Marinated Beets

One of my newest fascinations is pickling things. Now, I haven't yet pickled anything aside from eggs, but this recipe was what sparked my curiousity. These beets aren't exactly pickled, more like marinated. Even still, they're delicious in a salad.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch (4 or 5) beets
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• Salt and pepper

Method:

1 Remove greens from beets. Scrub the beets free of any dirt.

2a Boiling method. Place the beets in a medium saucepan and cover with water by about an inch. Bring to a boil on high heat then lower the heat and maintain a simmer for 35 to 45 minutes, depending on the size of the beets, until they are easily pierced with the tines of a fork.

3 Once you have boiled the beets, drain them and rinse them cold water. Use your fingers to slip the peels off of the beets. The peels should come off easily. Discard the peels. Quarter or slice the beets.

4 Make the vinaigrette by combining the cider vinegar, sugar, olive oil, and dry mustard. Whisk ingredients together with a fork. The dry mustard will help to emulsify the vinaigrette. Adjust to taste. Add salt and pepper to taste. Combine beets and vinaigrette in a bowl and allow to marinate for a half hour at room temperature.

Teriyaki Sauce from Scratch

I was craving teriyaki chicken a few weeks back, but I didn't have any sauce on hand. So I decided to make some! I found this recipe, and tried it out. So easy, so delicious and SO going into my recipe binder! Cook up some rice (Or quinoa), some chicken, and saute some veggies, then enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 5 tablespoons packed brown sugar
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1-2 tablespoons honey
• 1 large clove of garlic, finely minced
• ½ teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• ¼ cup cold water

Instructions

1. Combine the 1 cup water, brown sugar, soy sauce, honey, garlic and ginger in a medium saucepan and set over medium heat.
2. In a small bowl, combine the cornstarch with the ¼ cup water and whisk until dissolved. Add the cornstarch mixture to the saucepan.
3. Heat the sauce until it thickens to your desired thickness. If the sauce becomes too thick, add more water to thin it out.

Part Three: Homemade Dog Food

Here's the final part of the three-part series about the importance of food for our dogs' health. I told you the stories of Annya and Tessie, how the poor quality of their food was affecting their health. Now I'll talk a bit about the alternative to store bought, processed foods: Homemade Dog Food!

Now, I'm not going to lie. There is a lot to take into consideration when making food for your dog. First, and often the most simple choice, is whether to make wet food or dry. I chose to make wet food, because less processed food is the main goal for Annya.

After that, there's all kinds of complicated things like calorie requirements, rations of fat, protein, and carbs, how often to feed your pet(s), etcetera, etcetera. So the easiest way to go, is step by step. Obviously, I'll be using my own information about Annya as the basis for this post.

Calories: There's a fancy complicated formula for working out how many calories your pet needs, but it's all based off of the weight and activity level of each animal. To simplify the process, I've provided a calorie requirement chart for you to check with. For Annya, there is a calorie range for her between 800-1100 calories per day. This will vary depending on her activity level, and whether or not she needs to lose or gain any weight. It is a constantly changing variable, so typically I just give her as much food as she'll eat, and let her decide how much she needs to eat in a day.

Protein, Carbs and Fats: According to my research, most people say that appropriate dog food should contain 45% Protein, 30% Carbs and 25% Fat. Personally I think dogs should have much more protein than that, so I try to make Annya's food with at least 50% protein.

Frequency: I used to feed Annya in the morning, just filling her bowl up with her dry food, and letting her nibble on it throughout the day. Now that her food is made fresh, it shouldn't sit out for long, so instead I feed her once in the morning, and once in the evening. If she seems particularly interested in my meals, I'll feed her another smaller portion in the middle of the day. The whole process is about trial and error, so just test things out, and see what works for your animals.

So now that we have all of the complicated stuff out of the way, we can get to the fun part: Making the food! This is actually a lot easier than it might seem, especially since I've taken quite a bit of the leg work out of the whole process. All you really need to do is pick and choose which foods you want to use, figure out how much you need for your dog(s), and then voila! Homemade dog food!

Tips: I'd recommend keeping as much food raw as possible, to make sure the nutrients of the ingredients are intact. Of course, this will depend on your dog's taste preferences. Annya won't eat raw carrots, but if I cook them she will. If you can get away with the raw ingredients, do it. Also, if your dog has any dietary restrictions, keep those in mind when making the food. And don't be afraid of switching things up. You dogs, like you, appreciate new flavors.

So go on then! Pick some ingredients, fix them up, and let your dog tell you what they think about it!

Sources of carbs:
Sweet potato*
Banana (Not too often, it can upset the stomach a bit)
Rice (Like the banana, some dogs tend to have a hard time digesting too much rice.)
Quinoa
Carrots
Peas
Apples* (Remove cores and all of the seeds.)
Berries*

Sources of Protein (All cooked):
Turkey*
Beef*
Chicken*
Fish*
Lamb
Pork*
Beans
Lentils

Sources of Fat:
Coconut (Dried flakes, milk, or just the oil are all good options)
Flax (Seeds or ground meal)
Olive oil
Hemp seed

*These foods have have 100mg or more of Zinc in portions of 100 grams. For Annya, these are the foods I need to make sure she eats regularly.

Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to bake. Part of the reason for that, is that I love to eat the things I make. It's the best part of baking, right?

When I spent the summer at my grandma's house several years ago, she taught me how to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. When I came home, I forgot to get the recipe from her, and I've been testing out recipes ever since, looking for the right one. Yeah, I could always call and ask for the recipe, but where's the fun in that? So far, I haven't found anything that perfectly replicates the delicious, chewy cookies I'm looking for. Until now, that is. Pinterest has once again come to the rescue, and has provided me with this lovely recipe from Deliciously Sprinkled.

Now, I know. There's the glaring problem of these cookies not having chocolate chips in them. However, the base cookie is absolutely perfect. For this trial recipe, I added pecans to it, because I was skeptical that the plain oatmeal cookie would be worthwhile on its own. Oh, how wrong I was. These little beauties can definitely hold their own against any other cookie you can bake.

Next time I make these, I'm adding chocolate chips, to test how well they'll really hold up against my grandma's cookies.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups old fashioned oats

Directions:

PRE-STEP: Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.

STEP 1: In a large bowl, using an electric or stand mixer, cream together the granulated sugar, light brown sugar, butter, and shortening.

STEP 2: Add eggs one at a time, mixing between each egg.

STEP 3: Add baking soda, salt, baking powder and vanilla extract.

STEP 4: Add flour and old fashioned oats until just combined. DO NOT OVERMIX!

STEP 5: Using a cookie scoop, scoop dough into balls about 2 Tablespoons each and place onto prepared baking sheet. Place baking sheet with cookie dough balls in the freezer for 10 minutes. Once chilled, slightly press down the cookie dough balls and place back onto prepared cookie sheet.

STEP 6: Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Let cool for 5 minutes on baking sheet before moving them to a wire rack.

Easy Slow Cooker Bread

As you know, I've been on a journey to gradually start making things from scratch, instead of processed or store bought versions of the foods my family eats. For quite a while now, I've had a desire to begin making my own bread but I was completely intimidated by the idea of having to use yeast. I had read countless recipes and tutorials from people telling me that making bread is way easier than I imagined, that it was something that could be learned in a matter of minutes. I always brushed it off, thinking that these people must have been in the kitchen since they could stand.

Well, we ran out of sliced bread this week. I kept mentally reminding myself that we needed to pick up another loaf from the store, but we never actually got to it. Then last night, like a light bulb had gone off in my head, I remembered that I'd seen something on Pinterest talking about making bread in a slow cooker. So I thought to myself, 'Why not just try it? We need bread anyway, and if it doesn't turn out, then at least I can say I gave it a genuine effort.' And so it began.

I found this recipe online, checked to make sure I had all the ingredients, and read through the entire process to make sure that there were no hidden steps, or outrageous techniques I needed to master before attempting the recipe. It was actually an extremely easy process, to my surprise. And you know what? The bread turned out great!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1/2 Tb yeast
1/2-3/4 Tb kosher salt
3 1/4 cups flour

Directions:
Stir water, yeast, and salt together in a large bowl, or container with a lid. Dump in the flour and mix together into a wet, shaggy dough.
Let rise, covered but not sealed (the yeasty air needs to escape) for 2 hours at room temperature. You can use the dough right after the 2 hours rising time, but I suggest putting the dough in the fridge for another hour first. My loaf rose better, and stayed nice and round when I used cold dough. You can keep this dough in the fridge for 2 weeks; use it anytime, and it will develop a bit of a sourdough flavor.
When you're ready to bake, turn your slow-cooker on to high (Mine worked better when it was preheated)
Sprinkle some flour over the top of the dough, and pull out about half of the dough. Return the rest to the fridge.
Form a ball by tucking the sides in and under a few times, stretching the top surface of the dough ball. (They have a video of this technique here, it's important!)
Place dough ball on a sheet of parchment paper and lower into the slow-cooker. Cover and cook for 1 hour. (Some people have reported it taking up to 2 hours) It will be pale when it is done, and the outside will beslightly stiff, not hard and crusty.
If you want to darken/crisp up the crust, put the loaf on a baking sheet or stone and put in the oven under the broiler for 5-10 minutes. Let cool completely, and slice!

Tips:
Make sure you use Kosher salt, like the recipe says. There really is a difference between kosher and table salt, as I found out. Table salt is much saltier than Kosher, so if you find that you don't have any kosher salt on hand, then just cut the amount of table salt you use by half. Unless you like very salty bread, then go for it.

If you don't want your crust to be too crunchy, but would still like a bit of color on it, I would recommend taking the loaf out of the slow cooker a bit earlier than the recipe says, and transfer it to your oven to broil for a few minutes. I found that my crust came out a bit tougher than I like on my first loaf, and I left it in the slow cooker for the entire hour, and then moved it to the oven to broil for about 10 minutes. However, this is simply a preference thing, so use your best judgement.

In the comments on the original recipes post, many people were voicing concerns about the use of the slow cooker without it having any liquids in it. I did both of the small loaves without any issues, but if you want to be safe, there's an easy alternative. Find a metal or heat-safe glass bowl that will fit in your slow cooker. Place about 4 balls of crumpled up foil on the bottom of the slow cooker bowl, fill with 1-2 inches of water, then place the bowl on top of the foil balls. Add the bread and bake according to the directions above.

Depending on the desired size of the loaf, you may want to make one large loaf as opposed to two smaller ones. My two came out to be about 6 inches across, which will work perfectly fine for me. But if you want a larger size, just keep all of the dough together instead of halving it.

I hope you all will try this recipe, it really is easier than I thought it would be! Good luck, and Happy Baking!