What We Did (and Ate) Today

First we got up and went to yoga for the first time in awhile, which was nice. Our butts are sore from hiking, so it was good to have something force us to move them a little. Having worked up an appetite by the time we got home, Matt decided to try his hand at making biscuits from scratch, which turned out great. Cheap, fast, easy, and GOOD. So we scrambled up some eggs with the rest of our summer sausage and Meunster from yesterday and went to town. Eat your heart out, McDonald's...and I'm not the kind of girl (as many of you know) who says that lightly!
As you can see, now we've got plenty for the freezer. This is a picture of them pre-cooked, but they came out nicely golden. Matt cut them with a drinking glass but we thought we might even use a small bowl next time to have more room for the eggy sausage-y goodness. We don't eat meat very often, but as I told Matt yesterday, I think that if I had to pick, sausage would definitely be my favorite. (Yes, I realize sausage isn't technically its own meat. This is coming from the person who was a vegetarian for 9 years and never craved a steak or a pork chop or a filet mignon...only cheese hot dogs and canned corned beef hash. It's probably for the best that I stay away from it for the most part.)

Then I spent a considerable amount of time on my paper (that's time, not necessarily headway, mind you, although in a way it feels good to be engaged with something a little more active than just the endless reading) while Matt busied himself around the house. What a guy. Courtesy of a rebate offer that makes our first bag free (though through the beginning or the end of October, I can't tell from the rebate form), as well as our awareness that clumping clay cat litter may be pretty close to the worst thing in the world for the environment and our cats' lungs and digestive tracts (and just perhaps, those of us who have been recently diagnosed with sensitive, allergic personalities), we're currently trialing Feline Pine Scoop Cat Litter at our house. (To paraphrase the Bible: If thou wipest thine counters with thine old underwear, and re-useth the same plastic bread bag for lunch every day, but filleth thy litter box with clumping strip-mined cat litter therein, thou hast done very little good for the environment at all.) Feline Pine is basically made of sawdust with additional (optional--there is a plain version) clumping properties compliments of the guar bean. As my dad would snort, "Yeah, you give that a try and then you tell me how it works." Well, that's what we're doing.

So far, it's been in the litterbox for about six hours, and all appears to be well. There seems to have been some "activity" in there already, nobody is complaining, it smells like we've been running the table saw, and so far we haven't found any unpleasant surprises anywhere else. We didn't bother mixing it with clay litter to wean them off of the old stuff; we didn't want to waste it and it seemed kind of pointless, knock on wood, since we have been VERY blessed thus far with two cats that are not at all fussy about the medium in which they do their business. Many of you may know Scratches' propensity for making his displeasure known when we leave town for more than a day or two, but it has always been in the exact same place (the bath mat) for the exact same reason (we're gone), and, thank goodness, has never extended beyond that or, heaven forbid, included urine. I did a fair amount of reading reviews ahead of time (because that's kind of what I do) on brands like Swheat and Yesterday's News and World's Best Cat Litter, but the most unanimous reviews have so far come to Feline Pine. Of course, that means nothing until it works for our cats, so we'll let you know what we think.

Later in the evening we headed out to the mall (twice in two days, who do we think we are?) where Matt picked up a new MacBook. We were going to wait until the insurance finished going through, as well as for the launch of Leopard (which, like the second coming, they say is coming any day now), but we've been borrowing a laptop from an extremely kind neighbor who gets back from India tonight, and all signs just sort of pointed to the fact that we'd waited long enough. The insurance should go through this week, and luckily, as a student I should have access to a reasonable price for the new operating system in case it doesn't get launched within two weeks (in which case they usually offer a free or reduced-price upgrade). Matt was being very good and patient about waiting, but because my sharp clinical judgment had picked up on a marked increase in Mac-related ideation and wistful verbalizations within the past twenty-four hours or so, we decided to just go for it. Judging from his happy silence for the past hour or so, I think he's glad we did.

While Matt got up close and personal with his new machine, I used up some vegetables we had languishing in the fridge and made stir-fry, this time with Lemon Herb Sauce. [Note: I ended up thickening the sauce with about a half teaspoon of cornstarch, which oddly enough the recipe doesn't mention. It worked perfectly and was a nice, quick, light sauce, luckily made all of ingredients we already had on hand.] Every time we make stir-fry it's so good, so easy, so quick and even healthy, I wonder why we don't do it more often. We really should. It's also pretty cheap. Even Matt--the loyal Wisconsite, the dairy farmer's son, the quintessential cheese head, the eater of all things cheesy and dipped in ranch dressing--said as we ate, "You know, it's kind of nice to have something without cheese on it once in awhile."

Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?