Peanut Butter Dog Treats

I've been meaning to put this recipe on here for forever. These pictures are actually from a few months ago, life has been a little hectic.

Anyway, this is the recipe that I've been using for the last year or so to make the treats that I bring with me to adoption events. I love this recipe because there are only four ingredients in it and they don't seem to bother the dog's stomach as much as some other treats.  I've also doubled the recipe from the site that I originally used because it didn't make nearly enough for my taste. Okay, enough with the rambling, here's the recipe:

First thing you want to do is mix together the dry ingredients, i.e. the flour and baking powder.

Next, mix together the peanut butter and hot water. You don't really need to use a mixer for this, but it's way easier and you don't have to worry about spilling hot water everywhere... or is that just me that does dumb things like that?

The kitchen usually starts to smell like a peanut butter dream at this point. Just a heads up, family members and roommates will follow this smell and expect there to be peanut butter cookies for them to eat. They will be disappointed.

Break out whatever cookie cutters you'll be using. It was still fall when I made these so I used my leaf, pumpkin, and heart cookie cutters. In retrospect, I probably should have only used the pumpkin for pumpkin flavored treats. People were very confused.

Make sure you put flour down and roll the dough thinner than you would think you should. It will rise a little bit and if it's too thick, they won't dry out as well as you want to get that nice crunch that dogs like. Also, the drier you get them, the longer you can store them without having to worry about them going bad.

If you want to make smaller treats, or use the treats for training, you probably don't want to use big cookie cutters. What I usually do (which I'll try to get a picture of eventually) is roll the dough out and then use a pizza cutter to cut thin vertical lines in the dough and then make horizontal cuts so you get little squares. I like that method because you can make them any size you want. I like to make tiny ones so you don't have to worry about breaking them up when you are training. I make them just a little larger than the size of kibble. Just make sure you keep an eye on them while they're in the oven, they go from perfect to super crispy in no time.

Once they're light brown and firm to the touch, take them out, let them cool for a bit on the pan and then transfer them to a cooling rack. This lets them dry out even further. Make sure you cool them completely before you put them in any kind of container or the steam they give off will make them mushy.

Good luck making them!

Recipe:

2 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup hot water

1. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Mix together the flour and baking powder.

3. In a separate bowl, mix together the peanut butter and hot water until smooth.

4. Gradually add in the dry mixture. If too wet, add a little more flour.

5. Turn dough out onto a flat, pre-floured surface.  Roll until a little less than 1/4 inch thick. Roll thicker if you want flakier, biscuit-like treats. Roll thinner if you want easier to break up treats to be used for training.

6. Cut into your desired shape and size treat then transfer to a cookie sheet.

7. Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly brown and firm to the touch. Let cool completely and store in an air tight container.

Original recipe from: elephantineblog.com

Adoption Spotlight: Misha and Marco

Okay, I've been really bad lately with updating this blog, especially from the pitty  side of things.

At least I have good reasons for it though. This summer I went back to my job from last summer at the vets office and managed to get a 40 hour work week. Plus I was taking a calculus class at night so there wasn't much time for baking or anything fun. 

And now that I'm back in school! But I've been ridiculously busy because I'm trying to start a new club on campus that's all about animal community service. We're going to be working with Pitty Love Rescue to help fundraise as well as with the big local shelter here.

Anyway, I don't want to bore you with my personal life, so on to the dogs.

The first pup I'll be spotlighting this week is the marvelous Misha.  Misha has been with us for longer than I would like. She is an absolute love. She's way more curious now than when she first came to us. Now she loves the camera and wants to stick her cute little nose in it.

Her beautiful orange/ tawny coloring comes out wonderfully in her pictures. I also am absolutely in love with her worried little face. She always looks concerned about something, like she's pondering the problems of the world.

Long story short, Misha is an awesome petite little girl.  We also think that she would do great in agility classes at some point because she is so athletically built and svelte.  Misha would probably do better in a house with out kitties but seems fine with kids.

She also loves to make silly faces:

Marco is a 4 month old, absolute ham as you can see. He was part of a litter that came to Pitty Love at 4 weeks old. He now lives with one of our board members with her daughter and is good with other dogs and cats.  

  He can be a puppy at times though and loves to run head first into play, which not all other dogs are comfortable with.  From what I've heard, Marco just loves to play and cuddle and be around people at home. I think he would make a wonderful addition to almost any family! I love spending time with him at adoption events because he such a comical little puppy. He loves his squeaky hamburger and didn't want to let Misha play with any of his toys. He is also really inquisitive and loves to explore all over the Petco that we hold our events at. And when he's not allowed to do what he wants he just flops down on the floor and gives you the most fed up little look.

He's also a total goofball: 

Marco also makes the most ridiculous faces sometimes. 

Looks like he's saying "you want to adopt me right? *wink* *wink*"

As per one of our experienced fosters: "while Marco is a sweet puppy, he is very assertive and will need a family who is dog savvy. Marco will need to keep up with his training in order to maintain his wonderful temperament!"

See Misha's adoption page HERE!

See Marco's adoption page HERE!

Marco has since been adopted!

Gnocchi

I don't know about you, but I love starches. I love pasta, bread, potatoes. I'll have a pasta dish with french fries or some other form of potato on the side. I don't care, I love it. 

So when I had a bag of potatoes sitting in my cabinet the other day I couldn't think of a better way to combine two of the things that I love best: pasta and potatoes.

For those of you who don't know, gnocchi is essentially pasta dumplings made out of potato. The word gnocchi most likely came from the Italian word "nocchio" which means a knot of wood or from "nocca" which means knuckle. If you look at them this makes a lot of sense, since to me at least, the look almost like the joint of a thumb with ridges in it.  

See? Kind of like knuckles of wood.

Apparently though, originally they weren't made with potato at all, but instead they were made with semolina dough mixed with eggs.  I like them with potato though and that's really the most common way you see it today so I decided to go that route.

For my version I actually used a loose interpretation of Mario Batali's recipe.  I think I ended up using a little more flour than he did and I probably should have used more than I did cause my dough was still sticky, but more on that in a minute.  I also don't have pictures of the first few steps but they're pretty self explanatory so I think you'll be okay.

First you'll want to boil a few potatoes. I didn't happen to have russet potatoes so I used white potatoes (which hardly cost anything at Wegmans). I used about seven smallish ones, about the size of my fist.  After boiling them until relatively soft, I let them cool a little bit until they wouldn't burn my fingers and took the skins off. 

Now, as per my usual college ways, I of course didn't have a vegetable mill or a ricer. I didn't even have any sort of strainer because I lost it in a move at some point. So I used forks. Yeah, I know, it doesn't get much lamer than that. But it worked pretty well.  I did end up mushing some of the smaller pieces with my fingers because the forks weren't helping.  Once you're done you should get a pile that looks more or less like this:

Now that you've essentially got mashed potatoes, you can create a well in the middle of the pile:

And then you sprinkle (re: dump) the flour over the whole pile:

Create a new well in the center and add your egg!

Now use your hands to mix it all together!  I decided at this point to put it in a mixing bowl because I was making a royal mess trying to keep it on the cutting board.  Alternatively you could just do it on a clean, floured counter, but I didn't feel like cleaning it afterwards so I used the bowl:

Then take a fist-sized chunk and roll it into a log, about an inch wide:

You might have to add more flour as you roll it out, mine was pretty sticky. Or you could mix more flour into the main dough until it's tacky, but not impossible to work with.  Then take a sharp knife and cut the log into about 1/2 in wide pieces.  You might want to shape them a little more with your hands at this point or add the signature lines with a fork. I'm a lazy college student and I realized that this made a ton of dough and there was no way I was fussing with all of that so I just made them into little "torpedoes" as my dad calls them, and called it a day:

To cook them, bring a pot of water to a boil then put 12-15 gnocchi in at a time, allowing them to float to the surface and then cook for about another minute more before removing from the pot with a slotted spoon. At that point you can add more. Don't add too many at a time or it will take longer because the gnocchi will lower the temperature of the water too much.  

Here's what they look like while cooking, before they float:

And after you take them out:

At this point you can treat them like regular pasta: toss them in sauce, put some olive oil and salt on them etc.

I like mine a little more crisp than they come out of the pot so I sautéed them in a hot pan with some olive oil and rosemary until they were slightly browned:

Yum!

Here's the recipe:

3 pounds russet potatoes

2 c. flour

1 egg

1 pinch of salt (or more)

Boil the whole potatoes until they are soft (about 45 minutes). While still warm, peel and pass through vegetable mill onto clean pasta board.

Set 6 quarts of water to boil in a large spaghetti pot. 

Make well in center of potatoes and sprinkle all over with flour, using all the flour. Place egg and salt in center of well and using a fork, stir into flour and potatoes, just like making normal pasta. Once egg is mixed in, bring dough together, kneading gently until a ball is formed. Knead gently another 4 minutes until ball is dry to touch.

Roll baseball-sized ball of dough into 3/4-inch diameter dowels and cut dowels into 1/2-inch long pieces. Flick pieces off of fork or concave side of cheese grater until dowel is finished. Drop these pieces into boiling water and cook until they float (about 1 minute). Meanwhile, continue with remaining dough, forming dowels, cutting into 1-inch pieces and flicking off of fork. As gnocchi float to top of boiling water, remove them to dry paper towel or plate. Prepare as desired.

Also, these make approximately a zillion so I highly recommend either cutting the recipe in half or freezing a lot of them.  This is less than half:

You've been warned!

Zeppelin, a.k.a. the dog formerly known as "Snoop" ADOPTED

Seems like I've been falling in love with a lot of dark colored mature male pits lately. First Debo, and now Zeppelin.  Zep is the sweetest boy.  He's at least seven years old and seems to not be in excellent shape physically.  He's clearly underweight and has some sort of skin condition going on. This poor boy was all itchy and uncomfortable in his own skin despite us having him in our care for a few weeks.  

Today was his first day in training.  He did really well, considering we were teaching him a completely different name from what he has been used to for the last seven years.  His name used to be "Snoop," which I think is hilarious, especially when you look into his big sweet face.  The whole drive to training I had "Snoop Dog, Baby" by Reel Big Fish stuck in my head.

Anyway, Zep did a good job starting to learn his new name and was starting to respond to it more by the end of our hour long training session. We played a lot of the "name game" which consists of immediately giving him a treat when I say his name. Basically rewarding him for hearing his new name.  He didn't have to react or anything, just hear his name and eat his treat.  Then we took him outside to continue his training with a few more distractions.  At first he was dragging me all over the place. He may be underweight, but boy is he powerful. Luckily he's just a big mush who wanted to sniff everything and was completely unreactive to the other dogs, even when they were getting overexcited.  

By the end of training he was walking fantastically on the leash, not dragging me at all.  He followed me like a little lamb and automatically sat and stared at me when we stopped moving! I was happily surprised.  If this is how much he can learn in just an hour I can't wait to see where he will be in a few weeks. 

Unfortunately I think this is the last time this semester that I'll be able to work with Pitty Love because I have to go back home soon.  Hopefully all my favorite dogs will be gone by the time I get back! My absolute favorite dog Oreo already got adopted which was kind of bittersweet for me, but I'm glad he got a good home.

See Zeppelin's page HERE!!!!
Zeppelin has since been adopted!

Peanut Butter Bread

I admit it, I have a problem. Everyone I know is aware of it, some of them disagree strongly with it. It's an addiction that can't be stopped.

My name's Isabel and I'm addicted to peanut butter.

Peanut butter, peanuts, peanut butter flavored things, Reese's, all of it.

And I don't care.

So when I found a recipe for peanut butter bread you bet your butt I was scribbling it down and running to the kitchen immediately.  I think I had it in the oven less than half an hour after stumbling upon the recipe.

I don't even care that I told my dad I wouldn't make anymore recipes that I found online. It's peanut butter bread! He will understand.

Other than my peanut butter addiction, there's another thing you might not know about me.

This girl bakes in a cardigan.

A black one at that.

I dare flour to try to touch me:

I do wear my personally altered apron though. Aprons never ever fit me right. The neck strap is always huge and the strings are always way to long, and with cats in the kitchen , that's not an option.  So I went to my trusty sewing machine ages ago and shortened the neck strap and added some ribbon accents.  This is my clean apron, I have another one with brown ribbon with polka dots that's my chocolate apron and pretty much never gets washed.

Anyway, back to this magical recipe.

It was super simple, I'm really glad that I had everything I needed in the apartment or there would have been an emergency Wegmans run.  This recipe is basically a peanut butter cookie recipe by the looks of it, just way wetter, which is alright by me.  

According to the recipe, before you add the milk, the batter will be super dry. It was, but don't worry, it improved with the addition of the milk.  Before the milk it sort of looked like my dough for dog biscuits looks like, that's how dry it was:

Once I added the milk it pretty much instantly became more liquid. It was actually squelching in the mixer, which was kind of gross but it smelled like peanut butter so who cares.  The most promising part of making this recipe was that the dough/ batter looked and smelled almost exactly like peanut butter. I guess that's what happens when almost a third of the mix is made up of peanut butter.

The recipe also had a tip to use wax paper in the pan to help get the bread out easier when its done. I've never done this before but I figured why not, might as well try it right? Well, I was a little obsessive compulsive about my folds but this is what I came up with:

The batter was surprisingly thick when I went to pour it in. It may have looked liquid, but it was way less viscous than I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise.  Overly liquid doughs always make me paranoid that I've done something wrong.

I got it in the pan, smoothed it out, and popped it in the oven: 

I waited impatiently for it to be done.  I may or may not have snacked on straight peanut butter while I was waiting:

When it finally came out....

Yep, that's burnt on the sides. Damn you college oven.  I would have taken it out earlier but the center was no where near ready.

Not. Pleased.
Although I will say that the parchment paper was a godsend. I will definitely be doing this from now on.
Now, me being me, I didn't let this burnt crap bother me.
I just grabbed my bread knife (thanks dad!) once it had cooled and cut/ scraped off the burnt edges.  The rest of the bread was fine. And my apartment smelled amazing.

Problem solved!

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and set aside.

In a mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars.

Add the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla and mix well.

Slowly add in the flour mixture.

Slowly pour in the milk and mix well. Be sure to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl as the thicker, drier dough will stick and not be incorporated if you don't.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick poked into the center of the bread comes out clean.

Recipe from: A Pretty Life In The Suburbs

Krusteaz One Step Blueberry Muffins

A couple of weeks ago my dad sent me an absolutely fantastic care package.

One of the things that I was excited to try was the One Step Blueberry Muffins from Krusteaz.

I made their crumb cake box mix all the time so I was interested to see what one of their other products was like.  Although I did feel like I was completely cheating by making something so oversimplified with only water as an added ingredient.  I went ahead and tried it anyway.

Here's what the mix itself looks like:

The only thing you had to do to prepare it for pouring into the pans was to add water and shake it.  

So I shook and shook and shook:

One thing I will note about it is that there should probably be some sort of warning that shaking it too hard or too long creates pressure in the bottle.  It surprised the crap out of me when I opened it to pour it.

It looked pretty much how I expected it to when I opened it. Although I was a little surprised at how cylindrical the "blueberries" were. I'll never get used to the look or taste of fake blueberries:

The mix was supposed to make six muffins but apparently the muffin pan I have is ridiculously oversized because I barely got four out of them. Oh well, into the oven they went:

They didn't end up rising all that much, or getting much of a muffin-y top. But even though they looked more like biscuits, they tasted like muffins:

So overall, they weren't the best muffins I've ever made or eaten, but they were certainly the easiest by far. 

Adoption Spotlight: Dashing Debo! ADOPTED

Oh Debo, how my heart bursts with affection for you! 

This giant meat-head is the most ridiculously affectionate dog I think I've ever met.  Admittedly, he looks a little intimidating at first (although you can't tell that in these pictures). Even me, being the pit lover that I am was a little intimidated when I first walked up to him and saw that enormous pitty grin:

It seems silly now that I've met him, but that grin looks like it could absolutely swallow you up! Debo instantly showed me how wrong that thought was:

Debo is absolutely the biggest mush I have ever met.  It took a lot of patience and blurry pictures to get some good ones of him because all he wanted to do was be right up in your face being loved. And yes, there are a ton of pictures of him because I just couldn't help but love that gorgeous face!

If Debo's heart is half the size of his head I'm sure he'll be the most loving dog in the world. 

He's also a huge goof.  

I think belly rubs are his absolute favorite. He stayed like this for about ten minutes straight and would flop over to get a tummy rub if someone even started to walk towards him:

Some of the smaller puppies didn't quite know what to think of him, but all Debo wanted to do was be best friends.  Even with such an imposing presence, this boy managed to win over the hearts of everyone that was there.

If I was able to adopt a dog, Debo would probably be at the top of my list.  You've never met a more kindhearted and friendly dog.  All he wants to do is be part of a family again. Can you find a place for his giant head in your family?

Debo's Page!!!

Debo has since been adopted!