Severe Macaw Hat Dance

I've mentioned before Rocky's fascination with a red fleece hat that we own. Thomas can only wear it when Rocky is in his cage, or Rocky will launch a major attack. We have to keep it hidden in a closet for everyone's safety.

Thomas had been out raking leaves and had placed the hat on the counter to dry. Somehow (i.e. one of the greys flying around), it got knocked to the floor. Since it was in an out-of-the-way corner, Thomas forgot about putting it away once it dried.

Rocky made a happy discovery when he found it last night. He was playing with it for about 15 minutes when I took this video (I had been in another room and didn't realize what was going on. Thomas was cooking dinner and was thrilled to not have a little pest around his feet.

As you can see from the video, he did take a short break from his hat activity to try to intimidate me, but was unable to resist the lure of the hat for very long.



Speaking of a little pest around his feet, here is a short example of what he has to put up with from his little macaw. Rocky is like a little dog and runs around the house, following Thomas. When he catches up to him, he fake attacks, fake eats, or preens his feet. This was mostly preening. In the background, just as Rocky is going between his feet, you can hear Beeps say "Babycakes." He's also beeping in the earlier part of this video.


Speaking of making dinner, we've been eating a version of nut/veggie/bean burgers about once a week for dinner. Sometimes more than that. They are so delicious and quick! As anyone who's read this blog for any length of time might suspect, the recipe derives from my favorite cookbook, How To Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman.

He gives a sample bean burger recipe here. The nut burgers are pretty much the same, except that instead of the beans and bean liquid, you use 1 c. nuts (we've always used walnuts because that's what we keep in stock), 1 c. oats (instead of 1/2 c.), 2 tbsp. ketchup, and 1 tsp. chili powder.

Last night, I realized that I had one beet on hand, so I grated that up and added it to my nut burger mixture.

Here it is in the food processor, waiting to be turned into patties:And here are the patties cooking:We used our new cast iron pan for the first time. Beloved Parrot's comment to me the other day made me realize that I needed to actually do something about eliminating the non-stick items in my kitchen instead of just thinking about it! Thomas and I agreed that they tasted better coming from this pan.

I'm hoping to buy a food mill this weekend so that I can go back to the apple orchard and get enough apples to make my own applesauce.

Finally, last night as dinner was cooking, Thomas was sitting at the kitchen table reading a magazine. Max flew over and started preening herself. Thomas started preening her as well, and they stayed like this for quite some time.



Thomas is often so busy with Rocky (and Beeps) that it's more infrequent than we would like that he can spend one-on-one time with another parrot. Max took advantage of his solo status!