Woofie cookies.

We had steak for supper last night. It was tough, it was cooked on a panini press (sigh), and it was premarinated (ie., too salty and processed-tasting). We all just kind of sat and looked at it, and there was quite a bit left over.

That is the ONLY reason I ended up making dog cookies with steak in them. And if you want your mother's skittish little white dog to follow you around obsessively for the next twenty-four hours, you should make them, too. (Note: you'll need a food processor. If you don't have one, you can sub 4 oz. of baby food meat for the steak. Just check the ingredients to be sure there's no onion or garlic.)

3-4 ounces cooked steak, cut in smallish pieces

1/4 cup natural peanut butter

1 egg, divided

1 1/2 cups barley flour

1/3 cup beef broth (approximately)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Pulse the steak in the food processor a few times, then process until it starts to come away from the sides of the bowl in a paste (about 3-5 minutes). Add the peanut butter and egg white; process until smooth.

Add the flour all at once; pulse, then process until it looks like coarse crumbs. Add the broth, one tablespoon at a time, until it forms a smooth, fairly soft dough. Roll out between wax or parchment paper sheets; cut into desired shapes and sizes.

At this point, you can make paint to prettify them if you like - combine the egg yolk with a bit of gel food coloring and about 1 tsp. of water, then paint onto cookies. Plain cookies can be baked directly on an ungreased baking sheet; painted cookies should be painted and baked on parchment.

Bake for about 2 hours, or until completely dry and crunchy. As long as they dried out completely in the oven, they should keep in an airtight container for about a month.