Easy Homemade Dog Treats

Homemade Alternatives for Dog Treats

This is Sasha, our beautiful Mini Pinscher, who absolutely loves her easy homemade dog treats. She's sporting a pretty bow made by hand by our good friend, Heather Harton. Check out her fabulous work here. We've been doggie parents since April, and we have to say that Sasha has brought so much joy and delight to our lives. We're so grateful! And we believe that, as responsible pet owners, we have to take proper care of our "little girl", just as we would our own child. So, we do our best to find the best (and easy) healthy meals for Sasha. The easy part creates that balance between time spent and healthy rewards, which can sometimes be a chore. But if you're looking for easy homemade dog treats, then this is for you!

Since I'm the cook in our family, and I love to create new and exciting homemade meals, I thought, well, why not include Sasha's dog food in that category? After all, she's definitely worth it! Just like you're always on the lookout for the healthiest choices for your family and children, so should you be for your pets. Healthy easy meals are in abundance these days. All you have to do is search the Internet and you'll find everything you need to know about healthy eating, whether it be how to make homemade cookies, homemade mayonnaise, or how to create quick healthy snacks - including your pets, of course. So I came up with some easy dog treat recipes.

Homemade Dog Treats

When we first brought Sasha into our family, I made the decision that we were going to pay as much attention to feeding her healthy dog food as we do for ourselves. After all, she's a spirit just like us, right? And she deserves all the goodness life can give her. But how to create the best homemade dog treats may be a challenge. So off I went, into the cyber-world of research where, as I mentioned, you can find pretty well anything you need to know. I found what I needed to know quite quickly. In fact, there's a wealth of information on feeding dogs easy homemade dog treats - and baking them yourself! If you're any kind of cook, you can follow homemade dog treat recipes. They're no different from making quick healthy snacks for your own kids...and these are very healthy homemade dog treats, not your run-of-the-mill everyday dog food you can buy in any supermarket.

So here's a wonderful thing about family and friends - word of mouth. The first recipe I decided to make for Sasha actually came from a suggestion from my sister-in-law, Marnie MacCallum. Bless her heart for thinking of us when she came across this easy homemade dog treat recipe. And Sasha certainly appreciates the suggestion, too, because she loves them. These quick healthy snack ideas take no more effort than baking a batch of cookies. (And if you love cookies like I do, then you'll understand what I mean.) You can find the original recipe here. I've adapted it (as I do with most of my recipes from the Internet) to my own liking...and in this case, to Sasha's liking, too. After all, she's the one who gets to enjoy the product of all my homemade dog treat recipes.

Pumpkin Dog Biscuits

2 eggs

1/2 cup canned pumpkin
2 tablespoons dry milk
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 1/2 cups brown rice flour *
1 teaspoon dried parsley (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.

In large bowl, whisk together eggs and pumpkin to smooth. Stir in dry milk, sea salt, and dried parsley (if using, optional). Add brown rice flour gradually, combining with spatula or hands to form a stiff, dry dough. Turn out onto lightly floured surface (can use the brown rice flour) and if dough is still rough, briefly knead and press to combine.

Roll dough between 1/4 – 1/2″ – depending on your dog’s chew preferences, – and use biscuit or other shape cutter to punch shapes, gathering and re-rolling scraps as you go. Place shapes on cookie sheet, no greasing or paper necessary. If desired, press fork pattern on biscuits before baking, a quick up-and-down movement with fork, lightly pressing down halfway through dough. Bake 20 minutes. Remove from oven and carefully turn biscuits over, then bake additional 20 minutes. Allow to cool completely on rack before feeding to dog.

* Brown rice flour gives the biscuits crunch and promotes better dog digestion. Many dogs have touchy stomachs or allergies, and do not, like many people I know, tolerate wheat.

Makes up to 75 small (1″) biscuits or 50 medium biscuits.

Now, as I mentioned, I change and substitute ingredients in recipes all the time. I believe that you use a recipe once, then adapt it to what works best for you. The possibilities are, well, almost endless! In this particular recipe, I didn't actually change any of the ingredients. I used the optional parsley (because I looked it up and that's healthy for your dog). And I rolled out the dough to about 1/4" thickness, then laid it on a cookie sheet. Then I used a pizza cutter to cut it in tiny pieces, about 1/4" square. You'll see in the picture of the finished product below, that I don't pay a lot of attention to uniformly cutting the dough. So the end result is a lot of slightly different sized pieces. But that doesn't matter at all. Sasha doesn't care what size her treat is, as long as she gets it!

So when these wonderful and easy homemade dog treats are done and cooled, I just put them into a Ziploc bag and freeze them. That keeps them really fresh and you obviously want your quick healthy snacks to be as fresh as possible! I just take out a handful at a time and keep them in a container for easy doling out when Sasha does something to deserve them...or when I'm training her.

And speaking of dog training, even though it's a little off topic, it's another necessary aspect of being a responsible dog owner. When you train your dog, you create a bond that brings many years of joy to both you and your dog. There are a number of online dog training systems available. For one example, Click Here!  And just to provide you with an alternative, you might want to choose this program: Click Here!

So the bottom line here is that homemade alternatives are always better and healthier for you and your pets. Homemade dog food is becoming much more popular these days. For example, here's an online resource that's invaluable if you're looking to make healthier choices for your dog: Healthy Food for Dogs: Homemade Recipes. There's also a big trend these days for going raw, and here's a great resource that states: Help Dog Owners Discover How To Put Their Dogs And Puppies On A Raw Dog Food Diet With This Complete Guide. A Raw Dog Food Diet, Which Is Made Up Of Raw Bones And Meat Is The Best And Most Appropriate Diet For Dogs For Them To Live Longer. If you think that's the best for your dog, check out Going Rawr! A Complete Guide To Putting Your Dog On A Raw Food Diet.

Enjoy your dog...and your dog will enjoy their homemade alternatives for dog treats!

This blog uses affiliate links. If you click on any of these links and make a purchase, I’ll earn some income. But rest assured that I love to share goodness in whatever form I can, so this is only an added bonus for me – my main focus is to provide you with relevant and helpful information. Thank you for your support.

And if you feel that affiliate marketing is right for you; if you believe that a few – or a lot – of extra money can help you in your life, check out the program that taught me how to do it – in a simple step-by-step way: Click here for more info.

Homemade Alternatives - Homemade Ketchup Recipes

How to Make Homemade Ketchup 

As you poured that famous Heinz Ketchup on your fries, did you even wonder what it would be like to learn how to make homemade ketchup? Could you actually reproduce that age old tomato sauce made famous by Heinz. We all love that rich tomatoey ( is that a word?) sugary concoction on all kinds of foods - just like Heinz has encouraged us to do over the years. Personally, I usually use it only on fries, but now that I've come up with a delicious homemade alternative to the original ketchup, I use it on many more things. The homemade ketchup I make is just the right balance to serve as a flavorful sauce on and in all kinds of dishes - casseroles, sandwiches, meats (if you eat meat), and many other uses. The wonderful thing about a sauce like ketchup is that you can use your imagination - put it on anything you like. I know many people who like ketchup on their eggs. I'm not one of those, but for those who love that additional flavor, this is the perfect solution.

So now, we get to the reason why I'm always on the lookout for homemade alternatives to the sugary, chemical-laden, processed foods that are all over the supermarket shelves these days. I don't want all that processed sugar and all those chemicals - those additives and preservatives that you find in so many foods - in my body. I'm trying to be healthy. And the answer to eating healthier is to eat organic. And to cook from scratch in your own kitchen where you have control over what goes into your food. That's why I make my own mayonnaise (click here for recipe). That's why I make my own bread (recipe coming soon). And there are many other foods that I'm going to be in search of to make in my own kitchen. And remember, your own kitchen is the best controlled cooking environment you can find.

Nutritional Information for Heinz Ketchup

Have you ever wondered about the nutritional information for Heinz Ketchup? Do you read the labels on the foods you buy? I suggest you do! If everybody read the labels on everything they bought, I believe the amount of processed food bought from the supermarkets would decrease considerably. Food manufacturers, unfortunately, don't care about what you put into your bodies. They only care about profit. So to turn the tide on this trend, you need to read your labels. 

Here's a good example of a Nutrition Facts label, this one being for Heinz Ketchup. Check out the ingredients! It's made from tomato concentrate. Distilled vinegar is good. But then, we come to the sugar element. Look at that: "high fructose corn syrup", followed by more corn syrup. That's a whole lot of sugar - and that's processed sugar, containing corn syrup that's probably manufactured using GMOs. For more information on Heinz and GMOs, click here.
It's clear from that article that there are probably GMOs in Heinz Ketchup, but that whole discussion on GMOs is for another day. Right now, we just want to focus on getting healthy ingredients into our food. So if you want to eliminate the risk of GMOs in your food, then don't buy the products that may contain them.

Homemade Ketchup: How to Make Ketchup

So if you can't wait to get down to business (or fun, if you prefer), let's teach you how to make ketchup. You can find pretty well any recipe you want on the Internet. I found this one at Whole New Mom. For the original recipe for Easy Homemade Ketchup, click here. Now, the joy of finding and using recipes from the Internet is that you can make them your own. It's been said that you use a recipe once, then you change it to suit your own likes and dislikes. Substitution is a big word in my kitchen. If I don't have what's called for in the recipe, then I substitute what I do have. And if I don't know of a suitable substitute off the top of my head, then I look it up on the Internet. You can probably see the trend here - I use the Internet to find out anything I don't know myself. I believe it was Napoleon Hill who suggested that you surround yourself with people who know what you don't know. And that would include just about anybody on the Internet. But I digress.

Here's my recipe for a healthy Homemade Ketchup, as it ended up with my substitutions, additions and subtractions:

Easy Homemade Ketchup

Makes approximately 1 1/2 cups 

Ingredients

1 6-oz can tomato paste
2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 Tablespoons demerara sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder 

3/8 teaspoon allspice

1 Tablespoon molasses 

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2/3 cup distilled water 

2 Tablespoons Chia seeds

Method

1. Place all ingredients in a blender.

2. Blend completely.

3. Store in the refrigerator.

And there you have it. It's that easy! This particular recipe I found to have an almost BBQ sauce taste, which is fine with me because I love BBQ sauce. But, again, that's the joy of working with recipes - you can add or subtract most of the ingredients to suit your personal taste. For instance, I added the Chia seeds because they help to thicken the sauce, as I found it a bit runny for ketchup. And Chia seeds are very healthy! 

And here's my ketchup, sitting in the fridge alongside my Homemade Mayonnaise.

I selected this particular recipe for homemade ketchup from a number of healthy recipes. I was just trying to find out how to make ketchup - without all the sugar and chemicals and additives. Since I made the ketchup recipe above, I've found another one that comes even closer to the original. The recipe above is, as I mentioned more like a homemade BBQ sauce which, I believe, gives it a much wider range of uses in all your favorite foods. But I'm always looking for a better way - that's just my nature. And here's what I found:

Homemade Ketchup Recipe

Ingredients:
Two 6 0z cans of Muir Glen Organic Tomato Paste (or you can use regular)
1 cup Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar Organic Raw  
2/3 cup water (I used my homemade stock)
2 tablespoons demerara sugar 
4 tablespoons minced onions
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sea salt (I used Himalayan Pink Salt)
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:
Blend together in food processor until smooth, about 1 minute.

Put in small saucepan and heat on medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring often. *I stirred constantly because that keeps the boiling bubbles from popping up at you - messy and painful! 

Let cool, then keep refrigerated.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Yield: about 3 cups 

Voila! What could be simpler...and healthier! I made a few adjustments to the original recipe, which you can find here. I switched to the organic apple cider. I've always been a fan of Bragg's - good natural foods you can trust. If you want to stay true to the no-sugar thing, you can use what the original recipe called for, which was Stevia Original Liquid Extract. I don't use Stevia; my personal preference is Truvia Calorie Free Sweetener, but Stevia is good, too. And if you're concerned about demerara sugar being the same as brown sugar, don't worry - it's not as refined as white sugar and it retains it's natural sweetness and goodness from pure sugar cane. 

So, as you can see, it doesn't take a whole lot of work to put together this homemade ketchup recipe. You can learn how to make ketchup in your own kitchen in just 10-15 minutes. And since ketchup is so widely used in America these days, wouldn't it make sense to follow the trend of making healthy recipes and make your own homemade ketchup? And once you get into the swing of it, making healthy recipes can do wonders for your overall health, even if you're challenged with some of the more life-threatening diseases. If you want to get healthy, remember, it's all about diet - not drugs!  

So make your kitchen the source of some wonderfully healthy homemade alternatives. Make your kitchen a healthy kitchen. Make your food healthy food...and you'll end up with healthy bodies - for you and all your loved ones!

This blog uses affiliate links. If you click on any of these links and make a purchase, I’ll earn some income. But rest assured that I love to share goodness in whatever form I can, so this is only an added bonus for me – my main focus is to provide you with relevant and helpful information. Thank you for your support.

And if you feel that affiliate marketing is right for you; if you believe that a few – or a lot – of extra money can help you in your life, check out the program that taught me how to do it – in a simple step-by-step way:

Click here for more info

Homemade Alternatives - Homemade Mayonnaise

Homemade alternatives are built on a pantry full of some simple basic ingredients, such as spices. This is the top shelf of my spice rack. As you can see, there's quite a variety of spices...and there are a lot more on the bottom shelf. When you're dealing with homemade alternatives to store-bought products, you totally control what goes into your recipe. So I like to keep a wide variety of spices at hand because you never know what might inspire me to add just a little bit of this or a little bit of that. That's the joy of homemade alternatives - you can design them to your personal taste. And if you need help with what spice goes with what, there are lots of guidelines out there. My preference in all natural. And that's also the preference of J.R.Watkins, one of the oldest and most trusted names in natural spices: 

Natural since 1868 and way too stubborn to change! Visit J.R. Watkins today! 

Are you a label reader? If you're not, you need to become one. Yes, you'll find a list of spices just like the ones you find on your spice shelf. But you'll also find all kinds of ingredients that you can't even pronounce. Ugh! They say if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. And that is so true!

For me, the biggest advantage to homemade alternatives is the control you have over the ingredients. There are so many easy homemade recipes available online. And those recipes, for the most part, don't have any of the unpronouncable ingredients. I'm going to share with you the ones that work for me. When I started on the DIY home made path, my main goal was to duplicate the taste of store-bought products, while eliminating all the additives and preservatives. Of course, with things like homemade bread, you're going to have to take into consideration how long your bread is going to last without preservatives. But you know your food schedule and you'll be able to easily figure out what you can leave in the breadbox and what you need to freeze. And speaking of homemade bread, here are some great ideas for any kind of bread you could possibly want to make: 500+ Delicious Bread Recipes - A Collection of Quick and Easy Homemade Bread Cookbook. Sometimes, if I know I won't be using a lot of bread, I cut the loaf in half and freeze the other half until I'm ready to use it. That works great for me!

Easy Homemade Recipes

If you're a stay-at-home mom or dad, you probably can find the time to make some easy homemade recipes. They're not that difficult. In fact, I'm going to give you one of the easiest recipes ever for one of the probably most-used ingredients in your kitchen - mayonnaise!  Here's what I did. I searched the Internet for homemade mayonnaise. I found a recipe that I thought I could adapt to my specific tastes. And I did exactly that! This recipe takes about 1-2 minutes to prepare and - voila! - you have a full jar of homemade mayonnaise. I've had this recipe for so long that I couldn't find the original again on the Internet. But I'll give you an idea of how I changed the ingredients to my person taste.

Homemade Mayonnaise

1 cup vegetable oil (you can use half or all extra virgin olive oil)

1 egg

1 tablespoon lemon juice (freshly squeezed, of course)

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

3/4 teaspoon salt (the original called for much more but I found it too salty)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon hot water

Whiz 1/4 cup of the vegetable and/or olive oil with the egg, lemon juice, dry mustard and salt in a blender for a few seconds.

Slowly drizzle the remaining 3/4 cup of oil into the mixture (through the top hatch) while the blender is running.

Finally, blend in the hot water.

Refrigerate until use.

Yield: about 1 cup (for me, it's one jar, which is perfect!)

As I mentioned, I made a few changes, gradually, as I molded the recipe to my personal taste. There was no sugar in the original recipe, but I've always liked the taste of Miracle Whip, and that was because of the added sugar. Obviously, when I wised up about all the extra crap in Miracle Whip, I stopped eating it. But to duplicate the taste without the bad stuff, I add the sugar, using only pure cane sugar, not that refined garbage...and I love the taste!

Also notice that I keep my homemade mayonnaise in a jar that I saved from another product. No need to go out and spend a lot of money on mason jars (although mason jars do come in handy a lot of the time). Just save the pickle and jam - any kind of jars you buy - and you'll have the necessary containers for your DIY homemade recipes. Of course, if you make your own homemade pickles and jam, you won't have those jars. In that case, you'll do well to buy a set of mason jars. Here's a great source for good old-fashioned mason jars:  Ball® Regular Mouth Pint Jars with Lids and Bands- Set of 12 (by Jarden Home Brands) And did you know you can actually bake things in mason jars? I find that fascinating! Here's a book to show you how:

How To Make Homemade Products

There are literally hundreds of projects you can embark on if you're leaning towards making your own homemade products. This blog is dedicated to researching them for you and putting them all in one place so you can access them at your leisure - and for your immediate last-minute needs. Homemade mayonnaise is only one of many homemade recipes that I've delved into, and I'm delighted to share some of them with you.

One thing I haven't yet mentioned that may be the most important factor in making homemade recipes is health. There's a strong trend towards eating healthier these days, and the more you can eliminate additives and preservatives from your food, the healthier you'll be. So I'll be focusing on healthy homemade recipes here as well - in fact, predominantly so. Because if you want to be healthy, you need to stay away from processed foods. They have absolutely no nutritional value and they're a total waste of your food dollars.

So stay tuned for all kinds of easy homemade recipes, including specialties like home made breakfast, or any other home made goods. I hope you'll continue to check back to this blog for all your homemade alternatives. It's good for you!

This blog uses affiliate links. If you click on any of these links and make a purchase, I’ll earn some income. But rest assured that I love to share goodness in whatever form I can, so this is only an added bonus for me – my main focus is to provide you with relevant and helpful information. Thank you for your support.

And if you feel that affiliate marketing is right for you; if you believe that a few – or a lot – of extra money can help you in your life, check out the program that taught me how to do it – in a simple step-by-step way: 

Click here for more info