Homemade Dog Treats for Your Best Friend

Dear Galaxy,

We LOVE our furry four-legged friends. One of the items we used to buy on a regular basis was dog treats.

Our big white fluffy dog lives for his treats and walks. If we forget either one, he causes a ruckus making sure that we know about it until we rectify our negligence. He barks and paws at our glass front door and then watches our every move with sad eyes. It doesn't take long before he gets his way. However, his need for dog treats and my need to save money conflict. To cut costs and make the box of dog treats stretch, I would break the treats in half and even thirds. This didn't help, so I decided to make my own biscuits and found grand success. In fact, it was so simple, I was mad at myself for not doing it earlier.

When I tested the doggie treats out on my brother's dogs, they went nuts. They loved them! My niece did an experiment where she put down the commercial biscuit and then the homemade biscuit. At first, the dog recognized the commercial biscuit and immediately picked it up. When he saw the homemade biscuit, he spat out the commercial biscuit and went straight for the homemade one. For the duration of my stay, I became the "Pied Piper of Pups". They smelled the biscuits--they wanted the biscuits--they HAD TO HAVE the biscuits. I was never alone. 

Peanut Butter Dog Treats

Doggie Bone Cookie Cutters

I find it interesting that there is cookie cutters in the shape of doggie bones, and they are sold in three different sizes. There are other shapes that the dog might enjoy like paw prints, doghouses and fire hydrants. Check online for a complete collection of cookie cutters. As humans, we find the shape of the treats only appealing to us. We get excited when the cookies look cute and we have to resist the urge to decorate them with colored frosting and sprinkles. I can guarantee the dog doesn’t care what it looks like and he or she will woof it down within seconds. Still, we love our dogs so much we are willing to do anything for them.

Recipe for Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits

Here is our favorite recipe for doggie treats. There are a couple of reasons I like this recipe. First, the dog really loves them and second I am feeding him high quality ingredients. We all treat our pets as part of the family and you could actually feed these cookies to your kids if you really wanted, although they probably wouldn't like the taste of them.

Ingredients

·         Vegetable oil cooking spray

·         4-cups of whole-wheat flour. I imagine white flour will work, but we like to grind our own flour.

·         1-cup of oats

·         2-tablespoons of baking powder

·         2-cups of low sodium chicken broth (you could use bouillon cubes instead)

·         2-cups of peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)

·         ½-cup of parmesan cheese

Step by Step

1—Blend the flour, oats, baking powder in a mixer. Add the chicken broth, peanut butter and parmesan cheese to the dry ingredients and mix. It will form a ball around your beaters and have the consistency of cookie dough. 

2—Preheat the oven to 375° Fahrenheit. Spray a cookie sheet with the oil. Spread the biscuit mix into the pan in about a ½-inch layer. Use your cookie cutter or score the cookies into squares with a butter knife.

3—Slide it into the preheated oven and bake between 15 to 20-minutes. Check frequently. The biscuits should be light brown and slightly hardened. For a harder biscuit, bake longer.

4—If you want an actual dog bone shape, you can order a dog bone cookie cutter. If you go this route, flour your clean counter top and roll out the dough with a rolling pin as if you were rolling out sugar cookies. However, although this is cute and fun, it is also time consuming and I prefer to mass-produce our dog cookies since my dog really doesn't care how cute his treat looks.

Doggie Tips

1—Use a fork to add holes in the cookie for a gourmet look.

2—The dog biscuits will only last about a week before they start to grow mold. We keep ours in the refrigerator, which buys extra time. Try baking them longer so they are super hard. If any mold appears, simply bake in the oven at 325° F for 20 minutes.

3—The biscuits are completely safe for human consumption. If you find your toddler nibbling on them, never fear—you don't have to call Poison Control.

4—Baking these biscuits may become a safety hazard! If you have inside dogs, they will be at your feet throughout the whole process--be careful not to trip over them.

5— Doggie treats smell tasty, but really aren't. They lack sugar, which we all want in our cookies. Caution: you may find yourself baking peanut butter cookies alongside these tasty dog morsels.

6—If you want to win over your neighbor’s dog, when you go for a visit, bring a bag full of homemade gourmet dog biscuits. They will both love you for it.

Peace Peeps,

Broke Girl

It's time for Maple Syrup

Hello Galaxy,

Guess what time of year it is? Yep, it's maple tapping season.

To collect maple sap, it has to be the right time of year, which is about now. The best sap flows when temperatures are below freezing at night and warming up to above 40 degrees during the day.

First, let me say that a little preparation goes a long, long, long way.  

Wood Pecker Holes

A few years ago, we tapped anything that looked remotely like a maple tree. The result was a funky mapley-tasting syrup that wasn't half-bad, which made it only half-good. Who knows what we were pouring onto our pancakes. To repent of our wayward tapping habit, we went out into the woods the next fall and searched for actual maple trees. We marked them with orange tape. One tree had rows of woodpecker holes at several different heights. I learned something important from this--if a bird likes it, it's a good tree. You wouldn't believe how much sap flowed from it --it was amazing! It was like a fountain of sugary wonder--my taste buds are crying with happiness as I type this.  

One year, our spiels drained into open buckets subject to the elements and critters. The next year, we ordered 5 new spiels with hoses. At first, I was annoyed that my husband wanted to spend extra money on this. I'm the cheapest person I know and I saw this as waste since we had 6 perfectly good spiels and our tapping operation was just fine. I now know the folly of my ways. Instead of the sap water brimming with leaves, twigs, floating dead bugs, it is pure. I should've gotten on board with this sooner since I am not a fan of proteins that are not cheese, nuts or eggs. You guessed it, I'm never going to be that person that relishes the idea of eating fried grasshoppers or chocolate coated worms. 

So here are some facts for making your own syrup. Did you know that you can tap trees other than just maple? You may not get the same taste, but it will still be good. Some tapping varieties are box elder, walnut, birch, sycamore, poplar and hickory. However, not all saps are created equal--some may be a tad bitter, some will take more sap to make the same amount you would get from a maple tree and the list goes on.  

Spiel with Hose

   
It's an easy process to tap a tree. Find a tree that is between 10 and 20 inches in diameter. Drill a hole about 2 inches into the tree with a drill bit that is the same size as your spiel. Tap the spiel gently into the tree with a rubber mallet. Hang your bucket off the spiel and wait for it to fill. It may take a while. It probably won't flow like it did in the Hunger Games—when they drove the spiel into the tree and sap miraculously poured out. It may take a few days depending on the tree or even longer. 

Don't be discouraged that it takes 50 to 60 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup--it's worth it. Once you have a good amount, put it on the stove and boil it down. If you have endless of amounts of energy (like the heat from a wood stove) or someone else pays your gas, electric, or propane bill for your kitchen stove, you're in luck. I happen to heat with a wood and I'm unapologetic about having the opportunity to make syrup when I can--there has to be some pay off to having to shove wood into that metal monster day and night 5 months of the year.  


Anyway, once you have your syrup--enjoy. I put syrup on pretty much everything. I add it to my wheat bread dough, my cereal, ice cream and baked beans. I believe there is no such thing as too much maple syrup.  

Peace Peeps,
Broke Girl

Hello from Broke Girl - Introduction

Hello Galaxy,

This is it--my first blog post as Broke Girl.

First, let me give you a little background on myself. I live an off-grid lifestyle in the Tennessee woods. Although I love off-grid living, one of the set-backs to being away from a city is the lack of available work that pays above minimum wage. Since the world revolves around money, this is a problem. I began working at home by studying medical transcription and then working as a contract medical transcriptionist for the VA. While this was a great job for a while, my back, arms and hands suffered from hour-after-hour of typing. In the past years, I've worked as a transcriptionist, eBook writer, sold art and other items on internet sites, cleaned construction sites, worked as a personal care attendant, a case manager and an administrative assistant. One could say that "I'm a Jack of all trades and master of none," and this would be true. This gives me the distinct advantage of not just telling someone what works and what doesn't, but actually trying different ways to make a living and saving money. One of my mantras is "money you save is money you don't have to earn." Therefore, it is my goal to live on as little money as possible and create the quality life that brings me happiness and peace. Isn't this what we all want? 

Peace peeps,
Broke Girl