Cats Love Cantaloupe

Mom and I have been doing some major diet makeover in our kitchen lately. It's been on the to do list for quite some time but getting around to doing the to do list isn't always as easy as it sounds. A while back I bought the book Whole Foods And Healing Recipes by Ron Lagerquist. It gathered dust for about 5 months before I felt so bad about keeping it hidden away in the bedroom that I brought it out to re-read. By some miracle I was able to persuade mom to read it too and next thing I knew we were buying carrots, corn, and cantaloupe!

Now speaking of cantaloupe, we've been buying "herds of cantaloupe"(as Lagerquist says) each week for a dollar a piece at the roadside stand. Now mom is not convinced yet that we should juice the whole cantaloupe rind and all but did you know that is the most nutritious way to eat a cantaloupe? According to Lagerquist's research, cantaloupe(rind and all) are high in vitamin A and C, myoinositol, and a large amount of digestive enzymes. They are also good for weight loss and in fighting off certain types of cancer!

Learning some of these fascinating facts on cantaloupe has been enough to keep me interested in eating it for breakfast...but the rinds? A few year back(honestly it was like 13 years back) we realized that our cat Mimi LOVES cantaloupe! We found it funny so we tried feeding her all sorts of fruits and veggies. She didn't really catch on to the vegan concept. We did have another cat that liked peaches and pineapple, and our cat Amy tasted Dr. Pepper once...um that's another story though. So, back to the rinds. Last year I had too many cantaloupe in the garden and they were starting to rot so I took little old Mimi out there and showed her where to harvest and she just dug those fanged teeth right into the rind and began eating. So the cat knows what's good for her and she's not going to let the taste of a tough cantaloupe rind get in the way of her raw food consumption! So take a lesson from my cat and eat your rinds.

Well so far each morning I'm still throwing the rinds out the back door hoping to hit the compost bucket and occasionally I'll throw one toward the cat. And if one of these mornings you catch me gnawing on cantaloupe rind...don't raise your eyebrows at me, I'm just trying to follow Mimi's good example.

A long day in the life of me.

I didn't feel like doing anything today, not sure what's up with that. When lack of motivation strikes what is one to do? I woke at the reasonable time of 6:30 and hopped right out of bed. I made straight for the kitchen and juiced 9 carrots, a huge beet greens and all, 3 stalks of celery, 5 small cucumbers, half of a yellow pepper, and an apple. With a breakfast like that I should have felt ready for the long day of hard work that lay ahead(and for those of you who are wondering if I drank all that juice by myself, no I did not, I shared with dad and mom). Next I headed for the barn but somehow I ended up sitting in dad's office(which, by the way is in the opposite direction) when I should have been milking the goats. I did eventually make it out to the barn a half hour late. After coming back in and cleaning the kitchen the "blahs" hit. I was determined to go outside and get something done but since I was feeling uninspired I asked dad to assign me a job! He gave me a few things to do and it's a good thing they were quick and easy because half way into the first job I was BORED and it was hot. I followed with a few chores of my own choosing and gave them 100% of my half hearted effort. By 1 in the afternoon I was fed up so I showered and set up my sewing station to do some mending. I mended one skirt in about 10 minutes then got sidetracked by the fabric supply in the sewing room which proved to be somewhat productive since I was able to sort out a few things that needed to go away. I never found the dream piece of fabric to make a new dress from but I did manage to cover every surface in the living room with pieces of clothing and cloth.

Somehow in the middle of that I started thinking about FOOD! Homemade bread and nutty crackers, yum! Last time I had thought to make bread I could not find my favorite recipe but I was pretty certain I knew where to find the cracker recipe. So I abandoned the sewing machine, the clothing scattered all over the place, and the boxes in the sewing room for the recipe shelf in the kitchen. To my delight I found both the bread and cracker recipe together! I set to digging out the grains, nuts, and seeds that make the yummiest bread and crackers.

Now as it's getting to be evening, the crackers are finished and the bread is rising. I still feel like a slug but at least sometime in the next hour I'll be a slug full of the yummiest bread ever. Then with the way I feel, perhaps I should take a nap...maybe I should have taken a nap this morning at 11 when the thought first crossed my mind...on the other hand would I have found my favorite bread recipe if I had taken a nap?...come to think of it, I can't take a nap(exasperated sigh), I have a big mess to clean up!