This is the dog I'm going to look at Wednesday night.

Her name is Angel. She was actually one of my first picks, but she wasn't at the Roswell adoption thing on Sunday. I'm not too fond of the name, but then again, I can call her Angelus if she's bad. Heh.

The girls got home last night, completely worn out from the weekend wedding festivities. The dogs were soooooo happy to see them. Tyler and Sammy stayed with us the whole time Jake and Sara were gone, except to go next door to eat their dinner. But our companionship does not compare to having Daddy Jake back. I think they were actually starting to get depressed by Sunday.

Anyway, Jake was exhausted and Sara was in full-blown been-spending-time-with-the-siblings-competitive-mode.

Bad and Deb: "We went to see Bassets today. They were really really cute! We're probably going to adopt one on Wednesday."
Sara: "Your new dog couldn't possibly be as cute as our dogs."
Bad: "I made raisin cookies if anyone wants one."
Sara: "Ha! We snort at your feeble cookies! We brought something back for you that is the greatest thing on earth and far, far above the realm of your snivelling raisin cookies."
Bad: "But I spent a lot of time making those cookies. They're really good. They were my favorites when I was a kid."
Sara: "You will snort at your own cookies after you've had this."

They were very secretive about the special dessert until they actually presented it to us. It was butter cake. Apparently a Philly delicacy. It's creamed butter and powdered sugar on top of a shortbread type thing. I mean, just butter and sugar. Philly, city of the most overweight populace in America. It could not have lived up to the pre-release hype that Sara and Jake built up for it without chocolate and airy layers of hallucinagens. I wasn't wild about it. I had two bites and gave the rest of mine to Deb, who did like it. I like my raisin cookies better.

Luckily, Sara wasn't all competitive antagonism. She did come kiss me and whisper that she'd missed me. That was nice. I'll be happy when they've recovered and everything is back in its normal groove again. Sometimes it's hard to get back into the synch of our lives when one or two of us has been gone for several days. I think it's kind of like when you have two dogs and you take one away for a few days and then bring it back. The one who stayed thinks the one who left smells all weird now cause it's been around "other people" and stuff. The pack gets briefly disrupted. Or it could just be that I am strange and territorial and have been thinking about dogs way too much lately.

Back to the raisin cookies. They're really good. I'll have to post the recipe. The most fun was getting to use the old-fashioned counter-mounted grinder to grind the raisins. The lady who used to own the house left her grinder behind. It's metal and heavy and has a corkscrew-shaped shaft that moves the whatever-you're-grinding forward through a blade and then out a plate with little holes. We could grind our own beef with this thing if we wanted to. There was just something tactilely satisfying about grinding up raisins.

I made the dough on Friday night and spent Saturday morning rolling out cold, fist-sized pieces as flat as I could, slicing neat circles into the dough with a cookie cutter, and rotating batches in and out of the oven in eight-minute intervals. I think I got about 10 dozen out of the batch. I like to bake when the weather gets cool. I'll be doing batches of dog bones and bagel schmagels from the Three Dog Bakery cookbook before you know it. Dogs love bagel schmagels. And they're fun to make.

Moving on - 12:11 p.m. , 2007-08-14

Where the hell have I been? - 12:10 p.m. , 2007-02-19

Holy shit! - 2:24 p.m. , 2006-01-11

Stuffing recipe - 6:17 p.m. , 2005-12-13

Good Life Update - 10:22 a.m. , 2005-11-11