Party time

The cats demanded a catnip party on Friday night.  It's been a while.  The cats broke into the catnip container (sealed and hidden) a couple of weeks ago, and we came home to find a large (expensive!) container of organic catnip spilled and spread all over.  I finally got around to replacing the catnip this week.  

We had an exciting mail week this week.  We had a small tax refund, so we replaced my dead blender and got L the dehydrator she's been wanting.  The large, empty cardboard boxes made the catnip party even more enjoyable, since they love playing in boxes.

L has already made her first batch of dried apples.  I prefer fruit as it is, but L really likes dried fruit.  It's a lot less expensive (and environmentally friendly) for her to slice and make her own rather than buying it for her.  I don't have any interest in drying fruit, but I do want to experiment with making fruit "leathers" and fruit "rollups" with the dehydrator.  I'm excited about drying and storing all of my own garden herbs/spices this year and drying and storing enough of our garden catnip that I don't have to purchase it mid-winter.  I'm also going to switch to making our kale chips in the dehydrator rather than the oven.

So far I'm happy with the new KitchenAid blender.  I've only made one batch of smoothies, but I did use all frozen fruit without thawing at all, just to test the motor's power.  It handled it with no problem.  I like the much larger carafe.  The real test will be when I make Tart Cherry Balls.  It was this recipe--specifically an unusually hard almond--that burned out the last blender.

Two of my favorite bedtime snacks are tart cherry balls and oat bites.  They are healthy and satisfy my raging sweet tooth.  Recipes can be found here:  Thrive's bedtime snacks. 

I got one other item in my Amazon order this week--a stainless steel straw.  I'm happy to replace my ever-present plastic straw with stainless.  The stainless steel stays very cold from the ice in my water, making every drink much colder than it is through plastics.