Porchetta Redux

Wow... it's even better the next day. 

Porchetta!

When we were in Rome's airport waiting to fly back home, we had a Porchetta sandwich for lunch. It was very good so of course Randy wanted to make it at home.  His version of this very old and very Roman dish started with pork belly, with layers and layers of good stuff on top.

Then he ground some fresh parmesan cheese onto it...

yep, that should be enough!

Roll it up tight and tie it up, to keep all those goodies inside. 

Perfect! Now into the oven...

And it comes out looking amazing!

The crust was crispy like pork candy, the inside was juicy and the taste was simply unbelievable. I can't describe it but it was worth all the calories that are probably in there. 

a tiny rescue

Tuesday we headed to Ocala to go to lunch. At an intersection we saw a woman holding a cardboard sign, asking for money. She was very dazed-looking, not quite all there, and wearing jeans and a sports bra. But in her bra she had tucked a tiny kitten. It's head and front paws were wedged above the bra and its body and hind legs were dangling below. Its head was lolling sideways and we weren't sure it was still alive. It was at least 95 out in the sun, where the kitten was, and he was squashed against her.  The light changed as we came up so we couldn't stop but we just could not stand it - we found a place to turn around and go back. I got out and offered to buy the kitten, which I was glad to see could still move it's head a bit. She wanted to check with her guy, who was sitting in the shade under the overpass. He would let me have the kitten for $20. Sold. 

It was a beautiful little kitty, probably about 5 weeks old. Once he was in the air conditioning, he lay down and went to sleep so hard that I kept checking to see if he was still breathing. This was the sleep of pure exhaustion. 

We didn't have any paraphernalia for cats so we drove to Walmart and Randy went in to get kitten food, litter, and a box. Dear Randy, he had to make a run through a really hard driving rain, but I think he'd do anything for this baby.

The first thing we did when we got home was get that baby some food! Randy had bought some wet kitten food to start with. Kitty was very, very happy with that!

Aterwards we let him rest a bit, then decided to give hime a bath. He smelled bad, mostly of that woman's sweat. He put up with it pretty well. 

After he was clean we introduced him to Shorty. Shorty was interested to take a sniff, but then he did his "I'm not going to pay attention to this" trick of simply turning his head away and not looking at it. Oh well, that's better than being upset!

He is such a beautiful kitten! Obviously he's part Siamese; I hope he keeps those amazing blue eyes. And the pads of his feet are coal black!

We set him between us to watch TV, and he seemed to enjoy that.

After a bit he got restless and walked onto my lap, where he took a long, long pee! We were able to keep it from getting on the couch so no problem. He had not used the litter box before, but this seemed to fix that because afterwards he would use the litter box for both jobs; I think he was just too dehydrated before. 

We thought and prayed and wished and eventually knew we could not keep him. Shorty's medical issues mean we have to keep him away from other pets, and it wasn't fair to keep kitty behind the bathroom door. He deserved better. Our friends at the Animal Shelter assured us that with his good looks he will be scooped up in no time, and they want to send him to a foster home to get socialized while looking for his forever home.  Bye bye, sweetie - may you have a long and wonderful life! 

I finally see the bear!

We really try to not tempt the bears around here. We are very careful to tightly bag and cover anything that might smell appetizing in the garbage can, and the nights before garbage pickup we sometimes do not put dinner's garbage out until the next morning. But Randy cooks amazing things and there isn't any other place to dispose of our garbage.

A few times a bear has gotten into our can. He's pretty resourceful; he pads to the front of our truck and scoots the can out to the yard or street without disturbing much. 

Last night the bear showed up again. He took a sniff at the closed garbage can to decide if he wanted to try it.

Yep, that smelled good enough for dinner.

Fortunately as he pulled the can across the driveway something spooked him and he left. This is as close as I want to see a bear!

Tiny Critters

I utterly love the big birds, alligators, and bears in the neighborhood but I'm starting to pay more attention to the tiny things that live in our yard. 

I just found several White Garden Snails, and they are adorable! Unfortunately they're also invasive and eat a lot of plants. If they stick to the Purple Heart plants we should get along fine; there is a ton of this stuff growing here, more than enough to share. 

Every morning the local bees come to feast on our Purple Heart and Caesalpinia, aka Mexican Bird of Paradise. Even when I get close they don't threaten to sting, they are too busy.

And we have Anole Lizards here. They are also invasive (that seems to happen a lot in Florida). The good news is that they sometimes eat spiders. The bad news is that there are a zillion. Cute, though. 

We have a bear problem.

Well, the bear is back. He's been here 3 times in the last 3 weeks; apparently our garbage cans are on his route now. I can hardly blame him, when Randy makes such good food. But we are going to have to do sometime about this. 

I still want to see him/her. The other night I was up at 3 am and heard a thunk. I just knew it was the little scuba tank being knocked over, and only a bear could do that. I set my phone on camera, got a small flashlight, and went to the door. Fortunately I had just enough sense to stop. This did not seem smart, even to me! 

So the bear is still making a mess and I am still plotting how to see it without becoming a statistic.