alexist

I've just covered mine in almond paste. :-) First time I've ever done it, I'll have you know!

They had ready-made marzipan in Sainsbury's, but I didn't get it. I wasn't sure it had the same amount of sugar (the recipe I had was for 500g ground almonds to 250g icing sugar). Also I suspected that mixing it was the easy part. I was right. It was a bit messy to knead, but not that awful. Rolling it out evenly was more difficult, and wasn't helped by the lack of space (I had just enough room for my rolling pin). The other trouble with almond paste is that it's fragile and breaks at the drop of a hat. I knew it would be, since there's no gluten or anything for strength, but it was still frustrating. I smoothed it out as best I could, but it's not perfect by a long shot. Hopefully the icing will cover the worst of it :-)

Will warn all the in-laws that this is the first time I've made a fruitcake of any sort, much less the recipe I tried, so it very well might be awful! It looked all right when it came out of the oven, though.

She's not content with kicking litter outside the box, oh no. She also has to shred the liner. I wouldn't mind if it were just a couple of rips; dumping the box out into a garbage bag isn't that difficult. I'd put the tied up liner in another bag anyway as I don't think the liners are very strong. But she makes such a mess of the thing that you wind up with disgusting clumps of litter stuck to the bottom of the box, which was what the liner was supposed to prevent!

She's particularly fond of shredding things. The newspaper under the cat box and her food dishes (2 separate pieces, obviously) are attacked regularly. I can get a mat for underneath the food, but I prefer newspaper for the litter tray: it's disposable. Oh, and she kicks the litter out of range of the paper, so I have to vacuum the tiles. (Nifty mini-floor tool for the Dyson comes in very handy.)