After my first round with preparing Chile’s raw meat diet I was a little discouraged by how long it took me and how much it grossed me out. Also, as mentioned in my previous post, I had not been able to give Chile the turkey necks which are supposed to be part of her weekly meal plan. I tried asking the butcher at Jimbo’s if he could grind them for me , unfortunately the gentleman that had helped me before wasn’t there, and this new guy told me they wouldn’t grind the necks. When I relayed my dilemma to Sabine she suggested that I might want to invest in a meat grinder. She recommended the Tasin TS-108. I am obviously meat grinder ignorant so I sent the link for the Tasin to my co-worker Rob, who I know makes sausages, to see what he thought or if he had another one he might recommend. Rob told me this is the first time a vegetarian has ever asked his advice on a meat grinder but that the Tasin seemed well equipped for what I needed it to do (including grinding some bones) and that he is now thinking about getting one for himself! So I ordered the grinder and it arrived shortly before Christmas. With all the craziness of the holidays and our being out-of-town I didn’t get around to using it until New Year’s day. Let me tell you, it is fabulous! I was done preparing a week’s worth of food in less than half an hour. Without the grinder it had previously taken me over an hour. After ordering the Tasin I had watched a couple of videos on YouTube to learn how to operate it properly. During the first run through I didn’t have the grinding plate on properly so the meat wasn’t coming all the way out of the chute and gathering on the sides of the plate. I realized I must have done something wrong because that’s not how it looked on the video. It was pretty easy to figure out the problem and fix it so that I had a properly functioning grinder that was a cinch to use! The cleaning was a lot less difficult than I anticipated too. I would recommend this grinder to anyone thinking about making their own pet food and particularly those that are nauseated by man-handling raw meat like I am.
At this time we are still transitioning Chile from her commercial raw diet to the fresh one by gradually adding more and more to her daily meals. I thought I could handle changing Chile’s diet in conjunction with all the hosting we were doing in December but was reminded, by the Universe once again, that I’m not Super Woman and decided to just take it slow. So far we haven’t noticed Chile having any problems with digesting the new food and no upset stomach or diarrhea has been observed. I definitely think having the grinder will make all the preparation more convenient in the future and will make it easier to keep Chile on a fully homemade diet.
(Side Note: I have not tried grinding the turkey necks yet because they took longer to defrost than the rest of the meat and were still partially frozen at the time. I will try those later this week. )