trick or treat

Someone's been eating our jack-o'-lantern! Anna carved a pumpkin last week and put it outside our door on an upside-down flowerpot. It's a good carve job, not as toothy as I prefer, but not bad work for a non-native. Anyway, this morning Anna noticed that a few bites were missing around the mouth. At the top of the suspect list are the raccoons that hang around here at night, although I guess the squirrels could be potential perps, too. I think we'll continue to leave the pumpkin outside since I don't think we're attracting the animals, per se--there are pumpkins out all over town, and like I said, the squirrels and raccoons are around anyway. (I'll post a picture as soon as it stops raining outside.)

I don't have much to report on the cooking front. I've been working like mad and Anna is grading midterms and papers, and we both come home too drained to do much cooking. Sunday night I did manage to pull together a coconut curry (improvised) with cumin-scented sesame flatbread (Vegan Planet) and mango chutney (Trader Joe's).


The rest of the week so far has been Papa John's pizza (to PJ's credit, they do use rennet-free cheese), Tofurkey sandwiches, and Whole Foods pumpkin pie. :(

Toilet training continues. The litterbox is now completely gone and the girls are doing their business in the CitiKitty, which is a plastic tray mounted under the toilet seat. Keeping the CitiKitty and general toilet area clean is a ton of work right now, so I can understand why people get exasperated at this point and give up on the training. Still, the feel of cat litter in my sheets at night keeps me motivated to keep going.

Cuteness of the week: