Thanksgiving Dinner for All of Us (Mikey too)

 

More Pictures on my People Food for Pets Facebook Page

We had our first Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday night. A turkey was thrust on me so I figured I’d better take the plunge and do Thanksgiving. I’m working on my People Pets cookbook so I seized the opportunity to experiment with only dog safe foods.

So I consulted the list, (it’s at the end of this post) and got to work. It was a bit of a challenge—I never cooked for Thanksgiving without garlic and onions and tomatoes and mushrooms…..But I think I succeeded. Everything tasted good, in spite of the omissions.

This also turned into a migraine free Thanksgiving. When I eat like a dog, I don’t get headaches. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. I cast aspersions at people who treat their dogs like people, but Mikey has taught me how to eat. Could it be that he treats me like a dog?

 

Bad for Dogs	Bad for Migraines
aged cheese	aged cheese
alcohol	alcohol
bananas	bananas
beer	beer
caffeine	caffeine
chickpeas	chickpeas
chocolate	chocolate
citrus	citrus
corncobs	corncobs
eggplant	eggplant
garlic	garlic
ketchup	ketchup
mushrooms	mushrooms
mustard seeds	mustard

Please Check This Out--This article upset me

Important info about feeding your dog

I just found this website. I was especially interested in and frightened by the article about chicken jerky, Mikey’s favorite. Time to do some more cooking for Mikey and to convince my husband that just because Mikey Likes It, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s OK. This week I’ll be working on Thanksgiving for the whole family, including Mikey.

New Info About Artificial Sweeteners

Aspartame has been Renamed and is Now Being Marketed as a Natural Sweetener

Someone Really Thinks Like Me

I came across this Blog Post and had to reply:

You sound like me. My bookshelves are stuffed with over 200 cookbooks and the collection keeps growing. Do I use them all? Of course not, but I know what each one contains, because I too read cookbooks like they are novels.

Finally, after cooking for family and friends, I’ve decided it’s time to cook for my fuzzy son, Mikey. I’m working on a people-dog cookbook and having fun trying to adapt my tried and true recipes so their ingredients are all dog-safe.

My cookbooks have a history; some of them are stuffed with clippings from the New York Times and tons of magazines, others with faded bindings as a result of years of living under skylights. There are the new ones that are still on my living room coffee table and old community cookbooks with crumbling plastic bindings. I may not remember the stories in the novels I read in the last month, but, somehow, I remember what’s in each cookbook.

Could I ever throw any of them away? I don’t think so because each one is a living thing, having lived through years of abuse on my kitchen counter and next to the sputtering frying pan. I’ve tried to resort to using cookbooks on my Kindle and recipes from the Internet, but they’re not the same. Cookbooks have to be fully dressed; they can’t be squeaky clean and simplistic.

I’m hoping my cookbook will be fun and practical and interesting. In its infancy, you can see it on my website: http://www.peoplefoodforpets.com.

Oh, To Be Color Blind

Every year, in early November when my father’s birthday approaches, I think about his legacy. Yes, he really was color blind--he couldn’t tell the difference between green and gray—but, way more important—he was philosophically and morally color blind.

Too frequently something happens that brings him back to life. When Jimmy Carter said that he blamed the opposition to President Obama on anti-black sentiments, explaining that he was from the South and was qualified to recognize prejudice, we understood. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/seeing-in-color/200912/prejudice-and-obamas-opposition-0. Why did someone shut him up? Why didn’t he every repeat his thoughts?

Isn’t it time we all faced the truth? If you live in the morally isolated northeast or northwest, you may find it easy to insulate yourself.

I remember a business trip to Richmond, Virginia. I entered a large store and felt almost at home. The street was clean, the stores were familiar. Then I left the store through the rear exit. All I could think of was that I had been transported to downtown Newark (before it was somewhat gentrified). No, there weren’t signs to tell us who could drink out of each fountain, but it sure felt like a different city.

We spent many weekends in the Lake Okeechobee vicinity in central Florida. When we asked the locals where we could get some good barbecue, they suggested two restaurants. So we proceeded to try each. Why were we the only whites in only one of them? South Florida may be like New York south, but the rest of the state, not so much.

 I really must be naïve. I thought that my father’s lessons and attitudes were heard by more than just me. He was a real pioneer. He was the president of the local Brotherhood Council for years while I was growing up. I never knew who would appear at our dinner table: the local Catholic priest, the Methodist minister, a member of the NAACP, his doctor friend from India. I still doubt that my mother accepted my father’s friends without question, but she was smart enough to keep quiet.

Where did my father, who would be 99 on November 7 of this year, learn? He grew up in Brooklyn, but served in the Army during World War II. Could it be that when you have to depend on someone for basic survival, you become color blind? Or was he just a good person?

When the time came to vote in the last presidential election, we chose to vote early. We selected a polling place where we knew we would wait in line for hours with the local Haitian community. I just wanted to experience pure joy and excitement. There were people distributing drinks and chips and cookies, and it felt like a block party.

 When Barack Obama won the election, I felt the euphoria of my freshman year in college, when we stayed up all night to see John F. Kennedy elected. Will we ever feel that way again?