Ode to My Cat and Delicious Meals

**DISCLAIMER**

I already know I'm a crazy cat lady. Blog posts about my cat are the least of my psychoses, so no need to notify me of this.

A noble companion.

I am perpetually heartbroken at how cute and sweet Friskies is. She's here right now, laying on me and making squeaky snoring sounds. GP says cats don't feel love, but I disagree. I don't know why she would do some of the things she does if she didn't love me. For example, there have been times when I've been a sad inconsolable wreck of a person, sobbing uncontrollably (not lately, but definitely during my first year of uni, especially at Christmas time, for reasons Sarah knows) and Friskies would gently hop onto whatever surface I was sitting/laying on (bed, desk, or other) and start licking my face. She could tell I was sad and she wanted me to feel better. It wasn't because I was being noisy, either, she just wanted to be unselfishly lovey.

I'm also thankful I can have a cat because I'd go crazy (crazier?) if I didn't have someone to talk to or pay attention to during the day. Having a pet has made me more responsible and less selfish. I can't sleep in until noon anymore because she needs to be fed. I have to vacuum regularly now because otherwise our house would look like the inside of a wool muffler and GP's allergies would cripple him.

As much as I love my fluffy feline Friskies, I also love dogs. I don't, however, understand those people who prefer cats over dogs, or vice versa. Cats are independent; they don't want or need you to constantly pay attention to them. Friskies and I have a mutually beneficial relationship that seems to work really well: when I want cuddles, she capitulates as much as she wants and when she wants cuddles I capitulate as much as I want. When she wants food I capitulate as much as veterinary recommendations allow and when we both want cuddles at the same time, well, that's wonderful. I would love to have a dog. Dogs make it socially acceptable for you to go on walks and swims in the lake alone (not that I wouldn't do that anyway) and they are fun to train. Both dogs and cats are good company for TV-watching, but neither compare to GP in that arena. I guess what I'm trying to say is that my personality is sufficiently ying/yang that I'm overjoyed to have either a cat or a dog, or both. I fucking love animals.

Now, the title of this post also contains the words "delicious meals", and I don't intend to disappoint. Without further ado, I'll show you some photos of what we've been eating lately:





A few nights ago we had lemon/molasses roasted chicken thighs with grilled local crookneck squash and a salad of heirloom tomatoes and basil, lightly dressed with olive oil, balsamic reduction and some fleur de sel.


To the right you will notice some aromatics. The basil, onions, garlic and lemon zest were some of the flavour components in the mussel and prawn dish below.


















Instead of the pasta usually served with this kind of recipe, I substituted some steamed local streaky-purple runner beans. It was a good experiment but I think next time I'll split them in half length-wise to make them feel more pasta-esque.

As you may have noticed, I've become a bit obsessed with all the fresh fruit and veggies that are in season now and I've been buying most of our produce locally because it's so effing delicious and cheap. Both GP and I love eating nectarines with homemade yogurt and some toasted almonds as a slightly healthier dessert. It's so nice to have fresh juicy fruit to eat and it's really a lot of fun to cook with these different-looking veggies (the crookneck squash is a favourite). We've been using our BBQ for almost every meal because I find grilling veggies brings out so much of their flavour. In fact, below is a picture of GP grilling up a storm of local turkey sausage and a close-up of the purple runner beans I was talking about earlier:


Those beans are fantastic on the BBQ- way better than steamed. If you don't do anything else new in the way of veggies this summer, do this:

1. Trim and wash beans- big thick local runner beans, or normal ones if you can't get good ones, but if you can't get the big ones I'm not sure you should bother.
2. Toss with a dash or two of grapeseed oil, S and P and a bit of garlic (fresh or granulated, doesn't matter).
3. Throw 'em on the grill at medium heat for a few minutes (four minutes total?), or until they show slight grill marks.
4. Eat them all quickly, before someone else does.

Last but not least, here is the dish I made last night:

Courtesy of Nigella Lawson and her book Forever Summer (thanks again, Monsieur Andrews), it is a chicken and parsley salad with toasted almonds. Simple enough, with a lemon juice and olive oil dressing, it was just what the doctor ordered as GP wasn't home, I wasn't very hungry, there was leftover chicken in the fridge and I didn't have enough parsley for two people. I ate it outside in the sun because it seemed like that is where it would've been enjoyed best. I wasn't wrong.

I Did It, I Did It!

I am very excited. After having tried to make yogurt on 3 different occasions and wasting countless cups of milk (sorry cows, I know it was disrespectful of me to waste something that took you considerable energy to make), I've finally made a batch that worked! I credit my spiffy new digital thermometer and a more intimate understanding of the yogurt-making process.

I think the mistake I kept making was not waiting long enough for the milk to cool down before inoculating (isn't that gross? That's the word yogurt people use) the milk with the starter yogurt. This time I knew exactly what I was doing because I had my fancy schmancy thingamabob to tell me what was going on. I just stuck it to the side of the saucepan when I poured the milk in and it worked like a hot damn!

The other key to my success (I think) was my incubation device. Before, I was putting the inoculated (ok, I actually just like saying that word and I'm pretty sure the only reason yogurt people use it is because they are pretentious pricks and they like saying it too) milk in a bowl in my little picnic cooler with hot water surrounding it. Yesterday, however, I had the bright idea of putting it in my Laken thermos! How brilliant of me!

I made my yogurt with only two cups of milk because all my previous experiences have made me a little gun-shy. Next time I'll definitely use more. Here are the steps it took me to come to my delicious conclusion:

1. Sterilize the incubation device (so scientific) by boiling enough water to fill it and pouring it into the device, letting it sit for 5 minutes or until your milk is ready. You should also sterilize a little bowl in which you'll mix the starter yogurt and milk. This is to make sure no bacteria get in the milk and compete with the yogurt bacteria for growing room. I'm not really sure if this is actually an effective sterilization method, but it worked for me!

2. Heat two cups of milk (I used 1%, but I don't think the fat content makes much difference) to 170 degrees Fahrenheit, for the same reason as step number one. Stir constantly to prevent scalding and ensure an accurate read on your thermometer.

3. Take the milk off the heat-source and cool to 112 degrees Fahrenheit. While you're waiting for it to cool, dump the water out of the small cup you set aside earlier and put 1/4 cup of starter yogurt in it. It must be plain- no flavouring. I bought a single-serving cup of organic Olympic yogurt and used around half of it.

4. When the milk has cooled to 112 degrees, mix a small amount of it in with the yogurt in the small cup, working quickly so as not to let the milk cool below 108 degrees. Pour the yogurt-milk slurry into the saucepan of milk and whisk to ensure incorporation.

5. Pour the water out of your thermos and then dump the inoculated (hehehehe) milk into it. Tightly seal the lid(s) and wrap a terry bath towel around the thermos, securing it with an elastic band or two. I'm not sure the towel part is necessary, but I did that so I'm not going to take any chances by not fully disclosing my process. Plus, extra insulation never hurt anyone.

6. Let the mixture sit overnight, or at least 8 hours, without moving the container. After 8 hours you should decant your yogurt and chill it. It will be lumpy and slightly runny. I took an extra step, however.

Extra step: 7. (This step will significantly reduce your yogurt yield but also make it significantly yummy.) Line a mesh strainer with a large coffee filter as in the photograph above. Place over a bowl and pour the yogurt into the filter. Lucky for us, it will hold exactly two cups. Cover with saran wrap (not sure this is necessary, but whatever), bung it in the fridge and wait for an hour or so while it de-moisturizes. You will be left with very thick yogurt, like Greek yogurt but not as bad for you. Gently peel the coffee filter away from the yogurt (no need to scrape with a spoon) and discard the whey that has collected in the bowl. I can't wait to eat it!

Next time I think I'll double the recipe (4 cups milk, 1/2 cup yogurt starter) and add 1/3 cup of skim milk powder. This is supposed to give a thicker consistency, which may prevent me from having to strain the yogurt at the end and thus not waste so much.
Results!

Do you suffer from premature blog ejaculation?

I just have one more thought for now:

I think people who are not involved in religion need to have other ways of punishing/torturing/disciplining themselves, which is the only reason I can think of that my boyfriend (henceforth known as GP) and I are doing P90X. For the uninitiated (lucky...), P90X is an insane DVD series aimed at sculpting your body into a lean mean muscle machine. It is 3 months long and includes a strict diet that participants must follow by rote if they want to see any success at all. (GP had 2 very strong screwdrivers last night, not that I'm keeping track of who's falling off the bandwagon faster or nothin'). In the first month of this diet participants (read: pathetic flabby underlings) are allotted a million servings of protein, very few servings of fruits and veggies and basically one serving of carbohydrates per day.

In the spirit of low-carb living, I'm making vegetarian (vegan, maybe?) wontons for dinner tonight. I know, wonton wrappers are made of carbs, but fuck. I'm already pretty skinny and I haven't eaten carbs yet today, so given that there are 5g of carbs per one wrapper, I can safely feel good about gorging on these tasty morsels tonight. I tried and tried to find an intriguing, easy, tasty, healthy, protein-rich recipe for vegetarian wontons but unfortunately the internets let me down. Thank goodness that the human mind (mine especially) is infinitely inventive. For posterity, here is my wonton recipe:

For the filling:
350g extra firm tofu, pressed
1/3 cup soy sauce (or more, or less, to taste)
1 Tbsp. fresh finely grated ginger
4 small cloves of garlic, (or three big ones, or whatever), finely grated
about 1/3 of a red onion, finely grated (or use 1/4 of a white onion if that's what you have)
a handful of minced water chestnuts

To wrap them up:
one package of wonton wrappers (the small variety)
egg wash

To cook them in:
2.5 litres (2.5 quarts) broth/stock/flavoured water

To eat them with:
Assorted delicious veggies of your choosing

Put the above in a Cuisinart, except for the chestnuts. If you don't have a food processor you should beg/borrow/steal one from someone. Seriously, this is a lot easier with a food processor. You could try doing it in a blender, but it might all get stuck at the bottom and not want to move around unless you have one of those super duper fancy humongous two-blade deals. And if you can't do that, then you're on your own on that front. You're smart, you can figure something out. (If anyone ever reads this and finds a way to do this without using a Cuisinart or a blender, please let me know!)

Anyway, when you're done processing it, it should resemble a sticky kind of cookie dough. Or at least something suitable for sticking in a wonton wrapper. Taste it. You should like the taste. If you don't, add more of a flavour you like until it's palatable. Mix in the chestnuts after taking the tofu-mix out of the processor.

I don't know what you can use as a sticking-together agent for the wrappers besides egg wash, but if you're vegan you're probably crafty and have figured this out already. Read on!

IMPORTANT (ha, almost wrote "impotent") NOTE: Filling these little puppies takes a while. I thought it would quick and easy, and it certainly was easy, but quick it was not. It took me the better part of an hour to wrap up all my filling using 3 sheets short of a 260g package of wrappers. Anyway, lay the wonton wrappers on the counter with one corner pointing to you and place about 3/4 of a teaspoon (or half, or something, I don't know, you'll figure it out) of filling in the middle. Don't put too much filling in there or they'll explode. Wet two sides of the wonton with egg wash and fold the dry sides onto the wet, to form a triangle. Then fold the opposing points into the middle to form a tortellini-type shape.

To cook the wontons, bring around 2.5 litres of your preferred broth (I use Better Than Bouillon because they make a delicious vegetarian "stock") to a gentle simmer. Avoid a more vigorous simmer because that will break the delicate little wonton skins. At this point you will want to talk like Rachael Ray and say things like "Drop the kids into the hot tub". Avoid that; it'll make your wontons taste bad. Leave the wontons in the "hot tub" (ugh) for around 3 minutes, then remove them to the bowl(s) in which they will be served. Dump your choice veggies (I used bok choy, water chesnuts, baby corn, and carrots) into the broth, reserving the less robust veggies (bok choy) for a shorter cooking time. I simmered the veg. for around 5-6 minutes, or until the carrots were al dente. All you have to do when you've cooked the veggies is ladle the soup into the bowls over the wontons and season the broth with soy sauce and slurp it all up greedily. I can't wait to have leftovers today.

Oh! And I froze the rest of the wontons because there were so many. Good for when I am lazy and/or sick.