Dehydrated Divas

Now aren’t these some fancy looking bites? Only two ingredients and five minutes to prep them – you must try this at home! I’ve been doing a lot more dehydrating since I posted about the potentially tainted chicken and duck jerky treats on the market. I might be obsessing a wee bit.

My nephew gave me wild duck and goose breasts a couple of months ago, lucky girl that I am. Wild game is super fantastic for dogs, by the way. Lean, mean, and full of good stuff. If you don’t have a supplier nearby that sells it, or a nephew that loves cammo and ammo, you can use beef. Don’t forget that when dehydrating meat, you want lean cuts. Beef top round steak, flank steak and rump roast are the best cuts for this. And be aware that farmed duck and geese are not nearly as lean as wild ones.

INGREDIENTS:
2 large sweet potatoes
1 gamey breast or equivalent portion of beef.

Lightly oil a baking tray and set the oven to 200 degrees.

This is so simple. Grab a sweet potato and a sharp knife. Cut the nubbies off of each end. That’s right, I said nubbies. Now – carefully – cut thin slices lengthwise. Like really long potato chips. Repeat with the other sweet potato.

Now it’s time to slice the meat. Do your best to cut thin and long strips, but don’t lose a finger over it. Place the sweet potato slices on the baking tray. Place a strip of meat or two (depending on the size) on top of the slice of sweet potato. Basically you are adding one layer of meat on top of each one. If you have extra of either sweet potato or meat slices, just place them on the tray and dehydrate them on their own.

The meat will meld right into the sweet potato as they “cook”.

I put these ones in for about 4 hours. I flipped them at about the 3 hour mark to dry out the SP more. You could leave these in longer, mine were chewy – but I have very little patience! Still a great result as you can see. If you want crunchy, you need to dry them longer.

Once they are cool, you can slice them up all pretty-like.

These should last in the fridge for up to a week. The drier they are the longer they would last is my guess, but nothing lasts that long around this place!

Just a heads up re: the latest pet food recalls – in case you haven’t heard there is a recall on a bunch of Diamond Pet food brands including: Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul, Country Value, Diamond, Diamond Naturals, Premium Edge, Professional, 4Health, Taste of the Wild, Kirkland Signature – (Costco brand). So please check to see if your food is on the list. There is also a Purina cat food recall that was in the news today. Scary stuff.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there – I dedicate this recipe to my mom, who would most certainly appreciate my Asian flair in presenting these little Divas.

xo/J

I’m neither a vet nor an animal nutritionist.  This recipe is not meant to replace a proper and balanced diet for your dog.  You should to speak to your own vet before trying new recipes or feeding any home cooked foods to your dog.

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Chicken Jerky Treats – Safe For Your Dog?

Hello to you and hello to the month of May!

For those of you who don’t know me well (or at all, for that matter),  the main reason I’ve created My Dog’s Breakfast is to inspire people to consider home cooking for dogs, by way of providing a variety of recipes that just might coax the wary into the kitchen, and to share recipes of interest with other home cookers.   I try to create recipes that are either easy, affordable, fun, festive, or a combination thereof.  The purpose of my website isn’t to slam the pet food industry and to chastise people about feeding their dogs processed food.  That’s not my way.   But today, be warned, I have to put on my serious face and talk just a little bit about shoddy pet food labels & pet food standards. Don’t even get me started on the topic of the stunning lack of regulations when it comes to pet food industry in general.  Even right here in Canada.

Over the years, people have become used to packaged and processed meals for themselves, and while lots of people are heeding the call to move back to cooking whole foods from scratch, that movement hasn’t really hit home yet in terms of how we feed our pets.  As an aside, I’m almost finished reading “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” (thanks for the recommend, Aunt Daphne), and the book reports on and analyzes a broad spectrum of goods, including food. You might want to pick it up, it’ll get you thinking.

The specific product I’m going to talk about may be cheap, but will it come at a high cost to you?   Continue reading