Book clubs have become part of my life – a part I look forward to each month as much as I look forward to curling up with that month’s book. Yes, I said clubs. Plural. I’ve taken on more than one recently.
Are they dog book clubs? No, not one book about dogs yet. However, I just finished Recipe for a Perfect Wife (affiliate link) by Karma Brown – a novel constructed around information a newly minted housewife, by accident, finds about a 1950s housewife who lived in the same house. Guess what plays a central theme? Babies, yes. But also – recipes.
Recipes from the 1950s dot this book – many don’t sound appealing. ‘Meatloaf with Oatmeal’ is one of them, and not only because I’m a vegetarian or hated meatloaf as a kid. Wait, maybe those are the reasons.
The book is an interesting enjoyable read, if a bit predictable, validating my view of life dependent on others for financial support and running around after two-foot creatures unable to fend for themselves. “The housewife life is not for me,” I though as I stood up to open the patio door for my cats for the seventeenth time that day.
Then reality hit me – maybe I am a housewife, at least part-time, not to a spouse but to a household of that’s not two feet but 16. I live with the pitter patter of sixteen feet bouncing through my home.
Maybe it’s time to make meatloaf. Not for me, but for my dog.
That’s right, I turned to page 17 of Recipe for a Perfect Wife and stared down a recipe originally from the 1945 edition of Purity Cookbook. I’d need to buy ground meat (ugh) and of course remove the onions. Onions are toxic for dogs. Instead, I substituted shredded carrots. Carrots are good for dogs. Even baby dogs, like mine.
Here’s my dog-friendly recipe:
The Perfect Wife Modified Meatloaf for Dogs
1 pound of ground meat (450 g)
1 cup of water
1 large egg
½ teaspoon of salt
1 grated carrot
1/2 cup steel cut or rolled oats
Preheat oven to 300F.
Using a hand grater, grate one carrot
Slightly beat one egg in a bowl
Chop ground meat into small pieces (I used ground chicken)
Add everything to one bowl. Add meat, egg, carrot, water, oats and pinch of salt to a bowl.
Mix thoroughly. Spray an extra-large muffin tray with four large muffin compartments with cooking oil.
Add meat mixture evenly to each muffin compartment. (I got for large muffin sized ‘loafs’ for the dog).
Bake at 300 F for 45 minutes to one hour.
Cool. Serve one at a time – or half at a time – to your dog.
Note: I got excited when my dog loved these loafs and gave her two in one day. That was too much. (Later that night, a lot came out quickly). I suggest no more than one half of one per day depending on the size of your dog. Freeze portions for later.
