This is a hilarious blog from my best friend Kmac that I just absolutely had to share. In case you're wondering what I have been doing in between work and school ... Here's a little insight into my life these days. My dog Lilo that you have all seen me speak about often was dealing with severe allergies. I wasn't able to take seeing her suffer anymore so in February of this year I decided to start feeding her raw. She is a different dog and I will never go back! So as I said before, here's some insight into what some of my Friday nights are like. We are weird yes. But we have a great time. This is a long one but a must read. <3 B
Kmac's Tips for Making Raw Dog Food
This past Friday night, my friend B and I had dog food date night, as we do about once a month. We get off work at 6:00 and go to two different grocery stores for ingredients for the dog food as well as for stuff to make ourselves dinner and usually margaritas The food we make starts with a base of bone-in chicken thighs and then we add about 50% boneless meat to that (turkey, pork, beef, etc). We typically can get through Costco (the first stop) without being asked too many questions. But we ALWAYS have to explain ourselves in the check out line at our regular grocery store when the cashier wants to know what chicken hearts taste like. Apparently in that neck of the woods, it not that normal to find girls our age buying out the store's supply of chicken livers, gizzards hearts and necks on a Friday night. We've gotten strange looks from many a soccer mom in Juicy Couture sweat suits, wondering what the heck we were going to do with all of those chicken parts or looking at a cow tongue with wide eyes.
After we finish shopping, we arrive at my house, set up the grinding station, open up our snacks and make a batch of margaritas. We always get snacks because we know we won't be eating until very late. Plus when my blood sugar is low I'm not allowed in public or to be in close contact with other humans, so spicy hummus and pita chips it is. Then we get busy steaming veggies, opening cans of sardines and cracking eggs into our giant mixing bowl. We put the organ meat and cooked veggies through the grinder, add some ground turkey and then package the food into 12 oz portions for B's French bulldog, Lilo. Keep in mind that this is a pretty long and tedious process since we weigh each portion and spoon it out of the giant mixing bowl that holds around 30 lbs of ground up meat slop. Then we put all of the containers in the freezer and take a snack/margarita break. You may not believe this once you keep reading, but on this particular night, we had been too involved in what we were doing to drink ANY of our margaritas until then.
At this point it's about 10 pm and we feel like we're doing okay on time, all things considered. So we get started on the next batch that will feed my two dogs and my cat. As we were steaming a second batch of veggies it occurs to us that we have completely omitted the chicken thighs from Lilo's food. It was funny because the whole purpose of having a 58 lb meat grinder is to grind bone-in chicken thighs, yet we managed to finish a whole batch of food without grinding anything except veggies and organ meat. So we collect all of the containers from the freezer, dump them back into the giant mixing bowl, grind the chicken thighs, mix it together and repackage the meat.
Margarita break!
Then we get started on our second batch. We were not about to make the same mistake again, so we start with the chicken thighs this time, then grind the organ meat, cooked veggies and stir in all of our other ingredients—sardines, yogurt, eggs, etc. We weigh the food (2lbs each for my critters), package it and put it all in the freezer. Then at around 1 am, we finally have time to make our own dinner—pork and chorizo sliders with bacon and "fancy sauce?" yes please!—and our last round of margaritas for the night. We eat, relax for a while and then B's sister comes to get her so she packs herself up and gets in the car to leave. We had a bridal shower to set up the next morning so we needed to sleep.
As they were pulling out of the driveway, I open the refrigerator in the garage to put leftovers away and nearly drop the dish I am holding. Sitting innocently on the top shelf is the ground turkey that was supposed to be mixed into the second batch of dog food. I run out in the driveway to tell my friend what had happened and we both have a good laugh and talk about how horrible it would have been to realize the turkey was missing AFTER the dog food was frozen solid. But it doesn't take long for the funny to wear off and reality sink in. So I do what has to be done ... I send B home and drag myself back into the house to re-mix the second batch of food, repackage it and put it in the freezer all by myself. I finally get to bed at around 2:30.
And now that you've read how raw dog food making can go wrong, I present, for your reading pleasure, my top 10 tips for making your own raw dog food without incident:
1. Spend the big bucks for a grinder that can handle bones. The cheapo grinders WILL break. It's a matter of when, not if.
2. Put all your ingredients in one place before you start grinding, otherwise you could forget the main ingredient.
3. Do your shopping ahead of time if at all possible. It feels like a lot less work when you split up the shopping from the food prep.
4. Make an evening of it. Be prepared with snacks and adult beverages (if you feel so inclined) kept far outside of the raw meat danger zone. If possible cook something in advance that you can heat up easily. In fact, if you're going to spend all night making dog food, you should probably just order pizza for dinner. Cooking for everyone at once gets overwhelming and raises the possibility of cross contamination. No one wants a side of raw meat juice with their taco salad. In fact ... no one wants taco salad after they've made dog food. Avoid anything that includes ground meat. No matter how good it sounds right now, it won't sound good after a meat grinding marathon.
5. Invest in a really big metal mixing bowl so you can make large quantities of dog food and freeze. The restaurant supply is a good place to get giant bowls for cheap. I'm talking 13 quarts for about $12. Also know that people will make fun of your giant bowl, but will be really impressed when they see how handy it comes in (and many of my friends have witnessed dog food date night and been both terrified and impressed at the same time).
6. Find a friend to help and together you can make hilarious meat jokes while you work (that's what she said!). B and I spend the majority of the time laughing at the things that happen in the kitchen, like pureed liver squirting out of the grinder across the room or big blobs of meat falling on the floor (meat down!) or accidental splattering of meat juice all over us (SAVE my margarita!!!).
7. Take care when feeding items with a high moisture content through your meat grinder. Maybe consider having someone create a meat juice barrier with a towel or a disobedient child. The projectile of a 1 lb container of liver can clear several feet. And don't leave anything in the line of fire, like a drink, that could potentially catch flying meat particles ... because if you do, that is definitely where they will land.
8. It might seem like a good idea at the time, but whatever you do, do NOT put your face over the feeder tube while the machine is running. Once, before I got my big 1 HP Cabela's grinder we were using a little 400 watt grinder. I swear that thing used to burst into tears when it saw us coming with all of those chicken bones. During its last good run, it got backed up and Husband Elect, who is completely grossed out by raw meat, looked into the feeder tube to see what was going on. He had put it in reverse and when he turned the grinder on, a chicken knuckle flew out and hit him right in his mouth. We were laughing so hard that tears were streaming down our faces. Highly entertaining, but possibly dangerous. Nobody wants to explain that they got their eye put out by flying chicken parts.
9. Keep it clean and be aware that this is not a project for the squeamish. Chicken hearts have tiny heart valves (barf) and raw meat has a smell that you won't soon forget. Liver is slimy and bloody and if you get meat on your hands and touch anything else (which you inevitably will) it doesn't take long before everything is covered with raw meat. You will get dirty. Your kitchen will get dirty. And you should really shower afterwards. Make peace with that before you start and when in doubt, wash your hands. Keep the spray bleach or hydrogen peroxide handy or your house will become a cesspool of meat. Put down newspaper if you can. Also if you have a digital kitchen scale, no matter how much meat juice gets on it, resist the urge to wash it under running water. It will break.
10. Making homemade dog food once a month seems like a lot of trouble, but it's really not that bad. It can actually be fun and it's rewarding to see how much the 4-legged ones enjoy it. Mine won't touch the store bought stuff anymore. My "finicky" Chihuahua never reached his full weight until he started eating raw. I always thought he was naturally skinny, but he really just hated his food. So I guess the final lesson is, try it, but you might never be able to go back. Don't say I didn't warn you.
3 years ago
