Meet, Bray, Love: Secret Subject Swap

Welcome a Secret Subject Swap. This month 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. Read through mine and at the bottom you’ll find links to all of today’s other Secret Subject participants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My subject is: Tell me about the strangest pet you've owned.
It was submitted by Sarah of What TF Sarah.

 

 

I guess you could say a mule. I also guess that maybe I should give you some background.

 

I've mentioned before that I, for a short time, lived the Brady Bunch. My mother had 2 girls, my stepfather had 3 boys. Neither of us were willing to give up our "Alice," so his lived in (with her daughter, to round out the crew) and ours came during the day.

The house was beautiful, contemporary, which is my style, the whole back of the house was glass. The back yard was large, with a pool, a barn, and a rolling hill leading all the way back to woods. There were also woods to our left, and across the street. To our right was Four Corner Farm, a home complete with a barn, horses, and all kinds of animals. The youngest daughter, Lee, was my age, and I knew her from school so I'd been over there, although not often. Her mother was an animal lover, former horse rescuer, and you never knew what you'd come across there. A de-scented skunk, ferrets in the bathroom, anything and everything animal.

 

And us next door? We had nothin'. OK, so my brother had a dog that chased his tail till I got dizzy. Big whop.

But the neighbors' main love was, without a doubt,  horses. I'd walk up to the fence between our yards with an apple or a carrot and look into those big beautiful brown equine eyes and know exactly why their family had fallen in love with horses. Damn, I mean I got great birthday presents when I was little but Lee? She got a horse. A horse! And she named him (her?) Happy Birthday.

 

At the time that I lived there, though, I had just barely graduated college, was starting out in my first job and living at home to save some money. And also at that time, I fell in love with big brown equine eyes too, those of a donkey. Donkeys are, if you didn't know, gentle, domesticated, smaller members of the horse family. And one day, while snacking on a cookie dough/brownie hybrid by the pool, I broached the subject of bringing him home, see if he could fit into our family.

 

Cookie Dough Brownies

 

A little about donkeys in general, and mine specifically. He was not a foal (a young donkey), nor a Jenny (a female), he was a Jack, a male. He was gentle, though undoubtedly as stubborn as a mule. Not a mule, though, mules are actually the result of mating a Jack and mare (female horse). I know all of this because these are the things you learn when you live out in the country, your neighbors have horses and you have a donkey. Actually, that's a lie. These are the things you learn when you're writing a blog post and end up spending a lot of time researching jennys, jackasses, mules, and horses on Google.

Anyway, I had named him Pardner. As in Howdy, Pardner. Hey, if Lee can name her pony Happy Birthday, I can name my donkey Howdy Pardner. 

 

 

 

Just one last bit of pertinent information: donkeys live for quite a long time. So it shouldn't surprise you to hear that I still have that Pardner I'd brought home to meet the family all those years ago. 

 

In fact, I've been married to that stubborn ass for years now.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Wandering Web Designer 

Climaxed 

Part-time Working Hockey Mom

What TF Sarah 

 

Cookie Dough Brownies

                                                              ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe


Ingredients:

6 TBSP butter, softened

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg, room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

4 oz unsweetened chocolate

1 1/2 sticks butter

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 TBSP baking cocoa

Directions:
*Cream 6 TBSP butter with 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Beat in 1 egg and 1/2 tsp vanilla. Mix in 1 1/4 cups flour and the salt. Once incorporated, mix in the mini chocolate chips. Roll the dough into 30 balls. Place on a tray in the freezer for 30 minutes (can freeze overnight).

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 X 13 baking pan.

*In the microwave, melt the butter and the unsweetened chocolate at 20 second intervals until smooth.

*Stir in the remaining sugar and remaining brown sugar, then the remaining vanilla and eggs. Mix in the remaining flour, salt, baking soda and baking cocoa.

*Pour batter evenly into the prepared pan. Press the frozen cookie dough balls into the brownie batter. Bake for 30 minutes.

*Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.