Puppy Love!!!

Over the weekend I tackled a couple dog based projects as well as a quick valentines project. On the doggie front I made a couple dog chewies as a Valentines present for some puppies in Michigan. I have been cranking these out at a pretty fast rate. Turkey loves them and it keeps him from chewing up my more expensive stuff. If you would like to make some I would recommend this tutorial here.... They are very simple to make and a great alternative to expensive dog toys that get torn up. I have been hitting up the remnants at Joann fabrics. The remnants are 50% off whatever the going sale price is. Recently fleece has  been 50% off on sale and then 50% off cause its a remnant. Gives me something to do with my hands while watching tv other than chomping chips.

Over the weekend I also broke out one of my favorite dog biscuit recipes. I used to make them all the time and it got to the point that Daisy would spit out commercially available biscuits. Such a diva !!! I don't often post recipes but this one is a keeper and I have optimized it so I will share.

Puppy Love Dog Biscuits

Ingredients

1 cup uncooked oatmeal
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups meat in broth
3/4 cups cornmeal
3 cups flour (whole wheat, all purpose, whatever combo of flour you have)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 F. 

Prepare the meat....

You can use any meat in this recipe. I utilize this recipe to use up freezer burnt items, left overs or meat that's on sale. Make sure that you don't use leftover that are heavily seasoned. Take your meat and cook in 2-3 cups water for as long as you can. I usually cook the meat until it is falling apart. Remove from heat and cool until you can shred or chop the meat as small as possible. If you used bone in meat make sure to remove all bones at this point.

Add your broth and meat to a large bowl. You can substitute meat and broth for hot water with bouillon cubes. Heat the contents of the bowl in the microwave until hot. Remove from microwave and add oatmeal, let stand 5 minutes. 

Stir cornmeal and egg. Add flour, 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. 

Knead 3 to 4 minutes, adding more flour if necessary to make a very stiff dough. Pat or roll dough to 1/2 inch thickness. 

Cut into shapes and place on a greased baking sheet. You can use cookie cutters, or free form shapes. I cut bite size pieces with a pizza cutter. 

Bake for 40 minutes. Allow to cool and dry out until hard. 

There are no preservatives in these biscuits. Shelf life can be lengthened by freezing. 

I cut mine into hearts this time for valentines day, I should have added some beet to the mix.

I also made some treats for my human Valentines as well. I have a million pink scraps and this ate up some. I think i need an all pink scrap quilt to kill my scrap stash. I mailed off these to my mom and a coworker for Valentines day. Hopefully they will arrive in time. 

Last but not least we have a winner for the Traveling Stash Box #6. Katie from Snuggle Up with a dish from Karma will be the recipient of the traveling stash box. Hopefully she will enjoy the goodies within and add some more awesome stuff. 

January Blogger BOM Winner

     First of all we have a winner for January Blogger BOM. That lucky follower is Scrapbook-ChickADoodle. I have emailed her and will be shipping her 100 2.5" fabrics squares as soon as I get her address.
     I also took some more pictures of Megan's Baby quilt to get some shots of the back and the binding. I ended up cutting these owls in the wrong direction so that's how the ended up on the back. I love the binding on this quilt. I can't remember where I got it and I only bought a quarter yard. Turned out to be perfect for this quilt and was just enough.

 
     Other big news this week is this week is that we added a new critter to our family. Our dog Vinnie hasn't been doing great and my beagle Daisy is very close to him. Vinnie has a tumor in his ear as well as alot of other health problems. We decided that we weren't going to pursue surgery with Vinnie. Since he and Daisy are so close we decided to add a new addition to our family to make the transition easier on Daisy. We looked around and came across someone who had a litter of English Springer Spaniel puppies. My Uncle Tom had one of these dogs when I was growing up and I always wanted one. So this little guy has been chewing and pooing his way into our hearts, his name is Turkey. Daisy has been a very patient big sister.

     
       I grabbed some remnant fleece from Joanne's yesterday. I use it to make some doggie chews from this tutorial here. They turned out really well and the dogs love them. Very easy to whip up while watching tv.

     On the quilting front I am working on this baby rag quilt for Paru's baby girl who is about 2. She saw one that I made for Elizabeth's foster baby and fell in love with it. I made this one for her daughter with the cutest fattest bumble bees. I need to snip the seems on this one....

     Enough slacking I need to get back to the machine. Don't forget 2/1/13 we have a bonus Blogger BOM with Jennifer from Knotted thread!!!

Linking it up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced....