Saturday, January 28, 2012

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.


10 comments:

  1. your mom is so awesome! we've talked about doing this for our girls but i know myself and i know i won't keep up with it. we feed them the best quality food we can find and give them good quality supplements. maybe someday they will get to be spoiled like you three!

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  2. how much do each of you get to eat at each meal?

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  3. Wow, your mom is great! We were on home made raw diet, but when Minnie had pancreatitis, the vets said special kibble would be best for her. Since on RX kibble, she's only had 1 other flare up of pancreatitis. Hu-mom said it was lots of work, but worth the effort! Your's looks yummy.
    And thanks for the comment about Miss Daisy's red nostrils turning black again when healed! How long does it take for them to get back to normal?

    I can't believe how great MAPR is and what they do for all their puggies! There were 7 adoptions this weekend!

    Drools and licks,
    Minnie and Mack

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  4. Hello ladies! Well you sure are lucky pugs. Us too, I guess. Mom cheats and uses Honest Kitchen for most of our veggies, but she just finished a weeks worth of meat loaves, with lean beef ground fresh by our butcher Charlie, at our local market.(mom likes to keep it local too) there is nonfat cottage and eggs in our meatloaf too. Clean up is her least favorite part too. Mom makes a weeks worth. Looking at having two weeks in the hopper is looking mighty fine right now. That would mean ten pounds of ground chuck! Whoever Chuck is, he's mighty tasty!

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  5. Oh my dog, this is so cool! My mom isnlooking forward to the next installment of this story (so am I! Maybe she'll learn a thing or two!).
    Love,
    Marlene

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  6. The food looks yummy! We feed grain free escpecially after Tubbys cancer scare, but we agree pugs are not all that close to wolves, but you would be amazed to see a pug tearing apart a raw bone they do look pretty wolfish! Mom used to make all of our food but it was tough because Norbert is so big. Norbert wold need the size for all three of you guys for a week, and Bob almost as much. Premade raw was too expensive for the big guys, they needed about a bag a day. So we went back to grain free kibble with supplements and cooked toppers. You guys are very lucky to have such a great mom

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  7. I had my suitcase all packed and was ready to move in with you....then Mom caught me at the door.

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  8. I'm drooling on the keyboard! What I'm wondering is why you girls didn't sneak some for me while you were visiting?!? Hehee!
    Love,
    Payton

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  9. such lucky pugs! I totally sympathize with the massive effort it takes -- I also used to make my pugs' food, before their multiple medical problems required them to be on special kibble!

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