All about Zelda

You would think that not working would leave me lots of time to update the blog. However, I have chosen to clean and cook and nap instead. I have been told that I am sorely lacking in Zelda updates. I have lots to post but I'll start with that. Zelda is now 5 months old. My hands and arms were incredibly thankful that she had stopped biting for a while. Sadly, now that she's teething she has started biting again. *sigh* So I'm working all over again to break her of it. I think its starting to work. Her coat is coming along nicely, her little tail has a line of fur like a long flag. Zelda hasn't been eating much lately because of the whole teething thing. There is supposed to be an all natural version of baby orajel that I can give her but I can't seem to find it. In the mean time Matt figured out that if we give her one of her frozen teething toys to play with for a little while before meals she'll eat more. This past weekend we took her to the Durham dog park for a play date. We joined a meet-up group for owners of dachshunds. It was really cute to see them all playing together. It turns out that Zelda is very submissive. She didn't know what to do with the other dogs but she managed to have every person there rub her belly. Some of them picked her up and gave her kisses as well.
We've signed up for senior puppy classes at the local ASPCA and they start tonight. The first class is just an orientation for the puppy parents so Zelda is hanging out by herself tonight. But starting next week she's going to be socializing and professionally training once a week. They offer lots of different classes there so we'll see how we like this one first and then maybe continue on with some of their more advanced classes.
As I said in the beginning I've been doing a lot of cooking/baking lately. I've been making my own pizza. I started off just using the premade dough from Trader Joes but I decided to go more adventurous and make my own. Matt will tell you it wasn't the best consistancy but the flavor was fantastic. So I need to work on that. I want to experiment with some other toppings as well. I've been making BLTs too. Or FLTs for me. We used up the last of our home grown tomatoes so I'm back to using bought ones. I am making my own bread to make the sandwhiches, Matt loves the rosemary olive oil bread. I think he's right it goes really well with the other flavors. I've been making these restaurant quality salads too. Matt gets chicken with his, I get blue cheese, mmm cheese. I've been experimenting with that too. I think so far the best chicken I made was the tequila lime one. I make nachoes for us sometimes. I've been making the beans from scratch because not only is it like 50x cheaper that way, its also 50x better tasting. I'm making my own pasta this week too. Tomorrow actually. I'm kind of nervous but the internet and Nigella Lawson tell me that its no big deal. So I'm going for it. I'll let you know how it comes out. Last night's dinner was pumpkin pancakes with (f/b)acon and an egg scramble with sauteed mushrooms, onions and tomatoes. Pumpkin pancakes are one of the best things ever invented.
On the baking front, I've been into cakes lately. A couple of week's ago I made a modified version of Nigella's quadruple chocolate cake. Tasty. Last week I went with a chocolate stout cake and homemade frosting. Also delicious. Today I'm going to make what I'm calling a strawberry lemonade cake. Its going to be a twist on a recipe that my Tia Joann gave me a while ago. The regular cake is phenomenal so I'm hoping this will be too. You're probably thinking, "maybe you should be eating all those sweets" and you're probably right. So to keep that from happening Steph and I have started a weekly baking exchange. That way we don't have too much to eat. Steph has recently taken up baking in an attempt not to bug Linda while she's studying. The cookies she gave us last week were amazing so I fully encourage the new hobby. I'll try and do a craft update next time but I want to eat my lunch (leftovers, yum!) I'll post pictures too once I get my cord from upstairs, the layer of the beast.