How to Toilet Train your cat to use your toilet

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LARB (Thai salad dish)

yields 1-2 Servings

1 tablespoon toasted rice
1/4 shallot, thinly sliced
1-2 limes
1/2 lbs ground pork
1/4 tablespoon ground dried chili pepper
3 tablespoons fish sauce
5 sprigs cilantro, sliced
3 sprigs spearmint (Optional)
1 green onion, sliced (Optional)

*Tips and substitutions*
Substitute any ground meat for ground pork.

Substitute red onion or just onion for shallot if you like.

The spearmint adds zing to the laab.

Squeeze juice from 1/3 of the lime on to the ground pork. Mix well and let it marinade for just a couple of minutes until you are ready to cook it.

For this dish, people normally use a small pot; I use my cast iron pans because they can be heated up really hot, they retain heat well and heat evenly.

Heat up a pan on high until it is very hot. Add two tablespoons of water and then immediately add your marinated pork and stir. The pork will stick to the pan at first, but then the juice will come out and the meat will loosen from the bottom. Keep stirring until the pork is well done. Traditionally, the pork is undercooked, but I do not recommend undercooking pork for health reasons.

Put the pork in a bowl a large mixing bowl that will hold all the ingredients. Add fish sauce, green onion, shallot, cilantro, the rest of the lime juice, ground chili pepper and almost all of toasted rice into the bowl. Save some toasted rice to sprinkle on top for garnish. Mix well and taste. It should be a little bit hot. You should be able to taste tartness from the lime juice and the fish sauce. If you need to add more fish sauce or lime juice, don’t be afraid. Getting the flavor balance right is a trial and error process.

Put the mixed ingredients in a serving bowl, garnish with spearmint and sprinkle the rest of toasted rice on top. Serve with vegetables like cabbage, green beans, lettuce and Thai basil.

Tags: recipe

Ode to Lt Data

For Halloween, i persuaded my hubby to dress up with me, and what better way to do so than by picking his favorite sci-fi show of all time: STAR TREK! My hubby just recently exposed me to the 2009 Star Trek movie, I instantly wanted more (and there was a LOT!).

Yes, I am now a converted Trekkie.

Each night is easily turned into Star Trek night, since hubs has the TNG box set. And now, with KDOC airing The Original Series reruns at 10pm, we never fail to turn on the boob tube if only to see awful/awesome CG effects and old batman-like stunts. Spock is part of TOS, too, and he was my favorite character because he is calm logical and cool. However, after meeting Data in my TNG immersion, I guess I was hooked!

Lt Cmdr Data, the android on the Star Trek: The Next Generation series, is probably the most well developed character in all of the STAR TREK franchises.

He’s saved the crew more times than he almost killed them (LOL) and also gave lots of useful data to kids and nerds alike. An awesome role model for all ages. His only limitation was that he was not human and he so wanted to be. He did not lack the ability to bleed, or to offer his services (as with Lt Tasha, season 1 TNG), paint, play music impeccably. He also expressed interest in stand-up comedy and poetry. I personally find him funny and hilarious, and quite, quite endearing!

Here is a sample of Lt Data’s work.

Ode to Spot

Do you love Data too? Let me know how much by posting a comment below!

MEAN CAT IN A CAT HAT

*idea from Kea M. , New Zealand. See more of her Cat Hat Project here: http://zombiejax.atomkinder.net/

Is the Country in Recession? Really?

So Thanksgiving, black friday and my birthday came and went. There was a ridiculous amount of people in Ontario Mills during Black Friday.. we went the midnight following Thanksgiving. My husband and mother in law were tired so I went with my cousins-in-law.

There were enough parking spaces, however, inside the mall, it felt like the end of the world. Biggest line hoarders: COACH, H&M, PacSun (?), Forever21.

Sure there were clothes selling for $5, maybe even t-shirts for $2. But would you line up 30mins-1 hour for that?

Even the day of my birthday, we went to disneyland to claim my gift card. It was a Tuesday and yet, it felt like a weekend with all the people who were there. Many people had their birthdays on the same day, but also, people just wanted to hang out. I’m assuming a lot of them are annual pass holders, which means they shelled out some good $200+ to be able to get in Disneyland for an unlimited number of times in a year.

No, the US is not poor and people do have money. They dont have a lot of it… and honestly, the only answer is to lower the prices of everything, period. Medical and dental care is 4-500% the amount dentists charge here vs the amount I pay for the best dentists back home. Credit cards charge a lot for overages and fees. Groceries pack their goods enough for 12-20 person families (no wonder people turn out obese here). Merchants spam consumers with tons of billions of flyers everyday.

No, the US is not poor. Americans are just terribly wasteful.