I took the plunge and bought my first actual raw food! We're getting down to the last bit of kibble, so the switch is imminent. Tonight I bought a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters--unenhanced, 75mg sodium. I spent about an hour working on the contents of the bag and dividing it into meal-sized portions.
Let me preface by saying that the only meat I've ever worked with prior to tonight was the kind that has already been cut up and cleaned so that it's ready to throw in a skillet. Chicken leg quarters are nothing like the nicely packaged boneless, skinless chicken breasts I'm used to! Not only are the much messier, but they're much bigger than I was expecting. Most weighed in at over a pound each!
I know that in the future, once Mona is able to handle all the extra skin and fat, preparation time will be much less. But after much reading, I've decided to start her for the first two weeks with as little skin and fat as possible to avoid digestive upset. So I spent well over an hour hacking away at these legs, first pulling off as much of the skin and fat as possible. I cut each leg at the joint, and broke/cut it into drumstick and thigh pieces. The thigh pieces were almost all a perfect 8 ounce portion. Since the drumstick pieces were usually more like 5 or 6 ounces, I grabbed a couple frozen breasts from the freezer, cut them into thirds, and used those pieces to top off the bags. All in all, my $6 bag of chicken leg quarters (plus a couple extra chicken breasts thrown in), I ended up with 19 bags in the freezer, each with 8 ounces of chicken leg. I also saved all the fat and skin and stuck it in a bag as well... Surely there's a use for that?
On another note, I've enlisted my mother, Queen of Bargain Shopping, to help keep an eye out for good deals on clearanced meat. Already, she snagged me a couple packages of chicken livers and gizzards for dirt cheap. In a couple weeks, these livers and gizzards will be perfect to start adding to her chicken legs when I introduce organs to the diet.
Wow, exactly how I started! 'Cept I left the skin on. Proved to be his fave part then, now, it's the crunchy, crunchy. He always goes for the bone part first. Heh, still got that bag-o-fat, tho. I'm thinking of using it as frozen treat bites once a day.
ReplyDeleteYes, in hindsight, I wish I'd left the skin on. I'll know for future meat, though. But I do have some good treats now!
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