A mother-daughter conversation on food and cooking (mostly)

Saturday, April 26, 2008

More on Dog Food


I've been making food for Patty more often lately. It's a good way to use leftover meat, and it's a good excuse for spontaneous experiments...spontaneous experiments that Lawson and I don't have to live with.

For example, recently I browned a pound of ground turkey, then added a handful of frozen raspberries and a dusting of steel cut oats to absorb the juices. I covered it. After it cooked and absorbed for 10 minutes, I turned off the heat and stirred in two eggs. Patty loved it. Eggy Raspberry Meatloaf...mmmm. It fed her for several days.

Today I diced some potatoes, microwaved them for four minutes with a little chicken broth, and then stirred in some canned salmon. I usually stay away from the microwave with her meals, though: I think even dogs appreciate the browning of meat. The only food she has ever refused was microwaved chicken livers. She ate some the next day after I sauteed them in olive oil.

Last week we gave her a raw meaty, marrowy beef bone from the supermarket (in the backyard, of course). She was ecstatic. She spent all Sunday on that thing.

She also eats good quality hard food, but it contains more grains than she needs, so I'm trying to mostly stay away from grains in these supplementary dinners -- just meats and veggies, mostly. No doubt I'll get an email from some raw-feeding evangelist, and I think that stuff is neat, but surely there's a happy medium here.

2 comments:

Kris said...

Lovely Patty. I happen to know that dogs love berries. Emily went raspberry picking with us and I saw her stripping the berries off the branches with teeth and tongue (she threw up on the way home).

Eva said...

You know, it was that story that made me try raspberries in Patty's food (after making sure they were okay for dogs)! She loooved them. I think a change from savory things must be refreshing. I bet Emily could handle a few raspberries.