Dog Pill Hide Ems

My unsuspecting mutt. I kind of feel guilty, look at that face!

How do you get down a dog pill... undetected? See those three globs... "one of these things is not like the other, one these things just isn't the same" ( inserting Sesame Street here).

You see, my dog is no longer interested in taking her medicine.  I think they changed the formula.  Before the company had a quite a long hiatus my dog loved these things.  Now that this company is back in action she can not stand them.  I tried to give them to her in her food bowl, which before she would eat the tablet first, not now, she some how ate around it.  Like how do they do that?  They dont have fingers, they just eat with those big snouts and just how do they eat around something that is exactly the same size as the rest of the stuff in their bowl?  They're brilliant, I tell yah.

If I cover them with cheese then, by Joe, she will figure it out.  She will eat all the cheese and leave the pill lying on the floor, looking at it incredulously. Like how could I even think of giving her something like that to eat.

In comes peanut butter.  Her favorite.  I mean her favorite all time thing to eat! One time the kids and I did a taste test.  We put some peanut butter on the tile floor and a piece of meat.  We had bets on which one she would eat first.  She walked over to the meat, smelled it. Went to the peanut butter, ate it then promptly ate the meat as a chaser.  I won.   

Its becasue of this knowing that I had to try this tablet in peanut butter.  It worked.  Has worked many times since.  She is none the wiser.  I know some of you purists may balk at the use of wheat flour but I imagine it would work equally as well with oat flour or rice flour.

Pill Hide Ems

1 generous tablespoon peanut butter
1 equally generous tablespoon flour (your choice- rice, oats, wheat)

Stir together flour and peanut butter, mashing it out to mix it.  Make three balls, inserting the tablet into one.  Feed the dog a tablet free one just in case they decide to do an investigation.  This way if they check it out they will see it is just pure yum.  Give the tablet one next.  Usually my dog catches this one mid air because she already has realized its something yummy and since they look exactly the same way there is no need to do an investigation.

Then maybe you wonder if the dog is getting the pills total benefit if they do not chew.  I asked my vet that question and she said, yes, it is made to get absorbed fairly quickly.  It really doesn't matter for my dog though because there ain't no way in God's green earth that she would ever chew the thing anyway.

(Action shots of pill consumption, in a dimly lit kitchen, below.)

She's licking her lips, doesn't that say it all.

Crescent Roll Dough- Skip the canned stuff

I'd love to show you the finished product here.  It was dark when they were done baking and they were gobbled up like nobody's business. But I can share with you the beginning stages and later on, when I make them again, because I definitely will, I will share a photo of the end product.

Crescent Roll Dough
Printable here.

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons yeast
1 teaspoon salt
8 ounces (2 sticks) butter
1 1/2 cups ricotta (part skim or whole)

In the mixing bowl of a food processor (you can certainly do this by hand in a regular bowl with a pastry blender or fork) combine the flour, baking powder, yeast and salt.  Close the lid and begin to spin.  Add in pieces of butter until dough is crumbly like pea meal. Add in 1 1/2 cups of ricotta.  (Next time, I am going to use cottage cheese- just for a lighter dough, eh hem, as light as it can be considering all the butter in these babies). Mix it only until it comes together.  Empty out onto a floured surface and flatten into a rectangle.

Fold the sides of the rectangle in like you would a business letter, trifold.  Flatten a bit again and repeat the folds.  Flatten a little, cut in half.  Wrap in plastic and refrigerate (for an hour and up to 24 hours).  You can freeze this dough if you like at this stage.

Once you remove the dough from the refrigerator, Roll out and make crescents or use to make a calzone or like you would for any recipe calling for "canned" crescent rolls.  Voila.  From scratch. Minus preservatives and chemicals.

Broccoli, Ham and Cheese calzones.

Weight Watcher Wednesday: Indian Stir Fry

I know, it's Saturday.  Humor me.

I missed my day for Weight Watcher Wednesday. I slacked off last week and this week but I am back in full force. I made a definite decision to lighten things up around here.  In many ways.  Me, the amount of stuff I have around the house... So I will have a bunch of recipes to choose from each week. 

Let me remind you of stir fries just in case you have put them ont eh back burner so to speak.  I remember int he 90's they were big.  Everyone had a wok and was doing stir fries.  They were fast and delicious, especially if you had everything ready to go into the wok.  I loved them.  Somehow I have veered away from them.

Indian cuisine offers a lot of stir fry ideas as well.  I recently tried this amazing stir fry.  It went above and beyond what I expected.  At first I thought it and unusually weird combination of vegetables.  But since I had green peppers and squash to use up, I decided to try it.  Fabulous.

Green Bell Pepper and Butternut Squash Stir Fry
Any vegetables will work here.  These spices add so much flavor without adding calories.

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
cilantro (if desired for garnish)
2 bell peppers, chopped
2 cups butternut squash, cut in small cubes*
1 tablespoon ghee or a flavorless oil such as canola
1 teaspoon oil

In a heated frying pan, melt butter, add bell peppers.  Saute until tender then add butternut squash.  Cook until tender.  In a separate small non stick frying pan add oil.  When oil is hot add cumin seeds and mustard seeds.  When they begin to pop add garlic and ginger, cook one minute more.  Remove from pan and set aside. Add to stir fry when it is nearly done.  (When toasting the spices be sure not to burn it as the spices will turn bitter.)

*If you want to up the flavor quotient, spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray and roast the squash until lightly browned at 425F.  If you have the time roast at 350F- it will take longer but it will be sweeter.

 

Coming up... some more Weight Watcher Meal reviews.

I've Been Yogued

Any excuse to say that word. Yogued... like Vogue, only slightly fermented... I also like onomonapea and peppadew... Any excuse to say those words.

But I digress. You see for over a year now, more like five or ten years, I have been serious about making my own yogurt. I actually owned a yogurt maker. It was a long plastic covered contraption with six ceramic containers in it. It sat in my pantry for a looong time. I got rid of it. I saved the containers because they are reusable and have nice little covers. But I gave up. It all sounded like too much of a hassle. Until now. I found this post at A Year of Slow Cooking. I was hooked. I even bought a crock pot (15 bucks on sale, whew heeew). Why? because it had a warm function and I wanted to make sure it would keep the heat below 140F which is optimal because the good bacteria can be killed in the yogurt. I also liked this particular crock pot because it fits on my counter and I don't have to drag it in and out of the pantry. Love that! It was worth it to me you see because my husband goes through copious amounts of yogurt.

Now, crockpot lady does hers solely in the crockpot. I wanted to speed up the process a little. I put 2 quarts of 2% milk into a stock pot. I heated it on medium until the temperature reached about 185F. I turned it off and let it cool. I added the starter that my husbands friend "V" generously gave us (from India) after it had cooled. I had left the starter out on the counter to bring it to room temperature before adding it in. I also stirred in a 1/2 cup powdered milk. From what I have read, 2 tablespoons to a 1/4 cup per quart of powdered milk will help to gel the yogurt a bit more. European yogurt I guess tends to be on the runny side. American yogurt is more firm. I actually will eat it either way but prefer it more on the thicker side.
I put the crock pot on the previous day and took the temperature of the water with an instant read thermometer to make sure it was under 140F. After four hours of being on it was at 120F. So I was pretty sure it would not get too hot. I poured warm water into the crockpot and turned the dial to warm. I put my pint jars into their cozy little hot tub. I covered it and left it on for about 7 1/2 hours. I pulled out one of the jars and looked at the liquid. It had gelled. I consider that a success. Wahoo!
Here are the "Cliff Notes" version of what I did:

1. Heated 2 quarts of 2% milk in stock pot until the temperature reached 185F.
2. Brought my starter to room temperature.
3. After milk cooled down I added the 1/2 cup of starter & 1/2 cup powdered milk.
4. Poured that liquid into 4 pint jars and put lids on top.
5. Turned on my crockpot to warm and added warm tap water.
6. Placed the pint jars into the warm water bath in the crockpot and covered it.
7. It sat in the warm water bath for about 7 to 8 hours.
8. Turned the crockpot off, removed the pints and transferred them to the fridge.
9. In the morning I opened one, spooned it out and added a tablespoon of my canned cherry jelly. I enjoyed some cherry flavored yogurt for a fraction of the cost.

Notes:

You can use a good quality yogurt with all the good bacteria in it for your starter. Or you can actually pick up a yogurt starter at a Health Food store.

I don't know if it was the starter or the milk powder but the yogurt is a bit of a different flavor than the store bought one. I imagine I will get used to it and then hate the store bought one- thinking it too bland. Of course slathered in jelly, I didnt notice anymore.*

*Update- I found out it was the dry milk- I tasted it on its own and it was disgusting. It's old. Goodness time flies.