Rogan: “Did somebody mention doggie treats?”

Did you forget to buy a holiday gift for Fido or Fluffy this year? How about trying your hand at these luscious goodies instead? They will not be disappointed.

Jones and Ellie’s Holiday Biscuits

Jones and Ellie secretly slip these delicious biscuits into the other PETA office dogs’ stockings around this time every year!

Ingredients

1 cup cornmeal

3½ cups whole wheat flour

1/2 Tbsp. garlic powder

4 Tbsp. Bac-Os vegetarian bacon bits

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1½ cups vegetable broth

Directions

•Preheat the oven to 350°F.Combine all the ingredients.

•Roll out the dough and cut with cookie cutters.

•Bake 35 to 45 minutes.

Makes 2 dozen medium-sized biscuits

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Molly’s Peanut Butter Popsicles

Molly recommends these on a hot summer day, but December works too.

Ingredients

1-2 Tbsp. peanut butter

Boiling water

Directions

•Mix a tablespoon or two of peanut butter with boiling water (just enough to make it a little soupy) in a small plastic dish (e.g., a used margarine tub).

•Freeze until solid.

•Serve outdoors (it’s too messy for indoors!).

Makes 1 popsicle

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Astrid’s Frosty Banana Treats

Astrid’s mom says, “We live in the South, so we have hot, humid summers, which aren’t great for dogs with lots of fur like Astrid. Even when she is shaved, her coat is too heavy for her to play outside for long periods during the hottest months. One of the treats that we really like to get her is the Frosty Paws that they sell at the grocery store (little tubs of doggie ice cream). A few years ago, I decided to make my own doggie ice cream instead of paying $4 for a four-pack and a ton of packaging. I freeze them in small bowls, but you can use an ice cube tray or a wide-mouth plastic container like margarine comes in. I like reusable containers because they make this a waste-free treat.”

Ingredients

1/2 cup peanut butter (creamy or crunchy)

3 cups water

2 very ripe bananas

Directions

•In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix the peanut butter and the water until well blended.

•Mash the bananas into the peanut butter mixture and blend until smooth.

•Divide the mixture among six containers of your choice.

•Freeze until solid.

Makes 6 servings

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Mante’s Peanut Butter Bliss

According to Mante’s mom, “Mante goes bananas over these biscuits. When he sees me pull out the fixin’s and cookie cutters, he sits at the edge of the kitchen, patiently waiting for the biscuits to be cool enough to eat. Whenever he gets these, he does his “happy dance.” He’ll carefully take the biscuit from my hand, then set it on the ground while he play bows and runs laps around it, all while leaping through the air. It is so silly and incredibly cute!”

Ingredients

3 cups oat flour or whole wheat flour

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1/2 cup organic creamy peanut butter

Egg-replacer equivalent of 1 egg

Water to moisten

Directions

•Preheat the oven to 325°F.

•In a large bowl combine all the ingredients. Add enough water to form a slightly sticky dough.

•On a floured board, roll the dough to a ¼-inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes.

•Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until the biscuits are well browned. Cool.

Makes 1 dozen biscuits

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Bakers, Beware!
When doing your holiday baking, keep in mind that if a dog eats uncooked dough, the consequences can be very serious indeed―even life-threatening. Warm dough can expand to many times its size and, in the process, also produces alcohol, so dogs can fall victim to both severe stomach distension and alcohol toxicity. Symptoms include lethargy, vomiting, abdominal pain, bloating, disorientation, and depression. If the dog does not receive emergency veterinary care, which can include surgery to remove the dough, in short order, death can result, so do keep your dough out of your dog’s reach.

As a child of the ’80s, I have a tendency to revisit childhood crafts quite frequently. Most of the time, the nostalgic crafts have to do with Shrinky Dinks. So for a few gifts this holiday season to my fellow “children of the ’80s” friends, I’ve made Shrinky Dink charm bracelets. Like most of the peta2 crew, I can’t get enough of the “I am not a nugget” character so I made a charm bracelet with a small drawing of the character and the words “I am not a nugget.”

Shrink plastic shrinks to about one-third of its original size in the oven, so my charms (before baking) were about 1½ inches by 2 inches in height, and I just used a standard hole-punch to make the hole where the charm connects to the bracelet. There are endless possibilities, so have fun and charm your friends with a fun bracelet this holiday season.

While I was strolling through the aisles of Michaels a few days ago, buying supplies to wrap presents, I ran across some blank white ceramic bulb ornaments. I got really excited and bought a few, and when I got home I busted out my porcelain paints and painted up some ornaments to give away as presents this year. My favorite is one with a little pig face painted on it with the words “Love Pigs: Don’t Eat Them.”

I can’t decide if I want to hang it on my own Christmas tree for all to see a message of compassion or if I want to give it to friends to show off on their tree. Perhaps I’ll just have to make some more―some to hang on my tree and some to give away to friends to put on their trees.

Happy holidays!

This year, give the gift of clean skin and a clean conscience. By making homemade bath goodies, you can add your own twist to products and ensure cruelty-free cleanliness for all your loved ones; a basket filled with soothing goodies is enough to make anyone’s holidays bright.

Bath salts are easy to make and can be packaged beautifully when placed in a small corked glass jar or bottle (easy to find at Pier One or Michael’s). To make bath salts, just take the following ingredients and stir together in a mixing bowl. After the salts are mixed, pour them into the glass jars and cork, and—voilà!—you’re done! The whole process only takes about 10 minutes, so you can knock out a dozen presents in record time.

Homemade Bath Salts
1 cup Epsom salts
¼ cup sea salt
3 Tbsp. baking soda
3 drops essential oil in a fragrance of your choice

“Bath bombs” are also easy and quick to make. All you need is 1/3 cup citric acid, 2/3 cup baking soda, a few drops of essential oil, and a small amount of witch hazel in a spray bottle. Mix the citric acid, baking soda, and essential oil in a bowl, and spray a small amount of witch hazel into the mixture until it starts to clump together (don’t use too much witch hazel, though, as your mixture will start to fizz). Firmly pack the mixture into molds (a mini–cupcake tin works well) and leave overnight to dry. Once the “bombs” are dry, put a few into a small cellophane bag and tie with a pretty ribbon.

If you have the time and patience to make your own handmade soap, you can add that to your gift set, but beware that making handmade cold-process soap is not for the faint of heart—it’s easy to botch, the set-up costs a pretty penny, and the process is time-consuming. However, if you want to give it a try, I recommend The Natural Soap Book as a good starting point. The Sun Feather Natural Soap Company is a great place online to get supplies for cold-process soaps and is a cruelty-free company. If you want the benefits of handmade soap but don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to making your own, the Hibiscus City Soap Co. has great handmade soaps, or check out CaringConsumer.com for a long list of cruelty-free vegan soaps.

In my bath baskets, I always include handmade soap, bath salts, and fizzy “bath bombs.” Sometimes I’ll add in scented lotion, or knit up a cotton washcloth to go with it. My favorite way to package everything together is to place some crinkle or tissue paper in a “Chinese takeout” gift box, which, to me, is just kind of a fun and funky way to present all your handmade gifts.

One of my personal holiday gift-giving traditions is to make and give as gifts my own jams and jellies. Making jams and jellies doesn’t require too many materials, you don’t have to be an expert in the kitchen, and you can knock out eight to 12 4-ounce jars of jam at a time.

There are a few supplies other than Mason canning jars that you really need to get before canning high-acid foods (fruit, tomatoes, and pickled goods). The most useful is a water-bath canner (which runs $20 to $30), a wide-mouth funnel, a canning rack, and a jar lifter (many places sell kits, which pretty much include everything you need and run about $50). If you don’t want to buy online, many local hardware stores sell canning supplies.

If you’re making jam or jelly, you need pectin, your fruit of choice, and sugar. I generally use Sure-Jell Certo liquid pectin, and I recommend buying the pectin first―in every package, there’s a huge page of instructions and recipes for all different types of fruit jams. I then buy the fruit and the sugar after I consult the recipes so that I buy enough of it (trust me―you do not want to run out of sugar in the middle of making jam!).

Once you’ve made basic jams a few times, you can start to get creative. Last year, I made a pomegranate–red pepper jelly, and this year I’ve so far made blueberry–red tea jam, mango-rose jam, and strawberry-plum-ginger jam. Making jam and jelly is not nearly as hard as one might think, and your loved ones will be ecstatic when they receive such a thoughtful present.

When giving the gift of jam, I take a couple of different approaches. If I am giving it to people in person, I generally bake a loaf of bread, wrap the jam and the bread in fabric, and place them in a basket. If I’m mailing the presents to friends, I generally buy some tea and a teacup, box them all together, wrap it up, and sent it off.

If you really get into canning foods, I recommend picking up the USDA’s a Complete Guide to Home Canning and Preserving―it is an extremely comprehensive resource, and no one who cans (other than occasionally making jam) should be without it. Happy canning!

PETA Catalog

‘Tis the season for giving! So for the next few posts, I’ll be bringing you some of my favorite holiday gift ideas. I wait all year for the holiday season, but it’s really just because I love giving people presents. I think that old sentiment “It’s the thought that counts” speaks volumes, and in that spirit I’m a big believer in giving in homemade gifts. Not only are homemade gifts more economical, the thought and work put into them are, at the cost of sounding hopelessly corny, truly priceless.

For the dogs and their guardians in your life, I really recommend spending a few dollars and purchasing the bone cookie cutter set from PETACatalog.org. It comes with a great recipe for vegan dog biscuits, so you can whip up some batches of dog treats, wrap them in pretty fabric or tissue paper and ribbon, place them in a small gift bag and voilà! If you’re like me and know lots of people with dogs, you can knock out about a dozen gift bags in about an hour and a half.

So as not to leave cats out of the fun, try making the most awesome cat toy ever. I promise, you’ll be the cat’s meow. And if you know someone with bunnies, just save your old toilet paper tubes and stuff them with alfalfa or timothy hay, as bunnies can never get enough toilet paper tubes or hay.

That’s it for the animals in your life, but check back―soon there will be lots more ideas to come for handmade gifts for humans. Please share your ideas for homemade animal-friendly gifts with us!

VeganVintage

I’m not a lady who likes to focus on one thing. If you’ve ever seen my craft space, you know what I’m talking about. I have stained-glass supplies and projects going on in one corner, paintings and collages in another, a sewing station with a tower of fabric, bags full of knitting projects, usually a loaf of cold-process soap curing on a table, and a pile of what I deem “random supplies I may or may not use one day.”

I am also an avid reader and have spent a decent amount of time drooling in bookstores and taking home too many books filled with crafty goodness. I read and dig through my supplies and craft and craft and craft. What’s the best thing about being crafty? It’s incredibly easy to be a vegan crafter. Check out the following books:

1. SuperCrafty. This is the fist thing I pull out when I’m in the mood to craft and have no idea what I want to do. From tips for making shrink-plastic projects and vinyl purses to instructions on how to decorate the inside of your car, this book has got it all.

2. No Sheep for You. This book is a must for anyone who thinks you need wool to knit—not true. And while some of the patterns in the book call for silk, I just substitute bamboo yarn or soy silk.

3. Plush-O-Rama. Whoever said stuffed animals were only for kids is a liar. From “Plucky the Chicken” made of fleece to the reversible happy-cloud/sad-cloud pillow, the crazy and creative creature designs in this book make it a must-have for people who like to sew.

4. Pretty Little Things. If you are interested in using stained-glass techniques and collages to make fun jewelry and keepsakes, this book is definitely worth checking out. While the techniques take patience and practice, the results are worth the work and the wait.

5. The Natural Soap Book: Making Herbal and Vegetable-Based Soaps. Cold-process soapmaking is not for the faint of heart—and it’s not cheap either. Having said that, handmade-process soap is probably the best soap you will ever use. If you want to learn to make your own soap, this is the best beginner book I have found. And if you want the benefit without the work, check out Hibiscus City Soap Co.

nintenblog / cc

Not too long ago, my coworker Joel, the lad who sips his Starbucks across from me in the office, stood up and said, “So is there some kind of cruelty-free Drano-type stuff or something? I have this clog …”

My response went something like, “Dude, you can just make stuff out of kitchen items.”

Joel then listened attentively while I disclosed the secret recipe—which, by the way, is so powerful that it is essentially going to be responsible for the downfall of the commercial, animal-tested, drain-unclogging product world:

Oh, all you have to do is pour about ¼ cup of baking soda into the drain and then add about ½ cup of white vinegar. When it stops “bubbling,” follow up by pouring in a big pot of boiling water.

Joel didn’t think this homespun domestic-diva method would work, but the next day, he came to work beaming and exclaiming many praises in my direction. I also think that this whole experience has pushed him closer to his hero, Mario. I mean, as far as six degrees of separation go, I think becoming his own plumber must have bumped the gap up to at least 5 degrees somehow.

While this technique has almost always worked perfectly for me, I have occasionally—for larger hair-type clogs—had to incorporate a plunger and/or an untwined metal hanger. For those who still want to find a good commercially made cruelty-free drain opener, check out this one from Earth Friendly Products.

Show your love for your animal companion with this easy-to-make cuff bracelet. (And no, I do not recommend making one for your animal to wear. This is for you.) I started making these altered domino bracelets about a year ago, and they are now one of my favorite things in the world to make.

Supplies

1 package medium-sized domino beads (I get mine online at www.sunshinecrafts.com—just search for “domino”)

½” color copies of pictures of your animal companions

1 X-Acto knife

¼” copper foil tape (I also get this from www.sunshinecrafts.com—just search for “copper foil tape”)

Spacer beads (I like to use Czech 5″x7″ cube beads or 6mm fire-polished beads)

Stretch Magic bead and jewelry cord (.5 mm), also available at www.sunshinecrafts.com

Weldbond glue

1 small paint brush

Optional supplies: paper scraps, tissue paper, glitter confetti, etc.

Cut out your animal pictures. Take seven domino beads, and on the side opposite side the dots, make small collages using the Weldbond glue. You can make a background of tissue paper and adorn with glitter confetti or whatever you like. Wrap the foil tape along the edge of the collaged domino. String the collaged beads and spacer beads on the Stretch Magic cord, tie off the cord (I like to put a drop of glue over the knot), and voila—your own wearable tribute to your animal companions!

McBeth / cc

I get a thrill and a sense of well-being when I see wildlife around my home. Because of my busy lifestyle, my lawn and garden beds tend to look a little more unkempt and a little less manicured than I’d like―to the point where I expect to receive disapproving glares from neighbors. However, this lack of regular pruning, mowing, and trimming produces an unexpected bonus: more natural areas that are welcoming to wild creatures.

There are a number of ways in which you can make your yard more hospitable to wildlife, and many of them require very little effort or maintenance:

1. Build a brush pile. Start with some larger logs, then pile on smaller branches.

2. Make or buy a toad house. Place a chipped ceramic flower pot upside-down (with a hole large enough for a toad to enter), or prop the edge of the flowerpot up on a stone.

3. Place dog fur, cat fur, bunny fur, and even your own hair clippings outside for birds to use in their nests. You can place the hair/fur in a net bag, or lay it out on bushes.

4. Lay off the pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides. Look into natural and organic remedies for lawn and garden problems.

5. Install a birdbath. Change the water every two to three days in warm weather, and use a heater in cold months to keep the water from freezing. Don’t warm up the water too much, however; birds might be tempted to bathe and then end up freezing to death.

6. Put up a bat house to encourage the presence of these shy animals. Bats can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour. Plus they’re just really cute.

7. Plant native species that produce yummy edibles for wildlife. Consult a local garden center for plants native to your area.

8. Reduce the size of your lawn. Grass lawns do very little for wildlife; try groundcovers or wildflowers instead.

9. Keep dead trees around. Resist the urge to remove them for aesthetic reasons—they make good animal habitats and bird perches!

10. Grow native flowering plants to encourage butterflies, and place flat basking stones in sunny locations for them to warm their wings on.