October 1, 2017

White Dog stretched out on the sofa next to her empty food bowl. "After all day I thought the LAST thing I would want was food for dinner! Glad we are eating a little late."

Bailey came in from the sun porch in time to smack her lips and give WD an "Are you crazy?" look. "Sister, food is ALWAYS a good thing!"

It had been a cooking marathon all day. It began when Steve mentioned after breakfast that we needed to fix dog food. "Which one?" I asked meaning meals for the White Dog Army in general, Benson's and Stormer's special kidney diet meals, YoYoMa's high-protein add-in, or Yo's super cookies. "ALL of them."

I looked up, surprised. "How did THAT happen?" I asked. We usually stagger production so we do one set of meals each weekend and make enough to last several weeks in the freezer. White Dog said, "Really momma, it just a calculus problem, You factor the original..." She stopped when she saw my look. Additionally there were human meals for across the week that needed prepping.

Rice was measured and set to cooking; eggs started the process of hard-boiling; lentils went into the crockpot. Steve was sent off with a grocery list.

My White Dog chef's assistants and I prepared veggies for vegetable noodle soup, shredded chicken for WDA meals, carefully layered the ingredients for chicken and Dal curry that would slow cook in the oven as well as chopped peppers and mixed the marinade for the chicken breasts to nap in before they became Southwest Style week night dinner.

We took a little break as we shelled the 32 eggs...and shared quartered pieces. In meals, the kidney boys get the whites and the rest of the WDA, the yolks. Yo gets his own scrambled with chopped up beef livers.

Steve returned with canned pumpkin, sweet potatoes, green beans, garbanzos, carrots, spinach  and the WDA mackerel. He drained and washed the salt from the canned ingredients and the mackerel simmered. The WDA began to rotate members for "tasting."

Steve took on the task of food processing and then putting the WDA meals into freezer containers while half of us worked on finishing up the kidney diet. Then as he packaged food for Ben and Stormer, our team completed the meal supplement YoYoMa needs. All were so engaged that no one noticed the passage of time.

We finished removing the last of the quinoa, black bean, eggs and cheese cookies for Yo to the jar and looked at the clock. It was nearing 8:30pm. "No wonder I am SO tired," Opal said. She had paced back and forth between both teams all afternoon. Steve agreed, "I am right there with you sweetheart! Good news is dinner is already made!" "Ours, too," I called into the kitchen, "the curry is all ready, we just have to serve."

Most important we were set for a while...a staggered while. We had just short of a month's WDA meals, 18 days of Benson and Stormer food, and 24 days for Yo's supplement. AND cookies for three weeks  plus momma and dad meals for three nights this coming week.

White Dog yawned and looked at me across the room. "Cooking for an Army is a LOT of work, momma!"