Meatloaf Kills

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I occasionally get the urge for a plate of really, really good meatloaf. More specifically, I get the craving for a leftover meatloaf sandwich. Is there any finer second day meal on earth than meatloaf? The overnight stay in the fridge lets all the flavors melt together into one tasty, meaty melange.

Here’s the recipe I used (BTW, I have no idea if this is actually Gordon Ramsey’s meatloaf recipe, as I found it not on his official site, but on a Blog called – I kid you not – I Love Meatloaf):

Gordon Ramsey’s Meatloaf

50g butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 celery stalks, finely sliced
1 green pepper, finely chopped
4 spring onions, sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp chilli sauce
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
125ml evaporated milk
125ml tomato ketchup
750g minced beef
250g minced pork or sausage meat
2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
250g breadcrumbs
Freshly ground salt and pepper

1 Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the onion, celery, pepper, spring onions, garlic, parsley, chilli sauce, Worcestershire sauce and bay leaves. Cook over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally, for about 6 minutes.

2 Add the evaporated milk and ketchup and continue to cook for a further 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Discard the bay leaves.

3 Preheat the oven to 180C (About 360 F)

4 Place the beef and pork in a large bowl, add the eggs, breadcrumbs and vegetable mixture, and season. Place the mixture in an ungreased roasting dish and bake for 25 minutes. Raise the temperature to 200C/400 F and bake for a further 35-40 minutes.

5 Serve from the roasting dish.

Absolutely delish, if I do say so myself.

Unfortunately, I then had to take the bowl I’d mixed the meatloaf up in and figure out how to dispose of it. It’s stainless steel, so I wasn’t sure if it could go in the recycling bin, and even if it could, was it fair to expose all those hardworking sanitation workers to the possible risk of contamination from a bowl that had contained raw meat? I think not.

I finally hauled it to a friend’s smelter, where we melted it down. I then came home and cleaned all of my counter surfaces with a blowtorch.

What? Overkill? Not according to some veterinarians, who say that one of the risks of feeding your pets raw is that you can never really get the dishes clean that you use to prepare raw meat.

Better safe than sorry, I always say. Next time I make meatloaf, I’ll probably just burn the kitchen down afterwards – because you just never know with raw meat.

Dog's Dinner and Stem Cells Bring Hope

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My dogs eat leftovers – a fact that many veterinarians will be happy to tell you is a surefire pathway to obesity, bad behaviour and possibly heroin addiction. So far, so good — I haven’t noticed any track marks, and while a few of the dogs might be a bit on the fluffy side (Hello Delilah), most of them are actually quite lean and muscular.

Read more →

Penelope Eats a Muffin

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Well, here we are coming up on week two of Penelope’s “I ain’t eatin’ that” hunger strike.

We had a “woo hoo” moment where she agreed to eat a leftover can of Prescription Diet A/D that I had sitting around from when Barb sent Bunny to live with us (she had her own “not eating that” phase during her pregnancy. Too bad it didn’t extend to electronics). Unfortunately, A/D isn’t ideal as a food for pregnant girls, and even if it was, Nell had decided by the next morning that she no longer liked that stinky food in can, and could she just have a glass of mineral water with lemon (no ice), puh-leeze?

Sigh, redux.

She ate some raw, de boned chicken here and there over the weekend, but not enough to make me confident she was getting enough nutrition, and raw boneless chicken on its own isn’t enough to sustain healthy growth in puppies.

Cait suggested a sort of dog food muffin that reminds me of the baked results you get from Essex Cottage Farms dog food mix. Since there are no suppliers of either or ECF food nearby (read: within a two hour drive), I decided to look for home made dog food muffin recipes.

The most common one I found was a fairly simple recipe in which you simply added a pound of ground chicken to a commercial corn meal muffin mix. Well, that sounded fairly promising – after all, Penelope was willing to eat those zuchinni banana muffins last week. I don’t like the idea of using a mix, however — I won’t bake for myself from a mix, so I certainly won’t do it for my dog, either. Too much sugar, too much hydrogenated oil, and too little control over the ingredients.

Instead, I used the following recipe of my own, which I feel is a healthier alternative, and which I’m calling —

Fussy Frenchie Meaty Muffins

Ingredients:

* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 2 tablespoons honey
* 2 large eggs
* 2/3 cup natural yogurt
* 1/2 cup yellow corn meal
* 1  1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1 tsp. baking soda
* 1/8 tsp. kosher salt

* 1 cored, pureed red apple, seeds removed
* 1/2 of a medium sized zucchini, grated
* 2 cups ground chicken (we ground necks, bone included, and boneless thigh meat)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray two medium sized cupcake or muffin trays
2. Stir together dry ingredients in large mixing bowl. Beat together wet ingredients except for apple, zucchini and chicken in separate bowl. Fold wet into dry using a wooden spoon. Don’t over mix. Add chicken, apple and zucchini.
3. Drop two tablespoons of batter into each muffin cup. Don’t over fill. Bake 20  minutes, or until golden brown. Makes roughly 24 – 36 muffins.

So far, so good — Penelope loved hers, Tula reacted to them like they were little golden chunks of doggie crack, and the rest of the dogs looked so sad that they each got a 1/4 muffin with their dinner.

These would probably make nice little bait treats, by the way — and they smell quite tasty.

Raw Dog Food Simplified. Sort of.

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A few people have written to me asking for my ‘recipe’ for raw dog food, so I decided this deserved a post of its own.

To be honest, there really isn’t a ‘recipe’ per se. What there is is a ratio break down, which as I’ve mentioned before is:

50% or so turkey necks and fish with bones (salmon, sardines and mackerel, primarily)
5% liver, kidney, giblets (organ meats)
5% heart
25% muscle meat (beef, sometimes mutton or pork)
10% ground vegetables, fruit and greens
the rest is a mix of eggs, dairy, nutritional yeast, molasses, yogurt and cider vinegar

Bear in mind, this is MY ratio, based on what I have access to most often, and at the most reasonable prices. You, on the other hand, can muck about with this to suit your own preferences, and your own locally available ingredients.

Some people might have an easier time getting chicken necks and backs than turkey necks. Others might have a line on venison or elk in season, which they can substitute for beef. The same applies to veggies and fruits — if I’ve gotten a good deal on bananas or carrots, there’s going to be a lot of bananas and carrots in their food. Right now, my dandelion ‘garden’ is a reliable source for greens, so we’re using that (and getting some weeding done at the same time).

I don’t weigh out anything, either — I estimate by volume, using my trusty pots and pans and bowls.

I grind and chop all my veggies, and I pre bake sweet potatoes and squash. Technically speaking both of these orange vegetables are carb sources, so I keep them to a 20% ratio in my veggie mix. You can adjust as you like. For people who want a grain or carb source, try adding quick cooking oats or quinoa (although technically speaking, you don’t really need a carb source other than the veggies).

If you are confident that your dog can get through necks and backs, then by all means, skip grinding them. I, on the other hand, am confident that I’d spend a good deal of time pulling stringy bits of turkey out of the throats of my choking dogs, so I do grind. To each their own, and don’t let the hard line party advocates on either side of the issue bully you out of doing what’s best for you dogs.

Since I grind, I give my dogs recreational beef bones to chew on once a week or so.

Remember, this is all about finding what works for you. Preparing your own raw food is messy, time consuming and back breaking. Honestly, if I was only feeding one or two dogs, I’d have no hesitation about feeding them a pre made raw diet (we like the Nature’s Variety patties).

Don’t get caught in the “Unless you do it ‘this way’, you’re a dog killing heathen” trap. Too many raw feeding advocates get a sort of scary, cult like thing going on when they start preaching about their way of feeding. Personally, I don’t think any diet is perfect, unless you can make it work for you.

A Photo Guide to Making Raw Dog Food

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I wrote the other day about accumulating and prepping all of my ingredients for making a batch of raw dog food. Sean and I decided that if we were going to make a batch, we might as well make a big batch — and that’s what we ended up doing. Here’s a photo series of the steps involved in making a batch of raw dog food.

If anyone wants more detailed instructions, visit this page. Bear in mind, though, that what works for my dog might now work for yours.

The first step I usually do is to grind all my vegetables. I buy vegetables here and there, as they’re on sale or available, and then I grind them and freeze them into plastic containers — one for greens, one for carrots, another for fruit (my guys love bananas, melon, apples and pear). Then I partially nuke sweet potatoes and squash, and rice them using a ricer before freezing them into batches. The day before I’m going to make my dog food, I get them out and thaw them.

I’ve been getting a really good deal on whole, frozen salmon lately, so I bough ten of them and tucked them into the freezer. I poach them, mix them up with canned Jack mackeral, and put the whole lot through the grinder, bones and all.

The veggies and fish get mixed up with my yogurt, eggs, nutritional yeast, molasses, apple cider vinegar, pressed garlic cloves, hemp hearts and flax seed (I got a good deal on some at the co op, and decided to add some to this batch of food). I mix it all up in a giant corn pot (or lobster pot, or stock pot) that I got at a yard sale. I buy these giant pots any time I see them at a garage sale or second hand store – they’re perfect for mixing up dog food.

Sean grinds the turkey necks, hearts and livers for me — another reason why a tall guy is always useful to have around the house. We use a basic grinder from Northern Tools, and it’s lasted me a year and change so far, with two blade changes. I don’t expect it to last forever, with the amount of work we ask it to do, but I’m OK with that. If it wears out, I’ll probably buy the next model up. We buy our beef already ground, so it just gets mixed into with the turkey.

Did I mention we decided to make a big batch of food? So big, that I had a panic attack about where we were going to mix it all. Usually, we have a three quarter pot of meats, and a quarter pot of mixed gunk (that’s our ‘technical term’ for it). I then mix it all together in a third big pot, but this time, there was no way that would work — we had two full pots of turkey and ground meat, and a full pot of mixed gunk.

So, we improvised, and used this big wheeled bin. Here it is, about half way full, with Tessa watching the proceedings with interest.

Hey, are you wondering ‘how on earth do you mix up this much dog food?’. Easy – you stick your arms in. Up to the elbows. Pretend you’re one of those big food processor dough hooks, and blend, blend, blend. Then, look down, see that you’re covered in bits of raw meat gore all the way up to your armpits, shriek, and jump into the shower fully clothed.

Here’s the finished product, with flecks of heart, liver, bone and greens. Mmm! Getting hungry yet?

We measure out the food into large sized, zip lock freezer bags – to be more exact, slide lock bags, which are easier to close. We buy them at the dollar store, because the same bags otherwise would be $5 per box.

We put five cups into each bag, and by the time we were done, we’d covered the island twice, for a total of sixty bags. That is a lot of dog food.

We used to just stack the bagged food in the freezer, but found that the occasional leaking bag could make quite a mess. Now, we put the bags into plastic storage bins, which we then stack in the freezer. It’s easier to lift them out, and I can still stack things on top of them (in whatever room is leftover for people food, which sure isn’t much). We ended up with five of these totes.

Finished! And a long day’s work it was, too. For those curious about these things, we ended up with sixty bags of five cups each raw, or 300 cups of food. Ignoring our time and work, the total cost was just under $95. Not bad, really.

Here’s Tula, enjoying a bowl of the finished product. I, on the other hand, enjoyed a well earned nap.

Addendum: Oh, and can I just say how stupid I feel for having defended the right of Bernann McKinney to love her cloned Pit Bull, only to learn she’s actually an on the lam, sexual predator whack job? Nice one, universe. Thanks for the metaphysical slap upside o’ the head.