I'm excited to share with you how to make pet food at home. In this series on Natural Dog Food I will take you through the steps of making pet food at home. In this series I will be filming from my salon kitchen as I prepare pet food so you may follow along in your own kitchen.

We are going to learn

• How to shop for your natural dog food ingredients
• How to prepare natural dog food ingredients
• How to make natural dog food
• How to package natural dog food
• How to store natural dog food
• How to serve natural dog food
• How to be creative in making natural dog food
• What are dangerous ingredients in natural dog food
• What are safe ingredients in natural dog food

We are going to have a lot of fun and your dog is going to love us for it!

This is an easy recipe for making dog or cat food. I like to make a batch then freeze the daily serving portions to use at other times. This recipe is easly made into treats. Prepare time is about 2 hours from start to finish for the basic wet dog food. *Hint - I like to eat this, myself.

Basic Ingredients:

• chicken
• apples
• bananas
• summer squash
• fresh or frozen carrots
• fresh or frozen green beans
• brown rice
• water - to make broth

Instructions:

I like to use the whole chicken or turkey because of the white and dark meats in the whole bird. Quarters and legs may be used.. Watch for sales on poultry for the best buy.

• Remove neck and gizzard package from bird cavity
• Rinse bird with cool water to remove packaging moisture
• Remove gizzards, heart, etc. from packaging (if any) and place in water with bird
• Place the bird in a large pot
• Cover poultry with water - leaving a couple of inches between the water and the top of the pot
• Cover the pot with a lid - helps trap nutrients
• Bring to a boil - about an hour or little longer until bird is tender and falling away from the bone. (When using the whole bird pull a wing or leg away from bird to test for doness. If the bird comes apart easly - the bird is cooked).
• Let Bird and Broth cool
• Be sure to save the broth for later use
• Seperate the meat from the bone using your fingers (make sure to remove all the bone)

I like to cook my poultry the day before I begin the recipe so I don't burn my fingers while trying to seperate the bird from the bones. I boil the chicken then place the pot into the refrigerator to cool and set until the next day.

When I am ready to use the cooked meat I remove the pot from the refrigerator and place it on the counter to begin work. I like to skim the solid formation from the top of the broth. This solid formation, yellowish in color, is the poultry fat and should be removed. I use a spoon and scoop off what is easly removed. This should be done right after the pot is pulled from the refrigerator because the fat doesn't take long to become soft. When the fat is soft removal is more difficult.

This is the yucky part. I use tongs or my hands to dig into the pot to remove the chicken and place into a bowl. I begin working the meat with my fingers to remove any and all bones. I like to use the gristle in my recipe so I pull the gristle from the bone ends and place it in the bowl with the meat.

I use a strainer to pour the broth through to make sure there are no bones left in the broth.

Be sure to save the broth!

1 chicken

2 apples

2 bananas

1 cup green beans

1 cup summer squash (or yellow squash)

1 cup carrots

1/4 to 1/2 cup cooked brown rice. *HINT* I use the broth from the chicken to cook the brown rice instead of using water.

• Wash the apples, quarter the apples and remove the seeds and stem
• Peal the bananas
• Wash veggies
• Remove stems and any dark spots from veggies

*HINT I like to leave the "skin" on the veggies and fruit (except the banana) - lots of good nutrients in the "skin".

Using a blender or food processor

I put all the chicken, fruit, veggies and, brown rice into the blender. Using the lowest "chop" setting begin chopping the ingredients. If the mix is too dry add a little bit of broth. You will need only enough broth to let the blender mix the ingredients. Add just 1/4 cup at a time.

When I make this recipe I make the finished product to where you can see chunks of veggies and meat. Oh, unless I get carried away - then it looks more like baby food. Either way my dog loves the stuff so it doesn't matter what it looks like.

I like to use freezer bags or disposable single serving containers to store my "dog food". My dog weighs only 15 pounds so I portion my dinners into 1/2 cup servings which I feed from twice a day. I feed 1/4 cup in the morning and 1/4 cup at night. Some days she wants more and other days she doesn't finish what she has.

I place these daily servings into the freezer where they are kept good for 6 months or longer depending on the container you have selected. Every morning I take a package from the freezer and place it in the refrigerator to thaw so it will be ready to serve by evening. You could reverse this process and take the packet out the night before for use in the morning.

Packages stay good in the refrigerator for about 5 days.

Slow thaw in the refrigerator- placing chicken out on the counter to thaw could be dangerous. *Hint* I sometimes forget to take out some food to thaw so I use the "thaw" feature on my microwave.

We all are learning just how sneaky the pet food companies are about the garbage the pet food producers are putting into the pet food. What is really in your pet's food? The pet food makers will not tell us and lie on the ingredient listing about the ingredients used to produce their brand of pet food.

I, for one, could not bear another day of my precious Odie being sick, itching and scratching, infected ears, fever, moody, and her life being threatened. I decided that if I couldn't buy a quality pet food I was just going to have to make the time to fix dog food at home.

I have found that making dog food is a lot of fun and not an exact science. As long as I don't put any harmful ingredients into the mix I have already done something far better for my dog than the pet food companies have done.

I like to shop the produce section to see what would be fun to put into the dog food. I usually use chicken but other meats can be used. For a flavor change I use nutmeg, all spice, cinnamin, etc. I like to use a lot of apples in one recipe with lots of cinnamin which come out smelling like an apple crisp. I get hungry just thinking about how delicious my kitchen smells while I am making Odie's food.

Odie always knows when I am making a batch of her food. Odie will stand with me in the kitchen until the finished product is reading for "tasting". Every great chef must taste the food he/she has prepared so I enjoy tasting Odie's food just as much as she does.

Odie wants me to be sure to remind you great Dog Food Chefs of the ingredients which may cause harm to your pets. I'm out of room on this page so for today shop from the list provided here and I'll get that danger list ready for publication.

Have fun and enjoy knowing your dog will soon have a shiny coat, improved health, and will have the energy of a puppy - and you did it!