Venturing into homecooking
 

So I have decided to start homecooking and it's kinda fun (I obviously don't cook very much lol). I got my recipe off the Balanceit website. I used a mixture of Japanese sweet potato, white potato, peas, and carrots with eggs and a small amount of sardines and made enough for Toki to eat for a week. I'm not sure that it's that much more cost effective than buying canned food but it's nice to have more control over the quality and being able to limit the ingredients. We have the supplement coming in the mail and I'm going to discuss this with my vet at Toki's next check-up. I think homecooking for her is something I'd like to do a majority of the time in the future but we'll see how things work out once I get back into the full swing of things when the semester starts next week.

Toki sure enjoyed her meal though (Teddy did too...he got a little scoop on his dinner kibbles) :animal36 The feeding amount recommended seemed kind of high to me...I measured it out according to the recipe and it was nearly 1 1/2 cups of food a day! I know it's not as dense as kibble or some canned foods but it still seems like a large volume for such a small dog and I know that I don't feed Toki that many calories to maintain her weight. I guess I'll start out with ~1/2 cup per meal 2x a day and see if I need to adjust it. Anyways, just thought I'd share since I know a lot of folks here are interested in starting to homecook...it really wasn't so hard :)

Oooooh! That looks really yummy!

Thanks for posting, I'm considering home cooking.

How much does Toki weigh?

Toki weighs ~8.2 pounds...if you use the BalanceIt recipe generator, they will give you the serving size and ingredient amounts to make one days worth of food depending on the weight of your pet. I just multiplied it by 7 and put half of it in the freezer. I'll make a larger batch the next time I have more freezer room...I don't think it would take that much more prep time to double or triple the recipe.

Looks awesome. I am going to the store tomorrow to get the ingredients to do homecooking for Callie I used balenceit.com and am gonna try the sweat potato, peas,carrots and chicken. I'm excited to start! I told myself I would for the New Year and I'm going to I was just waiting until I got over this nasty cold flu like bug.

I think Callie is going to love it! I really wanted to start cooking more for myself this year (we are so bad and eat out a ton) and doing more freeze-ahead meals so I wouldn't have as much of an excuse to go out for food when the week gets hectic. And I thought why not also try it for Toki and see how it goes...as you know, it is hard to find the "perfect" dog food that is high quality and does not have any funky ingredients so hopefully this is our answer. I also never realized how relaxing cooking is...it's kinda therapeutic weighing out things and cubing up little veggies and portioning it out and putting the containers into neat little stacks and blahblahblah but I guess I'm just kinda of weird like that lol... good luck with your recipe and let us know how Callie likes it!

That looks yummy! Hope Toki does well on it!

How is Toki doing with the food?

How much was the shipping for the supplement?

So far, so good! She's really excited at meals (not that she has ever had a problem with that lol) and I like that I can give her fresh food with lots of moisture. Teddy is still eating kibble (I soak it though) with a little bit of the home cooked as a topper but maybe one day I can HC for both pups. And the shipping for the supplement was free. I hope that it does not negatively affect the taste of the food but I'm sure Toki won't be picky either way.

The best thing I did for Rosie was home cook! I don't think it is a hassle. I make two weeks at a time and freeze them until I need it. I also use Balanceit. I think your baby will love it! Hope she continues to do well.

Yay you!! Hope it all works out! :)

I just finished making another batch to freeze...we got the supplement yesterday so I've been adding it to Toki's meals and she doesn't even notice it (that or she just doesn't care). She sat in the kitchen the entire time I was cooking LOL. I get the feeling that I'll probably end up doing some type of kibble/homecooked combo during the semester when it gets hectic...it'd be a lot easier to keep up with if things didn't have to be measured so precisely. But still doing good...I can't really tell a difference condition-wise but her stools are good so no digestive upset and it seems she is tolerating it well. I'm trying to find a recipe without potatoes and without grains...now THAT is tricky! Would love suggestions... I don't think I'll be able to find one through the BalanceIT site...I'll have to do more investigating.

If you find one please share, that's my main problem with their site. So far I've printed their low carb recipes.

You might have to email them and/or pay for one of their "custom" recipes. You can also try Dr. Remillard. I've gotten recipes from her. She incorporates the BalanceIt into the recipe.

I home cook for two of my pups. The vet nutritionist did tell me in the beginning that the amount of food would be more than they were used to; but that they would be fine.
They were! Their weight is maintained so well ! I also use Balance It.