I’m delighted to announce that the new book will be launched this weekend and will be available from Amazon!
The title is going to be ‘The Dog’s Favourite Recipe Book and culinary adventures of a Miniature Schnauzer’. It contains five stories with illustrations and forty recipes for dogs.
The first story is about Julia Baxter who runs a Bakery & Patisserie in the Lanes in Brighton.
Overnight Julia experiences a moment of complete madness and she ends up in a horrible fight with her oven. Our lovely Waitrose deliverers inspired me to write the second chapter. Buster needs to phone driver Pete for an emergency grocery order which gets delivered in an unconventional way … Our home boarder Bev was the inspiration for a story about Howl O’Ween Eve and the witches of Lewes. It’s a story about the three Robertson sisters who decided to move into a 300 hundred year old property Silver Moonlight mansion. The book finishes with a story about the grand opening at the i360 and includes my favourite cocktails recipes such as the Bulldog Smash*, the Regal Beagle* and the Salty Chihuahua*
(* but only for grown-up human consumption!).
The last story I wrote, The Dog Goes Bananas, is loosely based on the disappearance of our friend Kathleen’s schnauzer called Schnapps. In this story The Dog Goes Bananas! you will find out what scary event caused Schnapps to runaway into the hills of Seaford. You will also read about Kathleen’s life in which she decides to adopt one of the schnauzers from the pop act the Salt-N-Peppers. She even gets to meet the late Mrs Diana Brimblecombe who was the founder of animal rescue centre DBARC.
I hope you will enjoy browsing the recipes too and that it may inspire you to cook healthy home made meals and treats for your dog alongside the food or treats you normally would buy. For many of you this book will be a great opportunity to try out something new and something different.
The recipes are based on fresh ingredients such as vegetables, fruit, flour, dairy, seeds, herbs, poultry, meat and fish. The greatest thing about preparing the food yourself is that you know exactly what goes into it. When using fresh food your dog will get natural nutrients, vitamins, calcium and the best thing is their food will be free from additives.
The recipes in the new book vary from blueberry banana cookies, chicken ‘tickle-your-tummy’ roast and beef & berry popsicles to cod & turmeric biscuits, creepy strawberry ice cubes and chicken polenta balls, just to name a few.
I’ve been working on this book since July 2016 and I have done a lot of research for the dog recipes. I have visited libraries and shops to see which recipes are available and of course there was the internet with a huge amount of recipes for dogs. It was interesting to see how careful and cautious people are when it comes to cooking for pets. People only want to give the best food for their dogs. Their lives are so precious to us that we want to ensure that they are given good quality food.
When we got Buster in 2014 I was given a food chart for dogs by a friend who is passionate about pets. I am a home-cook so it was obvious that I would be doing the cooking for our Miniature Schnauzer. It was a very helpful chart and I started to look into recipe books for dogs and healthy cooking for dogs. I learned from an early stage which food is good for dogs and which food is not good for them. We feed Buster freshly cooked food combined with dried food. Most meals are simple and made with herbs and olive oil but without salt, garlic, onions or wine. Our miniature schnauzer Buster loves dog biscuits, fresh banana, carrots, green beans and cooked chicken.
You will find plenty of safe and healthy recipes for dogs in this book which your pooch will love.
I hope you will have fun reading this book and enjoy the cooking!
The Dog’s Favourite Recipe Book (and culinary adventures of a Miniature Schnauzer) ISBN 978154046188, paperback, black & white, 140 pages.
Price: £8.99, $10.99, €9.99. Out on 25th March 2017.
Richard Gough-Buijs 