This is my Summit.

She's sort of an attention whore. I was making reservations for a scotch tasting next week at a local brew pub (I don't try to spell or pronounce its name because things get tied in knots). She decided that it would be cool to wander up onto my back in s-l-o-w motion (because I won't notice her doing something she knows she shouldn't do if she does it sloooooowly, you know).

But she gives me Eskimo kisses, so I don't mind too much.

My Favorite Soup

Well, maybe not most favorite ever. Favorite holiday soup, maybe?

One of Emeril's good recipes. ;)

It's easy to half, and easy to freeze. You can shorten it up so many ways. Cook the rice ahead of time. Frozen corn. Sometimes we just roast the squash without peeling and cutting it into chunks. Othertimes it just gets microwaved. Mom has used frozen before, and I think she's tried it with pumpkin with good results. It's good.

Smoked Sausage, Butternut Squash and Wild Rice Soup

2 medium butternut squash, about 3 to 4 pounds, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch chunks
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
12 cups chicken stock
2 1/2 cups chopped onions
1 cup wild rice
3/4 pound smoked sausage, such as kielbasa, cut into 1/4-inch
2 cups fresh corn kernels
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Season the squash with 1 tablespoon of the oil, salt and pepper. Place on a baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until tender. Remove from the oven and cool completely. In a blender or food processor, puree the squash with 2 cups of the chicken stock. Puree until smooth and set aside.

In a saucepan, over medium heat, bring 4 cups of the stock and 1/2 cup of the chopped onions to a simmer. Stir in the rice and cook until the rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed, about 1 hour, stirring occasionally with a fork. Remove the rice from the pan and cool.

In a large saucepan, over medium heat, add the remaining tablespoon of oil. When the oil is hot, add the sausage and brown for 3 minutes. Add the remaining 2 cups of onions and corn. Season with salt and pepper. Saute for 3 minutes. Add the remaining 6 cups of stock and squash puree.

Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

Stir in the rice and continue to cook for 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat, stir in the half-and-half and reason with salt and pepper. Stir in the parsley and serve.

I'm keeping him.

No longer free to a good home.

He has one.

And he brought me Cold Stone Creamery cake batter ice cream with cookie dough and brownies in it.

Mine.

Pasta with Pancetta & Tomato Sauce

One of the Amazing Ladies posted this recipe of Giada De Laurentiis' awhile back. It's super easy to make and really yummy. Especially if you have some fresh basil fresh out of your new Aerogarden to use! OK, so we had like two little leaves to use. But I'm sure it made a huge difference!

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces pancetta, diced
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
• Pinch dried crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 (28-ounce) can tomato puree
• 1 pound pasta (linquine or spaghetti work well)
  
• 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano

Instructions:

Saute pancetta in olive oil until golden brown (about 8 minutes). Add onion and saute until tender (about 5 minutes). Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and saute for about 30 seconds. Stir in the tomato puree and simmer uncovered over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes. Season the sauce with salt, to taste.

Cook the pasta while the sauce is simmering. Toss the pasta with the sauce and cheese. Serve!

Obviously you can play around with this recipe quite a bit. We've used tomato sauce instead of puree because that's what we had. You could use bacon or prosciutto. We threw in some fresh basil; you could also throw in some Italian seasonings. We've also considered adding roasted garlic which would probably be amazing.

Want to see pictures of my Aerogarden? :)

They're growing like crazy!

And also, because Mom has asked here's a picture of our new baker's wine rack.

I love the little baskets at the top. They're perfect for my K-cups for my new Keurig (more on my love for that little guy another day). The teas are on the left and the coffee is on the right. I love it.

And because I remembered to take a picture of it, here's a piece of the plant I stole from my Uncle J over Thanksgiving. It used to be about half an inch tall. I just plopped it in dirt and it's growing like crazy (unlike the big piece I stole from him that decided it was going to die this week :( ).


We think it's some sort of corn plant. We don't know much more than that, except that corn plants are potentially toxic to cats. They don't bother this little guy yet. Maybe that's because they were enthralled by the big one that's dying? Anyway, we keep shut the plants up when we're not home and they're not allowed unsupervised visitation with the plants so it's cool for now.

Free to a good home!

My husband.

Who has me take his car to school every day because it gets better gas mileage and has heated seats.

But who decided to take it today.

Without telling me.

So I didn't have a parking pass.

Who also took all of my cash - $6.

And left me a lovely $1 bill on the coffee table that was interestingly enough shaped like it just came out of a wallet.

Which left me without enough cash to pay the $3 for a parking permit today.

I had to steal change from Mitzie.

Seriously.

She was nearly as unhappy as I was.

He is an excellent cook! Provides flowers on a surprise basis. Does his own laundry and will occasionally help with other laundry.

On second though, I might keep him.

If he's lucky.

Mitzie's New Trick

Have I mentioned that Mitzie is probably too smart for her own good?

Shortly before I left to go home for Christmas, Mitzie stopped going after her food after I let her out of her "stay." She would just stare at me, and then bump her head up against the wall or chirp at me. Even if I shooed her toward the food she'd just look at me and chirp. I finally tried giving her a kiss on the top of the head and then telling her to go ahead and eat. It worked.

Jeff didn't believe me.

But after I left, the first day he fed her by himself he had to kiss her on the top of the head before she'd eat. Now he believes me.

I tested her yesterday, thinking maybe she just didn't want to do Eskimo kisses anymore and just wanted on the top of the head kisses. But no. She knows the difference between "kiss kiss" (the command for Eskimo kisses) and "Give me love!" (what we've been telling her when we do the kiss on the head thing).

She has us wrapped around her paws.

Animal Crossing: City Folk

On release day I got my copy of Animal Crossing: City Folk (aka Crack because I quickly become addicted to it).

One of the really cool features in this version of the game is that you can take pictures of whatever is going on in your game. The Wii has a SD card slot, so if you like the picture you can just save it on the card and play around with it later.

One of the next really cool features is that the Northern Lights appear on random, clear winter nights.

Another fun thing is that the pine trees get Christmas lights put up on them.

You can also design your own clothing.



Here's a picture I photoshopped of my character and Jeff's character with the lights, sporting our spiffy St. Louis Blues jerseys with the Christmas lights.

If you click it, it should get bigger and easier to see. Right now it's my desktop background. I'm such an addict. And a nerd.

It makes me happy. :)

Edit to add: Eeek! How did I forget one of my other favorite features?!?! Do you see the cat constellation? You can make your own constellations, too. I named this one M'Mitz (I call Mitzie "My Mitz" but it gets shortened up when I say it to M'Mitz) because I never see anything named after Mitzie. No worries, Sum has one too. It's just not the right time of year for it to show up. ;)

Delayed Secret Santa and More Herbs

So I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I belong to a pets message board that has a ton of Amazing Ladies on it. This year, one of them decided that instead of doing the normal Secret Santa that we usually do that it might be fun to do a donation Secret Santa instead. Meaning we would draw people but instead of sending their pets presents, we would send the presents as a donation to an animal shelter in our person's name and send the person a card to let the know how awesome they are and what they had donated in their name.

We decided to donate to Best Friends Animal Society. There are a lot of bully breed fans on the board (myself included). This is the incredible rescue group that took in the dogs from the world's scummiest-scumbag-lowlife-jerkface-probable son of the devil who should be strung up by his toenails and Chinese water tortured-stupidhead-twatwaffle-creep-not a real person person (michael vick who doesn't even deserve capital letters in his name!). They healed their bodies and hearts and placed them into wonderful forever homes.

Now that I'm over ranting over said dirtface jerkwad (OK, maybe not quite) I can show you the amazing bonus presents my Secret Santa sent Summit and Mitzie.


Christmas stockings for the little monstas! Aren't they so stinkin' cute?! And she even made a white one for Summit and a black and white one for Mitzie. I almost cried when I saw them because it was so sweet. She also put in some pawbreakers and fun little mice to bat around. The cats were so happy. I got the best Secret Santa ever this year!

And also, when I woke up this morning my dill had sprouted. And when I got home it was all standing up and super cute! So here's a picture of the dill that was feeling left out. Look how tall and proud it looks! In fact, it might be taller than all of the others.


My chives are looking much better, too. They were tall enough today I could pull away some of the mold? fuzzies? blanket? surrounding them. There are some little black things on them at the top. Pieces of the seed . . . shell? Whatever it's called that it grows in and stuff. Maybe I'll learn this in Biology soon and I'll be able to update with the proper term. They're looking pretty cute, though!

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year

was an aerogarden. I've been wanting one since I first saw them and now we have space for one! Sort of, anyway. A spacesaver 6 version.

Mom and Dad got it for me and then shipped it back here so I wouldn't have to haul it home on the train (which ended up being a plane instead because I decided to be brave and fly).

Jeff and I "planted" our little Italian Herb garden on the 30th, and now we have lots of little sprouty plants!

Here's the thyme at however many days old it was yesterday when I took the picture.


Here the thyme is from the side. Does the label make it look fat? It's been concerned about that, though I keep reassuring it that it's adorable and perfect.


Here's the basil. It was the first one to sprout.


And the oregano. Don't ask how long it took for these guys to actually sprout. I didn't keep track aside from squealing in delight as I checked them each morning and breaking Jeff's eardrum when I informed him we had new baby plants. Look how itty bitty it is!


And how stinkin' cute is this mint?! Isn't it precious?!

I didn't know my dill was doing anything until I looked at the picture on the computer. It looks like it might be popping up any day now.


And if anyone can tell me what's going on with my chives I'd appreciate it! The poor guys look fuzzy. Is that mold? A blanket to keep it warm? What am I supposed to do? Daddy? Daaaadddy! Halp!


They look bigger and better today, but I'm still a bit scared something's wrong with the lil' guys.


Now how am I supposed to start whacking these guys apart and eating them once they're full grown? I've raised them from babies! Reassure they won't mind being nommed on.