I want chicken, I want liver.......

I had great plans for this blog post. It was going to be all about my muesli breakfast bars, which I was going to perfect over Memorial Day weekend. You were going to be blown away by a home made breakfast bar that was inexpensive, easy, quick, and delicious. I was going to put Nature Valley out of business with the push of the "Publish" button. It was going to be like this:

 

 

This is how everyone was going to react to the muesli breakfast bars

Unfortunately, I had to race last weekend, and that stressed me out, and when I am stressed I like to watch bad television, not bake. So instead of perfecting the breakfast bars, I was busy watching re-runs of The Real Housewives of Tragic Places in America and drinking hard cider. None of which I would recommend as a pre-race routine. But I digress.

So, I have no perfected muesli bar recipe. But I do have a fun food story about my cat, Jack. And before you decide I'm an over-trained crazy cat lady, just lay eyes upon him for a moment:

I don't always pose for photos, but when I do I look way better than your dog.

That is Jack. Steve and I adopted him from the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter back on Thanksgiving weekend in 2010. When we first adopted him, he had terrible stomach issues (that's polite-speak for "my house was constantly falling victim to explosive cat poo). After a few months of trial and error (and repeated steam cleaning), we learned that a lean protein diet is the key to Jack's gastrointestinal happiness. Which makes a great deal of sense because cats are carnivores, not omnivores.

You'd think this would be easy: buy some chicken breasts, a few cans of tuna, voila! Wrong. Carnivores get complete nutrition by eating the whole animal. Which is problematic when you have a job and live in an apartment. On the one hand, I don't have time to dispatch whole chickens or whole tunas in the food processor. On the other hand, releasing field mice in my apartment would almost assuredly get me evicted. Also, I am pretty sure if I released field mice in my apartment, this is what would happen:

So instead of making Jack's food, I buy it. I've tried a bunch of different brands, Origen, Primal, Wellness, etc. Today I went to the store and they were out of everything I normally feed him. And so, after some chatting with the ladies about comparable brands, I walked away with a bag of Nature's Variety Instinct rawboost, a blend of high protein lamb kibble and freeze dried raw salmon. $29.99 for a 5.1lb bag. Some men worry about what their wives will spend on shoes while they are away. My husband's main concern is the damage I'm doing at the local pet store.

Jack's allotted 1 cup of this per day. Given that there are approximately 30 cups of cat food in that bag, it represents one month of cat food. I spend $300 a month on myself in groceries, and I weigh 9 times as much as the cat, so, I think I have mathematically proven that this cat food does not represent a shameless waste of money.**

Next week I promise there will be a real food story, with a real recipe. Unless of course Bravo decides to start showing re-runs of Top Chef Masters before next weekend's race.

**Shame on all of you who are sitting there with a calculator trying to use that math to figure out what I weigh.