A while ago, I realized that if I buy plain yogurt and add my own jam, I always get to have the flavors I want. And it wastes fewer containers. Also, I use plain yogurt in place of sour cream when I’m cooking. It’s a habit I developed ages ago after ready that 0% fat yogurt tastes and cooks the same but doesn’t have the crap in it that low fat sour cream does.

I tend to use a particular bowl when I stir up my yogurt and jam.

Esmerelda loves yogurt and she loses her mind waiting for me to put my empty bowl down so she can have her turn. Sometimes I give her a little dab of plain in her wet dish just to shut her up until I can finish my concoction.

Last week, our tomatoes started coming in. We have 3 plants in our garden (red, purple and yellow cherries) and we have been getting a farm box. And they have been including tomatoes. That’s been lovely. I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches with mayo and with pesto. We’ve cut them up in our salads. Fresh, flavorful tomatoes make enduring the heat of summer worthwhile.

We’d gotten a glut, though, and I couldn’t eat them as fast as they were ready. So, I had Chuck pick up some feta when he went to the grocery and I made a tomato salad. It was 8 oz of feta, 2 pints of cherry tomatoes cut in quarters, a small bell pepper, a handful of fresh basil rolled together and cut very fine, equal part olive oil and apple cider vinegar and a little salt and pepper. When I fix a serving, I add some Kalamata olives to the bowl. (Do you notice that there is nothing resembling cat food in that recipe?)

When I made a tomato sandwich yesterday, I cut the bits that didn’t fit well on the bread into bites and added it to the tomato salad. When Chuck cut up a tomato for our green salads at dinner, instead of overwhelming the lettuce with tomato, he did the same with the surplus.

So, I have been eating tomato salad like a fiend for days and the container is still full.

This morning I decided to have a little dish of it for my breakfast. And I used the yogurt bowl.

When I finished and headed for the sink, she lost her mind. She knew she needed what was in that bowl. I told her that I don’t think cats like tomatoes and set it down to prove it to her.

She licked every last scrap/drop/morsel out of that bowl. I couldn’t have looked cleaner if it had just come out of the dishwasher.

I don’t know that I’m ready to start sharing my salad with my cat.