Three Beautiful Things 06-06-2023: 20/20, Fun with Chickpeas, Luna Resists Tonight's Pill

 1. Christy walked out of the optometrist's exam room this morning, the day after her second cataract surgery, with good news: "Dr. Miller says my vision is 20/20."

2. I had a blast in the kitchen this evening. Tonight's HelloFresh meal was Crunchy Curried Chickpea Bowls with Cabbage and Golden Raisins.

I had a blast juggling the preparation of several parts of this meal at once.

Here's what this meal required:

- drizzling chickpeas with olive oil, seasoning them with curry powder, salt, and pepper, and roasting them in the oven

-- pickling a packet of cabbage in a saucepan on a burner using fresh squeezed lemon juice, sugar, and water

--submerging raisins in boiled water in a small bowl 

--chopping carrots into small cubes, putting these pieces in a pot with butter and curry powder, cooking this combination for a couple of minutes, and then adding basmati rice, a packet of vegetable stock, and a cup of water, bringing it to a boil, turning down the heat, letting the rice cook, and then adding more butter to it

-- cooking shredded kale in a puddle of olive oil -- I went beyond the recipe and used the rest of the chopped onion from our Skyline Chili dinner, sautéed it, and then added the kale

--whipping up a quick dressing that combined sour cream, lemon juice, curry powder, and water

When all these different parts of the dinner were ready, I took out two bowls, split the rice between them and topped the rice with the kale/onion, pickled cabbage, chickpeas, and raisins. Last of all, I dressed these bowls with the dressing I made.

The layers of flavor and textures made this bowl of food one of my favorites of all time. 

3. For the first time since I began giving Luna her thyroid medicine twice a day, she resisted the pill this evening. I hung in there with her and after about the eighth try, I managed to hide the pill in her wet food and I'm pretty sure she ate it. 

I'm leaving Copper and Luna in Paul and Carol's care for a few days starting this Sunday. To help them out in case Luna resists their pilling efforts, I'm taking the cats in this week for a nail trim. 

Luna didn't scratch or bite me when she resisted the pill, but she could have and having her nails trimmed will save Paul or Carol from getting scratched.