Update on Tilly's Baboon

Tilly has told us the name of her baboon and posted some great pictures so I thought I would just update you.

Tilly's baboon is called Waylon, after the singer Waylon Jennings.  We will have to find out more about him! Tilly's mum says that Tilly's baboon sings like Waylon Jennings.

Tilly and Waylon are obviously great friends already.  Look!!

Isn't that a great hug!! You can see that they are going to be great friends.  Waylon is no fool he knew how to get Tilly's interested!!

They look as though they are discussing that treat don't they!!

Well Tilly gave Waylon gifts too.

Waylon is a baboon so the packaging interested him too!

But look at the wonderful gifts he was given.  All the baboon favourite snacks!!

Isn't the sunflower lovely too and look all those lovely nutty snacks.  I think Waylon is going to be very happy in his new home!  Living the dream!!

Thank you Tilly for making Waylon so happy. HUGS HUGS HUGS

July 2014 rehomings

Well, here's the thing!!  I closed the rehoming programme for a while and then promptly rehomed two baboons in June (see previous blog), and two in July.  That really is it for a while as there are not homeless baboons here at HQ right now.  The programme will restart at some point soon though.

The first baboon to be rehomed was a very special rehoming.  @TigerBoyCat's cousin Izzy (not a Tweeter) had had kitties on the street and they were taken away, so she needed someone to love.  It started with Tiger very kindly lending her his baboon, Mandi, but he really needs him to help him with watching birds. Those birds can be too much for one watcher and they can easily get out of hand, let alone the squirrels!! Izzy clearly loved him, so we sent her a baboon of her own.  He doesn't have a name yet but we know he and Izzy will get on really well.

Our friend @Chanttilly_Lace also asked about having a baboon.  I had chatted to her before about adoption and now she felt she was ready to adopt one.  He also doesn't have a name yet but he has been welcomed heartily by Tilly!!

I am sure both baboons will be really loved and happy in their new homes and that we will hear more about them soon.

Thank you to all baboon rehomers. I really love it that you have given baboons happy homes.  The total is now 105!!

HUGS HUGS HUGS

Banana chocolate tasting

This is the blog post you have all been waiting for.  The inhabitants of Baboon HQ have been exhaustively tasting banana chocolate products to find the best ones for you.  Usually @JezzerBear is the official chocolate taster.  However, we agreed that this particular project needed primate input.

We had never really thought about banana and chocolate until Mini-Kolo/Jackson visited the chocolate museum in Cologne with @bijntje, @fuzziestFreyer and @F_is_for_Fred.  He found banana chocolate in the exhibition and the shop.  So we thought we really needed to find out more about this.

 

All the baboons and our humans were involved in the tasting, but we needed a tasting panel to manage each product.  We had five products.  Well actually we had four but Mini-Kolo had also tried some banana chocolate that he bought in Cologne, hence he has an empty wrapper here.

 

We started with Little Tony.  @TourGuide Ted had given me some of the new Cadbury's banana caramel chocolate and Little Tony presented this product to the panel.  As with all the products, all the baboons tasted it.  It is based on Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate, with which all of our British readers will be familiar.  You get the familiar Cadbury's chocolate taste and it has pieces of banana caramel in it.  It was interesting.  The taste was very nice, but you do have to watch out for the banana caramel, let it soften in your mouth, other wise it can be rather hard on the teeth, especially for humans.  Tony collected opinions and the baboons and people thought it was very nice.  Highly recommended!!

Thierry is pictured with this product, because he is so photogenic, but actually I presented it.  It is the Brocks Chocs Banana Chocolate bar.  This is a mid priced product, over £2 a bar.  It is a very dark chocolate with a banana flavour.  We liked this, at first it just tastes like dark chocolate, the banana taste comes later.  The baboons liked it, one human liked it more than the other.  Overall a smooth product with a pleasant bananary after taste.  Highly recommended!!

 



 

Jack presented Prestat Banoffee Truffles, described as bananas and toffee with a whisper of coffee.  This is one of those special product for a special occasion, as it costs between £11 and £12.  Biteing into this product gave a very pleasant banoffee flavour.  You could tell it was banoffee and not plain banana.  The baboons loved this product and one of the people did too, the other person found it a little sweet.  We felt it was one for a special occasion.  Highly recommended!!

 

 

Our supermodel baboon Thierry presented a banoffee pie bar from Gnaw in Norfolk, England.  This is another banoffee product.  Again, when you put it in your mouth it tastes of banoffee rather than plain banana.  We baboons and one of our humans really liked this, but the other human also found this one a little sweet for him.  It is worth bearing in mind that he doesn't really go for very sweet things or white chocolate so take his opinion if you feel the same way.  Highly recommended!!

 

 

 Jackson/Mini-Kolo can tell you about his bar, and only he, one of our people and @LeroySealion actually tried it.  We don't blame them for this as this was a snack they had on the flight home.  Over to Jackson, try to sound grown up Jackson!

The manufacturer is shokomonk, a German company and the bar is Bananasplit.  It was white chocolate with darker pieces in it.  The overall taste was really nice and even Leroy, who is a lion and therefore not such a banana eater as we are, really liked it as well.  We would have got hold of more but we can only get it in catering packs of about 50 online.  I don't see the problem with that but the humans didn't get it.  Our person liked it very much as well.  It was a real treat, when our people go to Germany again we will get them to buy some for us all to try.  Highly recommended if you can get it!

CONCLUSION

All of these products were nice and which you choose depends on what you like, what the occasion is and where you are.  For British readers Cadbury's is easy to get, we have seen it in most sweet shops and convenience stores now.  The banoffee products and Brocks Chocs we bought online, through Amazon although there are other outlets.  The shokomonk we highly recommend to our German friends.  We would have all of them again.

We hope this will help you make a decision.



Baboon Business

Many of you will be aware that we had the #IOWTweetUp this weekend with @TourGuideTed, @BooBooBearGreen, @MarthaBBear and @TabithaTeddy. Well my camera played up so I didn't get many pictures, but anyway I think TGT has shown pictures of what we did.  There was, however, baboon business (aka baboonery) and I did get some pictures of that!!

Many of you will have heard about Bob the Bolting Baboon.  Yes Bob is TGT's little baboon and he managed to get himself lost when he arrived.  We wondered whether he felt a bit surrounded by bears and wanted to find other baboons, but then why was he found in a bear shop!!  You got that one wrong Bob!!  Well anyway, Bob was found and our manperson retrieved him and brought him to the TweetUp.  TGT was very relieved.  Mini-Kolo didn't let him out of his sight until he could reunited him with TGT, who was very glad to see him.

In order to keep Bob in order, and maybe to make him feel he has baboon company, we rehomed Bob's sensible twin brother with him, he is the one on Mini-Kolo's right, Bob is on the left.  We hope this may stop Bob from bolting again.  TGT will let us know when Bob's twin has told them his name.

Mini-Kolo did manage to meet up with some rehomed baboons and rehomed a baboon with @TabithaTeddy, that was the last planned rehoming.

 

 

 

Here Mini-Kolo is meeting up with the already rehomed baboons.  You aleady know Bob and his new brother.  Hanging over Mini-Kolo's shoulder is Tony, BooBoo's baboon, and sitting in front of Mini-Kolo is Barney, Martha's baboon.  Barney likes to hold onto his spoon, these baboons with magnetic paws, like Barney and Tony, have been known to steal cuttlery from resturants so it is best if they bring their own.

 

 



Here the baboons are joined by Tabitha's new baboon.  She is a girl baboon who loves books and stories so we felt she would be happiest with Tabitha.  Tabitha will also let us know her name when she has told her.

Tabitha's baboon is number 102 and Bob's new brother is baboon 103.  Despite us taking a rehoming break baboons 104 and 105 are on their way to their new homes in the US and we will let you know when they have arrived.

Pasta with zucchini and egg plant

The first thing to say here is that in England we call zucchini courgettes, which is the French word for it rather than the Italian word.  We call egg plant aubergine, referring to its colour rather than its shape.  I will use those words in this blog.

A Twitter friend asked me to give her this recipe.  I normally cook this with peppers, leek and mushrooms (I have blogged it before).  However, our friend cannot eat peppers so when she came to visit us a Baboon HQ we couldn't cook this recipe for her.  We were given courgettes and aubergines lately so I tried a new version of the recipe that she can eat.

This was a joint effort so, being an organised baboon Edward got the ingredients ready.  Here are the ingredients for two:

8 oz pasta
1 leek
1 aubergine
1 large or two small courgettes (we were given some fancy yellow ones but the green ones will be equally nice)
1/4 pint of yogurt
Two table spoons of olive oil
Some lemon juice to taste
Black pepper (plenty)
Later you will need some hard cheese (I don't add salt in the cooking because I use a salty cheese), the original recipe said 2 oz of cheese but I use much more to give it a nice crispy topping.

Being organised Edward also wanted to show you most of the equipment you will need:

 

 

You need two large saucepans, a pyrex or other oven proof dish, wooden spoons, table spoons, a vegetable knife and a cheese grater.



Yaya is safe using knives so he prepared the ingredients.  Chop the leek into small pieces and the aubergine and courgettes into bite sized pieces.

We found that the courgettes needed a bit more frying than the leek and aubergine so, heat up the olive oil in a pan and fry the courgette gently for five minutes, add the aubergine and leek and fry gently for a further seven minutes.  Turn your grill onto quite a high heat.

In the meantime boil the pasta and grate the cheese.  When the vegetables are fried turn the heat off and add the yogurt, black pepper and lemon juice to taste (just a sprinkle).

Mix the vegetables in their sauce with the pasta in an oven proof dish, the bigger the surface area the better because you can get more crispy topping, sprinkle the cheese on top.  Put the dish under the grill, after about 7 minutes I usually turn the grill up a bit to get a good crisp finish.  It should be under for about 15 minutes in total (not sure whether a gas grill might be a bit quicker, mine is electric).  You will need to see when it looks done.  Hoppo got all this ready to go under the grill.

Now looking at the next picture you might think that Marley has taken up some strange sport, but this is a warning.

These are sillicone oven gloves which our friend sent from Germany.  These are what you need!!  Getting pyrex dishes out from under the grill is a very hot business.  We used to wear two sets of well insulated cloth oven gloves and it was still too hot to handle.  With these sillicone oven gloves you don't feel a thing.  Marley got it out of the oven.

 

Here it is all ready to serve with a lovely crispy topping.  We think this new version is at least as good as the original version.  Hope you enjoy it!!

Courgette/zucchini cake

A lady kindly gave us lots of courgettes.  Some of you call it zucchini.  Anyway we have been having lots of courgettes this week but there were still too many so we decided to make a courgette cake.  Yes, that's what I said a courgette cake!  Well carrot cake works so why not courgettes?

Some of my friends asked me for the recipe, so here it is.  The recipe I had would have fed the whole of the Arsenal team so I cut it down to the same proportions as I use for banana cake.  You need a 2 lb loaf tin for this recipe.

Ingredients:

2 eggs
125g/4oz of caster sugar (actually this was possibly a little too sweet so I might use less next time).
100g/4oz of melted margarine
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
200g/8oz of grated courgette (I left the skin on as it gave nice green flecks in the cake, but you could peel them if you wanted to)
200g/8oz of self-raising flour
100g/4oz ground nuts (I used almonds but you could grind any nuts for this in a food processor)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
2 teaspoons of cinnamon

Mix up the eggs, margarine,vanilla and grated courgettes in a mixing bowl.
Mix the flour, ground nuts, baking powder and cinnamon in another bowl and gradually stir that into the mixture (actually I just dumped it in and stirred like crazy like I do with the banana cake).

Put the mixture in a greased loaf time and put it into a pre-heated oven:

180C
350F
Gas mark 4

Leave from one hour.  I tested mine after an hour and it was still quite wet so I turned the over up from 180 to 190C and left it for a further 10 minutes.  It was done then and had the added advantage of crisping up the top.

I left it to cool for ages and ages and then tested it.

It was a nice moist cake with pretty green flecks from the peel.  I think the experiment was a success because my people ate it all, every crumb.

Give it a try, it seems you can make cakes out of vegetables and they turn out nice.  Now what to do with the all the cucumbers we were given???  Cucumber cake anyone???  Well maybe not!!

June 2014 rehomings

Four baboons reached their new homes in June.  The first to arrive was Little Jim, who joined Jim with our friend @summerstormsmum.

 

 

Little Jim was welcomed by Jim (who he knew from Baboon HQ), Gracie and Fred.  He is very happy to join his friend Jim.  He had been at Baboon HQ for a while so he took souveniers with him.  I can see he is very happy in his new home.

 

The next to arrive was Oliver, who travelled all the way to New South Wales to join @pete_bear07 and @storm_bear_bill.  Oliver arrived to be given banana muffins, cuddles, pizzas and love.  Not sure about the Masn U shirt, but it could be worse.

 

 

 

 

 

I love this shirt!!





 

Then two baboons made their way to the US.  First to arrive was Beccie Beckham Baboon, who went to live with @Bea_Bells.

 

 

 

Beccie arrived and took up residence on the sofa.

 

 

 

She was obviously hungry!!  But not any more, she had lots of snacks and looks very happy.

 

Finally Boscoe arrived to live with @TiggyBean.

 

 



Boscoe looks happy in his new home.

 

So thank you to all of you for rehoming baboons and giving them happy loving homes.

 

Now further news.  I am sorry to say that the rehoming project is going to take a break.  There will be one further rehoming, in person, at the @IOWTweetUp in July.  But then we need to take a break.  However, this is not the end, so if you would like to adopt a baboon please let me know because I will make a list and get in touch with you as soon as we are back to rehoming.

 

Thank you to all rehomers and to everyone who has taken an interest in the rehomed baboons.  Beccie Beckham Baboon is baboon 100, which was my target, but it will be 102 by July.