Barley Bites

Barley Bites

Our love for our dog Fin knows no bounds. On our European vacation—the trip of a lifetime—we laid in bed each night muttering to one another about how much we missed our dog. Yes, of course we missed our family and of course we were happy to be on vacation. But boy oh boy, did Finley's name get dropped more often even than the phrase, "I could go for gelato right now."And who came to the airport to pick us up? My sister... but she brought Fin along and videoed our mutually high-pitched, furious tail-wagging reactions.

So it should come as no surprise to you that when Ryan and I made a trip to Austin Homebrew Supply for a little foray into brewing (a story for another day), we were wondering how Fin would be a part of our homebrew experience.

Giant bag o' grains after steeping for about 2 hours...

Turns out, you make beer with grains. Not news to you?

Grains smell amazing, and brought me back to hanging out in the barn as a kid while my grandfather grained the cows. Happy memories.

At this point in the beer brewing process, there are no hops or alcohol involved. And it turns out the spent grains you use to flavor the beer in the first stage of brewing can be used in myriad recipes. We found recipes for breads, cookies, and—best of all—dog treats.

An awesome local brewery called Hops and Grain makes dog treats called Brew Bites. How cute is that? Really cute. Oh, and their beer is amazing too, so it's fun for the whole family.

In our house, I kept calling our homemade dog treats "barley bites," and Fin and her buddy Axel seemed to enjoy them quite a lot. I tried one and... while they needed a little bit of cinnamon perhaps, pretty tasty nonetheless.

Fin and Axel are pretty excited to try their first Barley Bite. Gotta love eager taste-testers!

Barley Bites
Ingredients:
4 cups spent grains from beer brewing (NO hops—hops can be toxic to some dogs!)
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1-2 cups flour

Prep time: 10 minutes
Total time: approx. 4 hours

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl until they hold together well (it will be very crumbly). If it's too dry, add a little water or some of the liquid that has drained out of the grains after you're done steeping them.

Dump the mixture onto the baking sheet lined with parchment, and press it firmly into a layer that's about 3/4 inch thick.

Score the baking sheet with a knife to make square or rectangular treats* and bake for about 45 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven and break apart the treats. Lower the temperature to 225 degrees and bake the treats until they have dried out, about 3 hours**. Can be stored in an airtight container for about two weeks. If you make a huge batch, throw some in the freezer!

*If you're feeling ambitious, try cutting out shapes—but be warned, this dough is very thick and the shapes may not work out very well. You'll notice my final product looks pretty crumbly. Cutting into squares saves a little time and will leave you with more full-sized treats.

**The treats need to be completely dried so they will be crunchy and not get moldy.

holy moly hot beans

You know how I like to tinker with recipes? Blatantly ignore the well-tested instructions heeded by countless others because I think my take on things might add a nice little punch? Well, in this case, it was more like being run over by a semi than landing a "nice little punch" on the tastebuds. 

Hailing from this great state, it's hard not to have an affinity for pinto beans, any style. I grew up eating them Nan Byfield style, simmered on the stove with saltpork and served with hot sweet cornbread and--this is the weird part--topped with spoonfuls of dill relish. Since I introduced Ryan to our family bean tradition, he's caught on and spread the love.

But he loves borracho beans; they're a souped-up version of pintos that don't get the relish treatment. We're still on the quest to replicate a restaurant version. The special thing about borracho beans is that they involve cilantro (R's favorite herb), chiptole peppers in adobo sauce (I'm trying to keep them stocked in the pantry), and a good Mexican beer (also something we'd like to keep stocked, if you get my drift!). This goes down in my books as the longest recipe ever, but two-thirds of that time spent was unattended. I soaked some organic pinto beans, bought for pennies on the dollar from the bulk bins at Whole Foods, overnight. Once I rinsed and drained them, I followed, in only the loosest sense of the word, fellow food blogger Homesick Texan's advice on making a pot of beans from start to finish.  

Well, turns out I should have followed it more closely. Should've thrown intuition out the window and held on dearly to caution. There were a couple of things I did differently, but only one of my subs took me from "good ole pot of Saturday beans" to "the pot that made me sob."

First sub: instead of the salt pork she calls for in her basic pinto bean recipe, I dumped in bacon. Not too bad--it cooked just fine and my first taste test yielded a salty, savory, supple bean. Since I didn't have commercial pickled jalapenos on hand--but I did have my mother's, which are known for being extra spicy--I poured in 1/4 cup of the juice and, for posterity's sake, a spoonful of the jalapenos. Good measure, anyone? This added a bit of a kick, but wasn't the culprit.

I probably also added a couple too many chipotle peppers in adobo, but those are mild and likely were not the cause of my tears.

No, no, it was definitely the serrano peppers I subbed for the fresh jalapenos in the "a la charra" section of the recipe. Not three serranos, just two...See those innocuous little slices, seeds and all, nestled gently in the valley between mountains of chipotles and cilantro? I don't believe that's a radon glow they're emitting. They packed so powerful a punch that I could feel spicy tears welling up as I cooked. I let the beans simmer on the stove for a few hours while we waited on a friend to show up. Then came the fateful ladling of the beans into bowls, and the spice-induced cursing I heard from Ryan in the other room. At first I thought it was a good "damn"--but I soon realized that this pot of pintos had it out for the acid-reflux afflicted digestive status of our company. Yes, we had company over for this explosion. Personally, since I tend to be a spice fiend, I enjoyed the tongue-slapping kick from the serranos. 

What about the chipotle skillet cornbread (not pictured because I am simply too embarrassed), you ask? Well, I didn't preheat the skillet correctly, and the cornbread was, for lack of a better explanation, a complete inedible flop that could not be salvaged.

Thankfully I had my margarita recipe to fall back on. Next time it's bean day, I'll be cutting back on the peppers--because really, I'm not a sadist...and nobody really needs that much capsaicin.