Cats, Squash Boats, and Gardeny Things

Meet Jada, houseplant eater, super talker, loving sweetheart, black beauty:

September was the month of the cat at our place. When the cat isolation room at the shelter gets full, the officers appeal to volunteers to take some of the iso cats into foster care...just until they get better, in order to make room for new incoming cats. It runs the gamut, but many of the cats in the isolation room are not too sick; they just have mild upper respiratory infections. It's only a matter of giving them anti-biotics for a couple of weeks until their symptoms disappear, and they can return to the shelter for adoption.

Jada was nearly fully recovered when she came to stay with us. I had to relocate all my houseplants, because she loved munching on them...I bought her some wheat grass to nibble on instead. She was with us for 2 weeks, and then went back into the adoption room of the shelter. Man, it was difficult to bring her back to the shelter that day...but she's since been adopted to a good home. (yaay Jada!)

She must have been living with a colony of ferals at one time, because her ear is tipped in the way they do ferals after they have been spayed/neutered in TNR programs. She wasn't the least bit feral herself though.

Next up, meet Lucky: long, lean, athletic, elegant, as graceful as a gazelle, and super friendly (though he looks rather nonchalant in the photo).

Lucky's situation was pretty much the same as Jada's...he just needed to finish up his meds, as his symptoms had already disappeared. He's still with us...we're planning on adopting him, but we have to wait and see; his status is still pending.

And, this is our long-time family member, Cheeky. 

Cheeky, taking time out to smell the flowers

She's a Drumcondra kitty, because she was born in the Drumcondra neighborhood of Dublin, Ireland. We picked her up as a stray kitten on the busy Drumcondra Road back in 2003, while we were living nearby at the time.

Here's a yummy Sunday dinner (apologies for the dark photo):

I was inspired to try these "squash boats" a while ago, while reading Meeps' blog: Alien's Day Out: A Vegan in Seoul, South Korea.  She totally doesn't know it (probably), but I love her blog...it's full of  crazily delicious food. She even makes oatmeal look appetizing. 

Anyway, she had posted about these stuffed squash that she ate for lunch in a department store food court. Food courts around here are full of junk, so I was struck by how healthy and delicious these seemed for food court fare.

My take on it was roasted kabocha squash stuffed with roasted cauliflower, shallots, and yam--and  then topped with pumpkin seeds, cashews, and almonds that I caramelized in maple syrup. Fresh thyme and rosemary made perfect garnishes.

We ate it with beans from the garden, some homemade seitan, and our usual salad.

Vibrant kabocha boats:

September was a good month out in the garden too, and tomatoes finally came into season...

**OK, all you people who have been harvesting tomatoes since July can stop laughing now! :D**

In spite of the cool summer, I got a pretty sizeable tomato harvest. I got 3 good pulls all about 3 lbs- worth, so ~9 lbs all together:

The dark-colored cherries are "Black Cherry" variety. They are super sweet, but skins are on the tough side. The large slicers are "Peron" tomatoes...fairly prolific and have a mild sweetness, nice and juicy too. The romas are, well, romas...extremely prolific, fairly tasty and great for drying or sauces.

I kept the tomatoes under a ventilated poly-tunnel all summer, which kept temps about 10 degrees warmer than ambient. Had I not done this, I would have ended up with multitudes of green tomatoes.

Squash harvest was not so great...I got three mini-kabochas. The cool thing is that they grew orange, knobby scabs over areas that had been munched on by some critter. You can see a big orange scabby thing on the righthand-side squash:

Still waiting on three little eggplants that I have since moved into the sun room:

I was hoping to see these peppers go from yellow to red, but who am I kidding? That's not going to happen: the intensity/warmth of the sun has diminished too much by this time of year. Instead, we'll be eating these greeny/yellow peppers soon:

Here are my autumn greens busy growing under a winter-time poly tunnel:

Dahlias and sunflowers waited until Sept to bloom too:

Next up for the garden is planting some vetch in for a cover crop and putting in some Russian Red stiffneck garlic.

Ciao for now.