Rosemary French Bread!

 I have no problem admitting that this is my favorite recipe. I just find it amusing because I thought for sure that it would be a desert recipe for my sweet tooth!

  
So, what do you do to your favorite recipe? Why, you try to make it better, of course! I put fresh rosemary in it. And boy, oh, boy was it good. 

To make this, you follow the instructions for the French Bread. The only difference is the rosemary. You add the finely chopped rosemary (2 sprigs) with the dry ingredients, and then you proceed as normal. (I used fresh rosemary from my garden.)

I rubbed some olive oil on the loaves before they went in the oven. But I would recommend rubbing olive oil on them after they have baked, that way you can taste the olive oil more.

5 out of 5 cat whiskers!

Dog Painiting Part 2

As promised... Here are Apple, Charlie and Luna's works of art!

Apple's

Charlie's

Luna's

I might be a little biased because the three are our dogs, but these are my favorite paintings :-)

Gentleman Jack

Gentleman Jack finally found his forever home!

He now has people he can call his own and lives with a fellow canine and a cat.

It is bitter sweet, but I am really happy for him! His human sisters have hooked up with me on Instagram so that I can follow his new adventures... that makes me feel even better about picking them as his family!

Dog Paintings Part 1

It turns out Jack and Willow are little artists :-)
A couple of weeks before Willow got adopted, she and Jack went outside and we had them create some works of art. Here are the results!

Jack's masterpiece

Willow's masterpiece

Now, before I show you the back I would like to take a moment to talk about these. Each of these captures their personalities so well. For example, Jack's looks spazzy, yet organized. Whereas Willow's looks like it's flowing and shy.

The back of Jack's

The back of Willow's

On the back, Mom glued a loop to hang the paintings and pictures of the dog who made the painting.

If you are wondering why this post is titled "Dog Paintings Part 1" well, this is why: Our dogs are yet to make their own masterpieces! So when they do, you know I'm going to share them here :-)

The Apple Pie Experiment

What would happen if you combined apple pie and an apple turnover together? My mom and I did an apple pie experiment with those two things in mind. And it is the very definition of delicious!

For the crust we used ready made pastry crust. We used two packages of the pastry sheets you can find in the freezer section. One box for the bottom and one for the top.

I recommend that you bake the bottom crust for 10 to 15 minutes before you put the filling in it and then the top crust. The reason I recommend this is because we didn't and the bottom didn't quite get cooked all of the way.

The filling was your standard apple pie filling... some Granny Smith apples, sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, etc.:-) What I'm saying is that you can use the filling from your apple pie recipe, because I know that everyone has their own special recipe, if you don't, there are plenty available online. The one my mom uses isn't written down anywhere... one day she will measure the ingredients out, write it down, and give it to my brother and I.

Once you put the apple filling in the pie dish with the crust, it's time to open the second package of pastry sheets. You'll want to roll them together on a piece of wax paper, or else it will be harder to get it on top of the pie. You will want to press the two sheets together to form one gigantic piece!

When you get the top crust on, make sure you cut slits and make sure to press the edges together well. We folded the edges under, for an extra thick crust.

This next part is optional. We wet the top slightly with water and then dusted it with coarse sugar. You could use an egg wash instead of water or you can skip this part.

We baked this at 400°F for about 45 minutes.

An up-close look at the rise of the crust!

It just looks gorgeous, doesn't it? Nice and golden and flaky! I just can't help but give this 5 out of 5 cat whiskers even though we should have cooked the bottom crust separately! I can't wait to try this again when the local apples start arriving at the farmer's market :-).