This week is brought to you by the food: Rice!

This is a big week for my little dancers! Recital is this coming Sunday, so we spent Monday and Tuesday in Stirling for dress rehearsals. I took many photos and videos since there are no cameras allowed at recital itself. The kids are all amazing, and it was great for my two to get the opportunity to watch the other (and mostly older) kids do their numbers. If you're interested in any of the videos I took, they're up on my youtube channel.

Yesterday my oldest kitty turned 15 years old. Scooter is the sweetest, most Zen cat you will ever meet. I think back on our 15 years together and I can only think of once when I got annoyed with her - she pulled a cold glass of water down onto a sleeping me! Even then, she wasn't intentionally trying to irritate me. She just wanted a drink. My other two cats will actually try to get in trouble because they want something (typically food). So, my Scootie Wootie is my little Princess. She loves anything pink, she has the strangest hoarse cry unless she's hunting her toy mice, she still plays like a kitten, she's recently deaf, she loves drinking water and she always has to knead the air when you pet her. I couldn't ask for a better cat than my Pumpkin Eater. LOVE her so much.

Scooter had a little stroke last week. She started walking funny, lost balance, leaned into the wall, and looked dazed. I picked her up and she leaned her head over my shoulder and pressed in as hard as she could while breathing very heavily. It broke my heart, but she recovered just fine. She's back to her normal self, so now I will just keep my fingers crossed that she still has lots of life left in her. In the meantime, I enjoy every day I have with her. ♥ We made her a kitty cake last night (soft cat food with some cheese on top) and sang her happy birthday (kind of ironic since she's deaf). It's our little family tradition.

Keeping with the birthday theme, I made all the humans in our family a chocolate zucchini cake to celebrate. Oh yes, I did! I don't even remember where I got this recipe, but I've been making it for years now! It's definitely a family favourite.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup milk with 1 tsp lemon juice added (let it sit for a few minutes)

2 3/4 cup flour

4 tbsp cocoa

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

2 cups grated zucchini

1 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325.

Mix butter, vegetable oil, and sugar together. Add the eggs, vanilla and milk. Combine well. Add the dry ingredients and beat until smooth. Stir in zucchini.

Grease a 9x13 pan. Pour in the batter. Top with mini chocolate chips.

Bake for 45-50 minutes.

Let it cool completely before icing. (I make a margarine, icing sugar, milk, cocoa powder icing that I've been making for as long as I can remember. I even remember making a little bowl of it for myself (or me and a friend) when I was living on my own because I was craving sugar. Haha!... bring back memories, Sarah?!)

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Dinners have been easy, repeats and not always blog worthy this week. They've also been full of rice. I'll share the recipe for the carrot feta risotto (can you tell I love risotto?) because it's not a new one, and you know if you revisit a recipe it's pretty good. The Hawaiian beans I made with them are not blog worthy though. Won't be making them again. They were edible.. but.. no one loved them. Both recipes came from Moosewood Cooks at Home.

Carrot Feta Risotto

5 cups vegetable stock

4 carrots, chopped into semi circles or into matchsticks

1 small onion, diced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

1 tbsp chopped fresh dill (you can use 1 tsp dried in a pinch)

juice of 1 lemon

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

Bring the stock to a boil in a covered pot. Ease the carrots into the stock and lower the heat to very gently simmer.

In a large saucepan, saute the onions in oil for about 5 minutes until softened. Add the rice, and stir gently to coat in the oil. Add the dill. Ladle 1 cup of carrots and stock into the rice. Stir until the liquid is absorbed. Continue to do so with the remaining stock until it's all absorbed. Remove the rice from the heat, add the feta and lemon juice and stir to combine. Serve immediately.

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Tonight I made even more rice. This time I made a fried rice with this vegetable stir fry recipe I blogged about before. I had originally planned on making my friend Jill's vegetable spring rolls, but forgot to take the filo pastry out early enough. Instead I'll make them tomorrow for Fun Food Friday - with homemade pizza! Interesting combo, but it'll be delicious, I'm sure. My fried rice really doesn't have a recipe because it's so easy. I heat some toasted sesame oil in a pan and add my mushrooms (about 6 fairly big cremini mushrooms). Once they're cooked I remove the mushrooms and add a bit more sesame oil. I add my already cooked rice (I cook it the morning of so it's nice and cool by the time I need it.. freezing also works) and coat it in oil.. cook for a little bit. Add a bunch of Braggs (or soy sauce) until it looks right. Stir it up, cook for a bit. Add the mushrooms and a couple of handfuls of frozen peas and heat it through. Voila, easy rice!