Honest Kitchen Archives - French Bulldogs by Bullmarket

A Plethora of Preggos & Chicken Banana Pudding Soup

I’m sorry, I know alliteration is the red headed step child of blog titles, but I couldn’t resist — It’s finally become apparent that Penelope wasn’t just being moody and picky and even more Princess-y than usual. She’s actually pregnant.

Which means — yay! Two sets of stinky bum, puppy breath, sock chewing little darlings to terrorize the old timers.

The downside, of course, is that if Paris is actually pregnant, too, I could be in for some fun times. Fun as in ‘no sleep, no eat, never leave the house again, clean up more dirty newspapers than should be humanly possible without losing your mind’ fun.

So far, though, she doesn’t look pregnant. She’s not getting all milky moo cow looking, she’s not gaining any weight (more than she usually carries on chunky physique, that is), and her baboon butt has disappeared. None of that bodes well for puppies, although to be quite honest it does bode well for my chances of ever getting any sleep after Labour Day weekend rolls around.

Both Tula and Penelope went off their food slightly, but Tula got her appetite back in about 48 hours. Of course, 48 hours is practically a hunger strike for Tula, but it was still worrisome. Penelope, who usually sucks down food like a vacuum cleaner on steroids, has been more stubborn about it. My usual raw mix wasn’t cutting it, and neither was lean chicken breast, ground beef and rice, or anything else we tried. Just as I was starting to get worried, I remembered we had a leftover box of Honest Kitchen ‘Embark’ in the freezer. I figured it was worth a try, and mixed her up a bowl.

Now, if you’ve never fed it before, Honest Kitchen has a sort of steep learning curve. It’s raw, but it’s been dehydrated, so initially it looks like a box of upscale chicken soup mix (if soup mix commonly had grass clippings and banana chips mixed into it).

Dry Embark – Banana Chip on top. The yellow lumps are chicken

You mix it with water, and it turns into a sort of slurry. Leave it sit for a while to re hydrate, and eventually it looks like.. well, like grass clipping, banana chip, chicken pudding soup.

Mmmm…

Re hydrated Embark – yummy!

But here’s the thing – after a week of refusing to eat more than two bites of food at a time, Penelope took one sniff of the bowl of green pudding, and sucked it back like it was the most awesome thing she’d ever tasted. She hasn’t let up since. Oh, and it gives them tiny little non smelly poops, which is an added bonus.

I’d always liked it in the past for weaning puppies, but now — big convert over here. Penelope gives Honest Kitchen two big, pregnant thumbs up.

Speaking of which, here’s a photo taken this morning of her chunkiness. Sorry for the bad stack, but it was starting to drizzle, and a grape can only hold a dog’s attention for so long.

Honest Kitchen Dog Food Assesment

January 19, 2008/9 Comments/in French Bulldog Stuff /by frogdogz

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, I picked up some samples of Honest Kitchen dog food to try out on Ellie. I picked up a trial sized packet of each of the foods made by Honest Kitchen – Force, Embark, Preference and Thrive. The samples were kindly provided by the Canadian distributor of Honest Kitchen, Companion Dog Xpress, located right here in Durham, Ontario.

I decided to start with Thrive, their diet for dogs with sensitive stomachs. From the Honest Kitchen website:

Thrive is our gluten-free, low carbohydrate dog food. This diet was designed to cater to dogs of all life stages including adults, puppies, pregnancy and nursing. Thrive is ideal for sensitive dogs who need gluten-free dog food but with a little grain, to help maintain a healthy body weight.

My initial impression on opening the package was that it smelled strongly, but not unpleasantly, of kelp. The color reflected this – in appearance, Thrive looks something like finely ground grass clippings. This makes sense, when you realize that the fourth through seventh ingredients of Thrive are Spinach, Parsley, Organic Kelp, and Rosemary.

I followed the feeding recommendations, and mixed a cup of dry food with a cup and a half of lukewarm water. Roughly ten minutes later, the food was the consistency of thick soup. In hindsight, I think that the water to food ratio I followed was too high, especially when preparing it for a dog who has difficulty with differently textured foods.

Ellie took one look at the bowl of Thrive, and turned her back on it. After a few minutes, she deigned to sniff it warily, and lap up a few mouthfuls. The mournful expression she turned on me clearly said “Have you lost your mind? I’m not eating this.” And, sure enough, two mouthfuls were as much as she ate, and this in a dog who usually clamors for her food. Honest Kitchen will not be Ellie’s new food of choice, so we’re back to soaked kibble for now.

I split the bowl of Thrive into two portions, and fed it to Paris and Tula. They both inhaled it in less than a minute, and knocked the bowls around in an attempt to clean out every last particle of food. Apparently some dogs really like Thrive – but bear in mind that Tula and Paris are the most food motivated dogs I own, and would happily wood chips if given the opportunity.

The finely ground texture of Honest Kitchen’s food made me consider how suitable it might be for a weaning food.

I usually follow the same protocol when weaning our puppies: start them on rice pablum mixed with formula; move up to ground kibble mixed into the pablum; add raw at an increasing rate until the pups are eating raw only.

I then feed the pups soaked kibble one meal per day, in an effort to ensure that any new owners who choose not to feed raw aren’t faced with overly fussy eaters. The whole process takes about two weeks.

The problem with ground kibble is that I’ve had pups who cough or choke on it. The texture is grainy, and doesn’t agree with a lot of puppies. Honest Kitchen is so finely ground that I decided to give it a try on Solo this morning. He’s been eating pablum mixed with formula for about a week now, and I had been planning to introduce ground kibble to his diet this weekend. I decided to try mixing in some Embark, instead.

The appearance of Embark was similar to that of Thrive, as was the smell, but it’s darker in color and smells less strongly of kelp. The ingredients in Embark are —

Hormone-free USDA turkey, organic flaxseed, potatoes, celery, spinach, carrots, coconut, apples, organic kelp, eggs, sesame seeds, bananas, cranberries and rosemary.

I mixed a teaspoon of Embark in with the tablespoon of pablum, added warm formula, and left the mixture to sit while I fed Solo his bottle. After about fifteen minutes, the mixture was slightly thicker than pablum on its own. It had tiny flecks of green, orange and brown in it, and a pleasant smell.

Solo seemed really enthused about trying it, and lapped up the entire dish, even licking it clean afterwards. It’s been a few hours since he ate, and there’s no sign of any stomach upsets or diahrrea.

I’ll keep feeding him the Embark this weekend, and if there are still no stomach upsets, I think I will officially consider it my second stage weaning food, replacing ground kibble. I like that it’s a raw food, that it’s not extruded (or even baked), and that it’s made with organic, hormone free meats.

It’s always nice to find a new food I feel comfortable feeding, and that the dogs seem to enjoy – even if I still can’t get Ellie to eat it.

Snowy Day Food Blogging

January 18, 2008/1 Comment/in French Bulldog Stuff /by frogdogz

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?

I 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.

Next 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.