Happy Monday, peeps! Hope you had a terrific weekend. We were busy at the Ranch putting the final touches on the new BarkBook making it ready for downloading in the shop. To wet your good pup’s taste buds, here’s a sample of some of the delicious (and easy to make) treats from it.
🦴 Cheesy Applesauce Bites
INGREDIENTS:
1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/3 cup applesauce
1/3 cup water
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/cup oatmeal
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 375º F.Combine cheddar, applesauce and water in a small bowl. Combine flour and oatmeal in a large bowl. Blend cheese-applesauce mixture into the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Knead into a dough and turn onto a floured surface. Roll dough to 1/4-1/2” thickness and sprinkle with Parmesan. Cut with cookie cutters (or use a pizza cutter and cut into small squares). Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 mins. (longer if biscuits are thicker).
Store in an air-tight container in refrigerator and consume in 1 week or freeze for up to 3 weeks.
And because every Monday should start out with a smile, how about a little poodle food to remind you to smile and eat your veggies? Happy Monday.
Let’s hear it for the arrival of Friday! If it’s Friday, that means it’s not only our most welcomed friend, but it’s also a time when we stroll around Blogville checking out the beauty of Mother Nature. As usual, we are joining our friends, Rosy and her brothers from LLB in our Backyard.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who follows along with our whinging antics, but it’s been hot. I mean, H-O-T. With temperatures in the upper 90’s a fair part of this week and little moisture in our ‘hood, you’d think there wouldn’t be much to look at. Wrong! It’s Rudbeckia season. Often referred to as Black-eyed Susan’s, this beautifully colorful perennial is a herbaceous flower belonging to the aster family. Growing throughout the US, the Black-eyed Susans is actually the state flower of Maryland and a symbol of horse-racing’s Preakness race.
Black-eyed Susans grow to between 12 to 40-inches in height, and 18 to 12-inches in width across the petals. Its stem is hardy and covered with tiny stiff hairs. This plant is fairly resistant to the wind and the elements, making it easy to grow in all conditions. It’s probably why you see it often along highways and in meadows.
The leaves arrange themselves in rosette form around the “bee,” with the plants shooting leaves from the stem in the second season. The leaves have a toothed edge with a rough texture. The plant produces a flower heads consisting of 8 to 20 orange-yellow florets that cluster into a cone-shape and turn dark toward the center. They are part of the coneflower family.
Ever wonder how this garden favorite got its name? The scientific classification actually comes from Sweden. Born in Västerås, Olaus Rudbeck was a famous botanist and professor of medicine at Uppsala University. Black-eyed Susans garner its scientific name, “Rudbeckia,” from the Swedish scientist although Rudbeck didn’t name the flower himself. Botanist Carl Linnaeus, who studied under Rudbeck’s son, named the plant in loving memory of Rudbeck and his son. The Black-eyed Susan belongs to the Asteraceae family, which includes other coneflower species.
We hope you are able to get outside and enjoy a lovely summer weekend and check out all the beauty Mother Nature offers. Like this pretty sunrise from this morning.
* * * Exciting News * * *
Recently I mentioned there’s be some exciting news coming and now I can share it with you. For some time now I’ve been working on writing a collection of treat recipes in a cookbook BarkBook. After exploring numerous publishing options, I decided to ‘publish’ it in our e-shop in the form of a download with a portion of sales benefitting local pet rescue groups. With lots of starts and stops (including a catastrophic disappearance somewhere in the Cloud) requiring me to lose my mind a total rewrite, this baby is now done. I’ll be beta-testing the download process over the next few days but wanted to give you advance notice that it’s coming soon. Finally. I feels like I’ve birthed an elephant. Stay tuned for the official arrival ( hopefully next week). In the meantime, don’t forget to check out the e-shop for bandanas, hand-painted greeting cards and (now) another new item, “Scrubbies” (which work great as an exfoliator for uprights or work hard cleaning your veggies-we use ours all around the house for cleaning too). Check them out!
Last week you may recall that the Management met with the Ranch Hands to discuss safety protocols. While I’m sure the status quo will return in no time making winter walks dicey again at some point, I’m happy to report they have been on their best paws during our walks. No assassination attempts have occurred but then again maybe it’s because the weather warmed up and gloves haven’t been needed in the balancing act of leashes, filled poop bags, squirrel alert, etc. We’ll continue to keep our fingers crossed.
That said, Management has been offered and accepted a(nother) new role around the Ranch. Some of you already were aware that we recently launched an e-shop and several of you have already purchased products from our K9 shop for which we are grateful. In case you haven’t checked it out, I hope you’ll consider swinging by as new items are being added all the time as we gear up for the ‘howliday’ season. The Ranch Hands decided the new title was a good idea and promptly dubbed me the Ranch’s CEO/Pet-trepeneur. Like all good companies, when you want to make someone feel good without giving them a raise, what do you do? You give them a new title.
So what does a Pet-trepeneur do exactly? I’m still learning the ropes of the new position but the Ranch Hands say I’m supposed to create products, try to maintain the website(dear Lord), advertise and market our little corner of the ‘Net and of course, handle customer service. The dogs tell me that last part includes baking organic, healthy dog treats like we used but I’m waiting for a marketing analysis report to come back. Yeah, that’s the ticket…marketing analysis. LOL
So to launch the e-shop properly and as my first official act as the new CEO/Pet-trepeneur of the Ranch, the dogs thought we should offer a contest just in time for Halloween; one of our reversible bandanas. This particular bandana comes in two sizes, regular and small. How can you win one of these reversible 100% cotton bandanas? Leave a comment and the official Prize Committee will choose a winner. Who’s on the Prize Committee, you ask? One Knucklehead and one Ninja. We’ll do this all very scientifically (till I can figure out the Rafflecopter plugin – oh boy, another digital cluster) going old school by printing each comment and having their busy-body noses decide sniff out a winner. Should be interesting so leave us a comment to be entered into our first official give-away. Sam and Elsa said they will accept bribes but rest assured, I put the kibosh on that. Knuckleheads! Good luck, ‘effuryone.’
P.S. We’ve added a few Howliday items and will hopefully add more this week. Just 63 sleeps till Christmas. Don’t mean to rush to it before Halloween, but they’ll be here before you know it.
That said, Management has been offered and accepted a(nother) new role around the Ranch. Some of you already were aware that we recently launched an e-shop and several of you have already purchased products from our 