Even *Dog Food* from Scratch is not Hard!

I thought, after talking to my aunt (who is one of my cooking inspirations - you will hear more on my aunt and my father, no doubt, following this blog!), that this might be a timely post after some of the bad press dog food has gotten recently.

This is my Hamilton:

As you can see, he is a dearly beloved little dog!

He is also an unfortunately *picky* little dog, who will not take pills unless they are ground up in wet food - which has to mean gluten free, in my refrigerator! So, for a while there, I did the expensive-gluten-free-canned-dog-food route. Then - I started tossing ingredients in the crock pot.

I vary what I use: it’s always a meat, some kind of frozen vegetable,  and rice. Today it’s chicken, as you can see; frozen chopped broccoli, because that’s what I had in the freezer; and brown rice.

The meat I use varies widely by what I’ve got in my freezer and what’s been on sale at the store. He’s had cheap cuts of beef, pork chops, chicken, fish - yes, this little one even likes fish! The dog food in the freezer now was made from frozen salmon, because that was what was on sale. 

He usually gets frozen peas and carrots for the vegetable. I forgot to buy any of those; hence the chopped broccoli, which was already in my freezer. Green beans are supposed to be good for dogs too; this one just won’t eat them. 

Meat and vegetable into the crock pot with enough water to cook the rice later! And now while that slow-cooks, I’m going to make the deadly beloved dog mad by going to pop him in the bathtub. 

Returning several hours later! Chicken is done, so I pull it out to shred, and add two cups of rice to the crock pot while I’m cooling and shredding chicken. 

You will not do this without company. I never do.

Return the shredded chicken/pork/beef/flaked fish/whatever back to the crock pot and give it an hour or so to cook the rice!

A note on storing: That’s a problem for which I’ve never found a real satisfactory solution. Most of it gets frozen, of course, but I don’t have enough room in my freezer usually for extra Tupperware. I use the sandwich size ziplocks. It’s kind of a mess getting dog food into ziplocks, but they lay flat and don’t take up much freezer space! 

This was, of course, dinner tonight. He does love chicken!