Salutary Sunday

What did I make this week?

How about red velvet cupcakes and A BROKEN DOG. 

I'll first show you pictures of pretty cupcakes.

I made these cupcakes using the Red Velvet Cake recipe from the book The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook. This book is my absolute favorite baking cookbook. I don't think I've ever followed an exact recipe in the book, but for me they are all amazing starting points. 

Because I took it from the book, I can't repost the recipe online! But, I recommend you buy the book for 12 bucks or go to you local library, because they should definitely have this book. {And if they don't, put if a request for them to order it and they will!}

I used a cream cheese frosting and it's so delicious! I love the taste of cream cheese frosting. I know it's not for everyone, but mmmm!!! I love it. 

Here's the recipe I used to ice 24 cupcakes {and there was still a lot of icing left over...} :

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese - COLD

1/4 cup room temp butter {half stick}

2-3 cup confectioners sugar

1 tsp vanilla

food coloring if you want

Using my egg beaters, I blended the cream cheese and butter until it was creamy, and then added the food coloring and vanilla. One cup at a time, I slowly added the sugar until it was a consistency and flavor that I liked. I then used a piping bag and a spatula to spread the frosting onto my cupcakes.

And now for the Roxanne story...

Goodness, it seems that every time I am happy with how walks are going with Roxanne, she hurts herself! As I have told you before, Roxi and I have a love/hate relationship with walks. When she is on a leash and sees another dog, she goes ballistic. Her hair raises and she barks and growls. When she is off her leash, however, she's usually pretty good. She'll run up to the dog and sniff it and usually walk away from it. 

I, unlike Vince, hate letting her off the leash in the areas we walk her. I get so anxious that we will run into another dog or that we'll come across a runner who will get pissed off that she is in their way. I know that most of the time she is a great dog, but there's always that 'if' running through my mind!

Now that I've started running quite a bit, I've been taking her with me. I've been keeping her on leash since I usually run in the neighborhood, and she tends to 'get in the zone' with me. Even if she sees a dog, I have to just keep running and she gets over it pretty quickly. 

Today, I decided to run on a road that goes through the woods and I let her off the leash. She stayed surprisingly close to me most of the way. She tends to run off around the woods out of sight, and usually I'm ok with that. But she didn't today...until we were heading back home. She saw a rabbit and wanted to chase it!

Eventually she realized that she in fact could not get that rabbit and turned back towards me. I put her on the leash because we were getting close to the main road, and noticed she was walking a little funny. I looked to make sure she didn't have any cactus in her paws, but everything looked pretty good to me. When we get home, I give her the once over again and realize that her paw was bleeding! She had cracked her 'thumb' nail in half and that was the cause of the bleeding. {I was going to post a picture of it, but it looks pretty nasty!}

So, I called the emergency vet line because I wanted to make sure she wasn't supposed to lick it {which is of course what she was doing} and they said to put an old sock over it until I could bring her in tomorrow to get her nail clipped. They will probably have to give her antibiotics for it because it's so close to her paw. Hopefully she'll get better soon though to go on bike rides. 

Until tomorrow afternoon, we have a sockdog! 

{That middle one is my new favorite picture of her! Hahaha.}