Blackberry-Peach Coffee Cake and Zombie Apocolypse Prepared Dog

I decided to try a new recipe today.  I had thawed out some of the fabulous blackberries I bought a couple of months ago from the farmers market.  I adjusted a recipe from a new cookbook to accommodate the ingredients I had on hand.  The recipe can be found here, and this is what it looks like:

It involves a nice spice batter with layers of blackberries...

and then a final layer of peaches and blackberries...

before topping with a gooey streusel...

and then sending this delicious coffee cake off to the oven. 

Now, next time I make this cake, the one thing I will change is that I will COVER the top with peach slices and just use the blackberries inside the batter.  Every bite that had a peach in it was so good that it made me want more peach bits!  So next time, it'll have exactly that!! 

On another note, in the last couple of months, my dog, Bender, has developed a new habit.  For those of you that don't already know, he hurt his back several months ago and since then, when we are in the car, he rides in his kennel.  He seems to feel quite comfortable riding like this and most of the time during rides of any length, he lays down and naps.

Now, even though he's confined to his kennel in the car, he still manages to score lots of treats - from the girls at the coffee shop, the ladies at the bank, the guys that pump gas into the car (remember, in Oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas), and from the folks at the pet store.  When these cookies are given to me, without looking, I bend my arm backwards and slide it to Bender through his kennel wires. 

The other day, when I picked him up from school, I noticed that once in the kennel, he went straight to the back corner, and by the time I closed him in and got in my seat, he was crunching happily on a cookie.  I thought that was pretty clever of him to have saved a cookie for a later time, so when I was cleaning out the car the other day, I thought I'd put another cookie in that corner and see if he noticed it. 

Well, imagine my surprise to find this:

He had a full-fledged stash!!!  My dog is a hoarder!  Anyway, after laughing at the mix of treats that are in various degrees of  consumption, I just covered them back up with the blanket.  And what is really funny is now that I'm paying attention, he gets in the car several times a week and I can see him check on his stash by digging up the blanket in that corner and then covering it back up before settling in.  And just this weekend, we went to the bank.  Guess where that cookie ended up?  Yep, you guessed it.

I used to know someone that always said that fate smiles on the prepared person.  I suppose it also smiles on the prepared pup.  Only the nose knows.

"With the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter cookies, treats, and self-discipline, anything is possible."- Julia Child Bender