We moved to our home in Goa in March 2020, the pandemic time. We had five dogs then and the home caretakers used to feed the dogs in our absence. The meal was rice and chicken curry pieces boiled together twice a day and milk and biscuits as snacks twice a day, year round. The dogs were a bit obese both due to this monotonous meal and the lack of walks/exercise. We changed this immediately; took over their cooking and took them out for walks to the beach. In the meals, we tried different combinations; reduced the rice and added some dal, reduced chicken and added fish or red meat, and cut off the biscuits and milk. Their health improved over time. Over the last four years, we have come up with the best recipe for the dogs with meat, vegetables, and soya chunks. This post is about that delicious meal that we feed them twice a day, that I often myself envy!
The meat - There are a few options in rotation for this portion of the meal. The first option is of chicken curry pieces, which are the ones remaining when the main parts of the chicken, the legs, wings, and breasts have been removed. For our five dogs, we cook 400 grams of chicken curry pieces for every meal. In Goa, these curry pieces are used to prepare most of the chicken gravy; the Ros. These cost cheaper than conventional chicken ranging from 50 to 100 rupees a kg depending on where one buys.
The second option for meat is called 'dog mince' in Goa which is a mince of the bovid stomach, meat that humans don't consume much. A packet of 400 grams of this 'dog mince' costs about 50 rupees. I usually include a packet in the meal prepared for five dogs. Dog mince is also sold loose, which I prefer; I then include about 350 grams every meal.
The third option that we have in Goa is of pork aadmas, the bony pieces of pork with some meat that people don't prefer as much as the rest of the pork; too much handling time. I include about 500 grams of this in their meal which costs about 60 to 80 rupees.
When we run out of these first three options, I keep a backup of tuna cans. Among fish, tuna is the possibly the one with the least ecological footprint; its caught in the Indian waters, and their reproduction is relatively faster than that of other large-sized fish. Among the cans, I find that there are two varieties, 'tuna in brine' (yellow) and 'tuna in oil' (blue). While tuna in brine costs 130 rupees, the tuna in oil costs 240 rupees. I always look for 'tuna in brine' and each can lasts two meals for the dogs. Overall, for the meat options it costs 40 to 70 rupees for a meal for five dogs; quite reasonable. And these four options are rotated through the month.
The rice - The dogs were earlier fed the rice that is obtained through ration, which the home caretakers had access to. Unfortunately, the rice provided by the Government as ration was not of great quality and the dogs were a bit unhealthy too. We now buy whats called 'Sona masuri' rice, which is of the same quality as we eat. We buy the 26 kg bag for about for 1400 rupees, which lasts us about 25 days. So each meal of rice, which is about 600 grams costs about 30 rupees. Off late, I have been replacing some of the rice with millets, which makes it a little more expensive though.
The vegetables - I buy the frozen vegetables pack from Godrej and other companies. It works out quite well, I add about 60 to 100 grams to each of their meals for vitamins and fibre. When cooked with the meat and rice, the dogs do not leave any vegetables; they hate vegetables otherwise!
More protein - Since the meat has been reduced from 500 to 400 grams, I substitute the 100 grams with soya granules or chunks. The dogs love it and finish all of the chunks.
Overall the general recipe is this for five dogs; 600 grams rice, meat (400 grams chicken curry pieces/ 350 grams beef stomach mince/500 grams pork bone-meat/210 grams tuna), 60-100 grams vegetables, and 60-100 grams soy granlues or chunks. I cook this mix in a pressure cooker for two whistles and open it after twenty minutes and cool it for another 30 minutes, and there it is: yummy food for five happy dogs!
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