Monday.

My miniature dachshund Marvin is a pain in the ass. He recently acquired a taste for lolipops.

This past halloween my daughters had piles of blowpops and other assorted suckers in their candy bags. They would sample one, and if they didn't like the flavor, they would throw it in the trash. Marvin was never a trash digger until he discovered piles of once licked lolipops in the small garbage can.

I kept seeing the dog walk around the house with a white stick hanging out of his mouth like Kojak. He would then hold the stick with his paws and finish eating his candy.

It was funny at first, but now he is a sugar junky and as a consequence he dumps over all the trash cans in the house looking for a fix.

"Rusty" the dog my wife brought home last year is doing well. However, when humans are not in sight, he jumps on the table knocks the butter dish on the floor and eats all the butter.

I was baking cinnamon rolls one morning and I had unwrapped a stick of butter and set it on the plate. I went to grab the sugar and I turned around just in time to see Rusty with a whole stick of butter in his mouth. He was trying to stealthily sneak off in a belly crawl. I yelled at him and he dropped it and slinked away.It seemed like a shame to waste the butter but it was pretty much a total loss at that point.

The sneaky butter stealer now stays in the kennel when he is inside.

Here is the quick and easy cinnamon roll recipe I came up with a few months ago.

Hammer's easy cinnamon rolls.

Preheat oven to 325F

Dough:

1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

1/4 cup white sugar

2 packets active dry yeast

1 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Stir water, 1 Tsb of sugar and yeast together until dissolved and creamy. Add the salt. Stir in the flour and the remainder of the sugar until well blended. Let dough rest in the bowl for 10 minutes.

While dough is resting make your filling.

Filling:

One stick of butter

1 cup of brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon.

Soften the butter slightly and mix all the ingredients well until it looks like a paste.

Knead the dough about 10 times on a lightly floured surface then pat it out flat until it's a square about 10 to 12 inches on all sides.

Spread the filling onto the square dough leaving about 1/2 inch on all sides. Save about 1/3 of a cup back for the topping

Carefully roll the dough into a tube with the filling on the inside. It should be about as big around as a soda can.

Get a 9 inch round or square cake pan ready and cut round sections off of the tube of dough about 1 and 1/2 inches thick and arrange them all in the cake pan so they are touching.

Cover and let them rise for about 10 min.

Uncover and put them into the oven for 20 to 25 minutes. When they come out spread the rest of the filling over the top and let it melt.

They are ready to serve as soon as they come out of the oven. I like them with a glass of cold milk.