This week in veganeats

I didn't go out anywhere.

The yogurts are done. I got rid of a couple more mac and cheeses. There's still a ton of those soup packets, though.

It's been Lazy Cooking for One week. I mostly had...

* penne with tomato sauce made with tons of mushrooms (Fernando's not a mushroom fan, so I'm taking advantage while he's gone)

* rice and fried mushrooms

* cabbage (I have a bag of chopped cabbage from when I was making dragon bowls)

* strawberries and "whipped cream" (from the uncheese cookbook - menoum!)

* raspberry walnut pancakes (Dolce Vegan) with the rest of the uncream-cream (menoum menoum!)

* chickpea-seaweed sandwiches (Vegan with a Vengeance) (menoum! didn't make enough, had to make a second batch)

* cocoa & soy milk

* homemade granola (Dolce Vegan)

But now I'm running out bread and milk. Haven't been to the grocery store. Locked in my home, alternating between doing the things I need to do, and procrastinating from them.

Speaking of procrastinating... BYE!

This week in cats: mac pics

The camera is still away with the vacationing husband. (Not really vacationing since he's helping his sister with her three children.) So I can only get pics of the kitties using my laptop. (I don't even have a cell phone.)

Since kitties, like Jedis, value having the high ground I'm trying an experiment. I moved Haley's Coussin de pouvoir to a lower spot, and Minion's Trône des jouets to a higher spot. Minion always kicks Haley off the Coussin, because she has her topcat status to maintain. But she actually prefers to sit in her toybox-snuggy. So if the snuggy-toybox is higher, will she let Haley sit on the Coussin? We shall see. It worked the first time, last night. 

...Though as soon as I woke Minion up with my noises, she came out of her box and teased Haley.

- Minion...

- What?

She comes over to my computer: "What? What?"

"Is it finger time? You type too much."

Random Haley Beauteousness

Minion Jungletude

Unusually pensive: "This is the mother's new corner. Not sure I like it. I will now throw this pencil on the floor in disgust."

The usual kitty-yoga

"It's mah move."

 With the springy weather I try to leave the window open for the cats (at least until the baby birds are born. The ones the will inevitably practice flying to our balcony.) Sometimes instead of going outside, Minion just leans out and watches the world go by.

Ever since I rearranged the book cases and cleaned up the cabling, the tops of all the shelves have been cleared for Haley. She now has four places to sit. Minion always tries to root her out (even though Minion gets bored up there and soon comes down), so I try to distract Minion with toys, and Haley watches us play.

And that, folks, was the week in cats! These new coworkers of mine are awesome.

This week in French: new words entering head

I look up so many new words in the book I'm reading, or for the show I watch etc., that I was afraid I wouldn't retain any of them. Except moumoune (which means sort of wimpy, baby-lala), and boulot (a more casual word for job or work.) And joufflu (chubby).

But just now I was reading my new Châtelaine subscription and there were three of my new words on one way. Fredonner = humming. Boucle = which I knew, but in the specific context of playing music in a loop. And tripes=which is "tripe" in English too, but in French when something's coming from "les tripes" or affects you in "les tripes" it's (to quote my Larousse) "in the seat of your emotions, your convictions." The guts, I guess, but less gross.

So the words, they are entering the head. This is giving the encouragement.

rock meeeee amadeus!

Amadeus has been playing in French lately and I like watching it while I do other things, cause I already know it so well in English.

I just learned that the original performance was with Paul Scofield as Salieri (wow!) and Simon Callow as Mozart (wow!) How great that must have been!

And someone's posted a clip from the Scofield perfomance!



 I wonder if this is still available:



(Simon Callow plays the friend who commissions the Magic Flute in the movie.

And then the next production was with Ian McKellan as Salieri (wow!) and Tim Curry as Mozart (wow!)



This is one of those productions I'd love to see two great women actors play, because it invites such great pairings of The Great Shakespearean Actor and Someone Young & Frothy.

And I didn't know there was a Making Of the movie. Oh goodie... more procrastinating. <-- She said in a sad tone. Hapoo.

BRB

 

Taking an offline day today. Or two. See you soonz!

Mon dictionnaire est arrivé! (A story in pictures)

 

 

Click on the picture for more details. I got it from Staples/Bureau en Gros, free shipping.

Merci to Le Père and La Belle-mère for helping me buy my leetle early birthday prezzie!

(This time adding "le" to the front of "père" is not even silliness. It's one of my favorite things in old fashioned Québecois that you always hear in the historical TV series. "Hey le père!")

Cette semaine en: Friendship - the Super Banane Edition

Someone's online pic of Super Pickle

I spent Saturday with my high school friend Super Banana. She only came to my school in the last year, and I instantly liked her, she was had a strong like of the Weird. And we were both big Phantom of the Opera fans. When my other friends were suffering through optional science courses, she and I took the optional drama course together and had a ball. I had two dolls, a pickle with a cape, and a banana with a cape, and that's how she came to be Super Banana, and I Super Pickle.

She was my Token Francophone Friend. (Not by choice, there's just a hella lotta Anglophones out my way.) Her family is actually Belgian, but Banana did live in France for a few years, and her parents have been living there the last several years. Her father passed away a few months, so her mother's there now, cleaning up all the paperwork. :-(  I've always liked Banana's family, they're really warm and outgoing, easy to talk to. I saw her brother several years ago, and he was as fun as ever to talk to (flighty, but charming and handsome guy), and this time her little sister was there with her little girl. Banana and her niece are madly in love with each other.

I also got to practice my French a lot! Banana and I didn't speak French the whole time, but I tried to speak French more often than I usually do; and whereas she usually defaults to English much more for my sake, she mostly stayed in French mode. Yays! It was great.


We ate at Yuan, one of those nice places that serves analog vegetarian meats, Asian style. We shared a tofu dish, and a "chicken" dish. Almost everything there is vegan. I liked their green tea better than any I've ever had, it was less sharp. And they had a vegan dessert! A rice based molded thing, it was yummy.

We also went to X20 cause Banana needed new Doc Martens. She was getting regular ones, but there were also all the fun boots and shoes to look at...

These were my faves. They look plain, but in life the glossy gray looks woo-woo! I don't remember if they were patented leather or fake, though. But there were a lot of cloth boots that a vegan could buy.