Monday Musings on Tuesday – 05.26.2009 Edition

I trust all our U.S. friends enjoyed a lovely, relaxing Memorial Day weekend.  Ours was quite nice – the weather was absolutely perfect here in the northeast, and yardwork and gardening was accomplished throughout the neighborhood!  😆

The other day, we found some Whole Wheat Israeli Couscous on quick-sale for 50 cents, so we figure “what the hey.”

Well, “the hey” was that the directions were practically unintelligible.  Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  The directions were LAME.  How’s that?

Fry contents of packing in 2 tablespoons of cooking oil and stir until brown, add spices and chopped fried onion according to taste.  Add 1 3/4 cups (14 ounces) of boiling water.  Cover pot and cook on low fire for 6 minutes, stiring (sic) occasionally.  After cooking leave pot covered for 4-7 minutes before serving.

In various font sizes.  The couscous weren’t bad, but they weren’t all that great, either.  I guess you really do get what you pay for.  🙄

So.  Given my current, um, fondness for pineapples in my morning smoothies (they are the absolute BEST!), I’ve taken to buying 2 pineapples every time we go to the public market (they’re usually $3 each or 2 for $5, so why not just get the 2, right?).  Now that’s a lot of pineapple cleaning!  😆

Anyway.  I mentioned to Peeps a while back that, if he, say, happened to be talking to Surly Boy, and if my darling son happened to ask what I might like for Easter Mother’s Day my birthday, a pineapple coring tool might be just the thing.

Surprisingly, the subject apparently never came up, and Peeps finally just went ahead and picked one up one day when he saw it in the gadget aisle at Wegmans.

This is the coolest thing ever!  It cores and slices the pineapples for you – all you have to do is slide the fruit off the tool and cut it into whatever sized bits you want.  Cool!

Plus – you end up with nifty pineapple-shell cups.  Frosty umbrella drink, anyone?  😆

I’m pretty sure that our Jarly’s two most favorite food groups are cheese and smoke, and it’s hard to say which he loves more.

Smoked turkey, smoked chicken, smoked ham, he’d probably even love smoked rocks if we tried it!  😆

While were were cleaning up after dinner the other evening, we had our usual “help.”

Want me to lick that?  Huh?

Can I clean anything up for you?  Please?

Hey, are you gonna finish that?

Surprisingly, for a dog who could swipe pretty much anything he wants off the counter – using nothing but his tongue – he’s really very good about keeping his nose off the counter.  Of course, he’s johnny-on-the-spot – just in case we’re looking to get rid of any special treats or anything.  😀

He is ever-so-gentle when taking even the tiniest scrap of smoky goodness from my fingers. . .

Does this couch make my butt look big?

Poor kitty.  😥

She used to stretch out across the back of the couch in the window and watch the world go by.  It’s been a long time since she’s been that relaxed, I guess.  😥

But we’re getting there.   😀

I’m sure it’s only a matter of a few more months.

And because I just can’t resist. . . 😳

While the dog’s out on his walks, we like to leave the basement door open, hoping to entice the kitty to come back and rejoin the sunlit lands.  During the week, I’m sure she just wanders around, probably spitting in his water dish and such.

But on the weekends – that’s when she gets a chance to come upstairs and spend some quality time with her papa.  She’s often waiting for him when he gets out of the shower.

I think she’s waiting for him to sit down so she can make herself comfortable in his lap.  It’s unfortunate that she does such a crap job keeping herself clean, though; it’s just no fun starting the day with a face full of cat fur.  😦

Of course, I had my usual help this weekend while I was finishing the herb garden!  😆

While he probably shouldn’t be nibbling on the chives, he actually had no interest in those anyway.

Nope.

Yes, it’s a nice, fragrant area of the yard to relax in, to be sure.  But I think the attraction for him was the tarragon – some people describe tarragon as having an anise flavor, though I don’t see it.  And we already know that he’s a  bit of a freak for fresh fennel, which is also described as sort of anise-y.  😆

Maybe I should just feed him a hunk of licorice and see how that goes over?  😉

Wanna hear something freaky? Of course you do.  😯

With Peeps’s new schedule, the dog and I have been taking our morning walk earlier than we used to.  Now one thing you need to know is that we live about 5 blocks from one of the busiest non-highway streets in the area.  While we’re technically in the suburbs, we’re still less than half a mile from the urban jungle that’s the City of Rochester.

OK.  So it’s about 4:45, maybe 5:00 and I’m walking the dog down the street.  Here’s an excerpt from the email I sent to Peeps when I got back:

A couple of blocks from Ridge, he stops and starts staring.  There’s a cat in the middle of the street.  Let’s go.

Then he stops again and starts staring and growling and a couple of short barks.

Dude.  The cat is IN A YARD on the OTHER SIDE of the street staring back at him.  Let’s GO.  It’s probably just ol’ Miller kitty anyway.  [Miller is the Harley Family‘s big orange tom-cat who’s not afraid of anything – especially dogs.]  He’s pretty fluffy and looks kind of orange-y.  And he’s not running off. . .

Then, another half block,and he stops AGAIN.  And turns around and starts losing his mind – the kitty has crossed back over to our side of the street and is walking toward us.

Um, my, kitty, what big ears you have.

And what a big fluffy tail you have.

It wasn’t Miller kitty.  It was a fox.

Once I had a chance to do a little research, I learned that this is fairly normal behavior – red foxes, like skunks, are crepuscular.  Which is a word I remember because I keep wanting to say “craptacular,” which is what running into either of these creatures unexpectedly is.  😯

Yes, I know.  It’s not Monday, it’s Tuesday.  But I’m still posting my Monday Menu Plan because, well, it’s Monday Musings.  😀

Monday – Monday is was Memorial Day, and James Brown invited us to a picnic with some friends.  We didn’t need to bring anything, though we did make a pretty amazing white sangria. . . more on that later in the week.  After all, sangria is just one of those things that is good to have around in the summer, right?  😉

Tuesday –  Rain is in the forecast – so we’ll be cooking indoors most of the week.  My brother will be joining us for dinner (he and I have a “thing” that evening), so we’re going to do chicken goulash – we had one package of boneless chicken thighs in the freezer that needed to get used, and this is the perfect opportunity!

Wednesday – Peeps’s boss sends Peeps home with, shall we say, factory seconds of some of the ravioli he makes at work.  It’s a rough life, you know, when you have a freezer full of lobster ravioli and “have to” use it up – we’ll be trying a light lemon cream sauce with them – that should work, don’t you think?

Thursday – While browsing through Cooking Light’s website, I found a recipe for Pastrami-Style Salmon.    I said, hey, we like pastrami, and we have salmon in the freezer, so why not?  😯

Plus – we’ll be picking the first of our spinach from the garden for a spinach salad!  Yay garden!  😉

Friday – Friday is homemade pizza night.  You know, even though Peeps spends his days at working baking bread, he still doesn’t mind coming home and making sourdough pizza crust for our weekly treat.  What a guy, huh?  😉

So anyway, be sure to visit Org Junkie for lots of Monday Menu Plans that were, in fact, probably posted on Monday.  😉