How to Make Homemade Dog Food

The Wee One is big.  Like....195 pounds big at the last vet visit with Dr. Cindy.  Weighing him is a challenge because he is too long for step on scale so it takes a lot of maneuvering to get all four wheels on the platform.  So....we are gonna say "around 195-ish".  Whatevs....he's big.  He weighs more than me and if he ever figured out that he could pull ME around by the laughable canvas leash....I dunno--yikes.

Established: He's Big.  In order to get big, he has to eat. And not exercise a lot.  Not unlike Sumo Wrestlers' plan, I imagine.  He's still got some puppy in him, so he moves quite a bit, but in short bursts and then....done.  It is also not unusual for him to lay down, flop on his side and remain there while we are "on a walk".  In quotes because it is really more a meandering than an organized walk.  LOTS of sniffing and lollygagging.

The third most often made comment: "How much does he EAT?!?!"  (First: "What kind of dog is that?"  Second: "Is that a dog or a horse/pony/bear cub/calf?"  This is not a lie.) He eats.  He eat a lot more than a Pomeranian.

I make most of his food.  Two reasons: Firstly, the larger the breed (Mastiffs belong in the Giant Breed category) the shorter the life span.  5-7 years, 10 if we are really lucky.  So, I make his food so I can have hope that we will see the longer, rather than the shorter, end of the lifespan range.

Secondly, the cost.  IF the first reason is most important above, then we are not going to get Cheapo Dog Food.  The specialty brands for Giant Breeds are few, but they do exist.  We still give him commercial kibble and have found that Holistic Select fit well for us.  They had a Giant breed puppy formula that we started with and then just transitioned into the adult formula.

It ain't cheap....50 bucks or so for a 30 pound bag.  If he is eating 4 cups of kibble TWICE a day, that bag is not lasting very long.  It was 5 cups when he was growing.  Christ.  That is a lot of money.  Worth it, to be sure, as the Wee one is pretty important to us. So, we try this.

This makes enough for a week's worth of wet food.  To a serving of this we add a cup of kibble at each meal.  The cast of the show: chicken, barley, rice, veggies, pasta.  That's it.

Chicken: It is the cheapest and often whole chickens are the cheapest....but if I can get it on sale at least cut up a little---maybe some split chicken breast, I snap those up.  I need about 4.5 pounds of meat, so I look for a 5 pound chicken.

Barley: Bought in bulk.  Whatever is on sale at the co-op. 2 Cups.

Rice: bought in bulk, 25 pound bags....my mother-in-law has been sweet enough to get this for us at Sam's Club. 4 cups, sometimes I add a little more.

Pasta: Barilla doesn't get as gummy as Creamette which is generally cheaper than Barilla.  But when my grocery store has a stock up sale, I stock up.  And by stock up, I mean 20 boxes for 20 bucks.  I go through a box of pasta maybe every 2-3 weeks making food, so I can usually bridge from sale to sale this way. 2 cups.

Veggies: Almost anything....typically, Sweet Potatoes when they are on sale.  A good size one is more than enough for one batch.   I have also just used frozen mixed vegetables, green beans, apples, spinach, carrots make a frequent appearance....really, whatever is cheapest or on sale at the grocer's.  4 cups are needed.

If I have a whole chicken, I will remove the skin, take off the thigh/drumstick portion and then split the breasts.

I have to make it in two pots, so this makes dividing the amount of meat equally between the two pots.

Each pot, with all ingredients added gets 14 cups of water.  I have the humongoid Pyrex measuring cup that can double as a mixing bowl to measure this.

I had a pretty good size sweet potato that was just under 4 cups, so I added in an apple that was sitting out. I leave the seeds out as I think I read somewhere they have toxic dealies for dogs.  

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Simmer for 45-50 minutes, stirring occasionally so the stuff on the bottom doesn't burn to the pan.

When all is done, I remove the meat and put it in my Pyrex measuring bowl to cool a little and give the rest of the mixture a little more cooking time to get rid of some of the liquid if needed.  It can still have some liquid that will firm up the finished product once cooled.  That makes it easier, and cleaner, to eat.

I have also boiled or roasted the chicken ahead of time and let it cool completely to ease the meat removal.

Once I have removed the meat, I add it back to its pot and stir.

I have a bunch of Tupperware stuff that is stack-able for the fridge.  If we had a smaller dog that didn't eat through all this in a week, we would freeze it.  It does freeze well; you also have to remember to thaw it out in time or face the wrath of a hungry dog trying to eat a Popsicle....which we have done in the summer

.........outside.

All told, I get enough for 7 days worth of food for him.  Each container holds 3-4 cups.  Sometimes I have 12 containers, sometimes I have 15 containers.  Meh.  I don't worry about it too much as it will all even out in the end.

That's it.  I love the Wee One and he loves this food.

Drying peppers....the lazy way.

I have a crap load of hot peppers. Mostly because a salsa pepper plant was mislabeled as an Italian Roaster plant at the nursery. It was also quite productive. There is no way we could go through the amount of hot peppers that the garden produced. It was a repeat of ZucchiniGate '04. I could put these on the radiator on a cookie sheet, but I can't have them sitting out that long as we have the house on the market and I don't want to deal with them should we have a showing.
Some are still green, and I might roast those. My housemate when I lived in Santa Fe would add roasted green chilies to her chicken soup. It was phenomenal. These two pictures were taken after I took out the red peppers to dry.
The last batch I did about a month ago, I took out the veins and the seeds. I am going to leave them in this time as see what happens in terms of drying. The heat of a hot pepper is in the veins and the seeds, so I already know this will be a much more heated batch. I cut the stems off and cut them in half. I arranged them willy-nilly on my favorite half cookie sheet from my mother in law, cut side up. Putting them in the oven on the lowest setting is what we want. We are trying to mimic the sun naturally drying the peppers.
This is after two hours at about 180 degrees.
After three hours. The edges are curling, the color is deepening and my whole kitchen is starting to smell like roasting peppers, even though we are not roasting.
I took out the small peppers before putting the sheet back in the oven. I don't want to burn them. I am going to let them cool down to check if they are brittle enough. I can always put them back in. What we are looking for is dried, completely, all the way through. We don't want them to mold. That would be bad. Very bad. I have to wait for them to cool completely in order to check that. While they are still warm, they are kind of bendy and leathery. Once they cool, it is a much more accurate check.
This is after four hours.
This is after five hours. Same temperature. I usually set the timer for an hour, just so I don't forget them and end up burning the house down. That would be bad. Very, very bad. I would probably get in trouble for that. I, apparently, am not to be trusted with candles either. I love candles.
These are the few that I took out a while ago, and it is the next day. You can see how they are a little translucent. We like that. Not all are going to be like this, especially if you leave the veins in, as some pepper varieties have thicker, meatier walls than others. I have four different varieties in this batch. I am not a Militant Freakshow about keeping the varieties separate. I don't think I will use even all these, but we have a friend, with whom we smoke meat, who makes his own meat rub mix. I can always get in good with him if I show up with a jar of dried peppers for him to grind into a powder for rubs.
This is after six hours and, again, the next day. On first look, I think they were in too long. But, it is a test and we shall see how they crumble.
These are the few that I left out. They are such a purty color of red. I like putting them in glass jars an putting them up on the shelf with my dried beans and other supplies that are also in glass jars.
I ended up putting a few peppers back into the oven for a couple hours. They were kind of sticky when I went to crush and crumble and I thought they had too much moisture (Ish. Hate that word.) still in them. I got a half jar of crushed red pepper flakes...correction: chunks. I like it chunkier, you can always crush them up into tinier pieces or even put them through a spice mill or coffee grinder to make chili powder. If you use your coffee grinder, run a couple batches of white rice through first to clean out the coffee.

Pepper Roastin'.

Remember this from yesterday? Today, we are going to look at one way to roast peppers...red, green, hot, mild, sweet. The whole sordid lot. There they are, top right, having been picked minutes earlier from my garden. I have found that they are easiest to peel after roasting if they are fresh. The fresher, the better.

My mother in law works at a hospital and gave me a surgical tray one year for Christmas. It was seriously one of the most useful and beloved Christmas gift ever received. It is about the size of a half cookie sheet, shaped like a jelly roll pan with higher sides and just perfect for this, or most any, cooking or baking job.

My broiler is in the oven as opposed to a separate unit below; turn that baby on and put all the peppers in for some roastin.

Now, there are a lot of different ways or locations to roast peppers.

In Bulgaria, every fall at my bloc apartment building, people would roast over open fires and do multiple humongoid bags in one day. They were making lutenitsa, among other things, which is a roasted pepper spread.

When I lived in Santa Fe, I witnessed (in a parking lot of all places) a huge hopper for the green "Hatch" chili peppers being roasted over, again, an open fire. This hopper was like a Bingo numbers cage on steroids. It was made out of wire and was on a rotisserie that could constantly be turned to jumble the peppers so they could all get flame licked.

I have also seen then done on a grill, but this seems to take longer if the grill on top is keeping the peppers from direct flame. Think of the time to roast a golden brown marshmallow vs. the nuclear option that produces a flaming ball of molten mallow.

In a pinch, I have also roasted a pepper over the gas stove burner with metal tongs. Don't judge.

This is after a couple minutes. They are not ready to turn yet, you want the side to be completely black. You may hear some popping; that is the skin of the pepper bursting open to release the steam that is being built up inside the skin. If you are able to be patient and sit and watch the peppers during this first stage, you will see the skin bubble and form a blister before it turns black.

Now, these are mostly ready to turn to a different side. You can see some of the pepper juice and water from inside the pepper that has leaked out through the burst skin. Unavoidable....or at least I haven't figured out how to avoid it. I am thinking that turning more might prevent the skin from bursting, but then I am not building up the heat in the oven because I am constantly opening and closing the door.

Maybe it wouldn't make a diff.

This is after turning multiple times to get all surfaces blackened. You can see all the juices that have leaked out have also blackened.

Time to carefully move them to the paper bag. They can be pretty fragile, especially if they are stuck to the pan.

Any paper bag that can fit all the peppers and can still close can do. I usually use a paper lunch bag. If you are going mega-batch, you could potentially use a paper grocery bag. This is a bag from the liquor store that is a little bigger than a lunch bag. (Gin, if you must know.)

They don't need any special treatment at this point, other than having the bag closed.

Then, let them sit in a place that is out of the way for 15-ish minutes.

Unless you are me and you forget them because you are also in the process of peeling a butt load of tomatoes at the same time.

No matter.

The beauty of using the paper bag is that I just rip it open and make a place mat for the peeling stage. The peppers are soft, pliant and still warm at this point.

You want to make sure that you are using a variety of pepper that has pretty thick walls....peppers that have a lot of "meat" on them. Then there will be something left after you have peeled the skin a way. If the variety is too thin, you peel a hole into the pepper when you peel and there is nothing left.

The same thing will happen if you roast too long on one side...there will just be charred everything instead of peppers that have been roasted.

These peeled very nicely. It is a huge mess, but totally worth it. There was actually one pepper that the entire skin peeled off in one huge piece. I was going to take a picture but my fingers were all gunked up.

Make sure to take the seeds and the top off. You can take the veins that run up and down the sides, but sometimes I leave those in. If you have some seeds that stick to the peppers, it is no big whoop.

You won't suffer any catastrophic side effects or anything.

Now, I just have to soak the pan. Most of this will come off with soaking and scrubbing. I pretty much just use this pan for roasting, so I am not too concerned with getting every little bit off.

If you are the type to be concerned with things of this nature, use an old pan or one you have already designated for roasting. Don't use your all time fave. You will have tragedy.

I Kid You Not: Cucumber Soup

Yep. I'm a fan. Cold Soup.....I have yet to try Gazpacho in my life, but that is next on my list because I didn't think I would like this, but I do. I really do.

I learned to like it and how to make it while living in Bulgaria. This recipe is from my host mother in Bulgaria. I lived with her and her family for three months to learn Bulgarian before moving on to my teaching job in a small town in the Balkan Mountains.

What the h*ll was I doing in Bulgaria?!!? Peace Corps, baby, Peace Corps. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. America, for providing me the opportunity to both serve and live in another country on your (and my) dime.

Here's how you make Tarator Soup:

You need plain, unflavored yogurt, water, olive oil, salt, a cucumber (I only had a half, but I was only make enough for me; the recipe calls for one cuke, but it serves 2-3 people.), fresh dill, garlic and walnuts.

Huh?!?! Walnuts? I know. They are optional so if you are allergic, that's cool.

Peel the cucumber and dice that baby up. One might even be inclined to mince if you don't like chunky soup. I do. And I am lazy.

I added a pinch of salt and then later added more. You can always add more, depending on your tastes.

Then, you dice up a clove, or two, or three of garlic. I can't presume to know how much you love or hate garlic, so use your best judgement.

A few caveats: it does need at least a little garlic. If you are going to let it sit in the fridge for a while, use less garlic. The garlic will make itself known the longer it sits. It can becoming overpowering. It will eventually beat down the door and demand to be heard. I used one big clove.

At this point, I am already not following the recipe's order. The garlic is supposed to go with the yogurt, oil, water and dill in a separate place, get the crap shaken out of it to mix it and then poured over the cuke.

My thought is: It's all going to the same place and I can mix it up really well in the bowl I already have in use. If you are a purist of following a recipe and afraid to boldly go forth and scoff at the recipe's order of steps........don't do what I am doing.

If you are a purist, you would have another bowl, and to the garlic, add the dill. I have dumped the dill, chopped as finely as you like, in with the garlic and the cuke, and the salt.

We need to talk about yogurt. No fancy schmanzy flavored variety. You want plain, unflavored, nothing added to it business. You could use greek yogurt for a more authentic, thicker version. If you can find Bulgarian yogurt, use that. It is rather hard to find and essentially about the same as Greek yogurt. Tangy, thick and stout. Almost sounds like a good beer.

I recently got a yogurt maker and I love it. Now, I have just admitted I am lazy above, and this yogurt making is not a big deal to me. The store bought is fine. I like making my yogurt.....I make our bread in the bread machine as well. I am no Martha Stewart; I just like knowing what is going into my food, and if it is easy, I can be consistent about making it myself without preservatives. I shall not judge nor try to convert you from your current food practices.

It really is easy. This is about 6 ounces of yogurt.

Dump it into the same (Purist: separate bowl still.) bowl.

Mix it well. You don't want a clump of dill hitting your tastes buds and catching you by surprise.

You will also need to add some water to thin it out to the soup consistency you prefer. It's pretty thick otherwise; somehow Cold Cucumber Stew doesn't sound as refreshing, yes?

I just used my same yogurt jar and filled it almost halfway, about 3 ounces. It is still pretty thick, but I like it on the thicker side.

Mix some more. If you have been paying attention, you will have notices that I did not add/use the oil. I decided I didn't want it in there. I prefer it without, someone else might say it is crucial. Try it both ways and make up your own mind.

At this point, you are done. Chop up some walnuts and toss 'em on top. Serve. I used to not put walnuts on because it kind of ooked me out. The crunch with the creamy. But we are always evolving and I tried it with walnuts this summer. I must say, I am a fan. It really does make a difference to me. It adds that certain something. So. Use 'em, don't use 'em.....makes no difference to me. Just know that when you come to my house, you're getting walnuts whether or not you want them. Well, not if you are allergic; I don't want to kill ya. And I guess of you really don't want have walnuts, I won't make you have them. I am not a walnut fascist.

Try the soup. You might be pleasantly be surprised.

Here is the full on recipe:

Tarator

1 large cucumber sliced thinly or grated (about 2 cups)

1 small onion, sliced very thinly (optional) (My mom didn't make it with onion, but I've had it with and it is good.)

3 cloves garlic, grated

2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped

1.5 cups yogurt

.25-.50 cups water, depending on desired thickness level

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts

salt

Mix cucumber and onion in a serving bowl. In a jar (or not), shake/mix together the yogurt, oil, water,garlic and dill. Pour over cucumber and onion. garnish with chopped walnuts and serve. Makes 2-3 servings.