Just enjoying the first weekend of fall doing some housework (okay not so enjoyable) and baking cookies. Cookies make everything better.
The weather is absolutely beautiful, though I heard on the news that we got our first snowflakes the other night. Madness, I tell you.
My mom is visiting today, and she was talking about how her dog is suddenly allergic to lots of things and he can’t have any treats with dye or chemicals in them. I’ve had the ingredients to make homemade dog treats for the Rors for awhile, so I decided today would be the perfect day to try them out.
I fudged around with a few recipes that I found online; the original one I found called for powdered milk, and since I have no other need for powdered milk and you can only buy it in a big box, I omitted it.
Here is my newfangled recipe.
2 jars of beef (or chicken) baby food
1 c. milk
6 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg
1 tsp salt
2 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. garlic powder
Mix wet ingredients (including baby food) til they are combined, but not until the egg is frothy. In another bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and mix. Plop dough onto a floured countertop, and roll out to about 1/2″ thick. Cut with a bone-shaped cookie cutter, and bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350? for 20-30 minutes.
Clearly, Rory thinks they turned out just fine.
I baked them for about 28 minutes and they were pretty soft yet, like cookies. I imagine if you wanted them to be crunchy like dog biscuits, you’d have to bake them longer.
I made my first foray into pie this week. I LOVE pumpkin, which is why this time of year is my favorite. I can take or leave the holidays, but I LOVE pumpkin. I wish it were available all year round.
So I bravely decided to try pumpkin pie out of fresh pumpkin – a feat I had been told to avoid because fresh pumpkin pie can be stringy and dense and weird. But I couldn’t resist. After I made my pumpkin oatmeal bread with a real pumpkin, I decided it couldn’t be too hard.
I was kind of wrong. Pumpkin pie (at least the recipe I used) isn’t hard, persay, but it is time-consuming.
First I used the pie crust recipe from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. I highly recommend this book. Very simple food- but very detailed instructions about how to cook it the best possible way.
So to start, I cooked the whole pumpkin. Just stuck the whole thing on the oven rack for an hour at 350ºF. After that I sliced it open, scooped out the seeds, then scooped out the flesh and put it in the food processor. I processed it for about 10 minutes total- occasionally turning it off and scraping down the sides. I think this is the key to making it smooth and not stringy!
Next I started the crust. Just butter, flour, and water basically. Mixed it up, formed balls, and put them in the fridge. Then I took them out and Puppers jumped on the table and ate one. Good thing I only had enough pumpkin for one pie.
Next I rolled it,
Put it in the pan, forked the bottom,
Filled it with beans
And blind baked it
In the meantime I mixed up the pumpkin with eggs, sugar, evaporated milk, and spices, and when the crust was done I poured it in. The filling recipe was from Betty Crocker.
Bake for about an hour, and yay pumpkin pie!
By the time the pie was done baking, the sun had gone down and the lighting was bad 
.
See Puppers hiding behind the trash can?
She’s so cute!
It was SO GOOD. Definitely try it.
Woo! We’re getting our oil today! That means we can stop rationing the 40 gallons we had in our tank and actually turn on the heat!
So I made some bread yesterday from the fabulous book, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I borrowed it from the library, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy it. Its fabulous. They don’t lie when they say 5 minutes a day.
Yum! You can’t taste the pumpkin much- its very subtle. But I put some butter and black beans on it today, and it was amazing. Yeah, black beans. I eat them all the time.
Can I just say that I just tripped on my computer cable and the whole thing flew onto the floor, dislodging the screen and smashing the power cable? I just got finished sending an email that said “My iBook is 5 years old, and it’s still kickin’. I almost wish it would bite the dust so I could get a shiny new one!” I guess you have to be careful what you wish for.
