Month: February 2013

Review | Better Food For Dogs by Bastin, Ashton & Nixon

Nibbles
Cover of Better Food for Dogs

image via Amazon.com

Honey, tonight we’re eating dog food!

And you know what? It wasn’t half bad.

Let me back up a second before you think I’ve completely lost my mind.

When I picked up Better Food for Dogs (with the oh-so-adorable wrinkly bulldog puppy on its cover), I was expecting a few lists of things dogs should never eat and a lot of recipes for treats, “muttloaf” and things of that nature. What I found was a book full of information that every dog owner can use, including many “Doc’s Doctrine” sidebars from Dr. Grant Nixon, D.V.M., the veterinarian that contributed to the book along with David Bastin and Jennifer Ashton–former dog bakery owners and dog-lovers themselves.

The recipes come only after a rather thorough examination of what the proper diet can do for dogs. The authors purport that does benefit from varying diets just as humans do and that it’s difficult for them to receive all the nutrition they need from a steady diet of only one sort of food. They even take on the topics of vegan diets for dogs as well as the raw diet trend–neither of which they are highly in favor of (the first as it’s not realistic for canines, the second for concerns of food safety).

While there are a dozen of yummy-sounding treats at the end of the book, the bulk of the recipes are for the everyday food for dogs, their two meals a day, and are divided between the Basic Recipe–a combination of beef, chicken, turkey, or lamb for the protein and either rice, macaroni, or potatoes for the carbohydrate, along with a veggie blend–in quantities enough for 4 servings at a time, and single-serving Gourmet Recipes. All of this is them broken down into suitable amounts for the different sizes of dogs out there–everything from 5 lb teacup breeds to 150 lb behemoths in 5-lb increments. And then there are charts for the additional needs of bonemeal (for calcium) as well as the other nutritional supplements needed (again, by size of dog).

The Gourmet recipes range from breakfast fare (Cottage Cheese, Fruit and Toast; Oatmeal, Yogurt and Fruit; even a Breakfast Burrito) to dinner options (Stir-Fried Ginger Beef with Greens; Salmon and Dill Pasta; Tomato and Chicken Rotini) and total 20 in all. Not each size of dog gets a version of each recipe, but it’s simple work to size  up or down by finding  the recipe you want in another size that can be easily doubled or halved to meet the proper calorie count. It’s a whole lot easier than making a small dog coat fit a medium dog!

Still, it sounds like a lot of work even cooking every other night on top of cooking for yourself or your family. How tough really would it be?

And that’s when I decided to serve Todd and I dog food for a couple of nights.

We started with one of the basic recipes: Chicken and Rice

Chicken and Rice from Better Food for Dogs

Chicken and Rice for dogs

And that’s when I determined that cooking for your dog is not as out of the question as it might seem. In fact, if you approach it the right way, it’s downright easy!

The basic recipe deals with a protein that easily be bought in quantities and cooked ahead: cubed chicken and ground beef being the most accessible. Package it up in the right quantities and keep it in the freezer until needed–you could do up to a month at a time depending on the size of your dog and the size of your storage space. Put your rice cooker to work to make up enough rice to get your through a week and buzz up a batch of the fruit & vegetable mix and fridge it. After that it’s a quick reheat, stir, and add in nutrients.

And, like I said, it’s pretty tasty. The vegetable mixture is pureed, so it’s a little different than using steamed, chopped veggies in your average one-pot meal, but other than that it’s totally normal food.

For our gourmet selection we went with the Salmon and Dill Pasta

Salmon and Dill Pasta from Better Food For Dogs

Salmon and Dill Pasta–yes, this is dog food!

Tomato, zucchini, spinach, garlic and dill with chunks of tender salmon and pasta make for a good supper no matter how you slice it, and since none of the veggies in this version are pureed, it’s not much different than any other meal we might make.

Now, obviously, we don’t have dogs ourselves but have owned them in the past and hope to in the future when we have enough time to devote to them. Still, I know many people who do–my own mother, for instance–and I would not hesitate to recommend this book to her.

Will we cook for our future furry friends? Hard to say, but at least it’s a discussion we’d be up to having now.

After all, some people consider their dogs akin to children. Would we want children to eat nothing but fortified cereals for every meal? So it’s a questions worth asking: don’t your canine companions deserve a bit more than kibble?

——————–

I received a copy of Better Food for Dogs for the purpose of review. All opinions are my own.

Achievement Unlocked: Photographer

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

When last I ranted wrote about the thoughts and search for a wedding photographer while planning a budget-minded wedding I was faced with seemingly few choices:

  1. Spend half our entire budget on a wedding photograher (conventional wisdom)
  2. Pay what we could afford but not be able to actually choose our own photographer (going with a photography group)
  3. Wait until a couple months before the wedding and try and score and up-and-comer on Craigslist or Facebook (last ditch before handing a friend my camera and hoping for a decent photo or two)

Seriously, that’s what the landscape looked like.

But I’m a little more stubborn than that, and I started searching afresh for someone out there who took good, no-nonsense photos without charging an arm and a leg. To do that, I did something a lot of people don’t: I went beyond the first page of search results. I clicked on every link listed in the WeddingWire photography directory and about midway through I found my glimmer of hope: Pink Shutterbug Photography.

Not only did she take straightforward photographs without a lot of over-processed filters applied, but she’s personable, quick with an email reply, and understands that not everyone has a photography budget of $2500+ but that everyone deserves decent wedding photos.

What makes her able to offer such affordable wedding packages is that she’s primarily a family photographer. She might do only one or two weddings a year, but she tells me she likes it that way–she gets to enjoy the shoots more than always wrapping up one to go straight off to another.

After a few dozen emails back and forth, we met for an in-person meeting and signed the contract then and there. I couldn’t see finding someone a better fit for our budget and we got along swimmingly. Better yet? She includes an engagement session in her package–great opportunity to work together before the actual wedding day–and delivers strictly digital files, just what I was looking for.

She wasn’t the only photographer I reached out to, of course. There was another who did her best to work with our budget but it meant one shooter for half the hours and no engagement session and was still 50% more than we really wanted to spend. We could have made it work, but I’m glad we didn’t have to.

Our engagement shoot was in January, and I’ll go into more details in another post, but here’s the teaser collage she posted on Facebook, just to give you an idea of what you can get if you really look hard enough:

It can’t be all about price, of course, but when you’re on a tight budget, price can’t be discarded from the discussion entirely. What lengths were you willing to go to, to find the vendors you needed?

AlcoHOLidays | National Battery Day | High Voltage

Sips

jwalker_highvoltagecocktailGot your history caps on? Today’s cocktail comes with a real charge!

Unlike the seemingly arbitrary assignment of some holidays (yes, PB&J Day, I’m looking at you), National Battery Day makes perfect sense as it falls on February 18th, the birthday of Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the battery.

Volta (from whom we get the word volt–the measure of electrical potential) was a physicist born in Como Italy, who discovered the gas methane in 1778 as well as created what he called a voltaic pile in 1800–an electrochemical cell or, in other words, a battery. With some acidic or brined cloth between them, the stacked zinc and copper get to zapping, and we get electricity. He also had another version called, appropriately enough, the Crown of Cups.

High Voltage

3/4 oz. Pepper Vodka
1/2 oz. Chocolate Liqueur
a couple pieces Crystallized Ginger
2 1/2 oz. Ginger Beer

In the bottom of a mixing glass, muddle the crystallized ginger with the vodka and chocolate liqueur until the ginger is broken up. Fill the mixing glass 3/4 full with ice, top with ginger beer and shake until nice and frothy. Strain into a prepared cocktail glass and garnish with a bit more of the crystallized ginger and a red chili.

When brainstorming this drink for a few days leading up to my own experiments, I was thinking of flavors that would instantly communicate a bit of a zap to the tongue: ginger and chili. Well, turns out, when I did the research, both ginger and chili powder natural sources of copper in the diet, and dark chocolate gives us copper as well as zinc*. Obviously the distillation process has probably done away with the actual health benefits of this drink, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

As for particulars, for the vodka I used Absolut Peppar, the chocolate was–of course–Godiva, and the ginger beer Bundaberg. If you must use ginger ale, at least use something with some bite to it or make up a small batch of ginger sugar syrup (small because the ginger zing fades away quickly) and add it to your own seltzer water to taste.

So if you need something to zap you into action, why not raise your glass to Count Volta (so honored by Napoleon in 1801) and get to your good times quick like a bunny.

Sips & Shots: come for the cocktails, stay for the history lessons. Or not.

Cheers!

——————–

*For the love of all that’s good and right, please do not take your nutritional guidelines from a cocktail article, m’kay? If you think you need additional zinc, copper, or anything else that your body may be lacking, please see a doctor not a bartender.

How To | Scumble-Beaded Trim and Belt, Part 2

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

Getting your materials and doing the first pass of beading goes fairly quick once you get the hang of it. Now for the slightly more tedious (but way more impressive) part of the process!

The Second Pass

So you’ve scattered your larger, more precious beads along the length of your trim, now it’s time to start filling in the remaining space.

Instead of stringing one bead at a time (boring, excessively tedious, and time-consuming), you’ll work with several beads on your needle at once. Pour your filler beads into a larger bowl or section of your bead board and mix them up. To string them onto your needle, just skim the needle through the puddle of beads until you get enough of them loaded. It may take a bit of practice, but it’s really a simple thing to do once you get the hang of it.

Push the beads down the thread to meet the foundation piece, and then figure out how far your string of beads will reach before stitching through at the other end.

What things should start to look like as you work through pass two. You can still see the focal beads, but the space is filling up with overlapping strands of the filler beads.

What things should start to look like as you work through pass two. You can still see the focal beads, but the space is filling up with overlapping strands of the filler beads.

Instead of tacking down another stitch, come up alongside the line of beads you just added, cross over and stitch down on the other side, hiding the thread between two of the beads in the string. This secures the long stretches of beads and keeps the work nice and tidy instead of loose and floppy. Bring the thread up in another spare space and repeat, crossing over the previous strings and going around the beads laid down in the first pass, filling up the space as you go. Leaving some smaller open spaces is okay, though, as the tiniest beads will wait to go into the third pass.

The Third Pass

Just like the second pass, but using the smallest of beads and usually fewer at a time.

If you run into larger gaps, feel free to grab some of the leftover beads from either of the two earlier passes–after this one you should have no parts of the foundation fabric visible through the beaded fabric laid on top of it.

You can see I used a lot of the tiniest beads along the edges.

You can see I used a lot of the tiniest beads along the edges.

Depending on how long you’re making your trim, these steps can take anywhere from several hours to several days. It’s great work for sitting in front of the television. I’ve spent many of our date nights at home catching up on the DVRd shows and stitching on strand after strand of beads. The first pass of beads for my cardigan took about 4-5 hours for the almost 3 feet it required. I’d say the second and third passes easily took 10-15 more, though I didn’t keep track. Like anything, once you get used to the mechanics of the process it goes much quicker and you’ll be surprised at just how much you can get done.

Putting It All Together

For edging your dress, a jacket, or other sturdy something, the best method is just to sew it right on. If you’re worried, as I was a bit, about a more flexible fabric not being able to stand up to the weight of the beading alone, using a second length of ribbon on the back side of the fabric will help shore everything up. It worked like a dream on my cardigan.

I already own my dress, it’s hanging out in our hall closet in a ginormous dress bag along with the crinoline I ordered to go with it. Because I bought it as-is, I knew it was going to need steaming and, possibly, cleaning before the wedding. Cleaning of garments like this, at least in the realm of price, depends heavily on level of decoration–the more beading and details, the more expensive it is to have it seen to. As it stands, though, my dress is very simple and streamlined and if I leave the trim off the price will undoubtedly be lower, but I also didn’t want to have to be adjusting my dress (and risking the wrinkles) so close to the wedding. Ergo, I needed a way to easily add and remove the trim I wanted to add to the neckline.

Obviously you want to select notions closer in color to your dress.

Obviously you want to select notions closer in color to your dress.

In order to do this, I’m going to use Hooks and Eyes  just under the edge of the cuff that tops my dress, with the hooks attached to the top edge of the trim.

The small hooks & eyes are fine for the 5/8″ trim I’m making, but a sturdier piece of edging might be better attached by larger versions called skirt hooks.

Skirt hooks can also be used to attach a belt without requiring it to go all the way around your waist. I would arrange to have them hook along the top edge of the belt and then on each side where the belt ends.

Of course, there’s more than one way to make a belt.

Peek-a-belt! Hide the seems, make it look nice, and make it easy on yourself.

Peek-a-belt! Hide the seems, make it look nice, and make it easy on yourself.

To finish the belt, especially one that was stitched onto a wider fabric than the beading, first fold over any excess and stitch down. I’m opting to bridge the gap on the back side with a narrow strip of ribbon. This serves two purposes: (1) it conceals the messy stitching on the back should the belt get flipped around and (2) it creates a channel that another piece of ribbon or elastic can be fed through to be able to wear the belt. To secure it, just stitch the ends closed through the pass-through elastic or ribbon.

Right now I’m planning on the elastic approach, secured with heavy snaps in the back. I bought a dress over Christmas that had a similar treatment on its belt and it gave me plenty of ideas. I just don’t care for loose tails like most tie-on belts feature. There’s hook-and-eye tape (aka Velcro), too, but the sound of that tearing open is like nails on a chalkboard to me. You could use the same technique to make a sparkly headband with either ties or elastic joining the two ends.

Sandwich the tulle between the ribbons with a little bit extra on the end.

Sandwich the tulle between the ribbons with a little bit extra on the end.

Finally, if you’re wanting to use a bit of scumble trim on your veil or other airy materials, this is the one time I might actually suggest gluing over sewing–or at least in addition to! I’d also suggest you attach your trim a little ways in from the edge, sandwiching the tulle, etc. between two pieces of ribbon and then, once sewed and/or glued into place, trim the excess tulle flush to the edge of the trim.

Here's my dress, with the finished cardigan and the partially finished belt and cuff trim pinned into place.

Here’s my dress, with the finished cardigan and the partially finished belt and cuff trim pinned into place.

I still have to attach the hooks, etc. but I dragged my dress out of the closet to get some in-progress picks and make sure my ideas were going to work as planned. I’d say it’s a case of sew far, sew good, wouldn’t you?

#35 Woodworking | A Little Spruce (or Pine, or Oak…)

64 Arts, Projects

aka Refinishing an Antique School Desk

Since I was about 9 years old or so I had this antique school desk in my bedroom that usually served as my bedside table. When I started moving into homes where more than just one room was mine to do as I pleased, the little antique desk became an occasional table, usually stuffed with programs, take out menus, instructions for assembling furniture, and any other spare part sort of things that would more-or-less fit.

It was, essentially, a junk drawer.

And, over the years, it’d started to look a little worse for wear. For the last 2 years it’s been hanging out in our garage because there was no place in the house for it to be.

Top of the antique child's school desk, scarred and stained

Poor little antique school desk.

Originally I thought the desk had been something Mom had picked up along the way, but it turns out that the piece of furniture goes back at least to my paternal grandmother, and possibly to my great-grandmother (Mom said it was kept in Mamie’s room, which became mine when we moved in with grandma when I was 3). Apparently it was there when my aunt (my dad’s baby sister) was little and she used it growing up, but didn’t know where it actually came from, either. It was the place coloring books and crayons were kept for the grandkids until it eventually moved with us to Florida.

Knowing how far back the desk goes makes me feel more than a little ashamed at how it’s been treated over the years. There were stickers applied, candle wax melted on, wet glasses set on it, teeth marks in the top (an unfortunate incident that involved my brother jumping on the bed) and the cubby stuffed so full that the bottom long since gave way and had to be reinforced more than once. (Aunt M did mention that she also had a habit of over-stuffing the desk, so I don’t feel quite so bad about that one.)

I’m happy to report, however, that this tale has a happy ending. I’ve spent the last 2 weekends giving this old desk a makeover and not in the spray-paint it glossy white sort of way that seems to be so popular these days. No, no, I stripped what was left of the finish from it, had Todd cut a new, solid bottom for it out of matching oak (once we cleaned it up Todd was able to identify what sort of wood the desk was made out of from one of his book), sanded it 4 times, stained it (and parts of myself) a deep, rich brown (Kona, to be exact), and am now in the process of giving it a full 3 coats of polyurethane varnish so that it will be nice and pretty for a long time to come.

Antique Wooden School Desk Stained but not Varnished

It’s not quite finished, yet–I still have 3 coats of varnish to add, but it’s close! (The hinges are just there for show.)

You see, it has a very important role to play this fall, as we’ll be including it with our wedding decorations (right now the plan is for it to hold the programs). Until then, though, it will sit in our living room as I’ve recently made room for it by moving one of the armchairs into my office. Coincidentally, that corner is also the one that holds the silver platter from my Easter remembrances from that same grandmother’s house, so it’s fitting they’ll be reunited again.

Having accomplished this task to the best of my abilities, am I ready to hang out my restoration shingle? Not hardly.

I’m not going to lie, this was hard, sweaty work and not something I’d like to spend every weekend doing. I will say, though, that the getting started parts where Todd and I were working together to remove the 50+ nails holding on what was left of the original and repaired bottom of the desk was quite fun. So it’s not out of the question that we might tackle something like this in the future.

I took plenty of pictures during the long, messy, process; have a look-see:

What’s left is 3 coats of polyurethane and adding the hinges back on with new screws. We were able to salvage the original hinges, though they still need a bit of cleaning. I don’t want to clean them up too much, though, since then they might look too new. I’m not going to do any distressing–something tells me that will happen over time as we’re not exactly gentle with our stuff–but I think if it’s lasted at least 50 years and many kids that we know of, this facelift should hold it for quite some time to come.