Naturally you can pour in more liquor to suit your taste. Keep tasting, as this is a seat-of-your-pants recipe. When it suits you, it’s done.
Turn off the heat and let it cool down.
YOU CAN PUT it in a piecrust or serve it just like it is. It gets better with time, but do refrigerate it and warm it up when you next serve it, although you can eat it cold. This is Tucker’s favorite recipe.
Mother tells this tale of Juts’s mincemeat (Juts Brown was my mother’s mother). It was the Depression and everything was going to hell in a handbasket. Juts desperately needed a mortgage. She invited the banker to the house for Christmas Eve—the Browns always threw open their doors on Christmas Eve, which meant the folks in town were mixed up worse than a dog’s breakfast and loved every minute of it.
Her eggnog was as famous as her mincemeat. For every egg she added a glass of brandy and a glass of whiskey.
By the time the banker ate her mincemeat and knocked back a couple of glasses of eggnog, Juts had her mortgage.
Dog
DOG COOKIES
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup bran flakes
1 cup soy flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup grits
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 cup sunflower seeds, ground
1 egg or equivalent egg substitute
1 ¾ cups broth or water
¼ cup canola oil
1 cup nonfat dry milk
Combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Roll or pat out to ¼- to ½-inch thickness. Cut with a dog bone—shaped cookie cutter or into 1 × 3-inch strips. Place on a well-oiled baking sheet.
Bake at 300°G F. for 45 minutes.
Turn off the heat and leave in the hot oven for 30 minutes or more to dry.
A DOG’S NUTRITIONAL requirements are very different than a cat’s. For one thing, a dog will eat almost anything. If it doesn’t sit well, they just throw it up and look for more food. I think this is absolutely gross.
They love dried smoked pigs’ ears. You couldn’t pay me to eat one of those things. Nor will I eat carrion. This alone proves the superiority of cats—although, I confess, I love Tucker, the Corgi, despite her food habits. We were babies together. People who say cats and dogs don’t get along don’t know what they’re talking about. If we’re raised together, we do.
Dog
THE DOG’S DINNER
Take the leftovers from these recipes, toss all of them in a dish, and feed. (Hee hee.)
Cat/Human
SALMON PIE
Makes 1 pie
1 (8-inch) piecrust
2 tablespoons (¼ stick) unsalted butter or margarine
2 tablespoons all—purpose flour
2 cups 2% milk
1 (7–ounce) can salmon
½ (6–ounce) package frozen peas
2 cups potato chips
Bake the piecrust at 425°G F. until lightly browned. Take out of the oven and reduce the heat to 375°G F.
In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Stir in the flour until there are no lumps and add the milk. Stir until thickened.
Drain the salmon and mix with the sauce.
Stir in the frozen peas and pour the mixture into the prepared piecrust.
Lightly crush the potato chips and spread evenly over the salmon mixture.
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until bubbly.
IF YOU DON’T want to bake a pie, you can leave out the peas and potato chips, roll into small balls, and eat immediately. Humans won’t eat it that way.
If you don’t like salmon, and some cats don’t, you can substitute lamb, beef, or tuna. Personally, I don’t like beef except for organ meats, but other cats crave beef. There’s no accounting for taste.
Cat
VEAL KIDNEY
1 fresh kidney, washed and diced
If your human won’t dice the raw kidney, have him or her put the kidney in a pot, cover with water, and boil. After 15 minutes, turn off the heat and let cool.
Remove the meat and cut into small pieces.
You can pour this over your crunchies cold or warm it up.
I ENJOY KIDNEY any time of year but Mother won’t make it in the summer. The aroma overpowers her.
As you’ve noticed, humans have a peculiar sense of smell. Their olfactory sense is underdeveloped. To further impair their noses, they smoke and wear perfume or cologne. But the scent of kidney in summer is too much for Mom, who has a good nose for a human.
I was reading The Intelligence of Dogs the other day, and I quote, “The scenting ability of hounds is truly remarkable. The average dog has around two hundred twenty million scent receptors in its nose, as compared to only five million for humans.” And just think, a hound has a better nose than other dogs.
On the issue of scent, I concede that dogs are far superior to cats.
Horse
MOLASSES MASH
¼ cup dry molasses
¾ bucket beet pulp
Warm water
Mix the dry molasses through the beet pulp, then add warm water almost to the top of the pail. Allow to sit overnight.
When you come into the barn in the morning, reach down in the pail with your hands and turn the mixture over again.
For a 16-hand horse, add ½ cup of the molasses mash to his or her regular feed.
SOME PEOPLE FEED their horses beet pulp daily and no sweet feed. We use it as a treat since most horses enjoy the molasses taste.
Mom’s grandfather used to make a bran mash: ¾ bucket high-quality bran, ½ cup dry molasses, warm water, and 1 ounce brandy.
If a horse is stall bound, the last thing you want to do is fill them up on bran. He used the mash as a reward, feeding it once a week out in the pasture.
Horses’ digestive systems are very different from cats’. The best thing in the world to feed a horse and keep it from colic is good-quality hay and lots of water. If you live in an area where the grass has plenty of nutrients, like Kentucky, with all that limestone in the soil, that’s the best of the best. Of course, turn a horse out on new spring grass and they’ll eat themselves sick. Remember what I said about horses being stupid …
Horses are grazers. Their ideal situation is to eat and walk, eat and walk. My ideal situation is to eat in one spot.
Pewter likes to sit on the fence post and call the horses to her. One day she was sunning herself on the fence, eyes closed, dozing, when one of the babies, Sidekick, snuck up. He tiptoed almost like a cat, got right behind her, then blew air out of his nostrils. Pewter shot three feet straight up in the air. Scared the horse as much as he’d scared her.