A dog's homemade dinner

Mara, home cook for Maggie and Lisa, asks:

Why do you cut the eggs up into small, but not tiny, chunks? And, what kind of bone meal do you use?

As I learned in the bookstore cooking section yesterday, it's all about "plating." With the eggs chopped up too small, all the ingredients of the dinner begin to merge into a indistinguishable, unappealing, green-tinged mush. Better to offer small segments of bright yellow, contrasting with the morsels of white egg. The lightly chopped greens can be scattered throughout, adding texture and appealing color. Small squares of carrots contribute brightness. Finally, the rice and oatmeal tie everything together and serve as a pleasing background.

An old-fashioned potato masher is the perfect tool to get to the right texture without a lot of effort. We've learned that Daisy has little appetite for the over-chopped amalgamation. She turns up her nose at the big chunks, or else carries them off to place somewhere in the middle of a room. So we have made an effort to construct a more delightful plate. It may be time, though, to rethink the giant round stainless steel bowl. The trend today is toward small servings on big plates.

"Crowding food is a no-no," according to How-to-Cook Gourmet.

So we could go with an even bigger bowl, with less food. Or perhaps the same size bowl -- maybe in a more appealing green or red to contrast with the tan rice, though -- with smaller portions served a couple of times. What do you think?

Oh, and if you hard boil eggs often, you may have suffered through many a difficult peeling process. The shell sticks, it breaks into tiny pieces, it pricks your fingers. Here's the solution we've found:

Bring a pot of water to a boil.
Place up to 20 eggs in the water and let it return to a boil.
Turn the heat down and boil for 5 minutes.
Turn off the burner and let sit for 45 minutes to cool.
Store the eggs in their original box in the fridge.

You can also place the eggs in a bath of cold water to speed up the process. One way or the other, they'll peel like a dream!

Here's a video of a fun alternate method. I did try it, but I think you have to have very powerful lungs to make it work.

As for the bone meal, we've recycled the jar so I'll have to report back after our next shopping trip. Any recommendations?

Bits of egg around the house

Daisy has a very tender stomach and a picky appetite to go along with it. We have always figured that her high-anxiety puppyhood led to these issues. She probably couldn't count on a meal and self-medicated when possible by eating grass.

Now, if she doesn't get a meal on time then out she runs to the backyard to take care of things on her own by grabbing a bite of grass. And you know what that means.

Daisy can't have regular dog food because it makes her ill. We discovered this when I was out of the country, leaving Tom and Daisy to fend for themselves. By the time I could get to a decent phone, Tom had a tale to tell. Daisy had gotten terribly sick and couldn't keep anything down. She was so weak and nauseous that she wanted to sleep outside. Tom couldn't sleep either, so they both were miserable. The vet recommended a strict diet of white rice and eggs, which eventually got Daisy back up on her feet again.

But once I had returned, we learned very quickly that regular dog food was not an option. So we began cooking up Dr. Pitcairn's two-meal vegetarian menu for dogs. The ingredients were roughly five eggs and nine cups of oatmeal in the morning, and seven eggs and three cups of rice in the evening. But Daisy very quickly got tired of the inexpensive oatmeal and would turn up her nose, heading down to the yard for a bite of grass instead.

Gradually we were able to get her onto brown rice for its better nutrient content, plus add in the various ingredients Dr. Pitcairn recommends. Here's what she gets:

Breakfast
3 eggs, hard-boiled
3 cups rice
Dog oil and dog powder mix
4 T chopped, cooked green vegetables

Dinner
6 eggs, hard-boiled
2.5 cups rice
2 T soy (or other) protein isolate
Dog oil and dog powder mix
6 T chopped, cooked green vegetables
Fish scent from a can of salmon or sardines to add interest

The powder mix includes:
nutritional yeast
bone meal
kelp powder

And the oil mix includes:
vegetable oil
cod-liver oil
vitamin E

The mixture must be blended to just the right level. The eggs should be roughly chopped, not in big chunks or ones that are too small. A little bit of hand-fed yolk usually gets a reticent appetite going.


We buy an awful lot of eggs, about six dozen at a time. The checkout clerks don't comment anymore, they just ask if we've checked for breakage. Peeling the cooked eggs is a story we'll save for another time.

But what is this new twist? Lately Daisy has begun carrying bits of egg around the house and leaving them there. Today we had a 1/2 inch chunk in the bedroom and almost a full, round yolk in the middle of the living room. Is the food critic in Daisy coming out? Or is this some kind of doggie instinct that kicks in when night starts falling earlier?