ramtops

A few weeks ago, Nigel Slater made a soda bread loaf, which he cooked in a cast iron casserole. We make lots of soda bread here, and it seemed like a good idea, so I gave it a try; but it was hopeless – you couldn’t turn it out to see if it was done, so I decided to just carry on using a baking tray as before.

On Saturday, I decided to bake a couple of Guinness soda breads; I scaled up the recipe carefully, but something went wrong, and even after adding a bit more flour, the mix felt very wet, so I bunged it in my huge and ancient Le Creuset and baked it in that.

Calamity – the inside was raw. Still we carved the ends of for Saturday night supper of bread, cheese and apple, and planned to surgically remove the remaining decent bits for toast for Sunday breakfast. However, the discovery of half a bag of cranberries in the fridge led to an outburst of fresh cranberry muffins instead, meaning the bread was left for Sunday supper.

Just as well, really. I opened a tin of tuna for the Tribe as a treat, only to discover once it was de-lidded that it was in fact crab; no idea what it was doing on the cat fud shelf.  Far too nice to give to the cats, we located the errant tuna and gave them that (it lasted about 3m 20s, I think), and put the crab in the fridge.

Then last evening, I mixed in some mayo, some lemon juice and some paprika with the crab, and we had it on the soda bread. It was really very nice indeed, not least because it was so unexpected.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

And pronounces it unsatisfactory.

Originally posted at the Jordan Cats.

A couple of new posts:

• Things on my cat, and
• But it's not fair.

And more besides!

The spotty boys, Iggy and Mustrum, have had a turbulent relationship since they arrived. We got them ten days apart, on 4th and 14th December respectively, in 1998. Which means we are almost at our 10th anniversary, the three of us!

Ron, at 11.5 weeks.

"We asked for their comments" and

First week with the kittens

Over on the Jordan Cats.

p.s. I think the Roomba won.

We went to visit our local animal sanctuary yesterday - the house is entirely too quiet and empty, and we thought we could give a loving home to a kitten or two.  They said they were crowded out with kittens, but I think we are a mega fail in their view ...

Aliss (in icon) hasn't been well - I haven't posted here, but I did put it on the catblog.

I took her back to Vim the Vet on Wednesday of last week. She hadn't put any weight on, and he was a bit concerned, so he gave her an anabolic steroid shot to kick start her and said he'd see her in a month.

She's been eating like a horse, but got thinner and thinner. perlmonger and I resolved that we would give her food she liked, keep her warm and comfortable, and give her lots of love and fuss. She didn't get meatier, but she has been bright-eyed, and happy to see us, and sat on laps in the evening, apart from scoffing huge quantities of expensive little tins of fud.

Until lunchtime today, when she didn't want her waffer thin chicken. Then didn't want her Highlife Tuna or her Gourmet Selection prawn and tuna. She's given up, I think - she's lying oh her side by the sofa, and we're just waiting for the end. If she makes it through the night, I'll be amazed, and I'll call the vet for a home visit in the morning if need be.

We are not putting her through what Bada went through in her last days. So we're not going to see Jeremy Hardy tonight - we're keeping vigil with our Aliss.

What a roller coaster - yesterday morning the vet phoned and said she was "feistier" and taking her food through a tube.

We allowed ourselves, at last, to begin to feel optomistic, and arranged to go and see her at 6.30, when we were confronted with a small cat on the edge of death. She wasn't accepting her food through the tube at all, was vomiting, wasn't drinking, had an ulcerated tongue, and was generally as ill as she possibly could be. The vet was clearly surprised that she had a) slipped back, and b) slipped back so fast.

We took the only decision we could - we let her go. And we will miss her joy and her nibblous tail more than I can say.

Good hunting, Liessa ...