Adding a puppy to the household has certainly upped the pet food bill. After reading the ingredients on some commercial dog biscuits and seeing the price tag on some of the better quality ones, I decided to make my own.
Thanks to two nice folks on the Labrador Retriever Chat Board, I found two recipes that sounded pretty good.
Here’s the first one – Peanut Butter Yummies. Devin loves peanut butter but, strangely, he didn’t really care for the peanut butter flavored biscuits that I bought (and he’s a Lab – he eats ANYTHING). Frankly, I didn’t like them much either after I tasted one.
Dry ingredients: 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 tablespoon baking powder.
Wet ingredients: one cup of skim milk and one cup of peanut butter. I used 1/3 cup of non-fat dry milk powder + water to equal 1 cup. I also use reduced sugar/salt peanut butter. Why do items that have ingredients LEFT OUT cost more? (Never mind, that’s another topic.) I despise scraping peanut butter out of measuring cups, so I take a 2 cup glass measuring cup, add the one cup of milk, then add peanut butter until the milk level reaches 2 cups.
I put the mixture in the microwave and heated it gently to make it easier to mix the peanut butter into the milk.
Add the wet ingredients to the bowl of dry ingredients, then place measuring cup on floor for easy clean-up 
Mix it thoroughly and dump it out on a floured board to roll out the dough. It’s pretty oily so I didn’t need much flour at all.
After it’s rolled out about 1/4″ thick, cut into shapes. I did some round ones with a biscuit cutter…
some squares, and some bone shaped. I prefer to use parchment paper, but the original recipe called for greasing the pans. They don’t spread, so it’s OK to crowd them pretty close on the cookie sheet.
Bake at 375° for 13-15 minutes (possibly as long as 20 minutes depending on your oven). I did flip mine over about halfway through the baking time. Next time I make these, I’m going to experiment with adding a wee bit of honey and some anise seed (the catnip for dogs). One spice you shouldn’t give dogs is nutmeg, so stay away from that (as well as chocolate, onions, grapes and raisins – the jury’s still out on garlic. Some say it’s OK, some say it’s not, even though you find it in a lot of commercial dog food).
Devin’s vote: 2 paws up. BarBBQ Bill’s vote: pretty good (his idea to add some honey – yes, he taste-tests all of Devin’s food).
Next, I tried Banana Bites. Another simple, healthy recipe.
2-1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup nonfat dry milk
1 large egg
1/3 cup mashed ripe banana
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water (the original recipe added a beef bouillon cube to the water, but I couldn’t find any that weren’t 1000% salt)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1. Mix all ingredients until well blended.
2. Knead for 2 minutes on a floured surface. Roll to 1/4-inch thickness.
3. Cut out shapes using a cookie cutter and place on ungreased baking sheets.
4. Bake at 300° for 30 minutes. Cool on wire rack.
Devin’s favorite: actually the ones in the center of the picture. After I got bored using the cookie cutters, I simply rolled out the remainder of the dough into a rectangle, spread it with peanut butter, rolled it into a log and cut into slices. Next time, I’ll do them all this way.
Daddy, STOP eating all my treats!
I felt comfortable substituting peaches for half of the tomatoes as they are lower in pH than tomatoes (3.5 vs. 4.5) so they add acidity to the overall recipe. That’s a good thing.
I had some lovely Kellogg’s Breakfast heirloom tomatoes (the ones on the left and right). They are my favorite tomato – sweet and juicy and a pretty color that I hoped would make a good looking salsa.
I used 4 cups of peeled and chopped tomatoes (aren’t they a great color?) Let them drain VERY well. They are meaty but very juicy.
Prepare 4 cups of peeled, chopped and drained peaches. These were nice local peaches.
We debated about using orange peppers, but BarBBQ Bill thought the salsa would need some red in it, so we used 1-1/2 cups of chopped red peppers. This is about 1-1/4 cups sweet red peppers and 1/4 cup of mixed Anaheims and jalapenos for a little heat – all from our garden. Feel free to adjust the heat level by using more hot peppers and less of the sweet ones. Just don’t increase the total amount of peppers.
Add 2-1/2 cups of chopped onions and 6 cloves of garlic, minced. I was lucky to find some sweet local onions and the garlic came from the garden. I used 4 cloves of garlic – ours were really big. I also used about 1/4 cup of cilantro (I love cilantro – if you don’t, leave it out).
Here’s everything in the pot. I added the following spices: 2 teaspoons cumin, 2 tablespoons canning salt, and about 2 teaspoons of ground pepper (I used white pepper).
Stir the ingredients and begin bringing it to a gentle boil. A thick bottomed stainless pot works the best.
Gently boil the salsa for 10 minutes. Start tasting. I added another squirt of lime juice (I love lime!) If your tomatoes aren’t as sweet as mine were, you can add sugar to taste. Brown sugar might be nice with the peaches.
Pour into hot jars (use only 1/2 pint or pint jars – no quarts), seal and process in a hot water canning bath for 15 minutes.
2. Raising over 300 plants from seed for the garden (in our tiny little kitchen).
3. Successfully rehabilitating a Little Brown Bat (in our bedroom).
4. Watching an Eastern Phoebe couple raise their chicks right outside our back door.
5. And enjoying our new puppy (who still is not sleeping through the night)!
Since both BarBBQ Bill and I are Hungarian, we grew up eating “Töltött Káposzta”. This is one of our main “comfort foods”.
Here’s the ingredients:
Cover the 1 cup rice with boiling water and let stand (about 10-15 minutes) until the water is absorbed. Set aside to cool. If it’s still a bit wet, just drain the excess water off. It shouldn’t be cooked all the way.
In a large pot (the one you’re going to cook the cabbage rolls in), saute the onion and garlic in olive oil until translucent, not brown. Add paprika to taste, being careful not to let the paprika burn (it will get very bitter). This is a big head of cabbage, so I’m using my largest stock pot (I think it’s 16 quarts?) for cooking.
In large bowl, mix ground meat, 1 egg, cooked rice, most of the cooked onion mixture, parsley and some of the bread crumbs.
Mush it around with your hand to mix thoroughly. Season with salt and more paprika. Add another egg and more bread crumbs if necessary. It should be moist enough to hold together into balls of filling.
With a sharp, sturdy knife, carefully cut out the cabbage core…
and bring large pot of water to simmering. Add whole cabbage head and cook until you can start to peel the outer leaves off without tearing. Keep returning the cabbage to the pot, peeling off the outer leaves until they get too small or too crinkly to roll.
Trim the rib off each cabbage leaf with a sharp paring knife (this makes it easier to roll).
Place a spoonful of ground meat stuffing on base of cabbage leaf and roll once.
Remember the stuffing will expand slightly when the rice absorbs the liquid, so don’t roll too tightly.
Turn in one half of the leaf (I do the left side first) and roll up.
Tuck in the other side of the cabbage leaf with your forefinger to secure the roll. If the leaf is really wide and there’s too much cabbage to tuck in, just trim part of it off and add the trimmings to the pot.
They should look like little packets that will (usually) stay intact during the cooking process.
In the large pot that you sauteed the onions in (I left a few in there to flavor the sauce), add about an inch or two of tomato juice and a layer of sauerkraut. Start adding the cabbage rolls.
When you get a layer finished, season with more paprika if desired (I don’t add more salt, because the tomato juice and sauerkraut contain a lot of salt). Pour tomato juice over to cover. I used two quarts of home canned tomatoes instead of one of the cans of tomato juice.
Continue layering sauerkraut and cabbage rolls until you run out of cabbage rolls. Chop or sliver whatever cabbage you have left and use in layers in the pot. Make golf ball sized balls with any leftover filling, and add those to the pot as well.