Preparing pork.

One thing I wished I'd seen more of when considering the switch to raw was information about preparing the food.  Specifically, I wanted pictures.  Perhaps the reason there aren't many photos of raw food prep is because it's pretty self-explantatory.  You take some meat, you cut it up, you bag it, you stick it in the freezer.  Simple.  But I still wanted pictures.  I think mostly I wanted to see what kind of a mess I was getting myself into.  I imagined a kitchen covered in raw meat.  Raw meat juices all over the place.  I pictured a salmonella breeding ground.  I was wrong.

Preparing and portioning meals isn't nearly the mess I expected.  For example, today my mom found some great pork on sale for $0.99 per pound.  This is how simple it is to turn it into dog food:

I wipe down the counters.  I like something with bleach in it.  Nothing smells clean like bleach!  I get everything ready.  Quick tip: Get all your zip top bags out and OPEN THEM before you begin.  Otherwise, you're fumbling with greasy, slimy meat fingers and can't get them open.  And ignore the wimpy knife.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I ended up using a much bigger knife.  Which reminds me... I should learn what my knives are.  All I know are "big knives" and little knives".

Anyway, the label calls these "pork shoulder blade country style ribs".  I have no clue what part of a pig that is, but it looks good.  I expect Mona will love it.  Then again, I also expected Mona would like liver...

The package had 6 cuts of meat, each weighing 12 - 16 ounces.  I cut the ends off to make 6 hearty portions, roughly 8 or 9 ounces.  Are you looking at this, though?  No giant mess.  No blood all over the counters.  No meat on the walls.  Just some juice on the cutting board.  Totally doable, right?

Ta da!  This go round, I wrote the weight on each bag.  I find that with the leg quarters I'm currently feeding, I'm weighing them all before I serve them, just to be sure they weigh what I think they weigh.  So for this go round, I wrote the weight on each bag.  I stuck them in the freezer, put the knives and cutting board in the sink, and wiped down the counter again with cleaner.  That's it!

Honestly, I think my kitchen is cleaner since switching to raw.  :)

I bought my first meat!

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.