Muffin Tin Monday -- Yellow

Today's Muffin Tin Monday theme was the colour yellow. I considered skipping muffin tins because of this since, instead of going to the grocery store this morning (where we could've picked up some yellow foods) we played outside in the absolutely gorgeous March weather.

So a yellow muffin tin, knowing that I didn't have any bananas or yellow peppers in the house (the two yellow items Austin thought of when we talked about it on the weekend) was going to be a challenge. And eggs are out of the question, because Austin doesn't like them and Alex will only eat them if she's mooching what I'm eating.

But the kids were all excited to do a muffin tin today, so I couldn't say no. And, I even surprised myself at how well we did filling up a yellow tin without having to break out the food colouring.

We have leftover chocolate chip pancakes (I know, a little more golden brown than yellow, but work with me here) which the kids surprisingly didn't realize were missing syrup, corn, shredded mozzarella cheese, yellow Smarties, pineapple pieces and Swiss Cheese crackers.

I've learned two interesting lessons since I started doing muffin tin lunches on a regular basis.

1) The kids absolutely love the idea. Who knew that putting plain old food in a muffin tin instead of on a plate could be so exciting?

2) Both kids, but especially Austin, is more willing to eat something simply because it's in a muffin tin. Case and point, that Swiss Cheese cracker in today's tin. When I pulled the box out of the cupboard, Austin said to me -- "I don't like those, so only give me one and then I'll eat it quick." If I tried to put one of those crackers on a plate with some cheese for him, he would loudly complain that he didn't like them. The irony here is, not only did he eat the cracker 'quickly' he then informed me that he likes them now and wanted more.

Maybe I should try to put eggs in their muffin tins afterall.

Check out other muffin tin lunches:

Another year, another birthday cake creation

It was no Mickey Mouse cake like last year, but I think it was still a pretty cool creation.

For Austin's birthday party this year, I baked ice cream cone cupcakes -- that is cupcakes in ice cream cones.

The idea came from a cake recipe I came across -- although I ended up just taking the idea and using a cake mix. And a good thing I did, because I had to make them twice. Because I discovered that unlike regular cupcakes, which just rise and rise and rise when you bake them -- these rose until they overflowed and spilled down the side of the cones. So batch number one sort of, um, exploded in the oven. (I wish I'd thought to take a picture of the mutant ones.)

So, it was off to the grocery store for another cake mix, more cones and trial number two.

This time, I was smarter -- I baked just three cupcake cones, filled to three different heights to test how much (or how little) I needed to fill each one before they exploded. Turns out you don't need to fill them that much at all. Who knew?

So test run done, I baked up the rest and whipped up some chocolate and buttercream icing (for chocolate and vanilla ice cream, of course). I then used the biggest piping tip in the set I bought earlier in the week (yup, I actually bought a piping set) to pipe in the icing to look like ice cream.

I think they turned out pretty cool. And, aside from the exploded first batch, they weren't that hard to make.

And they were a hit with the critics.

Although not surprisingly, I was left with only vanilla ones...the chocolate ones were gobbled up.

Muffin Tin Monday - Orange

It's Muffin Tin Monday again and today's theme is orange -- something Austin was really excited about because he's been wanting to do a colour-themed lunch for awhile.

So on and off all morning we talked about what we were going to make for lunch, and what orange foods we could include. Here's what we came up with:

Cooked carrots with maple syrup on them (because that's the ony way Austin will eat them ), dried apricots, orange M&Ms (because there are a lot of M&Ms in the house right now as Alex gets them as potty treats), orange slices (which neither kid touched), cheese and peanut butter with peach jam.

Notice a pattern with my muffin tin lunches; they pretty much always include peanut butter and jam -- that's because, according to Austin, lunch isn't lunch without peanut butter. In this case, he spent 15 mintues trying to convince me that peanut butter was actually orange and not brown! I conceded when he agreed to put peach jam on top!

Check out other muffin tin lunches here.

When your home office is in the family room...

...sometimes the view from your workspace looks like this.
'Tis the life of a stay-at-home/work-from-home mom.

Goodbye Ollie

My cat died yesterday. And as much as I complained that he was a dumb pain in the ass, I loved him. And today, all I feel is sad -- sad when I think about it, sad when I see his half-eaten breakfast still in the bowl on the floor; sad when out of the corner of my eye, I think the blanket is him on the couch.

There's no doubt he was a pain in the ass and a grumpy, grumpy, grumpy old man. He was only 10, yet hit the grumpy old man stage by about age 2. A friend who cat sat several times in his earlier years told me that the first time she looked after him while we were away, she thought he was an old cat I had moved with me from my parents house-- not a close-to-kitten-age cat.

Yes, he was that grumpy.

He liked me. He didn't overly like anyone else. Not that he was mean or aggressive towards anyone else, he basically just didn't want to be around people. That is, unless someone was going to feed him -- then said person was his best friend until he got fed, then he went back to normal aloof self.

Since it started out just me and Ollie in Peterborough, he grew to accept Ryan after a few years and eventually he tolerated the kids. By tolerated I mean that he would get up and quietly leave the room any time a child walked in and yelled 'cat!'. He'd leave at a slightly quicker pace if same said kid was chasing him as he made his escape.

He had a little 'problem' as many of you know, a problem that we lived with. In hindsight, I don't know why we lived with it for so many years but we did. We did because we didn't want to put him down. But it came to that on Saturday. He had gotten aggressive over the last month or so -- beating the crap out of Chloe, our other cat. Without doing any tests, the vet said at the very least he had a chemical imbalance and she even suspected he had a brain tumour. In short, there was nothing more she could do for him.

I remember when I first got Ollie. He was about six months old and I picked him up from a farm family. He was supposed to be a barn cat but didn't like living outside so would sneak into the house and sleep on the couch. And, as the family didn't want cats in their house, they decided to give him away.

It was January, 2000 and it was cold. And when I brought him home, the tip of his tail was frostbitten. A few days later -- that tip fell off. And freaked me out. I called Ryan to ask him what to do (figuring he had cats all his life and I didn't) and his only response to me was 'cats tails aren't supposed to fall off'.

So I called one of those 24-hour emergency vet lines. And told the on-call vet what happened. He said to me: 'is it oozing?' I said no. 'Is it bleeding?' I said no. 'Is there bone exposed?' I said no. 'Is he bothered by it?' I said no, but I am!

There was nothing anyone could do for his tail and over time, his fur grew longer in that area to cover the exposed blunt end of his tail, making it so you'd never know by looking at him that a two-inch piece of tail had fallen off.

And one thing's for sure. I'll likely never have another cat whose tail falls off!

Goodbye Ollie. You drove us crazy, but you will be missed.

Still stuck between a rock and a hard place

Over a year ago, I wrote about my cat Ollie and about how we didn't know what we were going to do with him. Yes, a year has gone by -- but not exactly a year of indecision.

When Ryan and I could never make the time to talk about what to do with him, we realized that we didn't want to talk about it and that in itself was a decison. So we went with that, and lived with Ollie's little 'problem'.

And for awhile he got better again, and then not so much, and then better again. He seemed to go through cycles -- we'd have good months and bad months. And since Ryan and I weren't willing to discuss the elephant in the room, we lived with it.

Until about a month ago, when Ollie started to repeatedly beat the crap out of our other cat, Chloe for no particular reason other than she'd walk into the room he was in.

We didn't even notice it was happening at first because ever since we got Chloe (7 years ago) from time to time the two of them would beat the crap out of each other. Something brothers and sisters have to do every now and then.

But then it started happening every day. Then twice a day. Then three times a day. It was becoming unbearable.

And that's when I realized that every fight was now in the master bedroom. And every fight was now started because Ollie walked into the bedroom. This got me thinking about the last week or so and I realized that Chloe hadn't come for dinner in a few days. And I had found 'business' in a corner of the bedroom, but had assume it was Ollie's doing.

But no. Chloe was now too terrified to roam the house -- for fear of being beaten up -- and had set up a safe haven for herself in the master bedroom. And she wasn't leaving for any reason. Not to eat, not to pee, not for anything.

I promptly brought her food and water into the room, put a litter box in the closet (yuk, but better than her doing what she needed to do on the floor) and called the vet with a plea for help.

Our vet is a wonderful person, who is very understanding. First thing first, she told us to separate Ollie from Chloe. So he now lives in the spare room and she's free to roam the house. Except, she's still too scared to emerge from the bedroom for more than a few minutes at a time.

Our vet offered to do a few exploratory tests on Ollie to see if there's anything going on that's causing his aggression. We agreed, but I was honest with her, and with myself, and told her we don't know how much more we want to do.

I love my cat -- he has been my companion for many years -- but I think it might just be time to put him down. (There, I said it.)

We can't keep living like this.

Go Canada Go for Muffin Tin Monday

There was no scheduled theme for this week's Muffin Tin Monday so I decided to go with an Olympic theme. We've been talking about the Olympics a lot around here lately (mainly because the kids will realize that for the last two weeks of February, I will likely have the TV on almost all the time -- and I never have the TV on during the day).

Last week, we learned about some of the Olympic sports and how all the athletes are trying to win medals for their country (which led to a discussion about Canada and the tracking down of the Canada Day flags from boxes in the basement so the kids could wave them around). So, in honour of cheering for Canada -- we spelled Canada in our muffin tin at today's lunch.

We have a peanut butter and jam C, a cheese A, a cucumber N, a pickle A, a peanut butter and jam D and a deli meat A.

See more Muffin Tin Monday lunches over at Muffin Tin Mom. (And bring on the Olympic couch surfing!)