Today I dumped the oatmeal cookie pucks, put them all into a freezer bag and they’re back in the freezer til we want cookies.
The other day when I had to give Oscar a pill, after having struggled with getting it down him with cheese, trying peanut butter, and finally a piece of cooked hamburger meat, I got it down him. He loved the hamburger meat and never noticed the pill in there. I’ve used hamburger meat since then and it has worked so well.
I had 10 pounds of ground beef defrosting in the fridge that I had planned to freeze dry. I ended up using about 2.5 pounds of that to make “ground beef cookies”. I pushed the ground beef down into the Super Cube cookie trays and stuck those in the freezer. I filled all of my cookie trays and a few of the 2 Tablespoon trays. I stuck that all in the freezer. I will let it freeze solid, then I will put it in the freeze dryer and once it’s dried, I can store it on the shelf in jars. When I need to give Oscar or Cooper a pill, I can rehydrate a ground beef cookie in a bit of water for maybe 5 minutes, microwave it or fry it in a skillet (I don’t give them raw meat), stick the pill in and no fighting with them to get them to take their meds.
Since I had planned to freeze dry four trays of meat – about 2.5 pounds per tray, I was one tray short since I had used some of it in the doggie cookies. I chopped up some purple onions and filled that last tray with onions. I’m not going to runt the freeze dryer with an empty tray!
I took 14 more pounds of ground beef out of the freezer. I left four pounds out to defrost so I can make a pot of chili for us. The remaining ground beef is in the fridge and should be defrosted by Sunday or Monday. I’m going to make raw beef patties with that, freeze dry those and we’ll have them ready whenever we want a quick hamburger! I wish I had known years ago how well freeze dried ground beef works.
What are your thoughts?