author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

The thing about Thing-a-day is, it's sort of unspecific. I mean, think about it: "Starting on February 1st, make one thing a day." Thing. Sort of noun-ish. Creativity is involved here, also newness ("no recycled old work"), but of what sort?

For obvious reasons, most of my things tend to be literary things. Today, however, I'm going with culinary.

Annie's Mac with Squash Brabant and Sauteed Walnuts

1. Cook the pasta from one box of Annie's Alfredo And Cheddar. Drain.
2. Defrost about 1.5 C cubed sweet potato and acorn squash. Alternately, you can start from fresh vegetables and cook them to tender.
3. Melt 2 Tbsp butter and toss in the vegetables, a handful of walnut pieces, and a clove or two of minced garlic. Sautee for a bit.
4. Add about 1 Tbsp onion powder, 1 Tsp paprika, and pepper to taste. Sautee a bit more.
5. Add one or two chopped up green onions (scallions) and the Annie's cheese packet. Mix well.
6. Add 1/4 C milk and 2 Tbsp heavy whipping cream. Lower heat, stir, and cook until warm.
7. Add cooked pasta, mix well, and allow to simmer until sauce has reached desired consistency.

Enjoy! And leave yourself time for a nap afterwards. I came home pretty tired from work and this meal topped my sleepy right off.

What? Cat food? Screw that. That's boring. Fruitcake is where it's at. Fruitcake in the oven for the next 3 hours, slowly making my house smell niiiiice.

Today, SlyCrow and Kandybar and I all went to Caffe Luna, in Longmont, and held miniature writing races where we'd set a timer for five or ten minutes and see who got the most words written in that time. I started the day at 29,131 (how the hell do I remember that?) and you can see where I'm at now. I highly recommend this activity. Especially if you type fast. Kandybar kept track of the math, and I'd watch to see if she punched the air triumphantly or gave me a squinty glare to see which of us had beaten the other by five words or so.

Caffe Luna claims to have free wiFi available. Actually, what it has is wiFi available. Boingo Wireless, to be exact - the kind where you need a login, and you either have a monthly subscription or else you "pay as you go," and that's not free, not in the littlest bit. Good thing we weren't there to web surf.

Not much else to report. It's Teen Titans tonight on Cartoon Network, followed by Justice League Unlimited and Megas XLR. And somewhere in there I want to do another 45 minute writing session or so, just to try to get me up to the 33K mark. And that's all I got for now.

(Oh, all right. Homemade cat food. Bake 1 lb chicken livers and 2lb ground turkey breast. When cooked, chop the liver fine and crumble the turkey. Take 1.75 cups uncooked brown rice and cook it. Open a can of pumpkin - not pumpkin pie mix, OK, just regular pumpkin - and set it aside. Open up a bag of Wellness brand dry cat food. Now, make up five batches of cat food by mixing 2/3 C turkey, 1/3 C chicken liver, 1 C rice, 1 C dry cat food, and 1/4 C pumpkin per batch. Stick all the batches but one in the freezer. That last batch goes in a closeable container in the fridge. Feed 1/3 C twice a day to overweight tabby cats with finicky digestion. In Uno and Null's case, said cats will lose weight and their digestion will improve.)

(Take leftover pumpkin and mix with falafel and a little olive oil. Form patties. Fry 'em and eat 'em like hamburgers.)

(Take leftover turkey and mix it into mac and cheese. Or saute up some celery, onions, scallions, and garlic to mix with leftover turkey; add a cup of water, a half cup uncooked jasmine rice, a couple boullion cubes, some chili powder and cayenne pepper, and a couple bay leaves. Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for fifteen minutes. Voila - Cajun dirty rice!)

(There oughtn't to be leftover brown rice. If there is, add it to the Cajun dirty rice during the last five minutes of cooking the jasmine rice.)

It's time for my thousand word blogging break. Readers - all two of you - rejoice!

So I have this fruitcake recipe. Someone sweet sent it to me a few years back on the condition that after I followed it I send her a slice. Which I did. And then I never did it again. Make the fruitcake, I mean.

But now the Tea Spot (I never get tired of linking them!) is selling little slices of the stuff, heavy in cherries and walnut, and you know what? I gotta do it again.

So yesterday when I went to Whole Foods to pick up the ingredients for cat food (about this, more later) I also started in on fruitcake preparations. This is both the fun and the obnoxious part: bopping up and down the bulk goods aisle, deciding which dried and/or candied fruits to include, scooping them into little baggies with PLU numbered twist-ties, and weighing them to see if I'm adding up to 3.75 lbs yet. I got...

• pecans
• walnuts
• almonds
• currants
• bing cherries
• sour cherries
• black mission figs
• dates
• cranberries
• candied ginger
• and sweetened papaya spears.

Now. About chopping up dried fruits. Dried fruits are sticky. I don't care how much your friendly Pampered Chef Dealer hyped the Food Chopper, it is useless for chopping dried fruit. Dried fruit sticks to the blades at the very first slice and then rides them clear of ever getting sliced again. Besides, you don't want randomly minced fruit; you want cubed cherries and quartered dates. So stick with the knife. It's old fashioned but it works.

By the way - here's a little bit of trivia for you. True or false: "It is safe to leave bags of dried fruit out on the kitchen counter in a cat-infested household." False! I came back from retrieving the second load of groceries to find Uno and Null regarding a scattering of black mission figs, occasionally batting them to watch how they rolled. Bad kitty-owner!

So now I have a bowl of chopped-up dried fruit sitting in a covered bowl and happily getting drunk on half a cup of cognac. Tomorrow there will be the mixing of the batter, the baking of the cake, and the beginning of the process of curing the cake in more cognac in my big round Tupperware™. I plan to let that sucker pickle right up until Solstice. Yes, yes, I know. "Waste of good cognac." Well, you know what? It's just as much a waste to leave the stuff sitting on the kitchen counter until it spontaneously quadruple-distills itself. Which is what would happen. Believe me, the last third of a cup of brandy from the bottle I used on my last fruitcake was still hanging around as of yesterday. So, deal.

Next entry: A musical interlude, with homemade cat food. You (all two of you) may want to skip it, as it involves baked chicken liver.