First off…The BEETS!

Our young friend, Jamie, gave me a link to a super simple way to prepare beets several months ago. I’ve probably made five batches of these beets since then and each batch lasts ten days. We eat them as a side dish, on salads, and, best of all, on SAMMIES!! They taste like pickled beets, but take a fraction of the time. The method is from Alexandracooks.com and can be found (with pictures!) here.

Basically, you throw a bunch of beets with a couple of cups of water in the Instant Pot and set for 35 minutes. Once they’re done, let the IP release naturally for ten minutes, then remove them. Let them cool a bit, then peel them, and slice them suuuuuper thin.

Cover with a bit of sea salt and white vinegar while still hot and there you have it. They are delicious hot and SUPER delicious cold. They seem to keep in the fridge forever because of the salt and vinegar, but they never last too long around here because they are so delicious. Tonight, we’re having them on tofu-halloumi sammies!

And Now…The Dog Treats!

The other thing I’ve been working on today is healthy training treats for Poppy. I found some relatively inexpensive ones online, but we go through so many while training Poppy with various commands that I was hoping to find a recipe for tiny treats I could make myself.

First, I found dehydrated sweet potatoes, so I tried that–I sliced a bunch of small sweet potatoes and baked them for an hour or two at 250 in the convection oven.

I then sliced them in to small bits, which can be broken into even smaller bits. The dogs love them and they’re cheap and healthy.

I couldn’t find a grain-free recipe for training dots, so I tried winging it based on various healthy ingredients I’d read about. The treats turned out well (if a little labour-intensive because I used a piping bag to pipe little dots onto parchment paper).

And the dogs love them, so mission accomplished!

Poppy’s Healthy Training Dots

Mix together and leave for ten minutes:

• 2 TBS ground flaxseed
• 3 TBS water

Once the above mix is gelatinous, pour into your food processor and add:

• 1 banana
• 1 cooked unpeeled potato
• 1 large cooked unpeeled carrot
• 1 chunk of turmeric root (cook in the microwave in water for a few minutes to soften)
• 1/4 cup natural peanut butter
• 1 tsp salmon oil
• 1 heaping TBS beef liver powder

Blend until as smooth as humanly possible. It should be the consistency of icing.

Using a piping bag, pipe tiny dots onto a sheet of parchment on top of a cookie sheet.

Bake at 170 degrees for a couple of hours. Loosen them from the parchment paper and spread them around to dry out for another thirty minutes or so in the oven. They should be completely dry before you put them in a jar.

I also tried the fruit leather method for the last little bit of the mixture because the piping is a bit onerous, and it was fine as well. For the fruit-leather method, you just spread the batter over a sheet of parchment, cover with another sheet and push to the edges of the parchment to get a very thin coating and bake for a couple of hours at 170. Use a pizza cutter to cut into small pieces.

Next time I make these, I might use the fruit-leather method, but place in my convection oven set to “dehydrate” at 140 for eight to twelve hours.

And the song of the day is “Raglan Road,” because pictures of my visit to Em in December four years ago keep popping up in my Facebook feed. Grafton Street in Dublin is so festive around Christmas–and I loved seeing the garda on horseback (in some cases, juxtaposed with Storm Troopers–haha!).