My favourite way of gathering kibbles is from this thing that the old woman built from toy bricks.
This is already the third version. It’s getting higher and today there are three things with moving parts.
This thing with the bits looking like wings took me ages to work out how to shift and she’s just added the crossbar but I think I’ll handle it. She leaves kibbles under the crossbar, or under the grey thing.
There are three sides … the front, the back and the top and I do them in that order. The front is my favourite.
The back is harder as the kibbles are always on the tiniest ledges where I need to grapple them from with my tongue.
The top is the highest it’s been yet, but not a problem. I can still reach with all four paws on the ground.
My Duplo puzzle board is my favourite kibble hunting ground!
Tonight, the first time ever, I finally understood what the old woman wanted me to do when she said, “Come on! Come on!” in that high voice she uses to encourage me to do something good.
Just recently she started watching Jackson Jupiter, or some such name, to get a few clues about what we were trying to do.
Training she calls it. I don’t see the use yet. But as I said today I played along. I came. I walked beside her and every four or five human paces she gave me a kibble and patted and stroked my back and said, “Good girl! Good girl!”
Whatever, you know? Just keep the kibbles coming. We went twice up and down the house and then I swung into the den, stood waiting for my supper. The other half of the kibbles that means.
How many days has it been that she gave me a kibble just for looking at her? About a month worth of days.
Anyway, the training is worth it from my end. I just picked up 24 more kibbles than if I’d been stubborn and ignored her entreaties.
This is me on a day when it is sweltering outside and we have the aircon going inside.
Usually I can convince the old woman to turn off the TV by about 8.30, for a game or ten involving me getting kibbles for prizes.
We’ve given up on the eggbox, I’m happy to say. Yesterday she tied that horrible furry snake onto the end of a red wheeled thing that she dragged behind her, trying to get me to follow it and get the kibbles loaded onto the tray.
I soon showed her what I thought about that game …
So that night ended with her, after much cajoling, offering me kibbles by ones and twos first on her bare feet (not so scary) then on her knees, then on her hands (scary!) Though I did manage to eat more than half my bedtime snack.
Today was completely disrupted. The two wild human young came while their owner went shopping. The old woman spread the craft sheet over the floor and everybody cut things, glued, taped, then they went to the sink and floated a boat. All this while I hid under the couch.
After their owner fetched the young humans, the old woman tidied the room and rolled up the craft sheet. She’s always saying things like … Now then Moggy-mine, what mystery will we work on today?
Today she hid seven kibbles in the rolled up craft sheet. And after I found them she put in another lot. I don’t mind this game … I think it can lead to greater things. Imagine if she hid a handful?
(This is 29 seconds of me finding eight or ten kibbles. Ttoo long for you?)
We’re both sitting on the couch now waiting for the bedtime alarm. Well, she shuts me in the den then, whatever she does for the nect hour.
Now that I’ve proven that I know how to play, the old woman is constantly thinking up new games. My favorite one so far is hunting kibbles.
Round about her lunchtime she’ll wander around with a small handful of kibbles and drops them tinkling into the various little plates and bowls she has hidden around the unit.
I know she means me to listen for the sound of them hitting the china but why would I? I just watch her bending over here and there to pour them from only a little height.
Then … this afternoon … she totally tricked me! We had a parcel delivery this morning that came in a cardboard box. After unpacking it, she set it in the living room.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Find out what’s in it. You should be able to smell them.”
First I just walked past it. It smelled new. Cardboardy. After her lunch I walked past it again. Hmph, still new and cardboardy.
By mid afternoon I’d worked it out though I continued lying around. A box with flappy bits—like that—seems like they’ll jump up and get me if I try to jump in between them.
The old woman weakened and lay the box on its side. That’s when I made my move …
So called in my birth family. A wedding present to my parents, it’s been in use, mostly, for more than three quarters of a century. I may have had it sitting decoratively on a shelf for a few years but is now back in almost daily use.
And still going strong, though the enamel is a bit worn at the edges. I trust this eroding enamel on cast iron a lot more than eroding teflon and modern stone wear.
I do stir fries in it, and also fry-ups which are a more elemental and robust fare than the meticulously sliced and diced former dish.
For a fry-up I like to start with a tablespoon of oil. Throw in roughly diced cooked chicken, precooked sausage or other meat, about a tablespoon’s worth per person. Fry till meat starts to get brown. Add in about the same amount of diced capsicum. Give the mass a bit of a stir.
People not on a low FODMAP diet might’ve started with onion and garlic. But next in for me are a few tablespoons of cooked rice, or cooked pasta, or a root vegetable. I’ll hold back the carbohydrates if I’m having this on toast.
Pile the pan full of washed and dried green leaves … I use half a bag of prewashed three leaf salad from the supermarket … and stir to melt down. Break an egg over the pan and half stir that goodness in too. ( Yes! Discard the eggshell!)
Empty into a bowl or on toast on a plate. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!
The ‘Dikke Koek’ of the title is something else entirely. if you know any Dutch or Afrikaans you’ll know already that Dikke means thick or fat, and koek means cake.
If you were going to say koek means biscuit or cookie … they are brothers and sisters of the same ilk. Baked goeds. Koek.
Dikke koek was a favourite birthday dinner dessert.
The savoury part of such a dinner often consisted of capucijners—in English known as marrowfats or grey peas—with bacon/spek, a green salad, fried potatoes and appelmoes (smashed apples). Yum!
You’d hardly think that after a first course as sturdy as that, anyone would still be able to fit in a serve of dikke koek met cinnamon sauce! But, you know, teenagers? They have hollow legs.
In the years when these birthday meals were cooked there would often be three teenagers at the table, plus an equal number of slightly younger kids.
Dikke koek is an old recipe—I’ll be very surprised to learn whether people in the Netherlands still eat it. Its formal name in the cookbook we get it from (published in 1939) is ‘broeder’… Why? A mystery to me.
The cookbook was my mother’s home economics textbook in secondary school.
This poor burnt result my latest experiment with marinades and tofu. Although I think the major part of the problem was inattention, as in me trying to do too many things at the same time. Tonight, like, in about five minutes, I’m having another go at this recipe.
Rita de Heer 