Food, glorious food!

We are some seriously lucky pugs. We get homemade food, made from human grade ingredients! Mom spends hours making it, although she really doesn't like to cook! Or clean up.

 The ingredients vary to make sure we have a good variety of stuff but for the most part, the ingredients are vegetables, sweet potatoes, whole grain and meat. 

We get all sorts of vegetables from broccoli and cauliflower to green beans and peas to turnips and greens. You name it, we've probably eaten it. Mom likes to get vegetables that are in season from our farm market so we get the freshest food possible. Right now, we are getting lots of root vegetables. 

For whole grains, we've eaten brown rice, oatmeal, quinoa, millet and barley to name a few. There's a big debate in the dog food world about dogs and grains. We are of the opinion that pugs are about as close to wolves as modern humans are to Neanderthals. While we support other people's choice of feeding closer to a wolf diet, it isn't for us. So we do think SOME whole grains are a beneficial part of our diet but they are a smaller part of the food overall.

As far as meats go, we've had beef, fish and pork successfully. Since Petunia is allergic to poultry, we don't get turkey or chicken any longer. Future meats will include lamb and bison, but bison is expensive! $7.99 a pound at our farm market. 

All the food is cooked. 

Veggies are steamed, then run through the food processor. Steaming helps retain the nutrients (as opposed to boiling) and turning them to mush helps us digest them.

Meat is cooked to remove some of the fat (if it has it). The grains are overcooked to make them as digestible as possible. The sweet potatoes are peeled, steamed and mashed. Although peels are good for nutrients, they don't digest in our tummies that well. And mom's food processor can't handle the volume of peels. 

Then it's all mixed together. Looks gross, right? 

After it's mixed (two batches using the big turkey roaster as a mixing bowl), it gets put into one cup containers. A typical batch of food yields 40 cups of food or almost 2 weeks worth of food for three pugs. 

Most of this will go into the freezer, to be pulled out as needed. 

Next up, why mom does all of this for her spoiled rotten pugs.