Unwanted

Whilst preparing a bulk meal that will become breakfast, lunch and dinner for me today, I put together an array of ingredients to make a hybrid savoury mince / dryish stew.  The contents being normal mince and very finely chopped (to the point of being minced in my chopper):  romaine lettuce, fennel, broccoli, celery, cucumber so that the quantity of the ‘minced’ greens equal that of the minced meat.

As happens when prepping vegetables, there were bits I didn’t want, so put them aside to deal with later.

I also used the remaining contents of a tin of condensed tomato soup (and for anyone who wants to know, the final ingredient was a sweet chili sauce for added spice), and put the empty tin upside down in a pet bowl to let it drain out.

So after adding all the ingredients in the deep frypan and put it all on low to let it simmer once I deemed it chunky enough, I set to work with the unwanted items.

• The offcuts from all the greens went into the rat’s cage.
• The empty tomato soup tin, now drained and the now empty chopper bowl, I put down for the dogs
• Adding to the latter, I had a couple of mouthfuls of green tea and lemon left over from the night before, so I also put that in a bowl for the dogs.

The results of all this were as such:

The rats who normally only get a variety of apples, carrots, fruits, nuts and seeds looked at me as if to say, “What’s with all the greens mum?!?” Clearly though they were only surprised about it because they happily went onto grazing on their smorgasbord of delights.

Cleo, my near deaf and blind dog who is fresh-produce obsessed went straight to the tin and started to lick that out before heading to the empty chopping bowl to lick out the variety of vegetable ‘crumbs’ that didn’t make it into the frypan.

By now, Milly, my other senior girl, not wanting Cleo to have all the fun decides to drink up the excess condensed tomato soup (that I had let drip out of the can before setting the can aside).  This is a dog that normally won’t go near tomato!  (And here’s where it pays to have 2 dogs, it shows that competition is always healthy.)

Both girls looked at the tea, and although they both adore white tea, they’re not fans of herbal tea, so both gave a look of “no thanks”.

Not a problem!  As soon as they both did the washing up and left the kitchen, I poured the remainder of the tea in their water dish.  They might notice a slight change of taste in their water, but they won’t realise their drink has become 19 parts water, 1 part green tea with lemon.

The best thing about living with a menagerie, NOTHING here ever goes to waste!