've always had multiple pets (except for as a child when we had one dog only) and I currently have two doggies and two kitties.
I found out last night that I'm an aunt again. Tis the circle of life Shannon.....
My brother in law and his wife just had their second baby. Their first, George, is one. The new one is a girl named Viola. They live in London and seem to be choosing somewhat British names! Unfortunately my nieces and nephew all live in other parts of the world-- my other niece is 6 and lives in Hong Kong.
What colors are you using? We have all bright colors, they make me feel happy. 
