Potatoes are in the oven for the Gorgonzola Stuft Potatoes; when they come out, they just need to cool down so I can hollow them out and stuff them.  And then I just have to cook the steaks (not the steaks on the Katie Brown website I just linked to, hell no, filet is too pricey!  I got some New York strip steaks for five bucks a pound, I’m making pepper steaks with Woostahshoostahshire-butter sauce.).  Green veggie will be leftover green bean casserole from Christmas, a lot of it left and still good, so why not?

By the time it’s all ready, it’ll be time for the Three Stooges Marathon on channel 38…a New Year’s Eve tradition here at Chez Ailurophile.  We’ll turn on the TV in the kitchen and watch it while we eat.

We’ll switch over to some channel that has the ball dropping and open up our Le Cheapeaux Champagne just before midnight.

The kittehs will get some more ‘nip…they already had some today, but hell, it’s New Year’s Eve.  If we can get drunk, then kittehs can get high on some ‘nip.

Steak, beer, Le Cheapeaux, ‘nip for the kittehs, and the Stooges…it doesn’t get better than that!  And best of all, we are home, safe and warm, away from the cold weather and the psycho drunks on the roads.

Going out for NYE is so overrated, anyway.

Happy MEW Year to all!

I received the funniest email forward from my friend Nicole.  It was written by someone who found an old JC Penney catalog from 1977, and proceeded to make snarky comments about some of the goods therein.

Check it out here.  It’s a .pdf file, so you will need Adobe Reader in order to see it.  If you are having trouble seeing it, you can download the latest version of Adobe Reader HERE…it’s free and safe.  Most computers come with it, though.

I was 17 back in 1977, and I remember well all of those tacky clothes and furniture.  What WERE we all smoking back then?  No, don’t answer that one…LOL!

Of course, back then, nobody got their asses kicked for wearing any of that stuph, because this was what everyone wore.  The seventies have definitely gone down in history as “The Decade of Bad Taste”.

But you’d never see stuph like that in a current JCP catalog, or at the JCP store at the local Westgate mall.  Not unless some lame-brained fashion designers decided that it is time to bring back the 70’s.

No thanks.  Once was enough, thank you very much!

Enjoy!  And thanks, Nicole!

It was a busy day today.  First we had to go to the Good Post Office to collect mail.  Then we decided to head up to Kittery, Maine, to have lunch at Robert’s Maine Grill.  We hadn’t been there in eons, and we missed it.  Since Mike is off from work all week, we could do this.

We got kind of a late start, though.  I really wish we had a tankless water heater…I showered first today, and poor Mike had to wait for the hot water to come back so he could shower.  But no way would the landladies pony up for one of those.  When our hot water heater died several years ago (on a Christmas Day, of all days!), they replaced it with the cheapest one they could find.

So I didn’t get to go to Maine-ly Stamps, the rubber stamp store in Kittery.  She closes at 4PM, and it was almost that time by the time we finished up at Robert’s.

I did get to go to the Corningware-Corelle-Revere kitchen store at the Kittery Outlets.  I bought a Baker’s Secret bundt pan, an Oxo Good Grips potato ricer, a couple of lids to fit our larger Corelle bowls, and a small serving platter to match our Corelle dishes.

Then we stopped at Shaw’s to pick up some groceries.  It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, and we want to stay in anyway, due to it being New Year’s Eve.  Don’t want to risk being out when all of the drunks start coming out!

And now I’m tired…see ya later!

Kind of a dank, depressing day today.  Kitties have been sneezing on and off.  Not all of them…Allegra was sneezing for a few days, but it seems to have gone away for her.  But Pumpkin, Little Mitty, Junior, and Sabby have been sneezing a bit now.  Allegra probably caught it first and gave it to the others.  Only Dusty has not been sneezing, but she tends to stay away from the others…she’s an old geezer kitty who wants to be left alone…except for following us into the bathroom to demand “brushies”.

No other symptoms that we can see, it’s probably just a cold that will go away soon enough on its own, just like a human cold.  Vet said to try giving them small doses of Vitamin C in their food for a few days, see how that goes.  If sneezing doesn’t go away, or gets worse, then I’d have to bring them in.

The cats here eat mostly dry food, so there’s no way I could sneak anything into that.  The Vitamin C tablets that I take taste kind of nasty, I know this because I can’t swallow pills, I HAVE to chew them.  But I take them religiously each day, right along with my calcium/Vitamin D supplement (which tastes like chalk).  I just wash it all down with my morning diet Pepsi.

But we do keep canned food around, so I decided to hide the Vitamin C in that.  I took some of my tablets and used my mortar & pestle to grind them into a powder.  Then I opened a few cans, portioned out a small portion for each cat, and mixed a pinch of the ground Vitamin C in each.  The kitties all scarfed it down, they thought it was a special treat, and not *medicine*.

I also was told that it’s important to keep the kitties eating and hydrated during a cold, and the wet food does that better than the dry food does.  But I have been seeing them going to the water dishes, so that’s good.  Hopefully, they will be okay in a few days.  Other than the sneezing, they don’t seem sick at all, they are all acting purrfectly normal.

But unlike with humans, it is not good to give cats Vitamin C as a regular dietary supplement, it is only good when they actually do have colds.  Too much can cause other problems.

I had not known that you could give Vitamin C to cats.  I know it works well for me…I had gotten a free sample of it from that fancy French department store, Tar-jhay, when I went to get my flu shot.  They gave me two week’s worth, and I started taking them; when that ran out, I went back and got a Hugh Jass bottle of more.

And so far this cold/flu season, no serious illnesses.  I was getting very tired of getting violently ill each year, and having Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas ruined over this crap.

But Vitamin C works for kitties?  Apparently, many veterinarians say it does, so it’s worth a try.  And at least they are enjoying their dosages more than I am…maybe I should grind mine up and mix it in some tuna or something, to disguise the nasty taste!

It was over 60 friggin’ degrees today!  Can you believe it?  Last weekend, we had not one, but TWO Hugh Jass snowstorms, and now today it’s like springtime.

Not that I am complaining, mind you.  Any day that I don’t have to spend money clicking up the heater, is a good day for me!

So we went out today, but not too far.  We went to the local shopping center, where I had Mike drop me off at the craft store, so I could look for cool craft toys, rubber stamps, and such.  But nope, nothing cool there today…same old stamps that have been sitting there for years.  Also, some of the stuph that was advertised in the store’s sale flyer was nowhere to be found at the store.  I HATE it when that happens!

But at least it got me out of having to set foot in Home Depot.  I HATE going into that place, it gives me a severe headache.  But Mike loves it.  So I sent Mike in there to buy some new rope, so he can re-rope the cats’ baseball bat scratching post.  They love this thing, and we’ve had to replace the sisal rope on it many times over the years.  And since Mike is home from work all week, he has time to do it.

After that, we met up at TGI Friday’s, where we had some lunch and watched the Pats game.  I had another $8.00 coupon from the Give Me More Stripes program, and we used it.

The Pats won, but sadly, they are out of contention, due to the Dolphins and Ravens winning.  Oh well.

But I am happy that most of the snow from last weekend melted!  Unfortunately, they are calling for another major storm next weekend.

Oh well.  You know what they say about New England weather.  Don’t like it?  Wait five minutes.  It’ll change!

There are giveaways going on all over the blogosphere, and when I see a cool one, I enter it, and then blog about it (this gets me another entry…LOL!).

So today I want to tell you all about one that my friend Owen is having.  What is he giving away, you may ask?  Is it a book, a music CD, a movie on DVD, or even a 4gb micro sd memory card?

NO!  It’s something that I think is WAY cooler!  It’s a brand-spankin’ new Twitter mug, customized to show all of the happy smilin’ faces of your Twitter pals!

This is what Owen’s mug looks like.  Pretty spiffy, isn’t it?  I really like his, because it has the mug shot of yours truly, right on the top row!  Of course, yours would look different, depending on your Twitter friends list.

Entering is wicked easy.  All you have to do is check out the Win Yourself A Twitter Mug contest page, and follow the simple instructions therein.

What better thing than to have this mug to drink your coffee from, when you are staying up far too late, hanging out on Twitter?  You have until the end of this year to enter, so go and enter today!

No, we don’t have an official “Boxing Day” here in the States.  But this year, Mike has it off anyway.  When Christmas is on a Thursday, it’s nice to close the office on the day after, as well, and give everyone a long weekend.

Anyhoo, Mike is taking some vacation time, and will be home all of next week, returning to work on January 5.  In actuality, he is only using three vacation days, as the office is also closed the day after New Year’s.

Hopefully he does not drive me nuts before the week is up.  So far, he hasn’t.  He just sits and reads, or watches judge shows on TV…complete with all of those commercials for pawn shops, title loan places, ambulance chaser attorneys, and ads aimed at old people that ask “do you need life insurance quotes?” Oh, and let’s not forget those diabetes ads with Wilford Brimley!  I swear, that guy looks just like a walrus!

We did go out today, though, to collect mail from The Good Post Office.  A lot of the snow has melted over the past coupla days, so the roads were okay.  An added bonus was that the Mobil station that is connected to the Good Post Office building had gas for $1.59/gallon.  That’s ten cents cheaper than the Mobil station near us that we normally go to.

After getting mail and gas, we went to Mike’s new favorite weekday lunch place, the 99 restaurant in Tewksbury.  He started going there for lunch a couple of times a week, after picking up mail, after the Tewksbury Piccadilly Pub went down the toilet. We used to really like the place, but they must have gotten new management, because the last few times we went there, it sucked.  The Pic out in Sturbridge is still good, though, so it has to be crappy management on the part of the Tewksbury location.

There’s a rather crappy liquor store next door to the 99, we went in there because I wanted to get our annual bottles of Le Cheapeaux Champagne for New Year’s. A brand called “Andre” was $5.99 a bottle this year.  We’ve had it before, not too bad.  It’s kind of become a tradition here at Chez Ailurophile to buy the cheapest champagne we can find, and drink it at midnight, while watching the Three Stooges Marathon on channel 38.  Okay, so we switch over to a channel that has the Times Square ball dropping near midnight, but we go right back to the Stooges once it’s done.

So, what are you doing for New Year’s?  We like to stay at home, too expensive to go out, too many psycho drunks on the roads.  If we want to be psycho drunks, we can do it in the safety of our own home!  Le Cheapeaux, popcorn, and the Stooges are good enough for us!

…Meowy Catmas to all!  We hope that Sandy Claws was good to all of you!

Nothing much going on around here at the moment.  I can’t start Christmas dinner yet, because I forgot to bake bread last night.  And I need bread to make breadcrumbs for the green bean casserole I’m making.

I am using a recipe from one of my America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks.  I have the companion book for every season of the TV series, except for the upcoming 2009 season.  That book is out now, but I know that if I hold out until the show starts airing in January, they will likely offer the book with the DVD set of the entire season thrown in for free.  That’s what they’ve done before, at least since they started putting the show out on DVD.  I think they started that with Season 6, because that’s the first book/DVD set I got.  Sandy Claws brought me the book/DVD sets for Seasons 7 and 8.  Now I just need to go back and get DVDs for Seasons 1-5, they have since been made available….they weren’t at the time I bought the books.

Anyhoo, the ATK people took the classic green bean casserole, you know, the one made with Campbell’s soup, frozen green beans, and those crunchy onions from a can…and made it over into something that sounds much better.  It calls for fresh green beans, three kinds of mushrooms, and a from-scratch creamy sauce.  Believe it or not, it still uses those canned fried onions, though.  But what they did was mix them with fresh seasoned breadcrumbs, and they say that this takes away the “from the can” taste.

I’ve not tried this recipe before, so we’ll see how it goes.  I’ve never had a recipe from ATK or its magazine, Cooks Illustrated, fail.

So that is why I need bread.  Yeah, I know that The Skeevy Corner Store is probably open and I could go there and buy a loaf of bread.  But all they have there is crappy Wonder bread, no way am I buying that.  I don’t need a whole loaf for breadcrumbs, so I want to be able to eat the rest of the loaf.  I have a spiral-sliced ham that I am going to be cooking, so we’ll need good bread for ham sammiches from leftovers.  Wonder bread is mostly air, and almost no flavor.  I can do way better in my bread machine.  And for less cost, too.  And no, I don’t buy those little packets of yeast at the supermarket, those are a rip.  I buy one pound bags of yeast from King Arthur Flour, which last for ages.  Cold makes yeast go to sleep, heat is what kills it.  I keep mine in a Tupperware container in the fridge, but it lasts even longer in the freezer.  Even with the shipping cost, it is still WAY cheaper than any packaged supermarket yeast.  One of these days, I will have to sit down and do the math and figure out how much it costs me to make a loaf of bread.  It’s probably a lot less than a dollar per one-pound loaf.

I also forgot to print out Alton Brown’s Creme Brulee recipe yesterday, so I had to come online today to do so.  I decided I felt like making creme brulee, thanks to the dumbass who tried to use a blowtorch to melt the snow, and set his house on fire.

Alton Brown would approve of my blowtorch, that’s it in the pic in the link I just posted, the one about the dumbassed blowtorch guy.  They make these little wussy torches that the sell in kitchen stores, designed just for creme brulee.  They are so small, you can’t do much of anything else with them, which makes them *unitaskers*.  They also cost something like $35.00.

AB bought his at a hardware store, and so did I…mine came from the hardware department of Sears and cost just $15.00.  And I guess I could use it for other tasks that may require the use of a blowtorch, although I’m not sure what those would be.  Mike probably knows.  Maybe welding stuff together, or something?  But definitely NOT for melting snow on the steps of your house!  It never even occurred to me to use it for snow-melting!

But even if my blowtorch is one of those evil unitaskers, at least it has enough propane for many, many creme brulees…so it’s a far better value for the money than the wussy $35.00 one.

On the old “Baking With Julia” TV show, Julia Child had this female pastry chef as her guest on one show, I forget her name at the moment.  She was making creme brulee, and was using a real hardware store blowtorch.  She was telling Julia about how every woman should have a blowtorch, and that people listen to women who have blowtorches.

Yeah…I can get into that!

Well, my bread is done, time to take it out to cool, and get cooking!

Meowy Catmas to all!

Welcome to the final post of my 23 Days Of Christmas project.  I hope you’ve enjoyed all of the great holiday songs I’ve been posting all over My Vast Blog Empire over the past three weeks or so.

I’ve saved the very best for last…my personal favorite Christmas song of all time - Snoopy’s Christmas, by The Royal Guardsmen.

I also found a very nicely done video for this song on YouTube, which you can see below.

After the video, past the jump, is a complete list of all *23 Days* posts, in case you missed any.  I will be removing the audio files from my servers before the New Year, so get ‘em while you can, ‘k?

(more…)

Today is Day 23 of my *23 Days of Christmas* project.  I will be posting songs on ALL of my blogs throughout the day.  I do not have an mp3 of this one, but I found a video, so it’s here as a bonus.  It’s Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck Christmas song.  Enjoy!

Later I will post a list of where all of the 23 Days songs are posted. In case you are too lazy to look for them yourself…LOL!