Homemade dog food – Make it, portion it, freeze it, win!
A couple days after putting up the post on how to make your own dog food, I found some more pictures I had wanted to share.
The above is where I roasted a whole turkey, deboned it, and mixed it with cooked rice, peas, carrots, some leftover potatoes (not many), and some scrambled eggs. Below shows it with some gravy. Appetizing, huh? I swear, dogs dig it. :P
And this? This is a whole lot of plastic wasted, but it means it could all be tossed into the freezer and my mom could pull it out, one serving at a time (about a cup for Buddy), microwave it, and be done.
I would also freeze a couple days’ worth in plastic bowls that could be thawed out in the fridge and then scooped out for each meal. For the sake of convenience, this made it just as easy as having store-bought food on hand. And because it was only done once a month or two, the effort saved a bunch of time, money, and health in the process.
Drawing on mini pumpkin pies – Bunny, jack-o-lantern, pumpkin pi!
Pumpkin pi. :)
They’re not quite as pretty after separating some in the fridge over night, but still fun. And I actually preferred the little tartlets over pie because every bite had delicious crust to filling ratio. <3
Here’s the recipes I used. I did roast and puree my own fresh pumpkin, so yours will look a different color if you use canned.
Pie Crust Recipe
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
- 1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 6 to 8 Tbs. ice water
Cut butter into flour, salt, and sugar, using pastry cutter or food processor. Slowly add ice water until well mixed. Form into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 2+ hours before using.
Pumpkin Pie Recipe
- 1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree, canned or fresh
- 3/4 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup instead)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (1.5 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice instead of ginger/cinnamon works)
- 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten (flax seed “eggs” work fine)
- 1 cup evaporated milk, undiluted (mix powdered milk using half the water as usual as a sub)
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices, and flour in a medium mixing bowl. Add eggs; mix well. Add evaporated milk, water, and vanilla; mix well. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes; reduce heat to 350° and bake about 35 minutes longer, or until center is set.
Quirky Cookery labels – What do they mean?
Before I get too knee-deep in this blog, I thought I should outline what my labels mean. Do you really care? Nah, probably not, but I actually put quite a bit of thought into them, so you’re going to skim this and pretend you care. :P
When I started Quirky Jessi, I really had no plan. Over the years, I kept the labels/tags relatively vague so that I have a fair bit of them, but they’re so general that sometimes a post falls into several at once…or none at all. And to top it off, they don’t really ‘mean’ much of anything.
So for Quirky Cookery, I knew I wanted to have some pretty tight labels to help keep things organized. So many cooking sites have 50 million tags so that every post is tagged with 20 tags each. One recipe may fit into the categories of “dinner,” “vegetarian,” “ethnic,” “Mexican,” “easy,” “cheap,” “dairy-free,” “diabetes-friendly,” “organic,” “healthy,” etc, etc.
I don’t want to be every other cooking site, though. And I certainly don’t want to juggle all those tags when most people just honestly don’t care. If you’re looking for Mexican recipes, google “Mexican recipe.” If you want food that simply ‘looks’ like a Mexican flag, then now we’re talking.
Cravings and curiosities – Whether it’s food or kitchen products, these are things I’m curious about. A recipe I think would be fun to try out, but I haven’t actually tried it yet? A kitchen accessory I’m drooling over? A new food that I’m curious how it’d be? All goes here.
Culinary detours – Stories mostly, I figure. When the kids say something so hilarious that I can’t resist posting it here, or when I make a goofy mistake like burning my belly button repeatedly, I want a place to put them.
Gadgets and gizmos – Self-explanatory really. I run across a lot of quirky gadgets and the best (read: strangest) ones will end up here.
Images – Yeah, so it’s vague, general, and it doesn’t have an interesting name at all. What’s it to you? I ran out of ideas, ok? And I know I’ll be posting random pictures that won’t fit anywhere in the rest of these categories. Leave me alone! Or suggest a quirkier name.
OAMC – Stands for “Once a month cooking.” While I don’t do it just once a month, I ‘do’ tend to cook a whole bunch at once to put meals in the freezer. This frees up a lot of time for me and allows me to play with my food a bit more on some other days. I have a lot of fun shopping just once a month (minus the occasional trip for fresh produce, bread, and milk), and even more fun taking pictures of how much I cook at once.
Other sites – I love to link to other people. Everyone seems to have so many amazing ideas and they deserve as much linky love as possible.
Quirky creations – These are my own creations. Here will be silly, quirky, and/or messed up dishes that I’ve made myself.
Recipes – Duh. Recipes here. These will likely be mostly ones I’ve tried (or am going to try shortly), but that aren’t necessarily “quirky.”
Reviews – Do I need to explain this one?
Tips – Or this one? These are boring. Shhh. Tips will be listed in italics, usually at the end of posts.
So there you have it. Now you know what they all mean. Or what they’re supposed to mean. We’ll consider this my cheat sheet for the next time I forget how to label one of my own posts, ok? ;)
Disclosure: All labels are mine and I’ll change them whenever I feel like, so this list could easily multiply like flour seems to all over my table, counter, feet, and hair. In 5 years if I’m still writing here and forget that once upon a time, I wrote this post, I cannot be held liable for these being completely outdated and false. It’s not my fault. And you shouldn’t care, so shush it and go click a link instead.
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