I just figured out my resistance to the veggie broth. It's vegetable soup. I hate vegetable soup. Luckily I read the ingredients and finally twinged to it when I saw it could be eaten as a soup.

erin_obscure, want four (yeah, there are four) quarts of TJ's Organic low-sodium vegetable broth? If not, I can donate it. I just like knowing things are actually used.

I will be all over those food ideas with chicken or a clear, light broth.

Sure! Getting home tonight after a couple weeks away from home I have a LOT of cooking to do. Feel like coming over for dinner tomorrow night? Or I could bring something to your place if yr up for some low key company.

Cook rice or pilaf or couscous in it, then add protein and veggiens? Make a lot of this casserole, eat some of it and freeze the rest for later. (Or eat off it for several days if you don't mind eating the same thing a bunch of days in a row,) If you have or are expecting hot weather make a casserole that is good cold.

TB beat me to it.

Quinoa with some spices (generally garlic and basil with TJ's everyday seasoning) and cooked in broth is my go to, grab'n go food. At meal time, I add lentils, or a boil in bag Indian entree...I love Paneer Matar and Bengal Veggies.

I like the quinoa cold too.

It's sacralige, I know, but I have been known to poach a nice piece of fish in left over chicken or veggie broth. It's quick and taste good enough to me.

That'd be great. I'd dig black kitty time, honestly. I don't even think I'll cry. Okay, maybe a little. But I adore your guys.

A bit of silliness after listening to James Cagney play George M. Cohen on The Big Broadcast.

Namesake and doppleganger.

It's all in the eyebrows, the center part and the sticky-outy ears.

Cathartic crying can be a good thing. I'm sure they will be thrilled to see you (though there may be some initial "hiding under the bed" time due to my recent repeated absences.

I made hummus soup tonight -- and the chick peas where cooked part in water part in veggie broth

I miss hummus.

I'm sure they will be thrilled to see you (though there may be some initial "hiding under the bed" time due to my recent repeated absences.

They probably won't care much but they are super sweet and will probably come out and it'll be awesome because I'll scratch their ears and stuff.

Weekend update: we took Ryan to the Zoo on Saturday. I love watching how much more he gets out of these visits every time we go. He told us his favourite animal is the tiger, and we got a great look at them - one of them was pacing around right in front of the glass. He was also a big fan of the fur seals. They have a new enclosure, with lots of flat-topped rocks for basking, plenty of swimming room, and underwater viewing windows (which they seem to enjoy too). This is also where they keep the little penguins, which sad to say weren't out and about when we were there, and the pelicans, which never fail to cath our little boy's attention.

Before lunch, we also saw a Syrian brown bear, a snow leopard (chillin', of course), lions and African painted dogs (African painted dogs!). This time, too, I made sure we saw the amphibian and reptile house. Ryan's bedtime comforter is a green frog called Bubby, so he enjoyed the frogs. (We've been assured several times since that Bubby is bigger than the Zoo frogs.) It was the reptile house that was the big hit, though. Ryan's favourite book of the moment is entitled "Is Your Grandmother a Goanna?" (Spoiler alert: No.) As it happened, the reptile house had a pair of goannas. One was stretched out on a log and catching some rays; the other one was hopped up and sharing high-fives with every kid with hands against the glass. He was pretty thrilled, and that was the one time during the day that we had trouble getting him to move on from an exhibit.

We had lunch on a park bench just outside the reptile house, the setting for DRAMA! A flock of seagulls and moorhens decided to come by and scavenge for our scraps. All well and good, until one of the moorhens decided that it wanted the fresh stuff, and jumped onto Ryan's chest in order to reach his sandwich, freaking him out. Biyi tells me that she's never seen me move so quickly as when I lunged at the offending avian. I spent the rest of lunchtime ensuring Ryan remained bird-free. (And tossing scraps to the seagulls, who were admirably civilised by comparison).

After lunch we headed for the elephants. Ryan loves them. The elephants at Melbourne Zoo are surprisingly hairy. On the way over there, we were privileged to witness a golden pheasant displaying to his female. (IMO, golden pheasants are the most visually stunning birds on earth, bar none. Better than birds of paradise, parrots, hummingbirds and other pheasants. This was a real treat for me.) On the way back from the elephants, we stopped by the orangutans. They have a new enclosure, with lots of climbing structures and platforms and play areas and such. While we were there, two of them were engaged in ripping out some vegetation from the riverbank and hauling it up to one of ttheir platforms. Biyi thinks they wanted to eat it. I reckon they were turning it into bedding. Either way, lots of excellent behaviour.

By then it was time to go home, and really just as well; we're in the grip of winter here. Saturday morning gave us a few hours of decent weather, but it wasn't long after we left that the raid started.

My favourite part of the visit was the golden pheasant. It's not the first time I've seen one engaged in courtship ritual, but it's still a gorgeous treat. I asked Ryan what his favourite thing was, and he said the tigers (though I think it was really the goannas). I asked Biyi what she liked best too. She said "When you protected Ryan".

So we had a very enjoyable outing. But that's not the big news from this weekend. The big news is that on Sunday, Ryan read his first word! I wrote "NO" on his blackboard, asked him what the letters were, asked him what it spelled and he said "No!". It's memory work, not phonetics or spelling it out or anything, but still. I'm very proud of him. (Next up: "HIPPOPOTAMUS".)