April 13, 2007: Pets, food, me

I bet you'll never guess what the topic of this blog is. There are three main topics:

1. my pets
2. food
3. me

I bet you're astounded! So, without further ado, here is Ms Dodo in her winter jacket. It was kind of cool for a few evenings so I put it on her at night.

It's muddy and disgusting out the front because it rained for weeks and weeks and weeks. Thankfully the last three days have been warm and sunny (yippee!). More rain for the coming week, though. Rats.
This next photo is Little One sniffing Sprout's bum. A most unsanitary and just plain GROSS activity, however it seems to be what cats and dogs do. (And three-quarters of Dodo in this photo, too!)

Our final pet photo of the day is of my five cats enjoying their breakfast. Yum, cat cookies! Crunchy, fishy, yucky, stinky little brown bites. Yech. (And peeling paint under the window...story of my life in this house. Oh, but you can see just a bit of the new floor. Nice, eh?)

And onto the much happier topic of people food. This was my lunch on Friday, followed by Angela's lunch:

We ate with Tilman, Daiyu's husband, who had just come back from another press conference. Tilman is a journalist for the GIO. The Taiwanese ultramarathon runner, Kevin Lin (林義傑) was being interviewed. He is ultra-amazing. He ran across the Sahara desert with two other men. Shall I type that again? He ran across the Sahara desert with two other men. They finished in March. 7500 km. 111 days. AMAZING! So he had to tell us all about the press conference and this man, Lin. Tilman had to go home and walk his dogs before going back to work so then Ang and I got into some real chit-chatting. Ang left and I waited for Daiyu to stop being busy as I was to teach her how to make scones that afternoon. It turned out that it wasn't just Daiyu, but one of her very good friends (who has a teahouse) and good friend's daughter. And a couple of staff who wanted to watch, too. Man, I hate being on display like this. If I am teaching someone I know, it's fine. Or, if I am hired to teach, that's ok. But when I got there the woman was all gushing over me--and I couldn't remember her. In fact, I helped her to translate her menu into English as a favour for Daiyu. She was way OTT: "It's so great that you know how to make scones, I just think you are so amazing, you're just wonderful [blahblahblah]" Hey, it is great to be appreciated, but it's like someone gushing about being able to make a toasted cheese sandwich, or a coffee: it's not that hard. I know that this is just the Taiwanese way of showing thanks and appreciation and normally it's not a problem. I think I just got an OD of publicity on Thursday and didn't want any more people watching my every move!! Grrrrr!!
I would so NOT survive as a public person. I love being an anonymous 'voice' on a CD or on the airwaves.
Ok, bitching aside, it actually was fine. I told myself to stop being such a 'princess' and get on with it. I have made scones 8,000 times before, (at least!), using my standard recipe. My scone recipe has NO SUGAR. When the pastry chef tried a bite he had the same look on his face that I had the first time I tried (evil) sweet popcorn: it just isn't right!! I explained that these scones are best eaten with lots of jam, masses of whipped cream (Yes, yes, I heard you: you're asking about clotted cream. In Taiwan? Hahahahahahahahahahaha...gasp...so, where was I?) They are even better if you have on a straw hat with flowers, a large pot of piping hot tea, milk for the tea, your best friend and at least three hours. Well, we did without the hats (and flowers), best friends and some of the time. Everyone enjoyed at least one (and the pastry chef had two...with jam and cream.) Half of this batch had raisins, half had 'real' parmesan cheese added to them. I thought the cheesy ones were too salty--shouldn't have added any salt to the dough mixture. We made another batch, following a recipe kindly suggested by Treesparrow. This one had an egg, some milk and sugar in it. I liked the texture of these ones very much. As they already had a little sugar in them they could be enjoyed plain. The others prefered the first batch (the cream and jam gets 'em everytime.) Anyway...just wanted to explain what I wanted the scone recipes for. Oh, and no photos as my hands were covered in dough most of the time.
And now onto my last photo of the day and my newest hobby: I made all of these bracelets! The silvery one with purple beads I totally made: I put the metal loops together to make the chain (like making chain mail.) Cool, eh? I bought a few magazines, some tools and too many beads (greedy Amanda). It's fun to play with beads! And then I get to wear them and brag to all my friends.

Did I get it all? Pets, yup; food, uh-huh; me, oh yeah. Ok, that's it friendy, catch ya later!