Snowy Day Food Blogging

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The weather here today is horrific — blowing snow obscures everything, it’s minus -7° celcius, and expected to drop to -15° , and I have no intentions of leaving the house if I can possibly help it. Unfortunately, Solo is out of goat’s milk, so I don’t really have much choice. Sucks to be a responsible pet owner, doesn’t it?

Thrive Dog FoodI have another reason for leaving the house today – I’m going to pick up some sample packs of Honest Kitchen dog food from our local distributor. He’s actually the Canada wide representative for Honest Kitchen – he just also happens to be located here in Durham, a town with a population of about twenty people. It really is a small world sometimes.

I’m going to try switching Ellie over to Honest Kitchen, in the hopes she’ll find the texture easier to eat. She has a hard time eating kibble, even if it has been soaked. Honest Kitchen is a dehydrated food, as opposed to a kibble. The basic ingredients have been dehydrated, and you then re-constitute them with water before feeding. This results in a food with a ‘pudding’ like texture.

Apparently, not all dogs like it, so I’ll start with just some samples and see how Ellie tolerates it.

As for Sean and I, we’re eating Jamaican food today. I’ve got oxtail stewing down in the slow cooker, and tonight I’ll fry some plantain, boil some yellow yam and Irish potato, and make a batch of coconut rice and peas. For dessert, we’re having fresh made banana fritters. Since I can’t get ethnic food out here, I’ve had to learn to make do with what we can cook here at home.

PhoNext week, we’re going to get together the ingredients to make Pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup we ate at least once a week in Toronto.

Every block in our ethnic neighborhood had a decent Pho place on it, and I really miss being able to just drop in and grab a huge bowl filled with noodles, broth, seafood and bean sprouts. Sean likes his plain, but I love my Pho with a squeeze of lime and a dash of chili sauce.

Here’s a simple recipe for rice and peas —

Serves: 4-5

1 medium sized can red kidney beans
1 can coconut milk
2 cups of rice
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 table spoon oil
1 scotch bonnet pepper (whole, do not chop up)
water

Drain the liquid from the can of beans into a measuring cup and add the can of coconut milk and enough water to make four cups of liquid. Place liquids in a pot with beans, onions, garlic, thyme and oil, bring to a boil. Add rice and stir for a minute. Reduce heat to Medium-Low. Place scotch bonnet pepper on top of liquid and cover tightly for 30 minutes or until rice is cooked. Remove scotch bonnet pepper before serving.

This recipes can also be made using other peas.

Thursday Thirteen – 13 Movies with French Bulldogs in Them

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I missed Thursday Thirteen last week, because of the power outages and the need to write a long-ass update on the puppies. This week, I cheated and lifted part of my movie list from French Bulldog Z. Here’s a list of 13 movies that have French Bulldogs in them. Please note that I’ve chosen movie titles based on no particular criteria, and their inclusion should not be taken to indicate that I think they’re worth watching (other than for the scenes with the Frenchies in them).

 

1. At First Sight
The basic premise – blind boy meets girl, blind boy regains site and possibly loses girl.. but who cares about all of that? There’s only one good reason for getting this video, and we’re NOT going to tell you what it is. OK, we’ll give you a hint – it involved (gasp of shock!) a French Bulldog. No, don’t beg – we’re not giving the rest of it away. After all, if the rest of us had to sit through this yawner to get to the good stuff, so do you…

2. Wigstock – The Movie
We might be stretching it by including this title, but we did promise to include even those movies giving us just a ‘glimpse of’ Frenchies, right? Besides, this is a great movie, featuring footage of the 10th Annual Wigstock in New York. Plenty of fun, and some really, really big hair. Invite over some friends, pop this in the DVD player, and offer fabu prizes to the first person to spot the Frenchie. It’s more fun if you make all your friends wear wigs, though (or better still, full drag)

3. Babe – Pig in the City
I really, really liked the first Babe movie. Pigs, dogs, sheep — what’s not to like? But this one? – I just could NOT stomach that scene with the Bull Terrier. I came really close to walking out of the cinema. Mind you, that’s just one scene, and the rest of the movie is as cute as a button. Look for the French Bulldog in front of the Parisian Cafe…

4. Grease
Great musical with some memorable song and dance numbers, but most notable to Frenchie fans for the bizarrely Frenchie filled carnival scenes near the end of the movie. The prop department must have bought up literally every ugly, chalkware French Bulldog carnival prize in North America to stock these scenes. A chilling of example of when good collectibles go bad.

5. Titanic
The brief glimpse of a brindle Frenchie being loaded onto the ship, and later walked on the steerage class deck, was inspired by the historical French Bulldog which was on board the Titanic. Director James Cameron thankfully cut the scene where the dog struggles in the water after the ship’s sinking, but it’s apparently included in the DVD edition. I’ll pass on that, thank you

6. Monkey Bone
Deservedly fast-forgotten flick features a mix of claymation, animation and live action, and takes place in the mind of a comatose animator. Whatever. It sucked, and went pretty well straight to video. There are a few shots of Whoopi Goldberg as death, clutching a French Bulldog as some sort of minion, a la Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies, I suppose.

7. Armageddon
Watch for the cream Frenchie in the opening few minutes of this popular (if somewhat over done) outer space action adventure video.His shenanigan’s on the set of “The Rock” (another movie his owner actor Brendan Kelly starred in) made director Michael Bay decide to put him in this film. You can see ‘Frankie’ in his own flick below, on the Short Six collection.

8. ‘Franky Goes to Hollywood’
From the BillyBob database: ‘Imagine you are Brendan Kelly, working actor. You’ve starred in the TV series OZ, and films like MALCOLM X, THE ROCK, CON AIR, CLOCKERS, etc. So one day, Michael Bay calls you at home with a hot work offer in his latest flick . . . for your dog! “What a laugh I had,” Kelly recalled, “but as long as someone in the family’s working, who cares?”

Adopted by Kelly when he was visiting Paris, Franky got to chew on Godzilla, and Brendan made this 12-minute black and white flick with some of the cast. Watch it if, for no other reason, than to howl with laughter when Franky attacks some balloons and watches the costs get taken out of his per diem. Steve Buscemi seems mighty obsessed about Franky’s per diem.’

The only way that I’ve been able to find to actually see this short – which won best short documentary at the Brooklyn Film Festival – is on the collection “Short Six”. It’s worth it, even if the rest of the shorts are on the theme of ‘insanity’..

9. The Shaggy Dog
Amazon sez: Tim Allen barks, growls, and slobbers his way through the latest remake of the classic Disney suburban fable The Shaggy Dog. A mystical long-lived dog is kidnapped from Tibet by a nefarious corporation; when it escapes, it bites aspiring District Attorney Dave Douglas (Allen, The Santa Clause, Toy Story), who finds himself regressing into a dog in the courtroom. There’s more to the plot–something to do with creating a youth serum from the dog’s blood–but let’s face it, that’s not what anyone’s going to see the movie for..

That’s right – because what they’re really interested in is the fact that one of Tim’s neighbours has a Frenchie. This one is fun for you, and the kids. Or so I’m told. Plus, it has Robert Downey and Jane Curtain in it.

10. Garden State
I don’t usually get worked up about movies, but in this case I’m making an exception. Unless you’re a complete and utter philistine, you will immediately run out and rent and/or purchase this movie. Why? Here’s why:

A) it has a kick ass cast & plot
B) it has, for one brief and shining moment, a scene which showcases a nice little cream male Frenchie doing one of the disgusting things that nice little un neutered cream male Frenchies do.

11. Bringing Down the House
City slicker lawyer meets street wise ex con, as played by Queen Latifah. And yet again – ho hum, although not to the same extent as Second Hand Lions. After all, there’s no creepy 6th Sense kid in this one to freak you out. Best of all, you get lots more shots of the pied cutie from Second Hand Lions, this time as a spoiled Frenchie appropriately named Shakespeare, and looking quite dapper in his ruffed Elizabethan collar. Actually, this movie is pretty funny, with Eugene Levy as one of the highlights. And look – the Frenchie made it onto the DVD box!

12. Secondhand Lions
Here’s what amazon.com says about it: “If you can get past its thick layer of syrup and molasses, Secondhand Lions reveals itself as a thoroughly decent family film that anyone can enjoy. It gets a little sappy sometimes, but there’s something to be said for a movie in which Michael Caine and Robert Duvall play eccentric old brothers who take the easy approach to fishing: instead of a peaceful rod and reel, they use 12-gauge shotguns”. But who cares about all of that? There are tons of shots of an incredibly cute pied Frenchie hamming it up for the camera, and that alone makes it worth watching. It’s even worth putting up with an increasingly weird looking Haley Joel Osment. *shudder*

13. Just Married
Poor Brittany Murphy. It’s bad enough that she has to spend most of her time being the voice of Luanne on King of the Hill, but when she finally gets the chance to do a big screen feature film, what happens? Well, first of all, she gets dumped by her super hottie boyfriend and co-star, Ashton Kutcher, and then she gets upstaged by an adorable little French Bulldog.

OK, maybe we’re stretching things a little – after all, the Frenchie is only in one scene. But who cares? Other than gazing at Ashton and the Frenchie, there aren’t many other good reasons for watching this forgettable flick… It’s back to cartoon voice overs for Brittany, I’m afraid.

 

 

Bonus Fact: The same French Bulldog appeared in See Spot Run, Bringing Down the House, Second Hand Lions, The Shaggy Dog and Just Married, not to mention numerous print ads and commercials. Linus is one of the animal actors from Birds and Animals Unlimited.

linus.jpg

 

 

 


Yum- Breaded Frenchies

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Search terms found in my webstats —

French Bull dog breaders

breading a french bulldog

You don’t think they were looking for recipes, do you?

This one is even scarier —

dog breathes heavy foams at mouth breathing heavy vomiting

OK, people?

If your dog is breathing heavy, foaming at the mouth and vomiting, searching on Google is not where you should be. Get your ass in the car, and get your dog to the emergency vet, stat.

I don’t need blog readers that badly, honestly.

ps: like the new header? It’s Solo, exercising his evil super powers. I was going to give him sparkly red goat eyes, but decided to err on the side of decorum. Instead, I’m just going to rotate a selection of sayings out of his wittle mouf, none of which will be in LOL-speak… Evil super heroes don’t use LOL-speak.

Breed Popularity, Email Woes & Puppy Photos

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The AKC just released their annual registration figures for 2007. The list contains all of the usual popular breeds, with one exception – for the first time since 1935, the Bulldog has entered the top ten most popular breeds list. Bulldogs are most popular in Los Angeles, where they are second only to Labs.

This popularity has made Bulldogs one of the most commonly used dog breeds in wire transfer (or ‘phantom puppy’) scams – this is the scam where ‘breeders’ offer cheap or free puppies, with the prospective owner just paying for the shipping. Fees are to be paid by wire transfer, and once the scammer has collected fees from a handful of people, they disappear, leaving the victims with no puppy, and out the shipping fees they’ve wired. You can learn more about phantom puppy scams here –

http://www.akc.org/news/index.cfm?article_id=3220

http://www.scambusters.org/puppyscams.html

French Bulldogs have exploded in popularity, more so this year than any other. Many of us remember when Frenchies were so little known as to be almost a rare breed – this year, San Francisco and Los Angeles include the French Bulldog in their Top 10 lists.

The increase in popularity of Frenchies is staggering in such a short period of time – they’ve increased +404%, second only to Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, at +406%. This means we can look forward to more puppy mills pumping Frenchies into pet stores, more backyard breeders tossing untested dogs together to make quick buck puppies, and more cheap imports flooding the market and swamping rescue.

We can only hope that this surge in popularity is the crescendo, and that Frenchies can now slip quietly back into obscurity, becoming once again the dog most people assume is a Boston, a deformed eared pug, or a Pot Bellied pig on a leash.

Email Woes

I’ve been going through my semi-semi annual bout of frantic filing, desk re-organizing, correspondence answering and cord sorting out (where the heck do all of those electrical cords and chargers come from that end up buried in my desk drawers? Are they multiplying on their own?). This has all put me rather behind on my email answering, especially since everyone and their brother seems to have decided to contact me about Mae.

If you’ve emailed me, be patient – I should get caught up by Friday.

Puppy Photos

2197472603_3406bcf2b8.jpgSome new photos of my dapper little brindle man, Dexter. I tried to take some proper body shots, but he’s still at the ‘stop, you’re freaking me out’ stage of table stacking, and shots taken of him on the table show a cowering wreck who looks nothing like the pup I see standing on the floor, at ease. There are a few body shots in here, but in the best one Penelope decided to turn her head and block out Dexter’s. So, if you can ignore the fact that he’s headless, you get a pretty good look at his body.

All of the photos are here —
http://flickr.com/photos/frenchbulldogs/sets/72157603728391634/

2192134837_9c5e8193d1.jpgSolo is rapidly developing into the world’s cutest puppy.

Don’t believe me? Check out this photo. Super cute, yes? Almost…. eerily cute?

Yup, it’s true – he has super powers. Eerie, evil, super cute puppy powers. Be afraid.

All the rest of the pix are here –
http://flickr.com/photos/frenchbulldogs/sets/72157603710340910/

Zealotry in the Dog Food Wars

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There are a few topics well known as not suitable for discussion in polite company. Death and taxes, of course – and on pet mailing lists, the topic of raw versus commercial food.

One of my French Bulldog mailing lists just experienced the sort of name calling and hysterics that a discussion on dog food almost inevitably provokes. Luckily, this is a civil and good natured list, and it all blew over rather quickly. I’ve seen such discussions turn into blazing flame wars in the past, complete with accusations of unfit pet parentage from those on both sides of the divide.

For, and make no mistake, there is a divide there, and it’s growing. It’s the divide between those who feed raw, and those who feed commercial, and there is no shortage of zealots on either side.

Commercial feeders scream at raw feeders about being irresponsible flakes who don’t care if their dogs turn into veritable walking petri dishes of bacterial infection. Raw feeders consider those who feed commercial to be ‘lazy pet owners who’d rather buy a sack of kibble than save their dog’s life’ (that’s a quote, from a particularly nasty exchange on a Molosser list I belong to). This kind of vitriol, this refusal to find a common middle ground, exists even within each half of the divide.

Raw feeders can at times come across as members of some sort of strange, dog food obsessed cult. I once joined a raw food mailing list, only to be chastised harshly by the list admin for mentioning that I grind my on the bone meat sources before I feed them. Didn’t I know that grinding ruins the whole point of feeding raw?

At times, an attitude of pervasive one oneupmanship seems to become apparent.

Mrs. W proclaims that she only buys organic meat to add to the pricey raw food mix she uses.

“You use a mix?” spits Mr. X condescendingly. “I grind all of my own meat and vegetables, and supplement with eggs from my own chickens”.

“You grind?” sneers Ms. Y. “What are you, stupid? Everyone knows you shouldn’t grind your meat. I feed my chicken pieces whole, with vegetable patties I make with the vegetables I buy at the whole food organic co op.”

Mrs. Z then loftily wonders aloud “Why anyone is still feeding just pieces, or bothering with vegetables”. Her dogs are on the wolf model diet, and get entire cow heads, ungutted chickens and deer haunches (skin on, of course). “If they need greens, they eat grasses or bark. Actually, I’ve been thinking of just fencing off the back twenty acres, and letting them forage for at least half of their food”, she muses.

Commercial feeders aren’t immune from this sort of conceit.

The person who still feeds Ol’ Roy from Walmart gets soundly lectured by those who feed Pro Plan.

Those who feed Eagle Pack and Wellness point out that Pro Plan is the equivalent of letting your dog eat Doritos for dinner every night.

Orijen and Honest Kitchen feeders sniff that they’d never let their dogs eat the kind of crap that’s in Wellness.

This, of course, is when the raw feeders mention how anyone feeding any commercial dog food might just as well give their dogs an intravenous drip of corn syrup and be done with it, and the whole thing starts all over again.

Personally, I feed raw, and have done so for years, but I feed raw with some caveats and with an acknowledgment that raw is neither a cure all nor without its risks. Years ago, when raw feeding was still in its infancy, I lost a puppy due to improperly prepared meat. After publishing my experience, I was quite thoroughly vilified by some of the best known names in the world of raw feeding, in main part for simply having the temerity to point out that precautions need to be taken when feeding our dogs raw meat. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth for the kind of fervent zealotry that some people practice, and a determination to find a balancing point I can live with.

I still feed raw, but a handful of my dogs are on a decent quality kibble. The tainted pet food scandal of last year made me, now more than ever, cognizant of the need to read labels and investigate the company making the food my pets eat. It hasn’t, however, made me assume that anyone who chooses not to feed raw is irresponsible, nor has it made me smug in my own sense of superiority. After all, I know first hand that the best intentions aren’t always enough to keep our pets safe.

Then again, neither is lecturing and haranguing anyone who doesn’t do things exactly our way.

(BTW, Christie Keith on the Dogged Blog wrote a great entry on the Raw Diet Debate)