Find yourself a butcher

This is the good that comes from finding a local butcher. We have recently relocated to British Columbia Canada. It's been super SUPER busy but we found the time to check out a very little and very local butcher here in the community to see what we could find for ourselves and for the family zoo (Ruben, Calvin and Calico the crazy cat). Did we ever SCORE! Not only do they package up meats in convenient sizes for dog food they feature this: one pound frozen blocks of organ meat for much less expensive than the grocery store. These are GREAT because they are made up of kidney, liver and heart and they're all chopped up. NICE. Okay, heart meat is more considered muscle meat than organ meat so we also added extra chicken heart but STILL, this is fabulous! No more wondering if you'll be able to find the organ meats at the grocery store and no chopping or need to attempt blending organ meat. (Read the dos and don'ts of making your own food here)

AND they also had this: one pound blocks of whole ground chicken and again, less expensive than the grocery store! How perfect is this?! Because there is also bone ground in with the chicken, there is no need to add calcium. These are also perfect for cat food. The butcher also won major points with us because they stock Lucky Dog Biscuit. Cool.

Because we have two 50+ pound very active dogs that eat LOTS, the recipes I make at home are considerably larger than the ones I post here but below is the super easy recipe for the chicken dinner we whipped together tonight. Easy peasy my friends:

10 lbs chicken meat
1 lb organ meat
1 lb chicken hearts
.5 cup brown basmati rice
4.5 lbs frozen carrots and chicken
1 lb spinach
5 quartered apples
2 cups water
8 garlic cloves
2 tbsp dried oregano leaves

The only think that needs to be chopped here is the apples and it's only 2 cuts each. Combine all ingredients in a LARGE turkey roaster and cook at 350 for 2 hours if meat is thawed and closer to 3 hours if meat is frozen. DONE. Portion into smaller tupperware dishes and freeze or put in one large tupperware and refrigerate. This will last about 5 days in our house. We also top the meals with a teaspoon of fish oil.

I'm not sure you can see it in these pictures but Calvin and Ruben are actually quivering while they wait for the food to cool.

So check out your local butcher if you're considering making food for your dog. I was completely shocked that they catered to people who want to cook for their dogs or feed them raw, and even MORE SHOCKED that they were less expensive than the grocery store. And the cherry on top was that I was supporting a Lucky Dog Biscuits retailer. Good Stuff!

Comments

[hong]

where is the butcher that you use with the block liver organs