A Cookie in Every Pot, And a New Calendar

This pot being a one-gallon pot, I now know that Cookie’s total volume is just about one gallon of tortoiseshell ingenuity.

Cookie napped in the cooking pot on this day in 2010 and was the September feature photo in my 2013 calendar In the Kitchen With Cookie.

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Here’s a tasty meal to make on a September Saturday that will last you through the winter!

As the months in this year’s calendars come to the end, I’m working on next year’s calendars! I’m expanding In the Kitchen With Cookie to a larger size wall style calendar, still coil-bound. It will include all new seasonal recipes and also notes on the garden and backyard wildlife habitats as part of good home cooking and living green with your cats and other pets. Photos will include the supervision of a certain tortie cat in garden and kitchen as well as the originals from the 2013 calendar. This year’s recipes will be included in the back of the calendar.

Mimi and I remember Cookie in the garden where she loved to nap and supervise me. I’m so glad Cookie passed her kitchen and garden wisdom along to Mimi so that I never go without guidance, and never lack for a friend. So now while the harvest is plentiful and possibly you are having your first cool days too, get the pot simmering and get your vegetables together, and make sure you have adequate feline supervision!

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Cookie continues her series of poses as Domestic Goddess (in addition to being “The Goddess”) by curling up in one of my enamel cooking pots. This time I had no garnish for her; though I would have been glad for a few carrots and stalks of celery, they’d already gone into another pot of soup. I may get some and leave the pot where it is in the hope that she’ll do it again.

This pot being a one-gallon pot, I now know that Cookie’s total volume is just about one gallon of tortoiseshell ingenuity.

She is intelligent and self-aware, curious and inventive yet feigns humility, and this habit of crawling into kitchen items has always seemed to be a thinly veiled bid for a photo op. Until recently, she hated having her photo taken, and to my dismay would look away from me at the last minute as I tried to capture her many expressions. Her objection may have only been that she wanted to choose her venue and pose. She’s been very ostentatious about these kitchen poses, pausing to look directly at me, then arranging herself just so.

This is the second in a series, the first being “Cookie in the Pasta Bowl”. My kitchen has no lack of things to get into—safely, of course—the room being very small, and at this time of the year I’m cooking a lot because vegetables are ripe and ready for soups and such. I’ve brought all my extra pots and baskets and mixing bowls out from storage and they are everywhere. But even without all these extra props I’ve found Cookie curled up in the basket with the tomatoes, curled up on my dinner plate while I’m cooking dinner, and curled up next to a rustic loaf of bread on the bread board in imitation of its shape and color.

I don’t know how Cookie managed to tuck herself into some of the places she chose. Remember, this is from two years ago when Cookie was 18, and she’d always had difficulty walking and climbing, yet stepping into an one-gallon enamel pot, having a bath and curling up for a nap were not a problem. I had to take a second look when I’d walk in the kitchen and out of the corner of my eye see Cookie’s tortoiseshell fur somewhere it, well, normally wouldn’t be—I certainly can’t say “where it shouldn’t be” because it apparently very well should be where it was because Cookie put herself there.

I am happily designing away at a calendar of “In the Kitchen With Cookie” for your kitchen, so visit the series “In the Kitchen With Cookie” to see other images I’ll include.

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September In the Kitchen With Cookie…

A Cookie in Every Pot

RECIPE: ALL-DAY VEGETABLE SOUP

This is intended to make a large pot to cook all day and to put a lot of it in the freezer for winter. A big pot of soup simmered all day cooks gentler so the goodness is coaxed out of the vegetables, and each vegetable manages to maintain its flavor and texture slow pressure of gentle heat. I use my canning pot that holds four gallons of liquid, boil two gallons of stock or plain water, reduce to simmer. Add two cups of dried beans and, to taste, garlic, onion, celery, plus three pounds chopped tomatoes, four cups each chopped carrots, potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, green and/or yellow beans snapped in 1-inch sections, chopped cabbage, fresh corn kernels from four ears of corn, fresh peas, anything else you have on hand like turnips, parsnips or other root crops, brussels sprouts, collard greens, kale, mustard. Add chopped vegetables one by one, beginning with the firmest, and ending with the greens. Simmer at least two hours past the last vegetable added. Add chopped fresh parsley, tarragon, thyme, simmer one half hour more. Let sit, covered, for about an hour. Eat several bowls. Cool completely, pack in freezer containers and enjoy on a snowy January day.

Not this weekend, but definitely next! I late summer/early autumn and harvest time, and it’s time for this pot of soup. No one else ever curls up in my pots and pans and pasta bowls…Cookie was one in a million. Remembering Cookie with a big smile.

And as a bonus, here’s the pot of soup!

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Here’s the two-page spread for September 2013:

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Read more about “In the Kitchen With Cookie”
and “Compositions in Black and Green”

Click the image of the calendars to go to my “calendars” page to read more about each one including what photos are featured on each page and, for In the Kitchen With Cookie, which recipe is featured. I’ve provided a book-flip slideshow so you can browse the pages too.

Both calendars are $5.00 each plus shipping. I’d love to know my cats were in your home! Well, virtually, at least!

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Browse some rescued cats and kittens!

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Inspired by felines you know! Visit Portraits of Animals on Etsy.

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