Mikey Biscuits on the First Try

I did it! On the first try.  I made dog biscuits and Mikey liked them.

I received my dog-bone shaped cookie cutters, the ones I bought for $4.50 on Ebay, in the mail and had to try them out.

So I conducted my first experiment. Oatmeal cookies like the ones I can’t resist had to have some ingredients suitable for dogs, so I proceeded to test my very first recipe.  I used only a little bit of butter, eggs with the shells (for calcium), dried plums (because I didn’t have any other dried fruit besides raisins, the doggie No No), oatmeal, a little brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice (because I like the smell of it), 1% milk, pecans (the only nuts I had in my refrigerator), some salt and baking soda, and I put my trusty Cuisinart machine to work.

The only problem with my Mikey Biscuits is that they look like they are chocolate, thanks to the dried plums, but they look good, smell good, and, best of all Mikey likes them. They came out of the oven in under 30 minutes and I had to taste them…mmm…they tasted good to me, but I’m not as picky as Mikey.

Then Squawky, my very noisy hawk headed parrot, started in on his “Nut, Nut, Nut” plea. He thinks everything that tastes good to eat is a nut but he gets his point across. I’m convinced that parrots smell what I’m cooking. Even when my three don’t even know I’m cooking and can’t see the food, they demand samples. After I thought about the ingredients in my Mikey Biscuits, I realized that everything would be fine for the parrots.

The parrots loved my Mikey Biscuits. Every time they see me give one to Mikey, they ask for a bite. Parrots can safely eat more foods than dogs, so I may be on to something. They don’t like dog food, but I never thought about giving them dog treats.

As an aside, if you question my inclusion of brown sugar in my Mikey Biscuits, I believe that the sugars in fruits which are safe for dogs and birds are not very far removed from brown sugar so I concluded that a little sugar wouldn’t hurt either the dogs or birds. If we continue to think we’re not eating sugar when we eat fruit, we’ll continue to consume lots of sugar calories. Sure, we’re better off with the fruits with their fiber and vitamin content, but sugar is sugar.

Years ago, too many years I fear, I decided that I wouldn’t give my children fruit juice to drink. I always thought they were better off with the whole fruit and, if they were thirsty, water and milk were the right choices. My children accused me of child abuse and drank all the orange juice and apple juice in their friends’ refrigerators, but, what a concept, I’ve been proven to have been correct.

The dog biscuit experiment was a success, but now I have to make the people food equivalent, my favorite oatmeal cookies. I hope my willpower holds out because I love oatmeal cookies. Only time will tell.