Ginger Boy and Ollie are best of friends. They were both abandoned at different neighbor’s homes, at different times. Both neighbors brought them to MrsJ’s attention, knowing she was a volunteer at a local shelter. Ginger was one of a litter, but he escaped the initial round up. 
The next day the neighbor called and said we had missed one. The lone holdout was Ginger Boy. These are his siblings on the night before they were taken to the shelter. They were quickly adopted.
adopt
Ginger Boy
Ginger has fit right in with the rest of the crew. Homer still tries to assert himself over him but they rarely get into anything serious. The hummers are hitting the feeders heavily now, and will continue to do so through August. We have five feeders up and refill them nearly everyday.
Good Help Is Hard To Find
Tidbits
Moar Gumbo! This one is shrimp and crab, with the last of the dark meat turkey. When folks ask for recipes I usually point them to NOLA Cuisine. That is for chicken and andouille but there are links there for his Cajun/Creole recipe page. I would encourage y’all to go there.
Mrs J brought some small pet beds up from her sewing room for a quick wash and fluffing in the dryer, they will go with her to the shelter when she pulls her next shift. The top one is called a “cuddle cup” and the other two are “pumpkin” beds. Patterns are available online.
Chicken biscuits! These are from a recipe in the food section of the NY Times. The biscuit recipe seems familiar:
BISCUITS:
- 3 cups/450 grams all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons/37 grams baking powder
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
- 7 tablespoons/100 grams cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 1 ½ cups/360 milliliters whole milk
Bake in a 425 oven until they brown on the top, it took about 17 minutes in my convection oven. They do puff up quite a bit, I cut 8 biscuits from the dough, each 3-1/2″.
I could have gotten 10 or more by rolling the dough a tad thinner, the ones I made by rerolling the scraps were especially thick and nearly toppled themselves in the oven.
There was a bit of dough left over even after rolling out the scraps from cutting out the biscuits. I like to make cinnamon rolls from that. Just roll the dough fairly thin, brush with melted butter, and cover with a thick coat of cinnamon sugar. Roll into a long tube and slice that into little wheels, drizzle with more butter, and bake them along with the biscuits.
Kroger offers these telera slider rolls as a “take-and-bake” item – they are sold par-baked and just need a finish. They are a smaller version of these rolls. The crispy crust holds them together very well when making sammiches that are very juicy, like sloppy joes or Italian beef. Of course, they are good for little cheeseburgers, too.
Moar kitteh! Ollie likes ice cream. We all like ice scream.
Tidbits
Cookies! These are those very tasty chocolate chip oatmeal coconut raisin cookies, the recipe does not say raisins but I like them so I added a handful. And nobody does chocolate chunks anymore, all the cool kids are into the very retro and hip chips.
I tried this the other day, wanting to get some more use out of that heavy tortilla press. It really makes some thin hamburger patties! I backed off on the ones I actually cooked because nobody has an 8 inch burger bun. 
They do fry up fast fast fast. LOL I love my griddle.
I splurged on this ultrawide monitor. It’s a 34 incher and it’s wide enough to fit 2 web pages in without squeezing them too hard. It came with a couple of software drivers – one that purports to add a settings screen to Windows (adjust brightness and contrast and so on), plus something they call a Dual Monitor Something or Another. I think the DM driver is meant to fool the computer into believing there are actually 2 monitors hooked up but I didn’t get that far because one or both of those drivers made my computer go insane. I managed to do a system restore and got back to normalcy. The Nvidia graphics card handls the monitor just fine.
Cats and dogs living together! The cameras in cell phones are getting really good, but I sent this through a photo editor to brighten it up and correct the colors.
More cookies! These are from a recipe put out by the Splenda sweetener people. They are quick and easy and really are delicious with a nice crisp texture.
More kittehs! Ollie and Toby like to hang about on top the the couch. Ginger Boy is usually up there, too.
Soup! This is that Hungarian recipe mushroom soup we’ve been making lately. It’s full of paprika and sour cream and dill. It’s easy to make and delicious. Even better the next day. I used brown buttons this time, and I ran out of tamari soy sauce so I subbed in a shot of mushroom soy – it’s a very thick and dark soy sauce that works very well in this recipe, I think it’s going to be in mine from now on.
This Blog Needs Some Moar Puppehs!
Tidbits
This poor thing was brought in with two broken legs, the one appears to be less of a problem than the other, going strictly by the casts. I have no other info but he is in good hands at St Francis.
Made some mayo from scratch. The other day I roasted a bunch of garlic cloves in olive oil and used a 1/4 c of that oil in this. The recipe for the basic mayo is easy – put an egg with 1/4 c oil in the bowl of a processor, add a pinch of salt and 1/4 tsp of dry mustard and give it a spin. Start drizzling in more oil until you’ve used about a cup, total, or until it gets to the consistency you are going for. I added canola oil for the drizzle. This turned out very garlicky.
I used it on this sammich – very good! I assembled it after the photo, and went sans lettuce. That’s more of my maple pepper bacon. Yum!
Now here comes Bitsy, slowly, a step at a time. Head on a swivel, looking for threats. She finally made it all of the way in. Yay!
This was Taco Tuesday for us. I’m torn between piling on the goodies or going sparingly with them for a better picture. These white corn tortillas are smeared with refried beans, layered with smoked pork, cheddar, shredded cabbage, and pico de gallo.
This looks like a short loaf of banana bread but it’s actually made with figs. We had a fairly good batch we weren’t quite sure what to do with.
I quartered them and stuck them in the dehydrator overnight – too long, alas. They were barely pliable and too tough. We dropped them into a stout blender and whirled them with water to break them up. The result looked much like bananas that had been pureed so they went into a banana bread recipe.
This is one of those soups that come from what I think of as a “bottomless” soup pot – I keep adding to it as we eat out of it. Those diced potatoes were not in there yesterday and I added more carrots. The beef will get scarce after a few iterations, but right now there’s still plenty.
I’ll wind this up with another shelter kitteh. This one looks like our own Ginger Boy.
Cats and Dogs Living Together
What's 4 Dinner Solutions 