A near disaster - saved by the microwave

First, I should tell you about a near-disaster that happened last night. I was preparing lamb chops, according to a recipe from Jamie's Dinners. I had my couscous nicely resting, everything chopped up, the pan was hot and sizzling... and as I opened my packet of chops, they were smelly and obviously gone bad.

This is not a good thing when it's late and you're very, very hungry. Per, being experienced, quickly offered to run to the store for more. Not a great idea, I thought, so he came up with a good alternative - we had some pork chops in the freezer. Frozen, obviously. Thank goodness for the microwave. The meal ended up really nicely. I had to remake the couscous as that had clumped together beyond recognition, but other than that, all was well. It was very un-involved - we fried the chops, fried some onions chopped up with chili and fresh thyme, and had couscous (for posterity - my couscous always comes out perfect if I use 200 g of couscous, 250 ml of boiling water - combine, and let stand under plastic wrap for ten minutes.) with tomatoes and flat-leaf parsley. It tasted great. The would-be disaster fizzled and died.

The kittens are now out and about in the whole apartment. We had a pen for them, but yesterday they started jumping out. As they are not very prone to ever jumping back in, we did the best thing and removed one of the sides of the pen altogether. It's fun to see them - they're so active now! - but I'm a little worried that they're getting too much space at once. I want them to be able to remember important things - like where the litter box is - and I'm not completely sure of that. Also, I'm having trouble getting them to eat properly. Cat food? Not so much. Two of them accept canned food, neither eats dry kibbles for now. They all eat minced meat, and not surprisingly, they all also happily gobbled up my fillet of beef. Picture is of Glinda Gräddost (Gräddost is Swedish for Cream Cheese - as it happens, they're all named after cheese) who will be staying with us as our future breeding queen.