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Portland peeps-

Love kittehs? Love shopping? Love belly dancing?

This Saturday is the annual Pretty Kitty Bazaar to benefit House of Dreams. Buy some fun things for yourself, your family or your furry kids and participate in the silent auction. Lots of vegan peeps turned out to donate goods for the auction and raffle, so there are loads of great things to be won and purchased!

I bet you never thought kitties could benefit from your love of exotic dancing, huh? Think again! The following Sunday, the 22nd, there will be a benefit cabaret show featuring belly dancing and other assorted gyrating goodness to benefit HOD. Admission is cheap so you can donate some extra bucks and enjoy a great show- come out and show your love!

Cold weather inspires comfort food. Given that my poorly adapted Portland body has been heading to work in 40 degree weather, comforting meals have been calling me.

Behold the classic soup and sammie combo:

Tomato soup with a panini-pressed sandwich. The sandwich is on Dave’s bread with one side smeared with a garlicky bean spread and the other with kalamata olive Tofutti cream cheese, with grilled eggplant and zucchini in the middle (from Trader Joe’s).

Here is my soup dilemma- I like really creamy tomato soup and haven’t been able to make it really creamy and not resembling the flavor and consistency of tomato sauce. Recipes/ideas/help?

My ladies like to assist in the dinnertime routine.

Always proper, Bindhi coaches me on my table etiquette.

Josie supervises in a DOT foreman kind of way- gazing out the window and ignoring me, but everything must pass her smell test.

Hey there! You may notice a new face on the banner above. Let me intoduce Josaphina Sophia Holechek or, as we call her, Josie.

Yes, she is named after Josie and the Pussycats, but the comic that was interspersed in the Archie comics of the 1960s, not the cartoon or the silly movie and pop culture junk of recent years.

I found Josie about a month ago behind my work, emaciated and lonely. You could feel her bones protruding through her skin and she was yelling her little head off. Thanks to a quick-acting friend, we were able to get her fed and in a cat carrier in a matter of minutes and then she was off to the vet and home with me. Now she’s a healthy weight and settling into our house pretty well. The other cats are still adjusting, but thankfully Josie is very laid-back. If you’re going to have four cats, she’s the kind to have. She enjoys being close to us, such as in the same room or on the couch, but she’s not needy and she likes to give moderate affection. Good qualities when you’re dividing your attention four ways.

This is what we affectionately refer to as “the happy look of death”. Even when she’s extremely happy her face doesn’t really reflect it. But she’s definitely making herself at home.

I swear I will post about food soon.

Oh, and my book is officially out now, for real. So yeah, go bake some stuff.

It’s hot.

It’s very hot.

I’m not going to complain, though. Our weather has volleyed between 65 degree highs and 95 degrees highs, rather bipolar. And when it was cooler, I was very loudly unhappy about it not feeling like summer. Something out there must have heard me, because here we are.

The heat has some benefits, though, one of which being ripe fruit. My canning kick has continued… and continued… and I’m onto my ninth variety of jam! I’m going to try to take a break until fall, when I’ll start in on the butters (apple butter, pear butter and pumpkin butter). So far, one of the funnest parts of making jam has been gathering the fruit, meaning field trips to pick it.

My friend Sandy and I recently went blueberry picking, which was quite fun and scenic.

I picked about 13 lbs. for jam and freezing. Well, and eating too, of course.

After filling our buckets with blueberries, we moved onto marionberries.

We met a cute little friend along the way. He was about the size of a half-dollar.

This little guy was living the good life at the large, bountiful farm we were picking at, hanging out in the shade on a very hot, bright day. Smart little dude…

Later that weekend, while raspberry picking with Amy and our trusty sidekicks, Jim and Tim, we came across these hornets. I think they were sleeping in, which was fine by me.

After making loads more jam as well as freezing bags of berries, I decided to do something I don’t really do very often, which is bake with fruit. Sure, I toss handfuls of frozen berries into muffins, but rarely do I bake something where fruit is the centerpiece. I just love it so much on it’s own, I don’t normally see any reason to mess with it.

This particular recipe called for plums and blueberries. I veganized it using vanilla soy yogurt for the eggs.

I love upside down cakes because they are such a lovely surprise. For this cake, I used spelt flour, which is my new grain addiction.

After it cooled, I flipped it over. Notice the classy texture from the bottom of my springform pan. Nice…

The hard thing about upside down cakes is determining when they are done. I baked this cake for 10 minutes longer than the recipe said and it was still underdone in the middle. It certainly didn’t keep us from eating it, though.

With all this canning and baking, however, I’m not doing a very good job of keeping our house cool. Jim and I always have the option of prancing around in our skivvies. There are other people who are not so lucky.

Here is Linus, trying to catch a breeze below the dining room window.

Bindhi assumed the “dead bug” position under the ceiling fan. Hey, we do what we can, right?