home-made cat food

This STLtoday.com article -- "These meals go from table to floor"-- has been sent to you by: " [email protected]" These meals go from table to floor By Sarah Newman ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Here is the story. Do you cook for your calico? Or bake for your boxer? Would you admit it if you did? Even other animal lovers have been known to look askance when one admits that one regularly stirs up soup pots full of fancy concoctions just for Fluffy or Fido. Julia Szabo's eyebrows also inch up at the idea - and she's the author of two new cookbooks aimed at culinary-minded critter lovers. The books' titles - "Bow Wow Chow: Hearty Recipes for Happy Dogs" and "Meow Chow: Hearty Recipes for Happy Cats" (MQ Publications, 111 pages each, $14.95) - make them sound like typical cook-for-your-pet cookbooks. But they're not. As Szabo (sah-bo) said in a recent phone interview: "Nobody in their right mind wants to be their pet's personal chef." Szabo, who writes a pet column for the Sunday New York Post and Country Living magazine, speaks from experience. "I tried it. It's awful," she said. Play that role often enough - and long enough - and you'll start resenting your pet, she said. Or pets, in Szabo's case. Twelve of them. Six cats. Six dogs. All are rescued. And all of their meals are special, just like the meals she serves in "Bow Wow Chow" and "Meow Chow." What sets these books apart from other pet cookbooks is that their recipes aren't just for cats and canines - they're also for the cook. ("Serves two people and two large dogs, with leftovers" reads the recipe for braised osso buco from chef John Villa of New York's Dominic and Patroon restaurants. "Serves four people and two cats, with plenty of leftovers" reads the recipe for Tom's chicken soup.) Szabo believes that pet lovers have a "duty to cater to every aspect of a pet's life." She demonstrated how to do that in her 2001 book, "Animal House Style: Designing a Home to Share With Your Pets " (Little, Brown and Co., $35), which came out this year in paperback (Bulfinch, $19.95). In that book, and in these, sharing is key. It's the main ingredient in Szabo's recipe for happy hounds and Himalayans. "Pets want to be with us all the time," Szabo said. "They want to be part of all that we do, of what we lie down on, of what we eat. My feeling is that if we embrace that and work with it rather than fight it, we'll all be happier." Just as her design book offers simple, practical ways to make a home pet-friendly (as opposed to pet-proof), her cookbooks show "what a minimum of effort can do" to enhance your pets' meals. That effort can be as easy as cooking an extra soft-boiled egg and breaking it over your dog's kibble (shell included) or dribbling on some olive oil, which is healthful and which you probably have on hand for your own use, Szabo said. The idea that pets should eat only commercial pet food is as much a myth as the rule that they should never be fed from the table, she said. (Feeding them AT the table is a different matter, best left to the discretion of the diners.) The caveat is that pets should eat only the foods that they can eat safely, Szabo said. So don't give your canine or feline companion chocolate. Go easy on the fatty foods (don't fry if you can boil or bake). And if you plan to spice up your Italian greyhound's kibble with some of your homemade spaghetti, make her portion of sauce sans onion and wine. Szabo said she has been cooking and sharing food with her pets for years, "probably because I have so many animals and so little time, and I hate to think of doing anything without them. The food thing was just a natural outcropping of that. We all have to refuel anyway, so we might as well do it together." More important, she said, food is especially meaningful to animals. "It's everything to them. Love, motivation, reward, security. My feeling is that they're here with us for such a short time, why not let them eat what they want, as long as it doesn't hurt them." A couple of years ago, when Szabo learned that onions can be harmful to pets, it occurred to her to do "a book that teaches people how to share their food safely." That she ended up doing two books is hardly surprising. Cats and dogs have distinct dietary requirements. Dogs can live on just about anything. Cats "are serious carnivores" and must have meat to survive. Cats also are as finicky as their stereotype. They can even be finicky about their tableware. People who are owned by fussy felines ("Cheap plastic bowls are simply not acceptable") should note that "Meow Chow" includes a chapter on stylish dining accessories. To be honest, "Bow Wow Chow" boasts a similar chapter. Both books also contain chapters on breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and special occasions. Both have guides to some out-of-the-ordinary resources. And both serve up more than 30 tasty dishes, some from pet-friendly hotels and restaurants, which people and their pets can share in one form or another: chicken paprikash, grrreat grrrilled vegetables, The Hungry Cat's crab cakes, Melina's seafood salad sandwiches, carrot cupcakes - even catnip tea. But "Bow Wow Chow" and "Meow Chow" are not merely recipe books. They are colorful, fun-to-read lifestyle guides to making mealtime with Fluffy more than just another open can. There are menus; diet and nutrition tips; food-safety warnings; serving suggestions; pet-iquette advice for eating in and dining out; and photo after photo of cute cats and dogs, as well as a few equally adorable children. Szabo, who is a stylist, design consultant and photographer, took the photos for "Bow Wow Chow" and included her own dogs among the models. She also took the cover photo for "Meow Chow," which features one of the many cats she has rescued and "rehomed." She worked with another photographer for the rest of the "Meow Chow" photos, she said, "because cats require a lot more wrangling than dogs do." One of the things Szabo likes about the easy-to-handle softcover books is that they have protective vinyl covers. "That way you don't have to worry if something goes []splat[] all over them," she said. "Or if the cat barfs on them." "Bow Wow Chow" and "Meow Chow" are available at major bookstores and online at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. [][email protected] 314-340-8264[] _____________________________________________________________________ If you enjoy reading about interesting news, you might like the 3 O'Clock Stir from STLtoday.com. Sign up and you'll receive an email with unique stories of the day, every Monday-Friday, at no charge. 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Feeding cats a raw meat diet also leaves too much room for variables, another reason she doesn’t advocate such a diet. The potential for slip-up is high if the owner goes out of town and the food is left out too long, or if he substitutes one ingredient for another,