if looks could kill!

growing up, i never took a great deal of photos of any of my pets. it is something i now lament since many of the memories i have of them are mostly recorded in my head and vague [what did hamster #11 look like again??]. so, as an adult i decided i would take lots of pictures. thankfully, digital cameras have been created — no more dealing with film and waiting for processing {and being disappointed with overexposures or blurred images AND having to pay for it!}. instant gratification :))

amusingly, the camera can be our best friend or worst enemy. yes, i admit it, i'm vain: i rip up (delete) pictures where i've been caught with bad hair and some strange expression on my face, looking like a deer caught in a car's headlights in the middle of the night! i get annoyed by that person who always comes out looking great in every single photo! luckily, i have more good photos than bad ones. my rule, though, is never have your picture taken when you're not feeling 100%.

such is life — sometimes you can't avoid being photographed. the camera doesn't lie (but photoshop™ does!).

and, as the saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. even cats have their bad days.

friend and foe — a cat (& mouse) tale

well, after 2 1/2 hours of non-stop hardcore playing with a long lost friend (rediscovered hidden behind a bookshelf), the brown devil decided it was time for a nap. from the look of it, it's more of a coma! ;o

i've decided my cat is strange.

as a kitten, he developed a love-hate relationship with his mouse. he carries it around the house in his mouth, talks to it with little meows, and lays down on it to fall asleep. other times, he beats the cr*p out of it, growling at his long-tailed friend and throwing him the air with his mouth. one time i found him trying to bring it in the litterbox — i don't even want to know what he was going to do with it in there! i grabbed it away and hid it for two weeks.


as you can see from the picture, peace has been restored. poor mouse — ended up in the water bowl while being heavily assaulted by paws and jaws. i think my cat finally realized the moral of the story: wet mice don't slide well on wood floors ;))

50,000 chickpeas & a long night

3:30 a.m. — CRASH!

burekaboy, after having just fallen into deep REM sleep, following 3 annoying hours of tossing and turning, reflexively springs up in bed, completely bewildered {why did he drink that can of coke at 9 pm?? well, at least it tasted great}.

confused, he makes his way to one of the two places he knows could be the source of the crash, and expects the worst since the mischevious four-legged food processor was nowhere in sight.

squinting, in anticipation of the extreme pain which would be caused by the turning on of the bright light of the kitchen after being in complete darkness, he decides on plan B .... turn on light over the stove — less bright, less pain.

ambling to the stove in pitch blackness, he stops cold. "why are my feet wet?" he quickly asks himself. he realizes he has stepped into in a pool of water. as this realization occurs in the dark, he feels a sand papery tongue licking his ankles and hears a familiar purring. burekaboy knows he should just stop now and go back to bed; of course, he doesn't and his first thought is: "cat, you are SO dead!"

another step towards the stove to turn on the light results in the foreshadowing of the horror to come ..... as his finger extends to illuminate the situation, burekaboy thinks again: "what did i just step on?"

with a flip of the switch, he finds a soaking wet cat, 8 cups of cold water and 50,000 (ok, i exaggerate here but it was A LOT) *%#*&!@ chickpeas (& fennel seeds) all over the kitchen floor. it's now 3:40 am. i mean, what does one say at this point except: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!! STUPID CAT!!

alas, it's hard to be totally angry at a drenched cat with fennels seeds* in his fur happily licking up the water from soaking chickpeas, two hours before dawn. this didn't help burekaboy from wanting to rip his fur out at that very moment — let's face it, who wants to mop up chickpeas at that hour? burekaboy did contemplate going back to bed and then thought it would smell like hell in the morning (not that it already didn't) and waking up to a mess like that would be even worse.

(what's with the fennel seeds & chickpeas, you ask? chickpeas for cooking, fennel seeds to make them more easily digested).

after 15 minutes of chickpea hunting [under the stove, behind the refrigerator, under the cabinets], cursing and mopping up rank smelling water and fennel seeds, burekaboy notices it's now 4 am. the whole time, the cat is sitting in the corner, staring with that "what are you doing?" look on its face, acting as if he had nothing to do with the whole fiasco. to add insult to injury, he goes over to his food bowl and howls for a "midnight snack". chutzpah.

why didn't burekaboy buy a dog?

burekaboy, in bed again, rationalizes the situation by saying to himself that the silver lining is that at least the bowl didn't smash and that he was stupid for leaving the chickpeas within cat's reach. cat is an oddball: he especially loves chickpeas which are soaking and fresh tofu.

zzzzzz......

4:15 a.m. BANG! (mop falls over) — the fun begins again.....

you're lucky you're so cute, my little brown devil.

(this is what watches over me as i work on the computer)

a list long overdue.....

i have to admit it has taken me a long time to come up with a list of odd food-related facts about myself since i was asked/tagged by trinigourmet several weeks back. i guess i wasn't even sure if i even had any weird food facts about me to divulge to the public at large. after all, it's not like i'd eat stuff like this .... now that's weird. anyway, you can read on and decide for yourself. all things being relative, the question remains ....... just how weird are you?!

6 weird food facts about me:

1. i am obsessed with ACCURACY, especially in the arenas of measurement and size. when it comes to cutting and shaping things, i can spend inordinate amounts of time with my best friends in the kitchen — my ruler and uber sensitive & accurate scale [which, by the way, was one of the best purchases i've made]. ok, admittedly, i am not ready yet for a hospital program since i will forgo measuring and weighing things if they agree with the "eyeball" method. still, things look better when they are uniform and the same. errrr, most of the time, that is.

2. i rarely eat at other people's homes. this has been an item of contention for many years and made me either flatly turn down offers or find inventive ways out of eating at another person's home. i think my neurosis began with my experience of eating at a friend's home and finding dried food on the plates and then more on some of the serving utensils, including dog hair. i think i nearly barfed on the spot.

the fact is that you really never know how clean someone (you don't really know) is or what goes into the cooking of things. i also know people who have no problems with this, so maybe i am just weird! lol. my favourite thing is what i call "the microwave/oven" test. i always try to sneak a peek at the insides of the microwave (or oven) to see the state of it. if it's not clean, i definitely "ain't" eatin' your food.

3. glutinous and bitter foods are not my friends. anything which involves stringy mucilage is vorbotten and literally makes me wretch. foods like okra and natto come to mind when i think of goo. melted cheese, however, is not mucilage and is therefore 100 per cent fine by me in terms of goo. bitter things are also not items which please my palate. i have never understood people who actually say they enjoy things like rapini, radicchio, hilbeh or bitter gourd. i might as well use buckley's as a condiment if that were the case.

4. i only started eating dried fruit in my 20s. i have no clue where that came from but i refused to eat or even use it in my cooking until the recent past. i felt tortured as a child to continually find those damned little red boxes of sunmaid raisins in my lunches or given them for snacks. even to this day, i will not eat raisins though i have eaten the golden ones and will use only those kind in small amounts in cooking. owning a rabbit as a child reinforced my distaste for small dried black things. :O

5. i probably have 3 more sets of dishes, utensils, kitchen towels, etc. than you do. keeping a kosher style kitchen means separate everything (well, almost) for preparing and eating meat, dairy and pareve foods (anything non meat or non dairy). that's a 'hell-a' lot of stuff. i also have a whole set of everything again just for passover use but that is strictly for meat/pareve use (think whole kitchen's worth). no wonder i hardly have any space for all of my wares.

6. i love cutting up chickens. ok, that's definitely weird [and no, i'm not a hannibal lechter but i do own very sharp knives, so watch out!]. i just like being able to know that all parts of what i'm eating came from the same bird!! do you even have any idea that those chicken parts you're buying came from 20 different birds??? cutting my own chickens also means i can get the sizes and pieces i want but, of course, i have to use disposable kitchen gloves cause it's a dirty deed.

and as an added extra, since 7 is a lucky number:

7. sugar is a food group all on its own. i love sugar in all its forms. i mean i REALLY love it. my favourite sugar high is to toast [challah] bread, shmear it with lots of butter and then pack on a good 1/4 inch of brown sugar. oh baby.

weird, eh?

as this is supposed to be tag, i wanna know what oddities are behind the personae of:

*rosa [still workin' on your list!] ✓
*aria [oh, for sure there's some good ones there!]
*beenzzz [c'mon, i know you wanna spill the beenzzz] ✓
*topchamp [i can only just imagine!]✓
*pammie [i know you have more than 6! lol]
*tschoerda [tell me yours, my little gugelhopf ]✓
*emily [oooh, can't wait to read what the scientist reveals!] ✓
*you [-> e-me ✉ if you want to do yours!]

note: feel free not to do this; it's just an offer for a fun post. [if i haven't mentioned you, take no offense, was thinking of those who have done memes in the past or i though would be inclined to try one].