When I cook something that costs less and is more tasty/healthy than what I can buy premade, that gives me great happiness. So I love making yoghurt. Granola. Bread (although I cannot say my version is better than the MIX loaf I can get at the co-op, but still . . .). I’m on the verge of making my own cottage cheese now that Nancy’s has soared in price.
But my favorite homemade meal is what we around our house call Dog Stodge. Meaning it’s for the dogs. As anyone who knows me is aware, one of my least favorite things is waste. Dog stodge is such an opportunity for a multiple score: tasty (at least, that’s what the dogs say), healthy (you should see their coats), cheaper than storebought (much much much cheaper), and best of all, what makes it great is all the bits and pieces of vegetables that otherwise would have gone on the compost.
Over the years, I’ve honed the recipe. So even though it appears in, I believe, both Jam Today and Jam Today Too, it’s worth repeating. As always happens, I’ve gotten more flexible as years have gone by. More knowledgeable about what works over what doesn’t. Oatmeal, I find, is the healthiest, least expensive option for grain, for both the Dog’s Stodge, and for what we call around here the Husband’s Stodge (ie Granola: oats baked with honey, walnuts, almonds, cinnamon, vanilla, and dried cranberries; thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law Cindy Daniels for the recipe). If I don’t have enough oatmeal for some reason (we buy it, literally, by the ten pound sack load, and THAT doesn’t last long), I fill it out with bread ends I keep in a bag in the freezer, or leftover tortillas, or leftover rice, or leftover quinoa, the occasional lone baked potato not eaten at dinner . . . perhaps you get the idea?
For veggies: we keep a plastic bag in the back of the bottom shelf of the fridge and throw useful bits in there, collected for the next round of dog stodge cooking. So: Carrot trimmings. Celery trimmings. Outside leaves of cabbage and lettuce. Cabbage cores. Tops and tails of radishes. Greens that don’t look good enough for me to parboil, squeeze into a ball, and freeze for our own use later. Fennel stalks and fronds. Baked sweet potato skins (the husband doesn’t eat them, only the insides, and I said I hated waste, didn’t I? They go right off his plate into the plastic dog stodge veggie bag.) I’ve even occasionally used a chopped up, cored apple. Dogs like apples. Also stems of beets, collard greens, kale, parsley and cilantro.
For meat, I buy the least expensive I can find. This is usually beef kidney, heart or liver, which thankfully my dogs adore. Also chicken livers, chicken giblets, and—oh score! hamburger when it’s on sale. Then I buy a huge batch of it and freeze in portions.
Essentially the recipe is 1 part meat, 1 part grain, and 1 part veggie trimmings. This is adaptable, though. So often we have a great deal more veggie trimmings than anything else by the time cooking day comes around. No problem. I just add them. The meat flavors it all, especially if I’ve added a little chopped bacon to the mix. Or duck fat. Or a pat of butter that isn’t fresh enough to put on human bread. Or a swig from the olive oil jug.
Here’s what you DON’T want to use: No alliums. No garlic, no onions, no scallions. No raisins or grapes (poison to dogs, I have no idea why). No beans (hard on their digestions). No nightshade: no eggplant, no peppers, no tomatoes. Potatoes don’t count as vegetable, only as starch. Nothing citric: no tomatoes, no oranges, no lemons, no limes. No apple seeds (contain cyanide, you didn’t know that, did you? And I still eat them myself, just not a lot at once). I don’t recommend mushrooms. I once fed one of our dogs a batch of edible wild mushrooms, and ever after had to keep him from eating even poisonous ones during walks in the woods (hint: if your dog does eat poisonous mushrooms, make them throw up by forcing a spoonfull of mustard mixed with hydrogen peroxide down their throat. Saved my dog that way.)
Aside from all that, have at it.
Here’s the basic recipe.
Add to a large pot:
—Approximately one pound of meat of your choice, cut into bite sized bits if appropriate. Hamburger, liver, kidney, heart, giblet, ground chicken, ground turkey.
A little chopped bacon is nice to add, especially with chicken or turkey. A dab of fat is nice but not essential: butter, olive oil, duck fat.
—Approximately one pound of chopped up veggie bits: carrot, celery, lettuce, cabbage (green and red), fennel, zucchini ends, radish tops and tails, stems, an occasional apple (see above).
—Approximately one pound of starch: oatmeal is the best, I find. But anything else works as long as it’s not beans.
Salt. Add a little dried seaweed if you have it. Trace minerals!
Cover with water. Bring to a boil. Either cook on top of the stove on low for an hour, even longer if you want. Or, if your pot is ovenproof, cook in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour.
Let cool. My dogs always look startled if the dog stodge is hot, and refuse to wolf it down the way they do if cold or room temp.
Here’s what I do with a batch like that: divide it in half, putting half away in the freezer for next time. Then I mix two cans of green beans with the half remaining. This is because green beans are dog diet food. Our dogs are herding ones who can eat till they look like sausages with collars, so a little culinary sleight of hand is needed to keep them trim.
For a meal, I serve them a little dried food (my advice is Naturals Lamb and Rice mix) with the dog stodge on top. You wouldn’t believe how much they like that dog stodge. Or perhaps you would.
A small dog stodge anecdote. A generation of dogs ago, we had an old heeler/labrador mix who was the earliest guinea pig for my dog cuisine. We then got a young male heeler from the pound. His name was Gray. The first time I put his meal in front of him, Gray took one bite, and his head jerked up. He looked at the old dog, who was chowing down mournfully, since he hadn’t yet decided a young companion for his old age was necessarily a good thing. And Gray said to the old dog, as obviously as he could talk, “Oh my god, man, do you eat this EVERY DAY? Hey man, I’ll do whatever you want. If you say ‘jump’, I’ll jump. If you say . . .”
The old dog looked up and said, as obviously as if HE could talk, “Kid. Just shut up and eat, would you?”
And Gray did.
Dog Stodge. If that isn’t a testimonial, I don’t know what is.