carrots

My weekends are as busy as my weekdays.

I spend Saturday and Sunday shopping, planning, and often cooking for my dogs so that I don’t have to think about it during the week.

As I’ve mentioned before, even in a RAW, wHOLe food diet, some things have to be cooked. Dogs don’t do too much chewing with their semi-molars, so we need to help them break down the cellulose in vegetables by gently cooking them.

I’ve developed a recipe that admittedly takes some prep time, but yields a large quantity, freezes well, and is loaded with winter veggie goodness to supplement the protein sources I give my dogs. It’s also an easy way to add some coconut oil and sea salt to their diets.

Here’s a recipe I call Warm Winter Veggie Mash:

Ingredients:

• 1 medium to large Butternut Squash, peeled & cubed
• 6 large carrots, peeled and sliced
• 4-6 sweet potatoes
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 4 oz organic chicken stock

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375. Toss your squash & carrot chunks in 2 tablespoons of coconut oil and spread on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until tender.
• Rinse and pierce your sweet potatoes several times with a fork. Place them on another parchment-lined baking sheet, and put them in the oven beside your squash & carrots. Bake for 1 hour or until the skin puckers and the sugar starts oozing out of the fork holes.
• Let the veggies cool before combining them in a blender or food processor with the salt and chicken stock. The stock is really just to get things moving in the blender. You can use purified water or another flavored stock. Use more or less depending on how thick you want your mixture. Depending on the size of your vegetables and your blender, you may have to puree in batches.
• Spoon the mixture into 6oz plastic containers, and freeze. One container will defrost over night in the fridge.

Now you have several days of delicious, fresh, wHOLe food nutrition to add to raw chicken wings, thighs, or beef!

WOO-HOO!

These warm root vegetables are so nourishing during the cold winter months and POWER PACKED. Rich in vitamins and minerals that are naturally present — not added back in artificially– including:

Vitamins A, C, E, B6, and K, Niacin, Thiamin, Folate, Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Manganese, Dietary Fiber, Iron, Copper, and Pantothenic Acid, but low in saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol.

Check your bag of dog food for THAT list of goodies, then ask yourself who really loves your dog. Them or you?

This is a good mixture to have on hand if your dog develops an upset stomach, btw. You can add it to cooked ground turkey meat as a gentle, flavorful fiber to settle a runny bowel.

As with any cooked food, always add a digestive enzyme when you serve it to help your dog absorb the nutrients.

Give it a shot. Even if your dog doesn’t like it, you can put it in a pot, add some heavy cream, and presto! You’ve got yourself a delicious butternut squash/carrot/sweet potato soup!

pugs & kisses,