Healthy Homemade Dog Cookies Recipe - Meat and Carrots - ヘルシーな犬用クッキーのレシピ

Today I made these cookies for Daisy. She loves them. Why don't you try them for your dog?

After mixing up the dough, I bake 1- 2 cookie sheets of them. Then I save a handful out for Daisy to eat right away and I freeze the rest. That way, I can give them to Daisy straight out of the freezer every now and then and not worry about spoilage. Invariably, I either don't have the time or the energy to bake up more than one or two sheets of cookies, so I also freeze some of the dough, so that I can bake more later when I have more time or energy. Just take the frozen dough out of the freezer when you want to bake more, defrost thoroughly, then roll out the dough and proceed as usual.

This recipe calls for shortening, but I use butter because in Japan, it's hard for me to get shortening (unless I go to a specialty store) and since I rarely use it, last time I bought some I used about 2 tablespoons then it sat in the cupboard until eventually, the whole can went bad and had to be thrown out. Butter seems to work just fine but you may prefer shortening for your dog. I used butter that had salt it in but it may also be better for your dog to use a no salt butter instead. I think it's probably best to avoid giving salt to your dog, from what I've heard, but I doubt the little bit in the butter is harmful, unless you know that specifically your dog should not have any salt due to some health condition.

Meat and Carrot Dog Cookies

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups sifted whole wheat flour
1/2 cup powdered milk (dry)
1 cube of bouillon, crumbled or 1 tablespoon powdered bouillon
1 cup cooked ground pork or pork and beef mixed
1 cup grated carrots
6 tablespoons shortening or butter
1 xtra large egg or 2 medium eggs
1/2 cup cold water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (or 180-190 C) depending on your oven. Mine needs to be at 190 C.

Use a Silpat baking/cookie sheet or lightly oil a plain cookie sheet. Silpat works the best...if you don't have a Silpat baking sheet, get one! It's a fabulous and indispensable addition to your kitchen. I don't know how I ever lived without mine! Gone will be the days of burnt bottoms on your cookies or other baked items, not to mention, no sticking to the sheet.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, powdered milk and bouillon. Add the cooked meat, grated carrot, shortening and egg, while adding water gradually until you get a firm ball of dough. You may find you don't need the entire 1/2 cup of water.

Lightly flour your rolling surface and then roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch (0.5 cm) thickness. Use what ever design cookie cutters you desire (I used hearts) to cut out cookies and place them on the baking sheet. You can put them fairly close together, but not touching. They do not spread during baking.

When you make heart shaped cookies, I have found that pressing my finger lightly and making indentations at the top of the hearts makes them formed better (after peeling them off the rolling surface and placing them onto the Silpat in which they sometimes get malformed a bit) and it adds a cute texture when they are finished baking.

Press the tip of your finger lightly into each rounded top part of the heart to make an decorative indentation.

Keep re-rolling the dough scraps so you can use all the dough for cookies. If I have a little dough left at the end that I just can't get one more cookie out of, I form it into a small ball and flatten it out and bake it. The dog likes it the same as the heart shaped ones!

Put in the oven and bake for about 20-30 minutes, again depending on your oven. Alittle well done (but not with burnt edges) is fine as dogs like 'em crunchy. Cool and serve or freeze for serving later.

On the Silpat mat, in the oven and ready to bake!

You can probably safely keep the cookies or the dough frozen for up to 2 months. I am not an expert on this, it could be it would keep even longer, this is just my personal opinion based on experience.

Add Some Cheese!

Here is a photo of some cookies made in the shape of stars instead of hearts . Also, I added just a pinch of shredded cheese on top of each cookie before baking for an extra flavor treat (click on photo to enlarge and see the cheese more closely). You can see the cheese melted nicely while baking. I used a cheddar and jack cheese mix on these cookies, but you could put almost any kind of semi-hard cheese such as cheddar, mozzarella, gruyère, edam or jarlsberg.

ALOHA! AND ENJOY.....

Summer Garden highlights - 我が家の庭のハイライト

Well, it's nearly done, gone, finished, over...wonderful summertime is ending. I hope we will get warm weather well into November this year, but the garden is already showing signs of the impending cold weather that will arrive in the coming months. I suppose the destructive typhoon (hurricane) we had pass over us a few weeks ago did not help. My cucumber and tomato plants were slaughtered in the relentless wind and were not able to recover. This year I wasn't so into my herb gardening as the puppy kept me pretty occupied. Here is what we had this year:

Edibles:
Rosemary
Lemon Grass
Basil
Lemon Balm
Scented Geranium
Thyme
Chives (mei negi)
Bell Peppers (piman)
Shishito Peppers
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Echinacea
Lemon (2 regular variety trees and one "giant" variety lemon tree)
Apple Mint
Aloe Vera
Blueberry

Non edibles were:
Plumerias (5 small trees, various colors)
Hibiscus (double flower type)
Jasmine
Angel's Trumpet
Hydrangea
Gardenia
Iilima
Tuberose
Forget-me-Nots
Other various 'always' there plants such as Climbing White Roses, Dichondra lawn, and a few things here and there I don't know the names of.

Only one of the plumeria trees flowered this year, but that was to be expected as they are all only 2 years old (except for one which is 3 years old). It us not usual to get flowers on trees younger than 3 years old. Beginning next year, I hope to get LOTS of flowers!

Plumerias out to the garden in early spring from their wintering safely indoors. They lose all their leaves in the winter but start sprouting new leaves in spring.

A close up of a sprouting inflorescence (a plumeria inflorescence is the clumpy looking growth that will produce flowers). Also can be seen are the new leaves being formed (they look like little brown 'horns').

The growing inflorescence, the little green tips are the flowers forming.

The first flower to open with many more ready to open soon!

Finally we have flowers! They smelled SO GOOD. I enjoyed wearing them in my hair or wrapping like a small boutonniere on a wire to give to friends. Daisy liked them too.


A picture from today, end of summer, before the leaves have started to drop off.

As usual, I can not seem to keep lemons on the tree in Japan. I have tried unsuccessfully for 5 years now to get lemons from my trees (I have 2 trees). They get hundreds of sweet smelling blooms and then the fruit starts forming but shortly after this, everything falls off a few everyday until there is no fruit growing anymore! This year, I added a new lemon tree, a variety that is supposed to produce giant lemons and it did keep ONE precious lemon on it. It's is still green right now and it is pretty big! Hope will we be able to enjoy it soon.

The newly forming fruits on the Giant Lemon tree. As you can see here, all but 2 of the little lemons have fallen out. I wish I knew how to solve this problem. Does anyone out there have any suggestions?

Our ONE precious lemon...it's about the size of a softball at the moment!

We got some great cucumbers this year and made some onolicious salads and tsukemono (Japanese style pickles) from them, but the tomatoes weren't very productive this year. Everything else was green and enjoyable all season. The Dichondra even held up well to the tramplings of the new puppy! I'm so glad we chose that for our lawn instead of grass.

Here are some pics of some other things in of our garden this year.
Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Echinacea sprouting from the ground in early spring.

Echinacea growing taller and taller.

A little bee enjoying an Echinacea flower.

Our Hydrangeas in full bloom (they are growing in an extra large container!).

Close up of the pretty purple Hydrangea flowering, it's called Ajisai in Japanese.

Fabulous Scented Geranium blooming in early summer.

Makuhari Beach - Kemigawa Hama - 幕張海岸にて（検見川浜）

Daisy exploring the Kemigawa seashore

Today we took Daisy to the ocean for the first time. She ran up to the water without much hesitation and jumped over a couple little baby waves at the shore, but we had to force her to swim later on. She seemed to take to it well though and I suspect she will really like swimming when she gets older. The water was surprisingly warm.

I have included pictures below (click to enlarge) but keep in mind, these were taken about 2-3 weeks after a nasty typhoon hit the area and I bet there is not this much wood and debris up on the beach normally.

I have provided below, alot more info on this area than most of you lovely readers might want or need but I hope it may help someone out in the future who wants to enjoy the beach at Makuhari. Before we set off on this adventure today we tried searching on the internet and in all the books we have with info on Chiba, details for or directions to this beach area, but could find nothing other than a comment "Kemigawa Hama, bathing beach 20 minutes from JR Kemigawahama Station" and a photo (that is ONE photo) of one of the walkways that jet out into the bay (we tried searching in Japanese as well as English). We really didn't know if we would be successful in finding this place today!

It's still like summer here right now (this not usually the case, it was in the low 80's today, about 28 celsius) and we wanted to try to enjoy it, despite it being an insane plan to hit the road on a Saturday (which normally would mean being tortured in traffic for quite a while to just go a short distance). So off we went to Makuhari, which is about 15 minutes by car (when there is no traffic, today was 27 minutes). Usually, the only reason we go to Makuhari is for a trip to Costco, to go to the DMV or the occasional 'show' at the convention center there (Makuhari Messe). But there is also a long stretch of waterfront that is part of Tokyo Bay in Makuhari. It is one of the few waterfront areas in Tokyo Bay that is not covered in industrial type things (such as shipping ports) and instead has an actual beach. A neighbor had told me recently that there was a beach in Makuhari where people could swim in the water (some other ocean recreational areas are just for boats, windsurfers, or clam digging) and that dogs could go too, so we were on a mission to find it today!

We once drove by about 7 years ago when we first moved into this area, but never got out of the car (there was absolutely no place to stop the car due to the crowds as I recall). From the car, we could see some people windsurfing and sandy beaches, but being from Hawaii, it was hard to get excited about. On top of that, a trip to the beach in Japan or any other outdoor enjoyment (especially anywhere accessible in a one day trip from Tokyo metropolitan area) will invariably mean that you will be joining a sea of humanity who also have the same intentions, at the very same time as you do. Having been there, done that (and narrowly surviving), we mostly choose to just stay home.

So Daisy got us out the door today, on a wonderful warm sunny day. We waited until after 3pm to go and that turned out to be a very good thing. Only a bit of traffic! When we passed Makuhari Messe we turned east on the road that runs parallel to the beach (towards Chiba City). We quickly found an area called Kemigawa Hama. Kemigawa is the name of the area and a river there, and "hama" means beach in Japanese. There is a parking area that you can turn into at a traffic signal (there is a road sign at that signal that says "Yacht Harbor" in Japanese and English). It costs 500 yen to park there (no time limit but they closed at 5pm this particular day). There was plenty of parking (but again, we arrived pretty late, around 4pm so it could have been full earlier in the day). It is about 1-2 minutes down the road from the Chiba Marine Stadium.

There are grassy 'park' areas all around and nice brick walkways to the beach. There are also restrooms and showers we discovered as we neared the sand (there are also the usual vending machines around with cold drinks). It was a pretty nice beach! Of course, there is not the wonderful pristine coral sand beach like we get in Hawaii. The other beach I've been to in Chiba had a very fine sand with a sort of blackish powdery sand mixed in. The blackish sand really sticks to your skin. The sand here at Kemigawa Hama was a bit more grainy but still some black sand. Maybe it's volcanic?

The water was fairly clean and clear and I did not have any aversion to getting into it. Again, it's not Hawaii but it was ok. There were little baby waves rolling into the shore, about 10 inches (25cm) or so high (maximum). There were many people windsurfing but it was not a terribly windy place (on this day that was the case, however I don't find Makuhari to ever be particularly windy).

Also here you will find, on either/each side of the fairly long sandy beach, some walkways jetting out into the bay from which many people were enjoying fishing, walking, etc. There was a covered area with picnic tables though my guess some of folks we saw sitting there were probably homeless (they did not appear to be actually camped out permanently here but I got the feeling that they have their digs somewhere not too far off and were just enjoying the beach area like everyone else).

Now that we have a dog, we are discovering there is quite a bit of decent outdoors not too far from us!

Windsurfer at Kemigawa Hama
(jetty/walkway in the background)

Kemigawa Hama - east view (towards Chiba City)

Kemigawa Hama - west view (towards Makuhari and Tokyo,
with the buildings at Makuhari in the background).
Lots of wood debris left over from a recent typhoon.
Additional covered picnic table area in seen in the background.

Nearby covered picnic table area, in front of restroom and showering area
(viewed from the seashore)

Daisy heading to a grassy area that runs along the beach

Hanabi (Fireworks) in Summer - 夏の花火

In Japan, in the summertime, there are firework shows in various locations. As far as I can tell, these take place on riversides or bay areas. The biggest and most famous in Tokyo (and notoriously crowded) display is on the Sumida river. Not being into crowds, I've never been to that one. Last Saturday there was a display scheduled on the very big Tamagawa (Tama river). This river separates Tokyo from Kanagawa. It is a wide and long river with very nice grassy banks on either side. Our friends, Masaaki and Keiko Omori just bought a new condo about 1 1/2 blocks from the riverside there. So they invited us over to have a picnic outside and sit and watch the fireworks show (they kindly staked out a patch of ground for us ahead of time).

We decided to bring Daisy for her first time to go for a visit to someone's home. She enjoyed it alot but was really confused as to why she couldn't run around their home and get into trouble like she can at her own home. All in all, she was pretty good albeit a bit of work for Ken and I.

Here are some pictures from that evening. Ken was holding Daisy while we enjoyed the fireworks show and Daisy was peering over his shoulder at the people behind us. They were all lined up for as far as you could see (in the dark), so when you looked behind, it appeared as if we had an audience watching us. Daisy seemed to wonder why everyone was fixated on us all night.

Why are all those people looking at us?

It was warm but pleasant weather, we got a bit of sprinkles, which was actually quite refreshing, at the end of the evening, thus the spots on the camera lense (you may notice in the pictures below).

From left to right: Kenji, Daisy, Masaaki, Keiko

From left to right: Daisy, Kenji, Masaaki, ME!

Fun at the Dog Park with a new ball - ドッグランでおニューのボールとのひと時

Today Daisy and I went to the dog park nearby our home. I have put up some videos of a few of our previous trips there (can be seen on YouTube, just click on the link in the column on the right side of this webpage, under the heading "My Favorite Web Places", to get fast access to all Princess T's YouTube videos, YouTube member name is ptsrainbow).

It's a really nice little park provided by the city of Ichikawa for residents and their dogs. There are quite a few benches to sit on while your dogs play, and a covered area outside the dog runs with a picnic table near a pond with a little waterfall. The greatest part is it's FREE! We rarely get something for free in Japan.

There are 3 fenced areas, one for puppies, one for smaller dogs and one with the tallest fence, for large dogs. Daisy isn't so big yet (she has hit 15 lbs./7.2 kilos now) but she does best in the big dog area as larger dogs keep her attitude in check. That is, aside from the chihuahuas that scared her into a corner a few weeks ago!

During the week, hardly any one is there, so I bought her a frisbee and a squeeky rubber football (it's orange) to play with when it is just me and her. She had a great time today with the football. She hasn't got the idea of the frisbee figured out yet.

Enjoy the video!

Could Daisy be Underdog's girlfriend? 「デイジーはアンダードッグの恋人になれる？」

Lemon Beagle Miss Daisy Ipo wearing a lei

「レイを身に着けるレモンビーグルのミス・デイジー・イポ」

Disney has a new movie coming out (to be released in August in USA). It's called Underdog. My mother asked me yesterday "is Underdog a lemon Beagle"? Does he look like our "Miss Daisy Ipo" lemon Beagle? So I checked out Disney's website today and sure enough, that doggie looks like a lemon Beagle. His coloring looks alittle darker (a tad more red) than Daisy though it was hard to get a good look from just the trailer.

Daisy watched the movie trailer with me and then wanted to take some pictures with a pretty lei on so that maybe Underdog might take a shine to her. She thinks the relationship with Sweet Polly Purebred won't last and Underdog can find true Beagle love with "Miss Daisy", a real lemon Beagle.

Here she is in some poses in a little photo shoot from this afternoon. Putting on the charm there girl! Daisy says "Underdog, forget about Sweet Polly Purebred! Will you be my forever ku'uipo?"

Do you think she would make a good girlfriend for Underdog?
Don't forget you can click on the photos to enlarge them.......

Underdog, where are you? Care for a little roll in the Dichondra?

Here's my sexiest "Marilyn" pose....Underdog, I'm the girl for you!
I'm young but a dignified and sophisticated lady!

Sushi-den in Toyota City, Nagoya area 「豊田市の美味しいお寿司屋さん」

While in Nagoya for the exhibition at Art Space Sou (see previous post), as always, I stayed at my friend Miki's home (beadmaker Miki). Miki's husband, Mr. Miyano is an artist too. He designs cars for Lexus. They are always great hosts(ess) and we all enjoy going out together in the evenings. They have taken me to some great restaurants in their neighborhood in Toyota City (the city that Toyota Motors built, adjacent to Nagoya).

Myself with Mr. and Mrs. Miyano
「お友達の宮野さんご夫婦とのスリーショット」

One of my favorite places they have taken me, is the sushi restaurant called Sushi-den. The owners there are great, and will try their hardest to make exactly what you like, even for a crazy foreigner like me. They always have some of the best quality fish! This time I was gorging myself on the ono Maguro they had! I also love to drink the sake with dried Fugu (blowfish) fins in it, which is lit on fire before you start to drink it. Mr. Miyano suggests some good drinks, being the connoisseur of adult beverages that he is!

So this time, when I said I wanted to take a picture, the owners of Sushi-den had me get behind the counter for a photo opp. Here are the pics...if you ever get to Toyota-shi, be sure to stop in and tell them the Miyano's friend Terri sent you! Be prepared for a delicious, fun, friendly and relaxing evening.....they really make you feel at home.

Sushi-den
9-8-15 Higashiumetubo
Toyota-shi, Aichi-ken (prefecture)
phone: 0565 36 0806

Gallery Art Space Sou, Opening day - July 2007 Exhibition 「アートスペース創さんでの展覧会初日 2007年7月」

Here are some photos from the opening day/weekend of my showing at the gallery Art Space Sou in Nagoya, Japan. This is my favorite show every year. Gallery owner Etoh-san always makes it fun for all with her cheerful and elegant style and her customers are great. I get to spend some time with my dear friend Miki who is a famous lampwork bead maker in Japan. She also shows her beads at this show every year, along with her friend Naomi, who it is also nice to see at this show every year! Naomi had made some cute beads with fish on them, they are called Amago fishes. I like the necklace with the fish in 3 pieces, head, body and tail. Very creative! (click on the photo below to enlarge).

Opening day was busy this year and the weekend was in full swing with customers waiting to see what was new for this year. The show runs for 8 days this year. It was sad to leave on Sunday afternoon as I had a great time seeing everyone again! Some of my regular customers even spoke to me in english a bit this year...maybe they have been studying! I am already looking forward to next year.

Starting off these photos, is a little movie of the bullet train (Shinkansen) pulling out of Nagoya station. This is an older bullet train, the newer ones look even cooler.

Video of Shinkansen/Bullet Train (click on the play arrow)

Art Space Sou/Front of building
「アートスペース創さんの建物の前面」

Gallery Sign Board
「創さんのサインボード」

Gallery Interior
「ギャラリーの中の様子」

Naomi Kazawa overseeing the customers
Princess T display/table 1
「プリンセスT作品の展示１」

Princess T display/table 2
「プリンセスT作品の展示２」

Beautiful Beads by Miki Miyano

Amago Fish Beads by Naomi Kazawa

Gallery Owner Etoh-san and myself
「創さんオーナーの江藤さんとのツーショット」

Myself with Miki (right) and friend Satomi-san (left)