Adventure Puss

The cat came to us from a rescue shelter.  We love him.  He's been an indoor cat ever since we got him, but since we got the dog, he seems to want to go out.  We don't let him as he was found a stray and the rescue centre advised us against letting him out in case he's just a wanderer.

He's managed to get out on a couple of occasions, but he normally scares himself silly within seconds and runs back inside, which makes us think he has always been a house cat.

Anyway yesterday afternoon he must've climbed out the open kitchen window and went on an adventure to next doors garden!  Our next door neighbour is a dog walker and always has a garden full of dogs.  We could hear all the dogs going barking mad over something, and then Pippa started growling and the next minute Puss appears through the kitchen window!  Wherever he'd been he'd given himself an awful fright and I don't think he'll be going out again for a while.

He'll be sticking to his duvet now.

Summer Fruit cobbler

Do you ever manage to miss the 2 hours where fruit is perfectly ripe and then wonder what you're going to do with it?  If you can't be bothered standing over the stove for 40 minutes stirring jam, then I'd suggest a cobbler!

I threw this together for a week night pud.  It was stupid good!

I sliced up 3 apricots, 3 nectarines and 1/2 a punnet of raspberries.  The good thing about this is if the fruit is starting to turn, you just chop out the bad bits.

Put them all in a pan with a tablespoon of sugar - I used golden castor sugar, but any sugar will do.

Add a good splash of lemon juice and some cinnamon

And then just stir them all around on the stove until they go a bit gooey and look like this

Transfer them into a small dish and add the crumble

For my crumble I used all purpose flour, another table spoon of brown sugar and about the same of butter.  rub it all together until it resembles breadcrumbs, then add just a little bit of water.  Dab the crumble mixture over the top of the fruit and put in the oven until the topping browns.

I'd leave it a few minutes to cool down after removing from the oven as it will be too hot to handle.

Then serve with some good vanilla ice cream!

So simple, so tasty!  And you could do it with any combination of fruit!

Birthday Weekend

Last time I wrote, the boyfriend was in the kitchen making the dinner.  Seafood pancakes?  Well they turned out real good.  

I just love the combination of the soft pancake, the zinginess of the seafood and the crispness of the plain salad.  Yum!

I don't really get excited about my own birthdays anymore.  That stopped when I turned 30.  I've also been in a state of mind where I am 34 for the past year, so turning 34 feels a bit like groundhog day!  I'm not really sure why.  I just kind of skipped being 33.  So anyway I'm 34.  That's not to say my birthday wasn't lovely all the same.  The boyfriend gave me some lovely presents including tickets to go see The Band Perry in November when they play Glasgow which I am excited about.

Pippa gave me lots of cuddles!

I went to the salon in the morning for a lovely massage.  It was amazing as I hadn't been in quite some time.  Then we had a walk along Byres Road and looked around all the antique stores.  And we stopped at Kember and Jones for some birthday cake afternoon tea!

Chocolate and raspberry.  Delish!

Then there was just enough time to dash home, spruce up and go to the crab shakk for dinner.

Doesn't the boy scrub up well?

I've wanted to go to this place for such a long time!  I had langoustines and oysters to start with

The oysters were really good!

The boyfriend had tais and scallops - you can tell he enjoyed it.

And for mains he had the crab.  Which was done really well

He was going to make sure he got every piece of meat out of this bad boy!

I think a bit of that shell landed in the other diners bowl!

 I had some halibut in a thai sauce.  It was not good :(
It cost me £19.95 and here were 4 pieces of halibut and a burnt sauce.  They'd over done the spices and it just tasted scorched.  Quite irritating really.

Never mind :(  We really enjoyed our meal but I won't be rushing to go back.  I grew up on seafood at home.  We had our own boat, our own creels and we ate lobster and crab as often as we wanted, so I always grudge paying the prices it costs to get good seafood down here.  But it was a nice meal out.
Also - they didn't have a pinot grigio on the wine menu (!!!) Weird.

We then went for cocktails and drank a few more than we should have.

the next day I snuggled up with Pippa and ordered mexican food and watched movies!

Warning! The boyfriends cooking dinner

Friday night.  I'm knackered.  I did all the housework this morning as it's my birthday tomorrow and I've got the new diamond edition blue ray Jungle Book DVD cued up on the player ready to watch!  Oh how I've been longing to watch the Jungle Book and could not find it anywhere!

Anyway.... this is the scene in my kitchen at the moment..... I think every pot, every dish, every utensil has made its way out of the cupboard and is essential to use in this master piece he is creating!

To be fair to him - it does smell delicious and when it's right, it's one of my favourite recipes of his - seafood pancakes!  I've just heard an exuberant 'yes' bellow through - so it must have mean he's tossed his pancake successfully!  This was preceded by some expletives and a smell of burning so I think the others found their way to the trash.....

Does the same thing happen in your house?  sometimes it's easier to call the take away than rope them in.

Puss puss

Rarely do I get cuddles from the cat.  He's the boyfriends cat through and through, but when the boyfriend is away, the cat will play.

Look at him in this pic - he actually looks pleased to be snuggled up with me - or maybe it's just the flash in his eyes.

I love him.  He's so soft and furry and cosy warm and he's just the sweetest puss but I'm second best in his world...... and that's OK.

Cavalier Shows

A few weeks ago we took the dog to a Cavalier Party.  Pippa had so much fun meeting all the other Cavs (as did I!).  They really are the best natured dogs.

Here she is settling in to the day....getting used to seeing all the other dogs - she's amazingly a wee bit shy

Look at this!  Twins.  This other tri colour is called Matilda.  Lovely dog.  She became my best friend and sat on my knee for strokes for ages.  So friendly.

And this beautiful ruby is called Saffie.  Her owner is 92 years old and has been showing dogs for years!  How amazing is that?  She also knows our breeder that we got Pippa from.
I literally fell in love with this lovely, lovely dog.  I wanted to take her home.

I really want a ruby friend for Pippa - and look, don't you think she suits it!  A ruby matches her eyebrows.  The boyfriend says when we move to a bigger house we can get another dog.

It was just the nicest day.  

We entered Pippa in the fancy dress costume with her kilt and she came fourth!  not bad.  

See the dog beside us - the other tri - it came as an actual Cavalier.  That deserved to win! It had a sword and everything.  And there was a King! Cute.  But some kids and their dogs in super hero outfits did! 

Look at her smile!  LOVE!

She just loved being on show.  So I've decided to get into showing her.  She is such a good pedigree and from such a good stock - her stud is regularly a First in shows so she's got the genes for it!

As you know we've started the obedience classes and then in a couple of weeks time we're going to start going to ringcraft classes and seeing how she gets on.  So hopefully next year we can start going to the shows.  There's the Kennel Club scotland one in August that we're going to go and spectate at and the Cavalier Show in October, which we're going to go along too as well.  Just to get a feel for it.  

We're both excited.  It will be good fun and as they say 'you always take the best dog home' and I know I definitely do!

Six Mile Cake

The boyfriend is training for the Great North run in september.  I promised him that when he made it to 6 miles I would bake him his favourite cake - Hummingbird Cake.  So I broke out the kitchen aid on Saturday afternoon and here are the results...

There's a lot of ingredients in a Hummingbird cake.

Pecans, walnuts, pineapples, mango, bananas, oranages, passionfruit - before you even get down to flour and eggs

It's not hard to make tho - everything just gets whisked up together.

A orange scented cream cheese frosting and you're done!

Tip:  I'd leave the passion fruit out next time.  It just goes a bit too crunchy during the bake.  I love passion fruit taste tho so the next time I might substitute with a tablespoon of passionfruit juice instead.

He's nearly ate it all.

I'll have to think what I make for him now for when he makes it round the 13.1 mile course in September?