Wheat-Free Treats for a Sweet Pup

Today Emily and I noticed that our dog, Frank, didn’t seem to be feeling so hot. He had already puked today and didn’t seem to want to do anything. I mean, our dog is lazy, but he didn’t even get up when we started messing with the treat bag. So we looked it up on the interweb. After some searching, we stumbled upon the symptoms of a wheat allergy in dogs. Frank had all of them, apart from the seizures (thank goodness). We suspected that Frank was allergic to wheat. What made things a little harder was that Frank’s dog treats had wheat as the first ingredient. Emily decided that she was just going to start making treats at home for the pup-star, to make sure he didn’t get any wheat.

 

She found a nifty recipe for peanut butter pumpkin dog treats on Pinterest, and we altered it slightly to make it easier for us. This is what you need.

 

• 2 ½ cups of rice flour
• 3 large eggs
• 2/3 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 3 T. peanut butter
• 2 tsp.-1T. water, whichever works for you

 

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Mix all of your ingredients in a bowl. Now, the original recipe says to roll your dough out and use a cookie cutter, but that doesn’t really work. Then, start pulling out little clumps and rolling them into balls with your hands. Flatten them out (about ¼ inch thick) and place them on a cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes. The original recipe also doesn’t include water or 3 eggs (only two) and it gets really crumbly. Just add 3 eggs and the water to make it doughier.

 

Voilà! You and your pup are now the proud owners of delicious peanut butter pumpkin treats. They can be people food too, but they are a little flavorless. Frank loves them, and that’s all that really matters.

 

-Grace<3

The Week in Pictures

And a fabulous week was had by all! 🙂

Helping to get the cardboard in place for our new garden.

Stomping the cardboard into submission. 😀

Phase 1 complete. 🙂

Raking up some leaves for step 2 of our garden. 🙂

All that raking pays off.

Now the hay is in place…this section is almost complete!

Planting onions…good times!

Always time to play with the water hose. 😀

A trip for birdhouse supplies got sidetracked by Greek mythology. 😉

And the birdhouse painting begins!

The start of our neighborhood for birds. 😀

Planting root veggies in a nifty box where we can see them grow.

Grace needed to make a sign for her “business” in a Greek market…this is what she went with. 😀

Making hamburgers with Daddy. 😀

Learning about ancient Greek coins…and designing a new one for Sparta. 😉 (History Pockets)

A game of Factor This! (Nerd in the Brain)

Playing some Greatest Common Factor Rummy. (Nerd in the Brain)

Exploring blending colors and painting. 🙂

Some interesting abstract art. 😀

Last Week in Pictures

We had a fantastic week last week!  Here’s the evidence:

Giggling at my nonsense. 😀 (Science Center)

Checking out the critters at the Science Center.

RAWR!

Class at the Science Center.

Dissections complete! (Science Center)

Getting the tomatoes, rosemary, and thyme started.

Grace’s new title: Subtraction Ninja! (XtraMath)

Playing some Mathological Liar.

Playing Operation Madness. (Nerd in the Brain)

Making dinner with Daddy. (You like the random way we dress around here?) 😉

Learning how temperature affects density. (Middle School Chemistry)

Temperature and density. (Middle School Chemistry)

All ready for a Pi Day throw down! 😉

The aftermath (get it???) of the Pi Party. 😀

Some symbols of the Greek gods. (History Pockets)

Leave a tooth that fell out on a pad of sticky notes….

…and get $5.00 in exchange. 😀

How To…Write a Goal

Grace has finished up her writing unit on how-to writing.  For her final paper, she chose to write about creating goals (another skill we’ve been working on).  Here’s what she had to say:

Setting a Goal

The first step in setting a goal is gathering your supplies. You will need paper and a pencil. Then, think of something you want to accomplish, like writing a short story. After you have the idea of what you are going to do, write down how long it will take you to accomplish. For writing a short story, you might want to stick to three weeks.

After that, write the first thing you need to do to complete your goal. After writing the first step of your goal, write (on the same line) how long that step will take. You might think that creating the main plot for your story will take two days, so you would write that down. After that, write down the date you would finish that step. This is so you know when you complete each step. Use this method to write down all steps.

After you have finished writing your steps, calculate when you will finish completely. If you didn’t give yourself enough time to finish, you might want to rethink your time limit. If you finish early, then you have plenty of wiggle room, or time to make mistakes. If you start your goal on April 1^st, your paper should look like this:

Writing a Short Story

(three weeks)

1. Create main plot (two days) 4/2/13

2. Create characters (three days) 4/5/13

3. Write chapter 1 (three days) 4/8/13

4. Write chapter 2 (three days) 4/11/13

5. Write chapters 3 (three days) 4/13/13

6. Proofread (1 day) 4/14/13

Wiggle Room: 1 week

Check up on your goal every time you finish a step to make sure your timing is correct. If not, think about what you are doing that is causing you to take longer than you had planned. Are you slacking off? Did you not give yourself enough time? If you are early, you know you gave yourself plenty of time and can use that information for future goals.

Have fun!

-Grace<3

Weekly Braaaaiins: How To Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

Grace is practicing her how-to writing, so she came up with this little step-by-step for how to deal with a zombie invasion.  Enjoy and be safe!  (By the way – Grace is planning to write a little about zombies each week to keep you safe and educated.  Look for her Weekly Braaaaiins features in the future.)

Surviving the zombie apocalypse is a key skill for all readers of Weekly Braaaaiins, so here are a few steps to help you stay alive.

First, you need to gather some supplies. You will need canned food, bottled water, blankets, flashlights, batteries (we suggest a lot), and a weapon. You can find all this at your local abandoned Wal-Mart®.

Next, you will need to find a safe place. Perhaps your basement or a warehouse? You want to find someplace sturdy with as few windows a possible, just in case the zombies get frisky.

Make sure to keep your weapon on you at all times. If you have children, keep them within reach. If a single zombie is coming to you, don’t panic. Zombies are slow and fall apart easily, but remember to aim at the head. Of course, chopping them into bite-sized pieces would work, too, but that may be a little too morbid. You should only panic if a large group of corpses start to come after you. If so, run for your life.

You might want to take this time spent cowering in the corner to devise a plan for the next time the world ends. What will you do? Where will you go? Just remember, if you follow these steps, your brains should be safe.

-Weekly Braaaaiins

The Week in Pictures

Here are some of the things we packed into our days last week. 🙂

To Kill a Mockingbird bookworm…you can’t see it very well, but there’s all sorts of good stuff there about allusions and similes and plot and stuff. 😉

A closer view of the bookworm.

Frank is not impressed with our schooling. 😀

Our trip to the homeschool store wasn’t successful, but we did see these nifty birds.

Grace’s “museum” of “artifacts” from ancient China.

“Job applications” for positions in ancient China. 🙂

Working on some “artifacts.”

Ancient Chinese coins…probably not authentic enough for spending. 😉

Peeling potatoes…life skills!

A little trip to the park was a nice change of pace.

Doing some experiments to see if water or metal is more conductive.

The Week in Pictures

Grace and I had kind of a strange week, but we still managed to fit in lots of interesting and educational activities. 🙂

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The Best Laid Plans ;)

The flexibility of homeschool is fantastic!  Even though I make all sorts of nifty plans every week, they can be ditched in a heartbeat if something more intriguing comes up.  🙂

So, what came up?  Building a compost bin of all things.  Grace went with me to buy the lumber for building the compost bin that I have in mind for the new house, and she became quite interested in the whole process.  She asked if she could help, and I thought I’d be quite the doofus to miss this chance.  Just think of all the skills involved!  *insert nerdly educator gigglesnort here*  (Annnnd we went to a “Surviving 19th Century Medicine” shindig this afternoon!)

The project will take us a few days to complete, but here are some pictures of the start we’ve made (I’ll post more pictures after we’ve finished):

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