Seeing a member of your family in pain is tough, whether it be human or animal. Part of me struggles more with animal because they can’t express what they are going through. Keiko is our family for now and on Thursday she went in for surgery to have a small tumor removed. The culprit, a hard pink lump in between the digits on her right paw – ouch! Our Vet is sending it out for biopsy and we’re hoping they will get back to us soon with news that it is benign. For now, she is being spoiled because Mommy can’t stand to see her hurting.
I took Friday off from work and decided to make her “Recovery Cookies” while she dozed in and out from her perch on her giant dog bed couch. After a quick Google search, I found a recipe on allrecipes.com that I thought would be tasty and easy to throw together – peanut butter and pumpkin dog treats. I knew anything with peanut butter would make her wag again, seriously she would eat herself sick on it if we let her.
To make these just a little more special I made a batch of peanut butter in the Vitamix, another first. There was a canister of roasted, unsalted peanuts collecting dust in my cupboards so why not?!
Not too unappetizing right?! After a quick taste test inspection from Keiko – and by that I mean 3 spoonfuls…I got to work making the cookie dough.
Recovery Cookies
Ingredients:
3/4 can organic pumpkin puree
4 tablespoons fresh peanut butter, or all natural if you prefer
2 eggs
2.5 cups organic whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of sea salt
water
Directions:
Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Collect all of the ingredients into a medium sized bowl, use a pastry blender (one of these: www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-607507/OXO-Pastry-Blender) to work everything together. The dough will need moisture, add a splash of water at a time until a ball forms. You don’t want this to be too wet so stop when it is tacky.
Lightly flour a work surface, place your ball of dough on there and flour the top so you can roll it out easily. You want about 1/2″ (or less) thick end product, these do not expand out but they will puff up. Use your cookies cutter of choice and place cookies onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for a half hour or to your desired level of crunch factor. Let cool before tossing to your four legged friend.
Feel free to play around with this, next time I may add more peanut butter and also some ground flax seed meal to make her coat shiny!