A Challenge.

Recently we got a dog. This was a big step for me, a huge nod in the direction of adulthood. I'd never had ventured to take care of another living thing before, and being given the choice to do so didn't come lightly. His name is Dash. It's a terrible name, honestly. That's the name he knows, however. Dash is two now - his birthday was December 14th. We'd change it, but with other things in his life changing so much, we wanted to provide a constant.

And of course our dog is the mostest. The most handsomest, sweetest, funniest, loyalest specimen of dog ever. Species redefiningly awesome. Waaaay cooler than your dog. So for our greatest of dogs, we wanted the greatest nutrition. But what to feed him? You may or may not be surprised to learn that the pet food industry (much like it's people counterpart) is (much like it's counterpart) frought with choices - most bad. If you read the labels on common dog food you'll be liable to find such oddities as corn, wheat gluten, bone meal, hydrolyzed soy protein - all sorts of weird stuff. This doesn't sound like what a dog should eat to me, but then again I don't really have the first idea what a dog should be eating. Even if I turn to my faithful friend The Internet I am left with many of the same problems a person finds reading about human nutrition: nobody is sure of anything, but everyone seems to have an opinion.

When I was a kid my family got a dog. His name was Sam. Sam was growing too fast for his age, and the vet was concerned about the growth plates in his bones. To make sure that his body grew more naturally, and that his bones and joints didn't suffer, the vet had us put Sam on a diet of cooked oats and cut up raw chicken, bones and all. At first my family was incredulous that we could feed a dog chicken bones, but the vet assured us that as long as they were raw they are fine. He thrived on this diet, and it was so simple. I decided to ressurect a variation of this plan for Dash, and simply add some things to make it more complete.

The final outcome is this:

3 quarts water

4 large carrots, shredded
1 small yam, shredded
1 bunch greens (kale, mustard, chard, collard) shredded

1 quart instant oats
1/2 cup ground flax
7 MSM gelatin capsules
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon salt

2 lbs raw chicken legs or thighs cut in to 3-4 pieces each.

Bring water to boil, add grated carrots and yams and salts. Bring to boil and cook 2 minutes. Add shredded greens, salts, and nutritional yeast. Bring to a boil and cook for another two minutes. Remove from heat and add MSM capsules, stirring in to pot. Set this mixture aside, it will be very hot and take about an hour to cool enough to handle. If you wish to cool more quckly, turn mixture out on to sheet pan and place in refridgerator for 10 minutes.

Get yourself the biggest knife you own, and hack the chicken in to manageable dog bites. This will be about 4 chunks per leg/ thigh. If you don't own a knife big enough to cut through a chicken bone, I suggest you remedy that. In my opinion, a quality 8" or 10" french knife is the most important tool in the kitchen.

Portion the cooled oat mixture in to 7 containers with tight sealing lids. Place equal portions cut up chicken meat and bones on top of oat mxture. Seal tightly and freeze.

With this method you can easily make a weeks worth of food and freeze it. Every evening I pull out a container of food and let it stand on the counterover night. In the morning I move it to the fridge and Dash's dinner is as simple as that.

A lot of work for a dog, but I love him. And because I love him so much, it doesn't feel like effort, I just delight in spoiling him. I know that raw and whole foods are a far superior way to eat, and that there are immense health benefits associated with their consumption. The longer I meditated on the wisdom of feeding Dash a more biologically appropriate diet, the more I began to scold myself for not doing the same for my own body.

One night we went to visit some friends who recently had a baby. At some point during the visit my girlfriend noticed an old Commercial Vitamixer 4000 sitting in their kitchen.

"Oh, that thing? It's a beast. We have a newer one and don't really use it. Someone gave it to us to make baby food, but we don't use it because it's too loud."Five minutes later and she was urging us to take it with us.

For those uninitiated, the vitamix is the most awesome blender ever. It's irresponsibly powerful, and is essentially the most valuable appliance in any chef's kitchen. It is also an awesome tool in raw food in it's ability to make excellent green smoothies.

What's a green smoothie? Simply put, it's a 60-40% (or so) mixture of raw greens and raw fruit. Common combinations are apple and spinach, orange and kale, pears and mustard greens pretty much whatever it is much whatever you'd like.