A Dog is a Dog is a Dog--Not a People

I almost did it, made the mistake so many people make, and tried turning Wesley and Willie into a people. Nope…they are dogs. They think like  dogs. They are not people, though they do out think me so much of the time.

The day Wesley got sick, very sick, so sick that we didn’t think there was any hope for him, we realized that we were doing something wrong.  His vet was worried, sent us to a 24-hour emergency clinic that admitted him and had no idea why he was so sick. We all prayed. He recovered.

It was then that we realized that we were barking up the wrong tree, treating him and Willie, like they were people. I had been working on a cookbook that I called “People Foods for Pets.” What a mistake! I had a website. I had designs. I had recipes. I did research. And then I realized that dogs are not people.

Dogs don’t use food as people do. We eat for enjoyment, for social interaction, for entertainment. Dogs eat to satisfy hunger…period. Sure, you can give them treats when they deserve them, but not the treats you would eat. DOG TREATS ONLY.

A chocolate chip cookie can kill your dog. Likewise, a piece of sugar-free gum.  Chicken bones can perforate intestines. We love our dogs. We know they love us in return. We hug them and pet them and sleep with them and kiss them, but we don’t want to kill them with kindness, and we can if we’re not careful.

What made me say this?  I received an email with an article asking if it was safe to give dogs oranges. Why would you want to give oranges to your dog? Who knows and who cares if it’s safe? The best thing we can do for our dogs is to feed them high quality dog food, no variety, the same food all the time. And watch them to be certain that they don’t pick stuff up from the ground.

My dogs eat special recipe dry dog food that I leave available all the time so I don’t have to remember to feed them. I use an additive in their water the is in a half-gallon dispenser. Simple…sure. I walk them three times a day and monitor their poop.

 Just like what comes out from a baby, you can learn a lot from poop.  My parrots, on the other hand, eat everything we eat.  They demand what they see or smell and don’t stop screeching until they get what they want. They act like two year-olds, the only problem is that they stay two forever. Babies eventually get toilet trained. Dogs poop outside. Parrots are forever terrible two’s.

Confusion

I spent the last two hours trying, once and for all, to figure out what people food can be included in my dog food recipes. Some sources forbid garlic, while others say garlic is a good flea treatment. Some say garlic is OK if cooked in food, while others say never feed anything with garlic, even cooked.

Onions seem to be more of a problem, cooked or raw. Food cooked with wine is really confusing. The alcohol in the wine evaporates when it is heated, but the wine is still made from grapes, a serious no no.

Tomatoes are mentioned as a problem, but some sources specify tomato plants. My conclusion is that cooked tomatoes pose no problems.

So…Can I feed my dog everything I cook? Do I have to adjust my favorite recipes so I can include the food in my dog food recipes?

No and yes.

When I intend to make dog food from the same ingredients as my people food, I’ll make some adjustments.

·        Tomatoes and tomato sauce won’t be a staple, but, in limited quantities, they will go into the dog food.

·        Garlic and onions will be added to the recipe after the portion for the dog food has been separated. If the garlic and onions are sautéed prior to assembling the recipe, they can be added later.

·        Wine won’t be added until the last few minutes of the cooking—just continue cooking until the alcohol evaporates or the food may taste bitter.

·        Nothing will be cooked with raisins, macadamias, avocado, or any of the other forbidden foods.

·        Dog food will contain only a small amount of sugar and salt.

None of this is very complicated or difficult.

We can feed our pets people food with the same ingredients with only a few exceptions.

Who Needs Another Cookbook?

I have over 200 cookbooks sitting on my shelves. I use perhaps one or two recipes from each and, over the years, have altered each one and made up new ones that could be somewhat similar.

The pumpkin bread is a take off on one of the a recipes for banana bread that I selected from James Beard’s Beard on Bread (1973).  The whole wheat flour is one of my additions. Even way back in 1973 I was into whole grains and healthy cooking, trying to sneak nutritious ingredients into my recipes, but I still refuse to substitute for butter. I use 1% milk, but don’t mess with my butter.

My family and friends have been encouraging me to share my recipes, but I seemed never to have the time or inspiration to write the cookbook. Until now. Mikey is getting older, is a really fussy eater, and I have had my doubts about all the treats we stock for him.

If I could come up with a way to make food for Mikey with very little more effort than I now spend on everyday cooking, I figured we could all benefit. I started with treats, but will add veggies and main dishes as soon as I can figure them out.

My only concern is providing all the nutrients necessary to keep Mikey, who is a senior citizen, healthy. I concluded that it would help if I gave Mikey a daily multivitamin. Doggie vitamins aren’t expensive and are available on line and in retail pet stores.

Mikey had his first vitamin yesterday, but gave us a scare when he ignored the piece of chicken we offered him. I immediately started to worry that the “Mommy” biscuits hadn’t agreed with him and could have been the problem. The only way we could test Mikey’s condition was to suggest to him (You don’t tell Mikey what to do, you just make suggestions.) that we go for a walk, his favorite activity. When he acted like his normal “Mike-iac” self, jumping and spinning around, we concluded we had been snookered.

Mikey won again. And he ate the piece of chicken the minute we got home.

Was There Life Before the Cuisinart?

Is there one piece of equipment that changed my life in the kitchen? If you look at most of my recipes, within the first few lines I mention the food processor or Cuisinart.

In 1973 Zabar’s, the upper West Side Mecca for unusual food, announced that they would be selling the new Cuisinart machine at a discount. My mother, sister, and I met at Zabar’s and joined the other foodies in line on the first day that the Cuisinart was available. We all left with our trophies. I think it cost somewhere around $140, with Zabar’s discount that led to a lawsuit. Zabar’s won.

I remember they said the bowl was made of lexan, a plastic that was formulated for the space program. Plastic? Could it possibly last? It did. I remember breaking the tops off the blades so I could get them in the drawer—now they come that way.

Although I lived on Long Island at the time, I had to shop at Zabar’s because it was the only place I could buy masa harina, the stuff to make tortillas. Now I live in Miami and if I told people that I had to travel to get my masa, they would look at me like I was crazy. There’s a variety of masas available in every store that sells food, and Miami isn’t the only place to buy masa. It’s pretty universal, but I don’t know if there are many crazies out there who actually make homemade tortillas.

In that era, when cooking was a hobby and a passion, I used to make my own ravioli and sausages and had a cooking school in my house. I had to buy semolina in Little Italy and bread flour in hundred pound bags from the bakery supplier. When I lived in New York City and shopped at the local Vietnamese grocery store, I kept asking the grocer to get me bread flour, and he finally did. Now you can get bread flour and semolina in any grocery store.

Over the years I have amassed over 200 cookbooks, but still revert to the original recipes from Joanne’s Kitchen. When I was looking for a recipe for banana bread, I tried about four and finally settled on one that used a quarter pound of butter. Sorry, arteries, I cook with butter. I altered the recipe several times, replaced half of the white flour with whole wheat, and used it as the foundation for the pumpkin bread that is sitting on my counter summoning me to slice and eat. The companion pumpkin dog biscuits have been such a success that Mikey asks me for treats, knowing that I’ll give him a homemade biscuit rather than the store bought stuff he gets from my husband.

Now I have a later model Cuisinart. It’s bigger but very annoying—too safe and complicated. There’s not much I don’t do in the Cuisinart, from cutting vegetables and fruits for my birds to making bread dough. Because the Cuisinart is capable of kneading the dough, you have to be very careful when you add flour for a cake or anything leavened with baking soda or baking powder or you’ll end up with rubber.

My other latest greatest is a vita mix machine, my $400 blender. We still laugh at the day we were taken in by the vita mix man and bought one. It wasn’t a mistake. The prime use for my vita mix is making ice cream. (I hope the “vita” in the name is referring to “life” and not “vitamin.”) The vita mix is so powerful that it can even cook—if you can deal with the racket. No, I don’t prepare soup in my vita mix, but do use it to heat eggs for Caesar dressing and mayonnaise because I don’t like to consume raw eggs. I have to admit, though, that I’ve let it go too long and ended up with scrambled eggs on more than one occasion.

As much as I laugh at the “vita” in vita mix, I do try to use the right ingredients. My pumpkin bread contains whole wheat flour, as do most of the breads I make. When my children were small, they used to have meetings with the neighborhood kids on the front lawn, trying to figure out where they could get their hands on wonder (soft, squishy, white) bread. In school they traded their sandwiches on my 7 wholegrain cereal bread for the wonder kind.

Did they learn about good eating growing up in our house? I wish. My son’s house is stocked with all the junk he couldn’t get at home. I didn’t let them drink juice, just milk or water, because I thought that the fruit sugar was better consumed along with the fiber in the whole fruit. Everyone thought I was crazy, but now the common wisdom is that I was right. I apologize; they all raided the refrigerators in their friend’s houses looking for orange juice.

Now that everyone has moved out and my husband and I have only a Mikey dog and three parrots to feed, I’ve decided to try to forego a lot of packaged and prepared foods and treats in favor of people food. No, I’m not some sort of health food fanatic; I’m not interested in a raw or pure or green or macrobiotic or any other kind of fringe diet. I know I can feed my extended family the same food (with some exceptions) as we eat. As I make up recipes for dog food, I’ll spend the time to figure out the nutrients so no one is deprived and will use the dog treats only as a supplement to my parrots’ seed, nut, and raw fruit and vegetable diet.

So far I’ve made oatmeal dog biscuits and oatmeal cookies and pumpkin dog biscuits and pumpkin bread. It’s really easy and fun. As long as the kitchen is already a mess from the people food and the ingredients are on the counter, the dog food is a breeze. While the pumpkin bread was in the oven, I used the same messy Cuisinart bowl and tools to prepare the dough for the dog biscuits. The pumpkin bread and dog biscuits came out of the oven at the same time and Mikey and the birds were right there for samples.

Best of all, Mikey likes it.

Pets Really Can Eat People Food

   
     When I checked our last few supermarket receipts, I realized that Mikey (The King of our House) eats as well as we do. I know there has to be a better way, both economically and practically. 

     I cook dinner most nights and usually have too much food. (When I first got married and asked how to cook for 2, I realized the absurdity of the question.  So I cooked for 4 and we ate it.) I have wanted to feed some of my meals to Mikey, but always feared the consequences.

o       How do I know how much to feed him?            

o       How do I know what he can eat?

o       How do I know if the food will be dangerous?

     I know there have to be answers to my questions so I'm on a quest. I've always been a crazy cook and own over 200 cookbooks. Cooking is more a hobby to me than a chore. When my children were small and I used to send them to school with sandwiches on my homemade 7 Grain Cereal Bread, they would often trade them away.  They used to have meetings on our front lawn about the best house to get Wonder Bread.

     I used to have a cooking school and have amassed a collection of my own recipes. Now I want to figure out how to cook for King Mikey using the same ingredients as I use for my family.  I also want to make my own treats.  Even if I can't save a lot of money, I know Mikey will be better off if I know what is in his treats.

     First I have to do the research and determine the requirements for each type and size of dog. Then I'll figure out the calorie content in each ingredient. I'll come up with a diet fit for a King.