Tasty Tuesday-Sunflower Treats in Honor of the X-Files

As we have mentioned many times before our mom is a huge nerd with many geeky sci-fi and fantasy obsessions.  One of her favorites is the X-Files.  In fact she is such a huge fan that when Mom and Dad got married (Dad loves the show too) they had Mulder and Scully figurines on their wedding cake, in lieu of the traditional bride and groom.   

 The thing is when mom and dad first met in college, before they were even dating, they used to watch the X-Files together.  So if it were not for the show, there might not be any marriage, we might not have been adopted, and thus no urban hounds.  Anyway you can see why the show is super important in our house.

Mom feels we should celebrate the premiere, on September 10th every year.  First, us pugs put on our X-Files shirts, courtesy of Cafe Press (whatever you love they can make a shirt to celebrate it).  

Then mom makes us some sort of sunflower seed treat, if you know the X-Files you know that agent Mulder loves sunflower seeds.

Agent Mulder eating sunflower seeds.

Now mom is no fan of sunflower seeds, but we seem to like them.  This year she used them to make us cookies.   Now we must tell you these cookies are not mom's recipe, they are from the amazing wonderful Kolchak Puggle are Tasty Tuesday host who hails from Vancouver birth place of the X-Files!  That is why they are just begging for the addition of some sunflower seeds.

Kolchak Puggle's Super Easy Canned Food Treats (With Sunflower Seeds)

1 13.2 ounce can smooth style canned dog food

1 1/2 cups brown rice flour, or whatever flour you want to use

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1 egg 

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp Tumeric

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a baking sheet with oil.

Stir all the ingredients together until very well mixed.  Use an ice cream scoop or spoon to spoon out nice sized dollops of dough.  Press down with the tines of a fork to make criss crosses in the dough.

Bake for 17-20 minutes.

Weasley trying to get to the bowl of cookie dough.

While you eat your cookies snuggle up with your parents and enjoy an X-Files Marathon.  Mom wants your 'rents to know that if they join Hulu plus or Netflix they can watch every x-file on line for free (plus tons of other shows) and with a Roku box they can watch them on the TV.  Mom says the Roku is the best thing ever.

Anyway here is mom's expert 10 essential X-Files Episode Guide-(Expert because she has seen the show a million times).  They are in order of season, not favorites.   (Note: If you are not a giant nerd please stop reading because you will be bored silly).

Pilot-Obviously an important episode because this is where it all started.  Plus if you are a huge geek like mom you will enjoy the fact that the actor who plays the werewolf Oz on Buffy The Vampire Slayer is in the pilot.

The Host-Eeek!  This episode is kinda gross, mom always thinks of it when she is brushing her teeth, but its still one of the best ones and it takes place in Newark, NJ.  Not far from where we live now.  Hopefully, we don't run into any human sized Fluke worms.

Irresistible -This killer in this episode is so creepy!  Mom showed it to a friend of hers who kept her eyes squeezed shut for the entire episode.   When the killer wants to shampoo Scully's hair it gives us the shivers, Scully does have great hair though.

Humbug-This is probably Mom's  favorite episode.   The circus setting is pretty and neat and its probably the funniest episode.  Plus Mr. Knutt, the dwarf manager of the trailer motel Mulder and Scully stay in, is played by Michael J. Anderson's is played by the mysterious backwards talking dwarf form one of mom's other favorite shows, Twin Peaks.

Clyde Buckman's Final Repose- A psychic who can only see how people will die.  Another super funny episode, plus Scully gets a dog although sadly his tenure on the show is short lived.

Jose Chung's From Outer Space-In our house we like the funny episodes the best, and this one is very funny.

Home-A creepy family of in-bred hillbillies with a Texas Chainsaw Masacre style dream home.  

Elegy-A bowling alley manager has a vision of a murdered women, one of a group of young women who have been killed.  The prime suspect is an autistic man who works at the bowling alley and Mulder and Scully have to look for the real culprit.  Mom really like the performance of the actor who  plays the man with autism in the episode.  She works with a lot of people with autism, and says this is a spot on performance.

Bad Blood-Vampires that just want to live like normal people, except for the one who has seen to many Vampire movies, another funny episode.

 Signs and Wonders- The X-Files explores religion and snake handling!  Plus the minister is super creepy.

Note-In our opinion its best not to watch any X-Files after season 7, 8 and 9 ugh!

Sci Fi Saturday

Norbert's Star Trek Inspired ID: Live Long and Prosper Tag from Fetching Tags.

Our mom is a big giant nerd.  Now thanks to cafe press  we all can all be nerds too, or at least we can have nerdy t-shirts.  On August 19 mom dressed us up for a Star Trek party in honor of Star Trek creator's Gene Roddenberry's birthday.   August 19th is also coincidentally an important day in real world space exploration history, it is the anniversary of Belka's and Strelka's flight, they were Russian dogs who became some of the first creatures to survive orbital space flight.  We did a post on their adventure last year: link.   

Here are some pictures of us this year in our Star Trek t-shirts from cafe press, playing with our insignia and Tribble toys from Pugs In the Kitchen, and of course watching Some Star Trek on TV.  If your parents have on obsession of any kind like our mom does they can get you cool t-shirts from Cafe Press.  Warning, though, it is very addictive because they send you  TONS of coupons and discounts one you start ordering.

 

Pie, a Pug, and a Bike-Trip to Four and Twenty Black Birds

  Anyone, who reads this blog knows I can be very devoted to particular television shows, and movies, and books.   According to my wikipedia research the anniversary of the premier of one of my favorite shows is tomorrow, April 8.  The show which I was too young to watch the first time around and have only recently discovered on instant download from Netflix is one people either love or hate, Twin Peaks. 

  I admit it got a little out of control confusing in the last season but I love everything about it: the mystery, the pacific northwest scenery, the quirky characters (particularly the log lady),

 

 the scary parts, the humor, oh and the characters devotion to pie and coffee.  

 Twin Peaks has got to be the most creative, unique, and just plain weird thing that has ever been on network television and those are qualities that are sadly missing in the current sea of reality programming and cookie cutter comedies.  

I even bought the pugs these shirts on Cafe Press (they were super cheap, so its justifiable) to commemorate my love of the show.

In case you can't read them Tubby's says:Twin Peaks Sheriffs Department and Ping's says: Greetings From Twin Peaks.

After a recent Twin Peaks view-a-thon I was craving some pie.  So John and I decided to bike to Four and Twenty Blackbirds in Brooklyn.  Of course we brought Ping along in her Cynthia's Twigs basket, proudly wearing her Twin Peak's shirt. 


We had to bike over the Brooklyn Bridge 

and Ping was as content and comfortable as can be attracting many ooohs and ahhhs from tourists impressed with her cuteness.


It took us about an hour to get form our house to Four and Twenty Black Birds

Ping waited patiently on the stores bench 

while her Dad went inside to get us pie.   We were pretty near Park Slope, and perhaps Ping was hoping to get a glimpse of her blog buddy Sid from Pug Slope.

"Could that be Sid?"

When Dad finally came out with the pie it did not dissapoint.

Pie and Coffee What Cold Be Better?

We had pear crumble and it was delicious, and yes we even gave a little bit of the crust to Ping after all she had burned all those calories biking!

Wordless Wednesday-The Final Frontier

Our mom is such a nerd!  Look at the t-shirts she got us from Cafe Press  for Christmas.   

Sheesh!

A Date With Your Family-A Yummy Meal!

In my Thanksgiving post I mentioned that Thanksgiving in the anniversary of the premier of one of my favorite shows Mystery Science 3000, now sadly defunct.  MST3K is not for everyone, but its fans are loyal.  Whats not to love about a guy cruising through space and watching bad movies with his robot pals? Personally I think its the funnies thing that was ever on TV and one of the only original shows in the history of television.  Here is my favorite short from the shows history:

 Now here are two retro-styles recipes that put me in mind of a 1950s housewife.

Classic Meat Loaf From Epicurious:

• 2 slices of white sandwich bread ground into bread crumbs in the food processor
• 1/3 cup whole milk
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 medium celery rib, finely chopped
• 1 medium carrot, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 pound bacon (about 4 slices), chopped
• 1/2 cup pitted prunes, chopped
• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef chuck
• 1/2 pound ground pork (or replace beef and pork with 2 lbs meatloaf mix, a mix of veal, beef, and pork)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

• Garnish: 3 slice scooked bacon

 Preheat oven to 350.  Soak bread crumbs in milk.  Cook the chopped veggies in the butter in a sauce pan or skillet for five minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently, cover and cook five minutes more.  Put the vegetables in a large bowl with the bread crumbs and milk and stir well.   Add the chopped bacon and prunes and stir well again.  Beat the eggs with a fork and stir into the meat mixture, add the parsley and stir again.   Mix up with your hands to combine completely.


Line a baking pan with tin foil and form the meat mixture into an oval loaf.  Bake 1  hr 15 minutes until internal temperature measures 155 degrees Farenheit.  Garnish with cooked Bacon.


Serve with baked potatoes and salad and the next day make meat loaf sandwiches with rye bread, pickles, and Heinz chili sauce.

Smells Good!

Yum!

For Desert

Chocolate Pudding Pie with Oreo Crust

Crust 

• 24 oreo cookies, crushed in food processor
• 6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Filling

• 4 egg yoks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 1/2 cups whole milk
• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate chopped, I used chocolate chips
• 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 1 tbsp vanilla

Whipped Cream Topping

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 tbsp sugar (confectioners or regular)
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.



Crush cookies in the processor and add the butter, process until crumbs are well coated with butter.  Press crust into a 9 inch pie pan.  Bake 13 to 15 minutes until firm to the touch.





 For the filling combine the egg yolks, sugar, flour, and cornstarch in a metal bowl and whisk well.  Add 2 tbsp of the milk and whisk to make a past.   Heat the rest of the milk in a sauce pan over medium high heat until it is barely simmering.  Carefully pour the hot milk into the egg mixture and whisk constantly, pour into the sauce pan and cook over medium high heat.  Whisk constantly until the mixture thickens (make sure to scrape the bottom of the sides in order to prevent burning.)  Cook for one minute.   Stir in the chocolates and the vanilla extract and whisk until the mixture is very smooth.   Pour into the crust and refrigerate over night.


Chill a metal bowl and beater for electric mixer in the freezer until very cold.  Beat the cream, sugar, and vanilla until soft peaks form.   


Cover pie with whipped cream and serve! 

Happy Birthday PG Wodehouse, author and dog lover

"It is fatal to let any dog know that he is funny, for he immediately loses his head and starts hamming it up."
-P.G. Wodehouse
Today is the birthday of master humorist PG Wodehouse, creator of  Jeeves and Wooster, and author of 96 novels and short stories (he was working on number 97 when he died on Valentines Day in 1975 at the age of 93.   In addition to being arguable the funniest author ever Wodehouse was an animal lover, and particularly fond of dogs.

link to this image

link to this image

 In fact it was Wodehouse's devotion to his dogs that got him into a lot of trouble during WWII.  Always completely uninterested in politics and world affairs, Wodehouse was oblivious to the tension mounting in Europe in the years prior to the war.  He was living in France in 1939 and decided to stay when the war broke out rather then returning to England.  The primary reason for this decision was that he couldn't bear to leave his dog behind, and he couldn't take him out of the country due to quarantine laws.   When the Germany military occupied France Wodehouse spent some time in Internment camps.  After he was released he made several broadcasts on German Radio of humorous stories.   This greatly angered the English and he was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and of treason, many English libraries banned in his books.   While his actions may have been foolish (though probably innocently so) you can't help but admire his loyalty to his dog.


After the controversy Wodehouse moved to America and continued to have a very successful literary career.  He and his wife lived in  Remsenberg New York in the Hampton's surrounded by dogs.  They were particularly moved by the plight of stray animals in the area. It was common for families to come to the Hampton's for the summer and acquire a dog for companionship on their vacation only to abandon it at the end of the season.  Usually not generous with his money, Wodehouse and his wife donated 20,000 dollars to Flora D'Auby Jenkins Kibbe to expand her Bide-A-Wee Human Association from a crowded building in Manhattan plagued by neighbors frequent complaints of barking, to a more spacious setting in the Hampton's.


Wodehouse's love for animals had a strong impact on his work and some of his most famous animal stories are collected in a A Wodehouse Bestiary

t.

I re-read the book in honor of his birthday and it is as funny as I remembered.  Perhaps every story included is not his absolute best, but my two favorite Jeeves and Bertie stories are included Jeeves and The Impending Doom and Jeeves and the Old School Chum.   All in all we give the book a four paws up  rating, or 31 paws up rating if we count every paw in the house (remember Ernie the cat has only 3 legs).

Dr. Zira and Ping enjoyed posing with the book and one of my tea pots: Tea for Two!  (Two bad we had to our urban deck as our background and not an English manor house).

.  

If you don't feel up to reading there is also a hilarious Jeeves and Wooster TV show available from Netflix.  While neither Jeeves and The Impending Doom or Jeeves and The Old School Chum make the episode list there are many funny episodes and lots of them involve dogs.  My favorite is Jeeves The Matchmaker  which features an adorable Irish Wolfhound named Patrick.  Here is a clip below, watch for a while and you get to see Patrick ruin Bertie's ill advised marriage proposal.

Tasty Tuesday-Sunflower Seed Cookies in Honor of the X Files

September 10, Saturday, marked an important anniversary in TV history the, the 18th anniversary of the premier of the (in our opinion) best show ever on TV, The X Files.  At least it was  the best show for about seven years, it went downhill after the year 2000 since its really a show about pre-millenial tension.  Anyway we can be big couch potatoes here

and nothing is more fun then cuddling up and enjoying an evening watching mom's favorite show (we have all the DVDs and the show is available for instant download from Netflix.)  In fact mom is such a fan that when she and Dad got married in 2001, they had Mulder and Scully on top of their wedding cake

As anyone who watches the X Files knows Agent Mulder loves sunflower seeds.  So mom thought it would be nice to make us some sunflower seed cookies.

Peanut butter, Honey, and Sunflower Seed Drop Cookies

Ingredients:
3/4 cup of whole wheat flour
2 heaping tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp honey
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (unsalted)
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup oil

Preheat oven to 350.  Microwave the peanut butter and honey together in a glass measuring cup until runny.  Stir together the flour, peanut butter honey mixture , sunflower seeds, egg, and oil until well mixed.  Drop onto a baking sheet by teaspoonfulls.  Bake 10-15 minutes.


Urban Hounds List of 10 Great X Files Episodes (by our mom) Actually pretty much every episode is great.

1) Pilot-Where it All Began
2) Squeeze-Cool Creepy Episode
3) Irresistible-Scary Serial Killer Episode
4) Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose Very Funny Episode and Scully Gets a Dog!
5) Jose Chungs From Outer Space-Another funny Episode and it Reminds me of one of my favorite books Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley
6) Home-A neat episode about a family of monstrous hillbillies
7) Elegy-Everything about this episode is just very well done, and its very sad too.
8) Folie A Deux-This episode is about a monster loose in a telemarketing firm.  I used to work as a telemarketer in college and it was indeed a monstrous job.
9) Three of a Kind: I really like the Lone Gunmen and this is their big episode
10) Je Souhaite-I liked how the genie stuff is don in this episode and I liked how Mulder's wish for world peace turned out.

It is Tasty Tuesday



So head over to Kol's Notes for some other great recipes.

Space-The Final Frontier......For Dogs and Cats

When I was a kid I loved to watch re-runs of the Muppet Show and my favorite skit was Pigs in Space 

Who am I kidding, I still like it.

Anyway, plenty of animals have gone to space (mice, monkeys, a cat from France, rabbits, rats, fish, frogs, tortoises, insects, and several dogs...but seemingly no pigs) I just thought it was decent segue way to this post.

Today, August 19th, marks the 51st  anniversary of Soviet Space Dogs Belka and Strelka day long orbital space flight.   They went into space aboard Korabi-Sputnik 2  and where accompanied by mice, rats, plants, and a camera that recorded the flight.   Belka and Strelka and their co-passengers have the distinction of being the first living creatures to go into orbit and survive.  Previous, soviet space dogs such as Laika, the first living creature to enter orbit, died during flight.   Here is a video clip of Belka and Strelka:

After, Belka and Strelka returned to earth they were national heroes.   Belka went on to have puppies with a dog named Pushok and one of the puppies, Pushinka, was given to President Kennedy's daughter Caroline.  Here is a picture of Pushinka on the white house lawn.

Pushinka went on to have puppies of her own and it is possible that her descendants are still living today.

In a weird coincidence today also marks the anniversary of the birth of Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek.   Like all good science fiction/fantasy fans I LOVE Star Trek, even if it is kind of hokey.  Dogs, however, are pretty much totally absent from Star Trek--what kind of idealized future is that, I ask!  

However, Star Trek does have a cat connecton.  While I was at the Meet The Breeds event last year I noticed a sign at the Devon Rex table claiming that the breed was the inspiration for the Klingons on the show.   According to the story one of the writers for the show had a Devon Rex that liked to cling-on his shoulder, hence the name.  I have not been able to find any other evidence supporting this story though-so I am not sure if authenticity.  The breed does look pretty alien though-in a cute way

image from link

On Star Trek The Next Generation  a cat appears as a fairly regular character.   Data, the android science officer on the show, owns a cat named Spot.   Here is a picture of Spot from the show

 I always thought Spot was neat and when my husband and I got our cat Baby 

 

we almost named her Spot.

In one episode of Star Trek data reads a poem he wrote about Spot that Ive always thought is a pretty good description of cats in general here is the youtube clip and and text of the poem:

 

Ode to Spot

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,

An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;

Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses

Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,

A singular development of cat communications

That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection

For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;

You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.

And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,

It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display

Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.

And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,

I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend. 

I certainly consider my three cats true and valued friends.  

In conclusion keep watching the stars--with your pets at your side.