You can find me at the gym… RIBBON DANCING YAY!
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Author: Angelgrrl
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Ricotta Gnocchi
Ricotta gnocchi is my latest culinary obsession. Unlike the traditional potato, flour, and egg gnocchi recipes, ricotta gnocchi is really easy and also not very hard to mess up. Since gluten immediately causes nausea for me, I decided to search for a gluten-free flour that would work for this recipe. I found a white rice flour by Bob’s Red Mill that kicks ass for this purpose and makes a really nice light and fluffy gluten-free gnocchi. Another plus, the ricotta adds some protein to an otherwise all-carb dish. Finally, I would like to give Gar a shoutout because he is the one who came up with the method I use for shaping the gnocchi. So here it goes:
2 cups ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan
2 eggs
1/2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1 and 1/4 cup white rice flour
Semolina flour for dusting work surfaces
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Stitch & Rowan
Stitch and Rowan have a special bond. Firstly, Stitch is the most dog-like cat I’ve ever known. He greets you at the door like the dogs, he begs with the dogs, and he plays with the dogs. Stitch and Rowan, however, share a propensity for trouble-making that greatly surpasses that of the average pet. Stitch is the reason I have child-locked all my cabinets. One morning I found Stitch and Rowan in the kitchen. Stitch was eating gluten free pasta and Rowan was eating uncooked rice. Rowan crapped rice craps for two days. What happened last month was, well, I can’t even think of an adjective to describe it. Loki woke up one unsuspecting Monday morning and was limping. Not only that, he cried when he got out of bed which really tugged at my heartstrings. We played ball a lot the day before and after feeling all of his joints I decided to give him a dog-specific NSAID. They are chewable tablets. After I gave Loki his dose I put the bottle back in the Tupperware container that holds all of my pet medications of a certain kind and walked from the kitchen to the bathroom. Stitch was pissed. The moment I put one foot in the bathroom I heard a loud crash and briskly walked back into the kitchen. Stitch had knocked off the Tupperware from the kitchen counter (I’m suspecting out of jealousy that Loki got a special treat offered to no one else) and all of the medications had fallen out. Not thinking too much of this and cursing at Stitch under my breath, I put all of the meds back into the box and this time, stuffed the box where it belongs in a hall storage area. It wasn’t until, on one of my innumerable wtf are you doing Rowan morning checks, I saw him licking the inside of the now empty medicine bottle and realized what happened about 20 min. earlier. Rowan had eaten 32 times a dose appropriate for his size.
Lets just stop for a moment and consider what this means. Like I already alluded to earlier, Stitch Murphy definitely wanted what Loki was given that morning or at least wanted to check it out. This also means that within about a five second period Rowan was able to steal the bottle without me seeing him near the incident at all. Similarly, Rowan was able to identify the bottle from which Loki’s supposed “treat” came from amongst many other bottles on the floor. Even more impressive, Rowan was able to seemingly distinguish the bottle from which Loki’s supposed “treat” came from, from a bottle that was visually identical to it. Yes, I had another unopened bottle that was identical to the one I used earlier but I suppose it wouldn’t smell as appealing as the other one. Dogs do have amazing sniffers. My angel of a Labrador can distinguish his particular tennis ball amongst many others. Hmmmmm, I wish this story was about him. It would end with “…and I ribbon danced while he sloshed around gayly in the waves crashing on the soft, sandy beach until the sunlight was no more.”
Anyways, after IV fluids, charcoal, liver supplements, and 5 blood tests in one month the good news is that Rowan’s liver has made a full recovery! What a happy thing.
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Bacon Pineapple Upside Down Cake
Yes, bacon pineapple upside down cake. It’s really, really good. I got the idea for this from last year’s Food Network bacon magazine. I deviated from their cake recipe and made a butter cake and also did not mix bacon bits in the batter like it suggested. The pineapple bacon effect is so easy to create just butter your pan, apply a single layer of brown sugar, put down your pineapple rings, and fill the non-pineapple space with homemade bacon bits. It’s that simple. It’s that good.
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Loki Smile
I look at this dog and pure love just radiates from me. “Loki, stay!” (I pry open his jaw and shove this toy inside his mouth) “Loki, stay!” (I hold his muzzle shut) “Loki, stay!” (Holding my breath for a moment, I slowly back away with one hand in the stay command and one hand calmly yet frantically opening the camera on my phone.) “Loki, stay!” This was the first picture I took. Gotta love it, and of course, gotta love him.
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Chinese Hot Pot
Have you ever heard of Chinese hot pot? Gar explained what this was to me a few months ago and we’ve done our version of it twice since then. There are variations of this style of meal depending upon the geographical location but, basically, it’s a sort of Chinese fondue involving a hot broth, meat, sauces, and various vegetables. I read that there are traditional bowls for the broth that are sometimes heated with very hot stones. Well, I suppose the next best alternative to kick-ass traditional Chinese bowls is Sunbeam’s hot pot express for $9.99 at Target. The hot pot can boil water faster than anything and it actually works out so great for a hot pot dinner. It is not cordless, however, so you might need to run an extension cord to your table. But, hey, that’s the fun of doing something different for dinner!
The origin of Squid Dog is little known. Some say he is an accidental product of a chemical spill, but I’m not buying it. No, I think Squid Dog was created by a secretive government organization in order to infiltrate various locations with his unaffected cuteness then extract information of all sorts with his incredible mind powers. I’ll tell you I won’t have any of that in my household, absolutely not.
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Holiday Leftovers
Every year around the holidays I try out new ways to utilize leftovers. Sometimes I get really fancy and sometimes I find small variations on classics such as soup or sandwiches. This year, my favorite leftover dish by far was this potato pancake. It’s super simple. All one has to do to make this dish is mix some bacon and diced gouda with mashed potatoes, coat with flour, and pan fry with oil. Top your pancake with a poached or fried egg because you can and that’s it! Leftover magic.
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Blog Break
Hello everyone, I will be taking a while off from blogging in order to snuggle puppies. As kids go back to school, there will be a shortage of family puppy snugglers but, thankfully, I’m willing to fill the void.
In reality, this is not the case as much as I wish it was. The next couple of weeks are actually crunch time for my Practice of the Year application at work and I barely have time for anything right now. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I will have plenty of wedding posts coming up. I just finished making invitations and they turned out so beautiful. I’ll be putting together centerpieces and trying on wedding dresses so stay tuned.
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Spicy Cilantro Lime Chicken Soup
Soup is good even in the summer. I saw a picture for a lime chicken soup recipe online and I didn’t even read the recipe, I just thought to myself “Yum! I will make something like this tonight.” I boiled chicken breast in some chicken stock and then shredded it once cooked. I added some jalepeno, cilantro, fresh lime juice, lime zest, black beans, and minced garlic. Once that simmered for about 30 min. I served and topped with avocado, sliced radishes, and fresh cilantro. This soup is so good and refreshing. I really like eating it lukewarm but it is also good cold. The flavors really mellow out the following day so if you like spicy, I would add a little more jalepeno than you think you need. Also, it’s a good idea to reserve some lime wedges to squeeze over leftover bowls.
This is Olive and she is very special to me. Her mom found her in a box with her siblings next to a dumpster. The kittens were very young and didn’t even have their eyes open but Olive’s mom, a young college student, cared for them all and found them homes. I spoke with Olive’s mom on the phone many times to discuss her care when she was very little and having ups and downs. Olive’s mom was so appreciate for the free advice and she decided to start bringing her to our hospital despite a 20 mile drive. She has even brought her to one of our special events. Olive is a really cool cat and her mom is head over heels in love with her.
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Maltipoo Puppy
And what is her name you might ask? Feather… her name is freakin feather and it couldn’t be more perfect for her. Her name matches her personality.
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Practice of the Year
Why have I been so busy lately? Well, I’m always busy working 40-50 hour weeks, regardless, but I decided that on top of all of the extra things I do besides tech/assistant work, that our hospital should apply for the American Animal Hospital Association’s (AAHA) Practice of the Year title. If you haven’t heard of AAHA, it is our industry’s only independent accreditation organization and the hospital I work for is accredited. AAHA hospitals voluntarily undergo regular inspections and are evaluated in literally hundreds of standards. Ok so… Practice of the Year… very detailed, time-intensive application… 7 weeks… that’s how much time we had to complete the application when I learned more about this accolade and we decided to go for it… This is the start of week three. Some of the application consists of essay-type submissions that are answers to specific questions. I want to post something I wrote for the introduction section of the application because I think it does a great job of reflecting my love for this field and some of the reasons why I stay in it and continue to find ways to grow. In one part of the introduction section you are asked to describe why your hospital is unique in 500 words or less. Since I will end this post with what I wrote, I will just add that you can expect puppy and kitten posts to finish out this week. This week will be my warm and fuzzy feeling posting week. I need to remind myself of the warm and fuzzies considering I’m constantly feeling like a grade school student who didn’t finish her book report in time except my book report is fixing a recall on my car or getting wedding invitations together. So here it goes, this is why our hospital is unique in 490 words (ps. I tried reading this to the staff at an all-hands meeting last week and had to have one of the doctors finish reading it so that I didn’t start crying):
If you were to ask every staff member at our hospital what about it they are proud of, you will get a long, varied list of answers. We are proud of our AAHA accreditation and Cat Friendly Practice certification. We are proud of the level of medicine and care we provide. We are proud of our facilities, our community, and each other.
When you ask every staff member at our hospital what makes our hospital unique, each individual will generate a singular, compelling response: our team. The importance of a veterinary hospital’s team is tremendous. Every single staff member executes our standard for care and compassion, they are a beacon for our message and recommendations, they are patient advocates, and they are, in a great sense, the establishers of each other’s quality of life. With the tremendous amount of time and energy that individuals devote to our field, we must recover and recharge somehow. Luckily, we do this by leaning on each other.
We go to great lengths to ensure that we create and maintain a cohesive and supportive team unit. Our hiring process is extensive, consisting of a handful of interviews for each candidate and ending with a review form completed by every existing team member. Aside from initial training, all team members participate in a continued education topic at bi-monthly meetings and are allotted a yearly allowance for continued education. Team outings occur quarterly each year but often times occur informally much more often than that. In the past few years, we have had the pleasure of getting together to enjoy dinners, baseball games, bowling night, game night, and pot luck thanksgivings.
Our team is exceptional in so many ways. Our doctors have visited patients in critical care at referral specialty hospitals and made themselves uncommonly available to discuss patient care to the team, clients, and other professionals. Our team members regularly send out cards on their own accord to clients to acknowledge events in their lives and in their pet’s lives. Our staff turnover is very low and the average amount of time our staff has been employed here is over 6 years. Every member is positive and supportive of one another. Every member cares deeply about pets and their people.
We are fortunate to have leaders who understand the value of utilizing the unique skills of each individual and encouraging personal growth. We have had multiple entry level staff members who are on their way to become or have become successful RVTs and doctors of veterinary medicine. If we assigned additional informal titles to our current team members, the list of titles would include party planner, storm chaser, personal chef, pet sitter, professional organizer, pet nutrition enthusiast, botanist, dog agility and training specialist, and social media expert among many others. Our hospital is only as unique as the individuals realizing its existence each and every day and what a unique hospital we do, in fact, have.
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Vesuvius Rigatoni
I have not had a food crush like this in a while. I was watching a tv show about Italian street food and saw this dish and cooked it the next day. I even found a recipe for it online in Italian and translated it to English to find out what exactly was in this dish. I didn’t make the recommended sauces for it (in small part because I didn’t have tomatoes from the foothills of Mount Vesuvius) so I topped it with Julie’s Pasta Sauce. Also, they originally baked these at 300 degrees in aluminum tins lined with plastic wrap but I just used a 6-count nonstick muffin tin instead and it worked great. I’m still very unsure about the whole plastic-wrap-in-the-oven-thing. I tried researching the details about such a thing with inconclusive results. Ok, back to the fun part. To make this dish you will need to dice up a log of fresh mozzarella, mix together grean peas and ricotta cheese (I ended up using about 8 oz.), make mini meatballs (I made simple mini turkey meatballs by combining 1lb. lean ground turkey, one egg, breadcrumbs to texture, garlic powder, salt, and freshly ground black pepper), and boil large rigatoni pasta for 4 minutes. Trust the four minute cooking time and do not worry about stopping the cooking process of the pasta once drained. 4 minutes is perfect.
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Chipotle Apple Dipping Sauce
Pork chops and apple sauce… not a huge fan. Don’t get me wrong, I love pork. I love breading and baking chops (pictured above), grilling chops, and grilling tenderloins. I super love slow cooking pork shoulder when it goes on sale. However, accompanying chops with applesauce doesn’t excite me in the least. I figured, though, that there has to be something worthwhile in the pairing for it to be considered the classic that it is.
I made a dipping sauce for breaded pork chops by combining about 1 and 1/2 cup of no added sugar applesauce, 2 diced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, 1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp. of molasses, 2 dashes of worcestershire sauce, and a dash of salt into a small saucepan and heating on a low heat until the mixture was bubbling and well combined. The sauce kicked ass and I would definitely make it again for the same purpose or for another, such as a topping on a burger. Even if you do not wish or have the means to create that exact sauce, just the simple addition of any amount of chipotle peppers to applesauce will be a tasty accompaniment to pork chops.
Side note, the pork chops were served with a very simple broccoli casserole. I caramelized some diced onion with a little bit of butter, added a small amount of water and chicken bullion, and carefully steamed chopped broccoli in the same saucepan. Once the broccoli was lightly steamed, I added a little more butter, a little bit of 2% milk, and a little cheddar. I thickened the liquid in the saucepan by adding some corn starch dissolved in a very small amount of cold milk and then brought it to a simmer before dumping the whole thing in a casserole dish. I topped the broccoli mixture with a light sprinkling of cheddar and with crushed cheddar goldfish crackers. If this sounds like a lot of work its really not… cheesy broccoli either baked or just with a light cheese sauce is one of my go-to craving replacements for macaroni or rich starches.
No words necessary!
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Chicken Masala
I love to make a chickpea masala. This time I added chicken after I pan-fried it. Some garlic naan and saffron jasmine rice accompanied the dish. I wish I could explain how to make this dish in a more helpful way but the truth is that I usually don’t make masala dishes the same way each time. I mean there are the usual suspects such as curry, garlic, turmeric, cumin, and tomato (either paste or fresh or both) but sometimes I’ll add other things, in this case, it was a bit of jarred tikka masala sauce and serrano peppers. I hope that helps.
Meet my new favorite puppy, McCovey, the Bernese Mountain Dog. This picture was taken at 8 weeks of age and he weighed 27lbs. I saw him recently at 15 weeks and he weighed over 40lbs. Love this breed and love him!
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Lake Tahoe
I love seeing new things, and was lucky enough to spend the afternoon traveling around the circumference of Lake Tahoe. The colors of the lake aren’t exactly describable, but the center is generally a deep blue while the shore fluctuates between shades of blue, turquoise, teal and green. My favorite section of the lake was Emerald Bay, from which the first photograph is taken. There is a Scandinavian castle named Vikingsholm in the bay that I look forward to visiting in the future.
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Andersen’s Split Pea Soup
Andersen’s is a very cool place along the central/southern Californian coast. They have a restaurant that is famous for (wait for it…..) split pea soup. I can attest that the food at their restaurant is pretty kick-ass. They also have a handful of random shops that sell anything from German pastries to Christmas ornaments to Elvis memorabilia. One of the last few times I was there, I got their “soup in a bag” kit which just includes a bag of split peas and their recipe on the back.
I knew that their recipe is vegetarian but I had a ham hock in the freezer leftover from Easter that I very happily acquired from my mom. I added the ham hock with all of the ingredients and followed directions but then something else happened. I got incredibly lazy and did not want to get my food mill with the very fine basket out. I decided, “eff it” I am just going to put all of this in a blender. So I did and it was still really, really good. I will say that when you taste Andersen’s soup just by itself, it does not have a sort of distinct mirepoix flavor like mine did (understandably so) but I totally loved it. If you ever see an Andersen’s, pull over… if not for the food then just to stare at some random stuff for a few minutes.