Musing on blog spam, and a recipe without SPAM

I have a spam filter on this blog which seems to be extremely effective. At least I’ve never seen any offers for knock off knockout performance enhancing drugs show up in any blog comments. Once in a while I visit the spam files and delete everything that looks wrong which lately has been everything in the folder.

Sometimes I’ll read a few as I’m mass deleting, and wonder what is in my blog that would ever give a spam program the idea I’d be tempted in even a minor fashion to want any of these products. Knock off designer purses? I tend to carry one purse until it falls apart, and usually buy that purse at a marked down store. Fake Oakley sunglasses? My glasses have that self tinting addition.  More money and worth every penny. I am truly stymied by the messages offering great deals on makeup. My skin routine consists of washing my face at night (when I remember) and covering it with avocado oil.  Works great for life in the high desert, I use it on my  hair also.

So what gives on the spam choices? Who knows.  Since most bloggers have the same spam controls I have to admire the tenacity of those burrowing digital beasties. I guess there must be an occasional success or the hackers would stop trying. Apologies to my brilliant friends who understand the digital world, for me the Internet is mostly magic anyway. I see the hackers as this era’s version of door to door sales people who want you to buy their fabulous photo albums or take a lifetime encyclopedia subscription.

No, she’s not spoiled. Photo by her doting person, Linda P

But wait! There’s more! I promised recipes yesterday.  The first one comes from Linda in Colorado who is owner and protector and companion and slave to one of the puppies from our last litter.  How Dragon Queen (aka Kinkee) came to live with Linda is a story for another time. I’d been making training treats for the dogs by dehydrating various kinds of liver, but wanted something not quite as special for everyday cookies. I’d been handing out animal crackers but wanted a bit more control of what the ‘lukis ate.  This is from what Linda suggested.

TREATS FOR THE QUEEN

From Linda: I really don’t measure anything and I make it up as I go along. The only constant things are about 2 cups of oats that are ground up to a flour in food processor (cheaper than buying oat flour) and two eggs with the shell. Comment from Mona: Oops, I ground up the oats then measured.  Helps to read the recipe more closely.

Then I added
1 can of salmon (everything in the can) whirl everything in the food processor until it’s smooth. If it seems thick, add water. {Mona: The first time I made these I added the eggs separately from the salmon…not a good idea!}

Spread out on a cookie sheet with either parchment paper or olive oil to avoid sticking. Bake around 350 for about thirty  minutes (Linda is definitely my kind of cook!!) When the batter is semi hard, use a pizza cutter to cut into the desired size, and bake some more until they’re crisp enough for your needs. I let mine sit in the oven as it cools, and they get nice and crunchy.

Second batch, I added some ground Parmesan cheese, a particular favorite of mine.  You can experiment with the additions, depending on your dog’s tastes: shredded carrots or other veggies, bananas, spices, vanilla, wheat germ. Most of the time they love these nuggets. Every now and then Gwyn (Kinkee’s mom) practices how far she can spit them out. But that’s Gwyn…and here’s Kinkee when she was just a few hours old…she’s the black one with the white collar