Dog Food Chili

Fern made the mistake of cleaning out the freezer onto the dogs plates. Now they won't eat anything we didn't make. So, I cooked up a 2kg roll of lean ground beef for dog food.  I put some bay leaves in it so it would taste better. Also it had a carrot, onion and stick of celery.  It smelled wonderful, to me. Storm wouldn't touch it. He doesn't like the bay leaf smell. I cooked up some more ground beef without bay leaf. He gobbled it up. So, what to do with 2kg of tasty dog food? I made chili.

I soaked a bunch of beans for a couple of hours then sweated some green peppers from the garden. I added the greens, beans, a jar of Fern's tomato sauce and a can of store bought tomato sauce. 1 tbsp of chilli powder, 1/2 tsp cumin. Salt, black pepper. And water, I kept adding water as the beans cooked and absorbed it. It simmered for about 7 hours which you'd think would cook all the beans but a good portion were still firm. So I left it cooking for the evening. Put it on the BBQ outside for the night. Put it back on the stove this morning and hopefully the beans will cook over the day. The taste was great, it's just the firm beans that need fixing.

I also made bread, fairly well this time, but it didn't brown enough. I used 

1 cup All Purpose flour

1 tbsp wheat gluten

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp yeast

1/2 cup water. 

I mixed water in with a fork, then started kneading the dough. It was a little too dry so I added more water and kneaded it in.  Between 5-10 minutes of kneading and the dough felt soft and pliable. I put it in the oven with just the oven light on. It rose to double it's size in about and hour.  I preheated the oven to 450F, put bread in and turned down to 400F for 35 minutes. Unfortunately I used a bread pan and the sides prevented the bread from browning. So it was pale bread, but good!

Fresh grated cheddar on top. Overall, not a bad meal for dog food.