I like:

- the Alexander McCall Smith Series with Mma Ramotswe of the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- the Spencer mysteries from Robert B. Parker
- Anne Tyler's quirky characters
- Nelson Demille's thrillers occasionally, Lion's Game I liked best
- Maeve Binchy stories leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling
- Colleen McCullough's most recent (I think) Midas Touch was a fun read
- All of Roald Dahl
- I still leaf through the Dr. Seuss sometimes at the bookstore.  It can still bring a smile.
- All of Jane Austen
- When I like meaty works of fiction, I like James Mitchner (Chesapeake) or William Styron (Sophie's Choice)

It's great that Food Network aired something, but where are Animal Planet and TLC? 

On this same note, I'd love it if there were a nutrition calculator tailored to pet food.  One that included amounts of taurine in foods and listed whole ground meats (with bone) as a food for example.  Or instead of giving a chart of how recipes stack up to RDA for people one that stacked it up against NRC standards.  I wrote to nutritiondata.com some time ago, but never got a response. 

Kaffe, I think you inspire alot of people and I would love to see you get started on a tv or radio show, magazine or newspaper column, or even a blog. 

Do grey tabbies growl more?  My first cat was a stray I adopted.  The first time I took her to the vet it must have been big dog day because half a dozen large dogs were in the waiting room with my one cat who I didn't have a carrier for yet.  When the seventh dog walked in my cat decided she'd had enough and started growling at all of the dogs.  Every single person in there turned to their dog to discipline them before they realized it wasn't their dog.  I was so embarrassed. 

I thought she was growling because she had been living in an alley where there were a bunch of dogs. Other than that day, she was extremely affectionate. The first few days I had her she even waited for me at the bus stop all day like a lost puppy.

I'm in Virginia.  The prices where I'm looking have leveled off, but not really dropped. The explanation I've heard for the prices not dropping is that the mortgages are still greater than the current house values. For example, if a person took out a mortgage for $400,000 a couple of years ago, but the house value dropped to $300,000 this year and they'd only paid off $50,000 of the mortgage, they'd still owe $350,000 to the bank.  Selling the home for $300,000 would leave them with $50,000 worth of debt that few can afford to pay.

I wish housing prices around here would reflect this better.  I'm trying to move, but the asking prices don't seem to reflect the state of the market.

Ahh, thanks for the info on rice gluten. I wasn't confusing it with rice protein concentrate.  My understanding was that the stickiness of all grains when cooked came from gluten being formed with wheat having the highest percentage of gluten. And, that even wheat doesn't have any gluten until cooked so how it is prepared makes a difference.  There are a few sources that do say that all grains contain gluten for example: Deadly Harvest.  But, it seems to me if it's safe for those with coeliac disease and autism to eat, the sources I had encountered prior to what you all posted are either entirely wrong or overestimating its importance in diet.

LeslieK, I've seen a bunch of info that says that washing rice takes away the nutrients.  But, again, maybe someone has better sources?

http://waltonfeed.com/self/rice.html

Preserving the Nutrients of Food With Proper Care



Sharky, I saw your source about gluten:

http://www.enzymestuff.com/rtgluten.htm

But, I couldn't find other sources to back up what this site was saying or to explain what they saw as the difference between wheat gluten (the 'celiac problem') and other glutens.

Kaffe, isn't the 'gloopiness' rice gluten?  Wouldn't that be harder on the digestive system?

Catbird, I never wash rice.  It gets rid of some of the vitamins and minerals and gives it a strange texture.  It does reduce the gluten though, but that's not desired for many dishes like paella and risotto.  I thought most of the rice in the US was pre-cleaned anyway.

Awww, I hope most of these posts are purely in jest.  Everyone seems to take such care about what they feed their pets, I hope they're taking as good care of themselves.  You deserve it.

They ran an article in the paper a few weeks ago on CSA's in this area.  Many of them are already full as a result of that article.  Now is definitely the time to sign up if you're going to.

I'd give up dairy, meat, carbs, and then fruit & veg.  I don't particularly like dairy except for butter so that would be easiest to give up.  I only eat meat two or three times a week as it is so that would be next.  I love beans and cereals, but I can't stand the white bread that is so popular in the US.  It's so doughy and over yeasted.  It's more like packing material than food so I'd have kind of mixed feelings about that. I don't think I'd ever give up fruit and veg.  It's so good and it feels so good to eat fresh foods.

I agree that veterinarians are strongly influenced by the pet food industry, but I'm not sure that a contrast should be made between this and human doctors and big Pharma.  It's really more of a parallel. 

I went to the doctor for the first time in over a decade last year and was shocked to see everything from the tendon hammer to the prescription pads covered in Wyeth, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and the like.  What really made my stomach turn were the incredibly transparent 'health' videos they were showing in the lobby and even in the exam room that had 30 seconds of bad nutritional information followed by several minutes of drug commercials. The veil of objectivity and propriety is so thin that it's non-existent.  Doctors are as much pharmaceutical pushers as veterinarians are 'food' pushers.  They are indeed paid to push drugs directly.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/09/business/anemia.php

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120114138064112219.html?mod=home_health_right

I do not agree that medical doctors do not have the same conflict of interest.  HMOs are very much in control of what prescriptions doctors dole out and have further control by offering larger discounts at internal pharmacies rather than getting the same drug from a private pharmacy.  Some doctors/HMO management will refuse to write prescriptions for name brand drugs even in those instances that generic is not as effective.

I have tried several vets in this area and am so disgusted it's not funny. None of them (not even the holistic one) knows about nutrition. Most recently, both of my puppies had a bout of vomiting and diarrhea and I got worried and went in for a parvo test.  I was 'given' (read forced to take) a sample 'perscription' gastric upset diet because a bland diet of combinations of chicken, rice, egg, ground eggshell, and squash weren't balanced enough to feed my dogs for a week.  Instead I was to feed:


Mmm...menadione sodium bisulfate...That's supposed to be easier to digest?

Here's food for thought.  If a food requires a prescription shouldn't it be classified as a drug rather than a food and therefore undergo the same testing as other drugs and have to 'prove' that is effective for treating the target illness and meet safety standards?  How many prescription diets would stand up to the same kind of scrutiny that other drugs have to?

I appreciate what you do at Defend Our Pets Mike, but I don't think patterning veterinary practices after current human medical practices is the direction I would want things to go in.  I'm not sure at this point where I think the field should be headed, but I don't making sure that the pet food industry has 'as little' control over veterinarians as pHarma has over medical doctors would make things better.

Dingbat: Yeah, we got a little bit into that when I was astounded by the amount my vet was charging. $700 per dog was my outrageous estimate Others have posted some good suggestions on where to go for help and data on local rates.

Sandy, are you sure you're feeding lamb and not mutton? Lamb (sheep slaughtered under 12 months) has very little smell, not more than beef.  Mutton from older sheep is overpowering. Mutton is sometimes sold as "lamb" so it makes it confusing.  But, if you ask the butcher they should be able to tell you which it is.  Although age is probably the biggest determinant of how much the cut will smell, feed makes a difference too as well as the breed of sheep.  You may need to shop around a bit to find a minimally smelly source.

I eat lamb a few times a year.  And it is possible to find lamb that has very little smell when cooking.  I tried mutton once and that was enough.  It tastes like it smells.  I still do feed my dogs mutton sometimes and the smell when cooking it certainly is objectionable to me, although the dogs love it.  The worst is when I mix it with goat, which smells very strongly of sweaty gym socks.

Kaffe, have you ever used Hare Today?  They package in regular cardboard boxes with Styrofoam insulation sheets and a regular ice pack.  Nothing fancy.  It takes 1 to 2 days for it to arrive to my home by FedEx and this amount of time it stays solidly frozen.  Of course, the more you order the longer it stays frozen. If you can get it frozen to below standard home freezer temperatures, it would help as well.

I've been ordering from Hare Today for a year now and only once did the food not arrive frozen and that was because FedEx claimed the weather was too bad to deliver and let the food sit in a warehouse 15 miles from my home for 2 extra days (the weather was fine, schools didn't even close).  This order spent 5 days total in transit and was starting to thaw on the outside, but still frozen in the middle.  I fed it to my pets anyway without problems (some of it fed raw, some cooked).

That's excellent.  The ones I go to don't start until May. I could really use a pint of strawberries about now.

Hannah is indeed beautiful. Really gorgeous coat.  Thanks for giving us a peek.