Liver baby food dog treats
I have been asked several times how I make my own dog treats, in addition to dog food. I’ve been working on compiling a list of great recipes, but this one is getting its own post because it caught me off-guard.
It was featured on All Recipes front page even, but when I clicked through to watch the video, I was surprised by the main ingredient: liver baby food.
I’ve never even seen liver baby food, so of course the first thing I did then was to google that, too. The vast majority of what popped up was Asian baby food jars and this lone Gerber image from what looks like the 50s maybe:
I don’t think they actually sell it any more, but the video clearly shows it being used at around the :40 second mark. Ewww! That looks even worse than most other baby foods!
If you really want to make this particular dog treat recipe, then just puree some chicken or beef livers and you’re good to go. Please don’t torture your baby with it, though. :P
The Finest Ethically Farmed And Sustained Meats (Guest)
(Today’s guest post is brought to you by Danielle. The ideas expressed may or may not be in line with my own. Enjoy! )
Ethical, schmethical. I’ve got enough on my plate with composting, sorting out the
green waste from the…other waste, treating the hemorrhoids aggravated by enviro
safe toilet paper, and spending mega bucks on biodegradable nappies. Now you
want me to look at what’s on my bloody dinner plate? Enough’s enough. Pass the
pigs in blankets.
Yes, a lot is asked of us these days. But soon enough, it all just becomes a
regular part of the daily grind. True, your bottom does go into shock when you
make the initial swap from traditional toilet paper to recycled. Yes, getting the kids to
keep their rotting lunchbox fruit out of the recycle bin is an ongoing battle. And,
sorry to say it, ensuring your meat is ethically farmed and sustainable is one of
the single most important things you can do. Cannings Free Range Butchers are
here to help.
The highly industrialized nature of current meat rearing and slaughtering is a very
far cry from what most people would consider healthy and humane. Animals
kept in appalling, cramped and filthy conditions, forced to subsist on a diet their
digestive systems are not equipped to handle, injected with all manner of growth
hormones and antibiotics to keep them free of the inevitable diseases that strike
when one lives in squalid conditions. It’s an ugly picture and it’s one that too
many of us like to put to the back of our minds. But the truth is this: unless you
are looking at where your meat came from, you are not doing your bit to make the
world a better, greener, and more sustainable place.
Happily, ethically farmed, sustainable meat tastes amazing and is infinitely
better for your health than factory farmed! If you’d like more information, visit
www.canningsfreerangebutchers.com.au
Lean Cuisine Chef’s Pick chicken dish comparisons
I’m one of those weird people who actually sometimes craves tv dinners (They don’t even call them that any more, do they?). Are they better than a home cooked meal or a trip to a restaurant? Nah, not usually. But they’re cheap…and done in 3-5 minutes with minimal effort.
And I might have a little nostalgia in there somewhere, too. Growing up, I rarely got them and actually saw them as a treat. I was spoiled with home cooked meals and had no idea that I shouldn’t be jealous of my friends who always “got to go to McDonald’s” or “had cool Lunchables at lunchtime.” The grass is always greener, huh?
So while I rarely eat tv dinners or prepackaged meals of any sort, I certainly wasn’t going to turn down the chance to try out Lean Cuisine’s new line of dinners. I had already heard a bit of buzz about them and they were supposed to be pretty good, so why not, right?
I had a pretty hefty list to choose from, which is never easy for me, so I brought along a friend to help me choose and then sample them. Here were our choices:
- NEW Spinach Artichoke Ravioli;
- NEW Asparagus Ravioli;
- Ranchero Braised Beef;
- Chile Lime Chicken;
- Mushroom Mezzaluna Ravioli;
- Chicken Makhani;
- Chicken & Vegetables;
- Chicken in Peanut Sauce;
- Chicken Carbonara;
- Glazed Chicken;
- Steak Tips Portobello;
- Chicken with Basil Cream Sauce;
- Chicken Pecan;
- Thai-Style Chicken;
- Chicken Marsala;
- Lemon Chicken;
- Orange Chicken.
Somehow, we managed to pick two chicken dishes that looked almost identical on the boxes, so I thought it’d be cool to compare/contrast and pick a winner between the two.
The contestants? Chile lime chicken for me and thai-style chicken for them. Actually, I don’t think they were intended to go in that order even, but it worked out for the best.
First, check out the pictures. I am SO sorry that the pictures aren’t great. Have you ever tried to take a picture of tv dinners? Even if they taste great, they don’t really look gourmet on a plate, huh? Only they can make them look good on the box, hehe. It didn’t help that I took the pictures after dark so I didn’t have the greatest lighting either. Oops.
That last picture is to show how that one sort of exploded in the microwave. It didn’t make a huge mess, but it did lose some of the sauce.
I attempted to plate the food so it’d look better, but that didn’t really work out. I added some leftover rice pilaf to the second plate because we were afraid it might not be enough food (these were for dinner instead of lunch).
So what did we think of the dishes?
My entrée-experiment-buddy was surprised they didn’t suck, so you know that gains a lot of points right there. Anyone who goes into an experiment with a negative mindset is going to require some extra convincing and proof to sway to the other side. With that alone, I think Lean Cuisine won overall, haha.
Each dish’s pros/cons:
- Thai-style chicken’s coconut rice…didn’t taste like coconut at all. I’m assuming it was intended to just provide the creaminess of coconut milk, but it was really lacking in flavor.
- Thai-style chicken itself was quite delicious. I kind of would’ve expected a peanut based sauce given that it was ‘Thai’, but no go there. It did come with plenty of sauce, though, so it got points for that. I really liked the flavor, though.
- Chile-lime chicken had a surprising kick of heat, but I would’ve liked it to have more. I dipped some of it in the Thai sauce and coconut rice to make it creamier, too.
- Chile-lime chicken rice was delicious. The rice wasn’t nasty like it had been microwaved and the corn was actually roasted. Look at the burn marks:
Overall, our winner is….
The Chile-lime chicken!
I would happily eat this again and I felt satisfied with my portion. I’m glad I was able to try more than one of them, too, although next time I should probably try one of the steak ones instead, just to mix it up and see what else they have.
I’m really glad that the two chicken ones were actually unique enough to stand on their own, too, because based on the pictures on the box and how they looked when I pulled them out, I thought for sure they would be way too similar or hard to tell apart.
Surely I’m not the only one that remembers some of those boxed meals year ago where they all sort of looked the same….and tasted the same….right?
I have partnered with Lean Cuisine through DailyBuzz Food to help promote their new line of Chef’s Pick products. I have been compensated for my time commitment to work with this product. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments. Thank you Lean Cuisine!
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