Category Archives: Cats & Dogs

Jarradale Pumpkin

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Pumpkin, squash, and sweet potatoes definitely top the list when it comes to cat favorites. Kallie turns into a little green monster when we pull out the pumpkin. Niko scored this snack by herself when Kallie was too busy sleeping. Lucky girl!

The jarradale (blue) pumpkin is my favorite variety of pumpkin (well, of the varieties I’ve tasted, anyway). It has super dark-orange flesh, and makes wonderful breads and pumpkin sauces. My uncle grows many acres of pumpkins each year for his October Pumpkin & Hayride event at The Eveland Family Farm. We came back from the Twin Cities a few weekends ago with sooo many pumpkins and squashes… and my mom is bringing more next weekend! I’ll be bringing a lot of them to The Food Co-op to sell, and hopefully building up enough energy to freeze what’s left.

Mmmmm…

T-shirt Cat

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Here’s Kallie, sporting her little Flash Dance-style dress. She was spayed in early October, and two weeks later her scar became infected, and she wouldn’t stop licking it. I heard about the t-shirt idea, and it worked like a charm – she couldn’t lick any more, and the infection completely cleared up after a day. Saved us a trip to the vet. She’s mostly healed up by now (this picture is from a while ago).

It has been pretty busy around here. My website business just keeps growing – that’s a good thing! We are coming up on the busiest time of the year at the co-op, so I’m preparing for that as well. For the past few months, the co-op has been consistently seeing its highest month in sales – ever… I can’t imagine what November and December (our two busiest months, historically) are going to look like this year.

In my wee freetime I’ve been doing lots of crafty stuff. I’ve finally figured out votive candles (they are not as easy to make as one would think), so that’s been kind of fun. I’ve got a couple of big crochet projects. And yesterday I made this nifty little thing:

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… I think we’re heading out to a larger town with a nice fabric store today. I have some things in mind for Christmas presents. I found the shiny blue fabric on the cat house at JoAnn’s in Willmar for $1/yard (!!!) a while back – I’m kicking myself for not buying more of it now.

Raw Kohlrabi

Niko likes kohlrabi

The dogs get super excited about raw vegetables. Their favorites are the brassicas – especially broccoli and kohlrabi. Last night we cut up an old kohlrabi bulb for the boys, and Niko came running to check out all the fuss.

Not wanting her to feel left out, I cut up a small chunk into bite-sized pices. She couldn’t get enough! She quickly ate all of her pieces and begged for more. Here she is, licking the skin.

The other month Niko ate some burdock root that Chris harvested from Clare’s house… I thought that was just because it had been cooked up in soy sauce, but maybe she’s into crunchy vegetables. Curious cat.

Wild Wood Organics

Wild Wood Soy Yogurt

Recently I mentioned WholeSoy yogurt, just a couple days before the company had a number of products recalled because they may have contained dairy.

I have more contempt for the dairy industry than I do for the beef industy, which makes me shudder every time I see a soy product marketed as “Vegan” that is owned by the dairy industry or manufactured alongside a dairy industry product.

Given vegan standards (and taste too!), Wild Wood Organics wins the coin flip for soy yogurt. Their website boasts:

Wildwood Soyogurt is NOT produced on equipment shared with dairy. We own and operate our own non-dairy facility. We are the only brand of Soy Yogurt that is not manufactured using shared dairy equipment.

The company itself is fairly interesting. It’s a joint company (Pulmuone and Wildwood) with roots stemming both from a family farm in Iowa and a farming cooperative in Korea. The cooperative in Korea (Pulmuone) was started in 1955, and entered the US in 1991. Since 1978, Wildwood has been creating organic/natural vegetarian products – apparently their fame started with the BRT sandwich (Brown Rice & Tofu). Their soybeans mostly come from the midwest, though the company is known best on the west coast. The two companies joined in 2004. (Visit Wild Wood’s website and Pulmuone’s website).

As you can see, Niko likes the yogurt as well. I’ve been special ordering it weekly from the food co-op, and between Chris, Niko, Nigel, Puck, and myelf it’s pretty easy to go through a case of 12 in a week. Nice to finally have some breakfast foods around the house. We all agree that Vanilla is the best – though Niko is fond of blueberry as well.

I’m now considering ordering a case of plain (unsweetened) to see if I can use it as a culture to make my own soy yogurt (with homemade soymilk from local soybeans, of course). When time permits…

WholeSoy Raspberry Yogurt

Niko likes yogurt

Meet Niko, our year-old orange cat. Niko likes to eat just about anything.

To kick off her online food review column, Niko helped me finish off a container of WholeSoy & Co. Raspberry Soy Yogurt. I was surprised that she didn’t mind the berry flavor… but then again, she helped me eat some rhubarb pie earlier in the day.

Star rating: 4 out of 5. Generally anything creamy is high on the list.