Líle Wrangling (Pets)

Head 'em up!

For The Love Of Feet (Pets)

Líle loves her feet. AM visited us for breakfast, and here she is taking advantage of the situation.
Normally she's curled up on my feet in a dark little cave under my desk, proof versus attempts at photography. Here, she has accidentally leaked out into daylight and become vulnerable to the lens.
A better shot kindly provided by the wife.

Epic Cheese Dinner (Chow)

This past weekend CRB, JAL, and AM came over for an extraordinary cheesetravaganza. NDM and I had visited Caputo the previous weekend and required a rationalization for buying too much cheese.
We started with a cheese board. Not shown are two loaves of artisan bread I made, one standard and one whole wheat, with some olive paste and fancy butter churned between the thighs of nubile Irish lasses.

• Gjetost. This was the only cheese I'd had before, a really nice Norwegian goat cheese that tastes like caramel. Three stars!
  
• English Shropshire blue. An incredibly rich, creamy, luscious cheese; smooth and buttery with an acid bite of a bleu underneath. Three stars!
  
• Ireland cheddar with Guinness. This was a fine semi-sharp cheddar with a notable bitter taste from the beer, but I felt it lacked any genuine Guinness character, so I was a bit disappointed. One and a half stars.
  
• Goat cabra al vino. This is an acceptable firm goat cheese, a little mild, without much hint of the wine it claims on its label. Two stars.
  
• Chimay cheese. Like the Guinness cheese, this one was a bit of a let-down. It was like a Port-Salut with a bitter tang from the beer, which is OK as far as it goes -- but I didn't really get any of the deep delicious heady flavor of my favorite ale. Two stars.
  
• German Mirabo with walnuts. A slightly pungent variation on a Brie; I enjoyed the cheese, although I wasn't sure that the crushed walnuts added a lot to its experience. Two stars.
  
• Baltic Red 4 year Asiago, which I also substituted for Romano in the lasagne. This was the best Asiago I've ever had, wickedly sharp and tangy. Three stars!
  
• White Stilton with blueberries. A smooth, sweet, creamy desert cheese that I could even imagine eating with vanilla ice cream. Three stars!
  
• Ukrainian marble cheese. An innocuous mild jack cheese whose sole recommendation was that NDM is Ukrainian. One and a half stars.
  
• French Rodez. I don't know much about this cheese other than I assume it is from Rodez; it is a fine parmesan-like cheese which didn't offer any dramatic uniqueness beyond the standard Italian hard cheeses we use. Two stars.

CRB brought two nice red wines -- apparently JAL thought I was too rambunctious at our last three wine dinner, so she cut me off. CRB did bring me a nice consolation price which I might post a picture of in a later NSFW post. Maybe. (He knows me so well!)
After gorging on the cheese course we had the real meal, a spinach and zucchini lasagne made from fancy ricotta and fresh buffalo mozzarella from the same cheese store. I'll try to write it up and pop the recipe on the Kitchenarium later in the week.
We finished the evening with some yummy chocolate cannoli that NDM made. (I don't deep-fry stuff, it scares me.) I don't normally like cannoli, but these were pretty darn good.

Thank God for lactase!

Sleepy 'Dolon (Pets)

A miscellany of sleepy 'Dolon pictures. Here he is curled up in a blanket, which is very unusual for him unless he's crawling under our bedcovers with us. (He's very warm.)
And here he is on my feet. Mostly Líle sleeps on my feet these days, but it is largely unphotographable as it occurs under my desk.
Finally, 'Dolon and Líle taking some down-time together. 'Dolon is really happy with his new sister, even when he's stealing her food and toys while humping her.

Puzzle Solution

I wish NDJ's answer was correct :-)

So, the solution to the puzzle...

In actuality I was removing golden raisins from NDM's dough for an orange-raisin brunch bread which was destined to turn out poorly due to her omission of yeast. I pulled out every single darn raisin on the advice of my veterinarian, then took the failed dough and made little doggie hardtack out of it. It was a big success!

Daily Puzzle

So, does anybody have a guess what I'm doing in this picture, and why? Fabulous prizes await!

The Struggle For Survival (Pets)

This is what the beasts look like when they are "playing", as it were. Below, you can see deep into their souls:

My Week In Chow (Chow)

Today was soup week in our household.First I decided to make a split pea soup in the crock pot. It was really easy and delicious, despite my failure to put pieces of pig in it. A bag of split peas, a few carrots thickly sliced, a stalk of celery treated the same, three peeled and diced pearl onions, a handful of coarsely chopped cabbage left over from last week, some minced garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper all went into the crock pot and were covered with 7 cups of water boiled in our kettle. I let it cook on high for four hours (slow for the whole day would have worked as well if I'd figured out what I wanted to do before lunch time), then used a sieve to push most of the chunky carrot bits out of the way and immersion blended the remainder for a few minutes.
My other soup was blue cheese and cauliflower. I boiled a head of cauliflower for 5 minutes, reserving two cups of the water. Then I briefly cooked a roux of 3T butter & 3T flour before throwing in two diced pearl onions. After a good five minutes of softening the onions, I slooowly added first the cauliflower water and then an two cups of milk while whisking away to make sure there weren't any lumps. Half the florets went into the proto-soup and I hit it with the immersion blender. Then in with about four ounces of crumbled blue cheese along with a little salt and pepper. Once the cheese was nicely melted I threw in the rest of the cauliflower and quickly whipped up some thyme croutons.

Note the crazy use of onions in recipe! I'm a madman!

I was going to use my remaining pearl onions to make a French onion soup for NDM, but although she can't comprehend how I don't like her trying to cook meat for me that she can't eat, she was aghast that I would consider making a soup that I would not be willing to consume. So the onions still languish awaiting an idea.
Then of course I realized I'd been marinating some firm tofu in a reconstituted black bean marinade for almost a week, so my last meal was a quick tofu and bok choy stirfy with a bit of shredded carrot and some quickly stirfried noodles. I wish I could take credit for the bao, but it is so cheap and easy to steam the frozen bao from our local Asian grocery...