Peter Singer Should Try Pele’s Guilt-Free “Chicken-Buddy” (™)

Written and Narrated by Andrew Couch

If that title makes no sense, don’t sweat it -it only gets worse! However, if you haven’t heard of or read the philosopher Peter Singer’s take on wealth, scarcity, and morality, take a moment to familiarize yourself with him here. He’s also got a few notes on animal equality. The following “essay” is a bit of that ‘ol ramblin’ on the intersection of morality, madcap singing, and dog food. Share and enjoy!

Also, if you like music and the people who create it, head on over to The Monkey Tooth Podcast to listen to this week’s guest - Vera Sola. We talk about dreams, music, exploding doormats, and her new record, Peacemaker. Or read the review below. 

Last year, I started cooking dog food. To be clear, I’m cooking regular food and feeding it to my dog; a lack of spices and the inclusion of a rather stinky multivitamin are the only things that make this food specifically of the dog variety. I’ve eaten plenty of it before the vitamins go in. A houseguest once asked me for the recipe for the “quinoa thing” in the fridge, “it’s tasty!” he said. When I apologized for not labeling my dog’s food, he said he envied our dog.

But I can’t make the meal without thinking about starving children. People all around the globe are suffering from food scarcity. Fear, worry, and plain naked hunger surround the idea of food for too many of my fellow humans. I cannot say, in good conscience, that I do enough to alleviate this burden for my fellow man. Instead, I spoil a dog with more calories in one day than a Yemeni or Palestinian refugee might eat in two. I struggle with hypocrisy and conflict in my relationship with food, which is, in itself, a luxury and represents an embarrassment of riches.

In light of this, maintaining my joy for cooking dog food requires constant adjustment. I’ll take you through a portion of the process so you can get a sense of what I’m talking about.

For one, my dog and I are rarely apart. He sleeps in the bed with my wife and me and is with me everywhere I go, from the moment I leave my sheets until I get back in them at the end of the day. As soon as my wife leaves the house, I find myself singing and talking to him in complete sentences. I can barely write about it without cringing at how mad it would sound to an outsider who heard the nonsense I rattle off as we move through our day. I sing about what we’re doing next, what we just did, and things we’ll never do. I sometimes sing the variations on his various nicknames, changing the pronunciation and calling him all sorts of things - Buddy, Budeept, Pardeef, Gurdjieff, etc.… I should be too embarrassed to write this down, let alone say it out loud. But if I stopped writing or saying embarrassing things, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have much to share.

So, Once a month, while singing to him about all the stupid things, I have the privilege of cooking up a huge batch of food for him to eat for the next 30 days. He seems to know the names of the various ingredients, and I rattle them off as I pluck them from the refrigerator, saving the star of the show for last. I only have to whisper the word “Chicken” for his body language to shift dramatically. 

He finds a comfortable seat with a view and sits up with both eyes locked on me as I prepare the meal—chicken, veggies, grains, berries, sometimes avocadoes, and vitamin powder. Every time I finish with a utensil or bowl, he knows it and clicks his way into the kitchen to help clean it up. As ingredients emerge from the refrigerator and find their way into pans or the food processor, my mind dances from place to place. I think of my friends in Latin America who could no sooner feed their dogs such luxuriant meals than they could take a dump on the moon. Grinning at my enthusiastic friend as I slice up the body parts of chickens whose tortured existence I hope my little guy could never comprehend, I can’t help but think about the suffering with which I am complicit. All the while, I can feel his excitement building and notice his ears sitting on his head like his own pair of attentive guard dogs.

I pile the processed ingredients into a large silver bowl to mix them. Before the vitamins, the resulting concoction smells great - as fit for human consumption as any meal the United Nations provides to refugees fleeing the bombs in Eastern Ukraine. I stir it together and delight in the small movements of my dog’s head as he tracks the movement of the big spoon, which he will soon be cleaning, along with the silver bowl.

The containers that hold his food for the week ahead cost more than a pair of shoes in Guatemala. The money I spent on the vitamin mix could buy a week of food for a child in Uttar Pradesh. The joy I get from laying down the large silver bowl, covered in bits of rice, shredded chicken, and vegetables, is rivaled by my pal’s glee in getting to clean it with his tongue.

As a young man, I never would have guessed the highlight of my week would be cooking dog food for a 25-pound, wiry-haired creature who growls at squirrels and understands English, clicking and whistling as if they were all his native tongue. At no point in my life did I consider how it would feel to house both guilt and pleasure in my chest around something as simple as dog food.

I don’t know how to deal with the guilt, but I’m sure someone does. For sure, there is a great deal more I could do for my fellow man, but doing so for the sake of my own guilt seems somehow on par with doing nothing. Of course, my moral quandary doesn’t matter to the hungry child or her parents. It makes no difference if their food was made with guilt or a clear conscience. It sure doesn’t seem to bother Budeept, Pardeef, or Gurdjieff.

Please enjoy the following recipe.

Pele’s Guilt-Free “Chicken Buddy”

(Makes one month of food for an active 20-30lb. dog)

Ingredients

3oz – Multivitamin powder for dogs

18lbs. Chicken (I use everything: skin, feet, organs, bones, etc…)

6 cups brown rice (soaked)

½lb. Carrots

½lb. Broccoli

½lb. Apples

½lb. Blueberries

1lb. Sweet Potatoes

1 Avocado (optional)

Method

1.     Soak 6 cups of rice in cold water overnight. Strain and rinse before cooking.

2.     Cover chicken in water, and boil chicken for a little less than two hours. Preserve chicken broth.

3.     Cook rice in chicken broth.

4.     Chop up fruit and veggies in a food processor with water or broth.

5.     Separate meat from bone and chop up chicken in a food processor, adding about a tablespoon of broth for each batch of processed meat. Basically, keep it moist so it doesn’t dry into weird clumps.

6.     When Rice is done, combine it with raw veggies and fruit to blanch.

7.     Mix vitamin powder in cold water and combine with rice and veggies.

8.     layer 1lb of veggie mix with 1lb of meat.

9.     I store 3 in the freezer and a week’s worth in the fridge.

10.  Let your dog assist in cleanup and tell them they did a good job.