Easy Pop Tarts, Dogs in Clothes, & Warm Holidays in Florida

Vegan Mode

It’s Christmas Eve!!  Or Holiday Eve.  Or December 24th.

Whatever you call it, it’s dead in the middle of winter.

And I’ve got my front door open, a window open in the kitchen, & the breeze is amazing.  Not to rub it in anyone’s face.

If it’s cold in your vicinity, just cuddle up to a couple pups.  That’s what I’ve been doing for the most part when it gets cold here, which it does sporadically.  I’m also a fan of dressing pups up when it’s cold, considering one of my pups is a smaller breed & gets cold easily.

It’s not that they’re begging to be dressed; I’m pretty sure I’ve got some morsel behind the camera.

So it does get cold here.  Just no white Christmases.

I’ve been kind of playing around with pop tart ideas & finally figured an easy recipe out.  Just something fun to eat…

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Easy Pop Tarts, Dogs in Clothes, & Warm Holidays in Florida

It’s Christmas Eve!!  Or Holiday Eve.  Or December 24th.

Whatever you call it, it’s dead in the middle of winter.

And I’ve got my front door open, a window open in the kitchen, & the breeze is amazing.  Not to rub it in anyone’s face.

If it’s cold in your vicinity, just cuddle up to a couple pups.  That’s what I’ve been doing for the most part when it gets cold here, which it does sporadically.  I’m also a fan of dressing pups up when it’s cold, considering one of my pups is a smaller breed & gets cold easily.

It’s not that they’re begging to be dressed; I’m pretty sure I’ve got some morsel behind the camera.

So it does get cold here.  Just no white Christmases.

I’ve been kind of playing around with pop tart ideas & finally figured an easy recipe out.  Just something fun to eat & even more fun to prepare.

Start with about a cup of flour, 1/4t of salt, 1/2t of sugar & mix in about 1/3 of a cup of coconut oil in its solid form.  Mix it around until you’ve got a crumbly texture to the mix.

Add ice water, first a quarter of a cup, then tablespoon by tablespoon, mixing thoroughly until you have a dry dough that feels almost like a hard lump of play doh.

Roll that dough out with a rolling pin & cut to whatever shapes you want.

I’m insanely boring, so I just cut rectangles.

You can opt to use any jam or even preserves if you’d like for the filling.  I simmered strawberries that I pureed with a little bit of cane sugar to make a homemade filling.

Just spoon a little bit of the filling onto the shaped cutout dough.  Don’t do it all the way to the edges, keep in mind the filling will spread when you put the other cutout on top.

As you are about to put the top piece on, wet the edges of the dough so that the pieces will stick together when you stamp them together with a fork.  You’ll also want to remember to poke vent holes in the top.  You wouldn’t want these guys to blow up.

Okay, it’s not perfect, but this was a picture of my first attempt.  You can see the filling was a little bit on the wet side & seeped out of the corners.  It still tasted really good.

 

I’m convinced I need to start a vegan breakfast joint. With pizza. & vegan booze.  Where pups are allowed.

For added yumminess, wet the tops of the tarts & sprinkle a little more sugar on there.

Preheat the oven on the high broil setting or bake at 400F for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Yeah, so I ate one almost immediately out of the oven. I’m smart when it comes to cooking the stuff at least, even if that does mean I’m not smart when it comes to eating food that will inevitably burn my mouth. I also made a strawberry empanada that was delicious.

So that’s it.  Easy stuff & a really fun project if you’ve got some helping hands around the house, which I did.

No I wasn’t talking about the dogs.

Here’s a couple more pictures of them though, as is the usual.

I’m all better from the illness I had. Baldwin still sleeps a lot.

I mean, they both sleep a LOT.  Cinder usually dozes most of the time.

Well, they sleep a lot except when there’s a lightning storm. Then they are as close to my head as they can get. Cinder was laying beside me in this one.

That’s it from me/us.  I hope everyone has a great holiday season or whatever you call it.  Just be great to others, that’s what this time of year is all about, no matter what you call the day.

See you next year!

 

Busy Slacking, Curried Black-Eyed Pea & Quinoa Patties, & Dogs Moving Places

I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but I moved.

That should go a long way as far as excuses go regarding not writing on the blog for a bit, right?

The pups are even going to be on the side of a Uhaul truck soon for a picture I snapped & threw on the interwebs:

They were excited to get into a giant monster of a moving truck.

No, seriously.  Apparently Uhaul has a group of people keeping an eye on anytime the name is used on platforms like Twitter & then they reach out to get permission to use pictures like that for the sides of their trucks.  Not a bad gig, I would think.

So the move was incredibly easy considering the pups & I were moving from an apartment to our own house.  They were pretty cool when it came to getting to know the new digs & love the big backyard that’s fenced.

They have a ton of room, & now we live a block away from a park, so walks occur pretty often.  More recently, I’ve been sick & had the pleasure of Little Baby Alec Baldwin being my health-helper.

He’s there whether I want help or not.

A little bit ago, I made up some breakfast patties for fun.  That’s kind of a good time if you’re adventurous in the kitchen & like to mix things up(hahahahah….hah…ha).

I started with a couple of cups of black-eyed peas.  Mash them well.

Mash just a little more than this.

The idea is always to use the bean as a binder, so have enough mashed to get it to stick in a patty when you have the rest of the ingredients in there.

As for the rest of the ingredients….I put a cup of cooked quinoa, a tablespoon of curry powder, half of a small yellow onion minced, two cloves of garlic, a dash of salt & a splash of lemon juice in with the mashed beans.  To get it extra sticky, I added some flour to the mix & then for some more flavor, minced a datil pepper & threw that in.

This doesn’t really look too appetizing. Yet.

Get a little ice cream disher to scoop out patties & just slap them on a griddle with heated oil.

Mmmmmmm….patties.

They look a little better.

I was hungry.

Just throw those in a wrap, on a bun or by themselves.  I made a tahini based sauce for them & that worked well with the flavor profile.

Pretty easy recipe, it’s kind of what I do.

To finish out the post, here’s a pic of the pups in the new house:

This is just their normal pose I guess.

Have a great week & I’ll be back on regularly….unless I move again.

Which won’t happen.

This place is awesome.