My First Home-Baked Bread

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to bake my own bread from scratch. It seemed like a wild and hard thing to do. Spoiler alert: it’s not. This project is also part of my goal to use cookbooks to try new recipes. This one comes from A Feast of Ice and Fire yet again. You’ve seen me cook for King’s Landing, dine in the South, and bake for The Wall. We are at The Wall yet again, cooking for the Night’s Watch. And yes, we’re making crusted white bread, just like they would eat. Two dreams coming true! All it took was a little bit of yeast. I would say the hardest part is kneading it out and keeping it non-sticky. Otherwise, it’s pretty simple: mix the ingredients, knead it out, let it rise, and bake!

Mar172016

Whole-Wheat Lemon “Cakes”

We’ve got another recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, A Feast of Ice and Fire. My last two (one from the Wall and one from the South) were great hits and this one brings us right to King’s Landing with a spin on Sansa’s favorite lemon cakes. However, my spin, as it usually is makes these a bit healthier. I used mostly whole-wheat flour to add some fiber and make it better for our blood sugar spiking as well as using a little less sugar and using mostly honey. These are delectable little bites of yum without all the guilt that normal lemon cakes would carry.

Feb132016

Whole-Wheat Medieval Honey Biscuits

I have continued my journey with the Ice and Fire cookbook (aka Game of Thrones for you tv-lubbers). Last time we dined at the Wall. Now we move to the South to Lord Caswell’s table. This recipe comes from A Clash of Kings. It’s been a lot of fun to try out different recipes, especially from this cookbook! This recipe is pretty easy to do. I’ve healthified it a little bit by using whole-wheat flour which increases the fiber and keeps your blood sugar from spiking like it would with white flour. I paired these as a dessert to the Healthy “Accidentally” Paleo Meatballs and they were a hit! This is an authentic medieval recipe, just altered to fit Hungry and Fit’s needs!

Jan102016

What Game of Thrones is Missing

The Greyjoys.

Recently, as I was driving through LA, I saw this apple TV banner. While I haven’t watched Game of Thrones since the end of the first season came out live, I’ve heard a lot about it from others. Since we read the books before the TV series was out, we were shocked to find out they were making a series in the first place. No one else knew what A Song of Ice and Fire was since it came out in the early 90s. I can’t imagine there were too many people out there that were more excited about this show than us.

Image source

Oct042012

Kitty Spotlight: Nymeria

Very connected with the name (although she doesn’t quite respond to it yet), Nymeria is wild, mischievous, and…well, adorable. She’s our baby girl, 3 months old! She’s younger than our other kitten, Misty, by a month. I actually have the two of them on my lap right now, and Nymeria is watching me as I type. A little too cute to handle, she gets really excited. You can read about when we first got them here. So let’s go over how she was around a month ago (though I feel we’ve had them forever) to how she is today.

Watching me type

So let’s start when we first got her. You can see the first picture I took of her below. She was wide-eyed, hyper, and ready for action (and still is)! She was very friendly, and while we were trying to decide on what kitten to get, she just jumped on my lap. Kind of a give away there. She loves to play, really loves to play. And if Misty is being too prissy to do so, she will sprint around the house, jumping up on the couch and cat tree then jumping off. We play a bit of tag then too, and hide and seek.

First day we got her, wide-eyed Nymeria

Nymeria playing hide and seek

One day I was looking for something in the very small desk drawer, and she hopped right in and laid comfortably

She is very mischievous and she knows when she’s doing something wrong because if we go near her during her crime, she will scamper away as quickly as possible. Nymeria loves to play with this black and white pen and we’ll find it on the ground when we come back or clamped in her tiny little jaws. She has the adorable little nature to her that will be apparent in her face, this baby-like innocence and curiosity. If we push her away from cuddling, she will come right back every single time. She’s also gotten into the habit of cleaning Misty a lot, licking her head and ears, sometimes with a bite to go with it if she’s feeling playful. You can see that below.

Tried out her Halloween outfit. She wasn’t pleased

Nymeria (true to her name) seemed born a hunter. Right from the start, she knew how to hunt and pounce. She had perfect form in her waiting-for-pounce mode and sprung at the exact moment. In fact, Misty didn’t even know how to pounce or play when she got to us, but by observing Nymeria, she does all the time now. Although she’s significantly smaller than Misty, she can do pretty well when they wrestle together. Nymeria is excellent at grabbing the toys we annoyingly dangle over her head and great at catching the toys we drag on the ground like animals. We just need to watch our toes.

Nymeria was not without her problems, though. Actually, she came to us with quite a few problems all at the tender age of two months old. She came with roundworm, a bacteria that affecting her pooping habits. She couldn’t really control it and it wasn’t very good. There were a lot of baths, a lot of scrubbing the carpet, and wiping butts. We kinda got used to it. We had to give her medicine every day which wasn’t fun (using a syringe to plunge the icky goo into her mouth). Then, she got a pretty bad cold, wheezing, sneezing, lots of big bogeys. And we could really tell she was sick. You know with kids, you can tell–her usual rascal self was not there, she slept most of the time, and never felt like eating. But we slowly got her back to health. She has the occasional sneeze now and then, but it’s cute.

An adorable sick Nymeria passed out with her cute shaved belly (from her spaying surgery)…we may or may not have wanted to shave it again just because it’s adorable

Yet, despite all her rambunctiousness, she’s extremely sweet and friendly, and would never purposely hurt anyone. Misty, time and time again, steals Nymeria’s food out of her bowl (before we catch her and reprimand her), and Nymeria doesn’t fight her, doesn’t growl (like Misty does), but simply waits until she can get her food again. She’s very patient and loving and would never hurt her sister, who I think in return would eat everything so Nymeria would have nothing. She has an amazing tolerance and easy-going nature which makes her never act aggressive. Nymeria is the ultimate cuddler, whether it be Chris or I or Misty, she will always initiate.

I would say her most distinguishing aspect (besides her adorable waddling bowleggedness) is that she kneads. I’m guessing she was taken from her mother very early and was thus unweaned. Never got used to not having mama’s milk since she didn’t have time to properly wean off it. So, if anyone lays on the couch, you can count up to 5 before you’ll have little black Nymeria paws on your chest. She will then curl into your neck, put both paws on your neck or arm, and knead them, like she’s trying to push milk out of mama. She does this all the time. In fact, right now she’s doing it to Misty on my lap, who definitely does not mind the massage.

Well, I wrote way too much, but I love my kitties. Nymeria is growing up great and healthy, can’t wait to see how she is all growed up. Keep an eye out for the next Kitty Spotlight!