Doxie News Dachshund Blog

I can't help but feel a little embarrassed to tell this story. Like many other people, I cook for my dog. Just the morning meal, but I still do it. I'll admit, I definitely have the crazy gene that all of us who cook for our dogs have. Yes, I'm concerned about additives and hormones, especially for a small dog. And we've had stomach issues in the past I'm not eager to repeat, so I guess this might help. But honestly, I don't think my cooking is significantly better than the high quality dog food Kody eats, but he loves it so much I just can't stop.

Kody gets hamburger and rice and my goal is always to make it easier. I have thought about making a big batch of hamburger and rice and freezing portions of it, but the truth is thawing a big chunk of hamburger and rice is actually more difficult than doing this, if you do it right.

The trick is to make rice cubes and beef cubes. I buy organic ground beef for Kody at Costco. It's too expensive for me to eat, but with the little that Kody eats it's not that bad. Yes, my dog eats better ground beef than I do. It comes in one pound bricks that are easy to cut into 16 one ounce pieces. I place these on a pan on wax or parchment paper, freeze them, then put them in Ziploc bags and I'm set for 48 days of cooking. (The beef comes in a three pound package.)

For the rice, I use the rice cooker (easy), and make cubes out if it and freeze them too. You can use ice cube trays or basically the same process we used for the beef. I try to make the rice cubes about the same physical size as the beef cubes. This is for a 14 pound dachshund who gets some dry food in the evening also. It might be a good idea to just use these amounts and make up for the differences in dogs with the dry food.

Then every day, I grab the pan throw in a rice cube, a beef cube, four tablespoons of water and cooking on one notch below medium heat for 4 minutes. Then flip the beef cube and continue to cook for another four minutes. Then crush up the beef and rice and mix together, put in dog dish, and cool in the freezer for another four minutes.

Describing it takes more work than doing it. It's basically pan, rice, beef, water, heat. Set timer. Flip. Set timer. Mix. Dish. Freezer. Set timer. Wash pan. Give food to dog.

Most of that time I'm actually at the computer working. This blog post was started during today's cooking. Or sometimes I'll prepare my own lunch at the same time.