greene's blog: DIY dog food

This is part 2 of my Thanksgiving blog post.

Yesterday, half the world was preparing for Thanksgiving, cooking up a storm. I did the same but in my case, I was making dog food. It's my own recipe and it turned out well. During the prep, I offered my dogs some of the cooked chicken livers which is a good thing. It turns out that my newest dog Chico Burrito does not like chicken livers. No worries. I just divided the ingredients and made one batch with livers and one without. Since I don't have an oven, three cooking methods: slow cooker, Instant Pot, and microwave. The microwave was the clear winner, hands down! Oh, I guess that emoji would be 'hands up'.

Microwaved meatloaf for dogs:


The original plan was to achieve something that would slice like meatloaf but even though it's tasty, it's a bit too crumbly so I needed to change the packaging method:


Portion control packages without livers:


With livers:


When people start talking about all the hard work they did to prepare for their Thanksgiving meal, I no longer have to say, "I live alone and have no one to cook for". That would pretty much bum people out so now I can smile, nod my head and agree, yep, it's a lot of work preparing food.

Here's my recipe:

1 pound chicken livers (rinsed, microwaved in water, drained, cooled) $1.68
1 pound brown rice (cooked in Instant Pot, cooled) $ .79

2 pounds ground chicken (raw) $6.00
2 bags frozen peas & carrots (not thawed) $1.68
1/4 cup dried parsley $ .22
1 can pumpkin $ .87
1 can black beans (drained and rinsed), $ .58
3/4 cup old-fashioned oatmeal (uncooked) $ .18
1/4 cup textured vegetable protein $ .27
1/4 cup nutritional yeast $.41
8 eggs ($ .00...I keep chickens!)
pulverized eggshells $ .00

I used coconut oil in each cooking container to prevent sticking. $ .18
Shredded cheddar cheese will be added when serving. $1.79
Yield 40 servings at approximately 36 cents each. Not bad. Next time I'll try to catch a sale on the chicken.

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