Gold Medal Pie

Happy Olympics everyone! We had a lovely evening watching the opening ceremonies - the floor of the arena was just amazing and we always have a good time watching the athletes walk in with their matching outfits. I figured that this was as good of a time as any to break out the February Pie.

I was a little torn on what to make (don't worry, the suggestions are just biding their time)... but it came down to what I actually had in the house. I settled on the Very Cranberry and Pear Pie in Ken Haedrich's PIE book. Festive, red (like Canada's color), and very delicious! I probably can't publish the recipe here for legal reasons, but it involved cranberries (frozen from Thanksgiving), ripe pears, cardamon, cinnamon, and a brown sugar/nut topping. How can you go wrong with that? Enjoy the pie-y pictures!

Cat + Cranberry = Win, Dog + Turkey = Fail

Happy almost Turkey Day! This should be a fun post- it will be the first with an actual veterinary story.

If you want to have lots of fun while making Thanksgiving dinner and your cat insists on helping (how thoughtful) - play the Cranberry Game!

The Set Up

Ingredients: One bag of cranberries, one cat (bagged). The brand of cranberries doesn't really matter, though did you know that many OceanSpray cranberries are grown in central Wisconsin bogs? But I digress.

Mix for hours of fun.
Oh, But the fun isn't over! Next find the cranberry in all sorts of unexpectedly wonderful places!
Cranberries are safe for pets... most won't actually eat them (though they may *roll* on them). Which segues nicely to the FAIL portion of this post.

Don't let your dogs get at turkey bones people. Seriously. (disclaimer- although I am a licensed vet I am not YOUR licensed vet. This post has general advice and is not meant to diagnose or treat your pet.) Our story concerns a 10 lb little white dog. Let us call him Sparky. Sparky had a GREAT Thanksgiving. He even found a way into the garbage... which contained the neck of a 25 lb turkey. Now, you may not think it possible that the little guy could actually swallow any of this, but Sparky was tenacious. He worked at it and managed to get a turkey vertebrae lodged in his esophagus half-way down his own neck. Sparky's Thanksgiving got a lot less fun. He gagged, retched, foamed at the mouth and worked hard to breathe all the way to the veterinary hospital, where he had anesthesia and endoscopic removal of the bone. This story had a happy ending, but the moral is: Dogs (and cats) are smart! They WILL get into things! Use common sense, use your human thumbs and make sure the garbage is secure. (Baby locks on cabinets work great!)

Ok, new craft and art stuff coming soon! There will be SPECIALS! And just for reading to the end of the post, CLICK HERE for a beloved family recipe using... you got it... cranberries!