Unlike the lucky folks living in USA (and other countries with plenty of farms), Singapore imports most of its food. This translates into a sadly limited varieties of food for not just humans, but also the pets.

The TRE cats are on a constant rotation of meat types and I rotate them rather arbitrarily! Some pet owners like to rotate on a 2 week basis, or a monthly basis, but bless my soul–I can’t be that methodical. So it depends on my mood, but at least the cats get variety…and I must add that they’re far less picky than a lot of other cats that I know.

Luckily, a rather conscientious hunt around neighbourhood supermarkets and high-end supermarkets turned out this:

FROZEN TURKEY!

Found this not-so-little gem in Ang Mo Kio NTUC Fairprice Extra supermarket–and that’s a slightly-above-average supermarket, for our non-Singaporean readers. It cost me $28 and weighs over 1 kg +.

Okay so it’s just the breast right there, but what could I possibly do with a 10kg whole bird even if I can find one (usually during christmas!)? Where will it fit? So for the average Singaporean, this will do just nicely!

The label ‘boneless’ turkey breast tickles me. I have never met a poultry breast meat cut that has bones!

What is a little disturbing is that the turkey breast is swimming in a bag of preservatives that help to tenderize and flavour the meat. I had to do something about it (show you later)!

But first, let’s open my turkey pack…

What could that butterball pack peeking out be?

It’s a sizeable gravy packet!

I was all set to throw it away until I decided  that it could make a tasty sauce for stir-fried vegetables for myself 🙂

A ball of meat!

Since the turkey breast is marinated in preservatives that you’d find in any canned pet food, I decided (On Oreo’s Mum‘s advice) to soak it for a couple of days. I don’t want my furkids to be eating any preservatives if I can help it, and that’s the whole point of going raw/home-cooked.

Popped the turkey into a tub of water and into the fridge it went! I switched the fridge settings to the lowest temperature available so that the meat would stay safe.

I changed water frequently throughout two days, rinsing the turkey well each time to get rid of as much solution as possible.

Two days later, I finally got to unwrap the turkey!

The whole turkey breast came wrapped in twine so that it wouldn’t fall apart.

Geez, so much twine! Almost looks like maggi mee! And notice the white parts? That’s all the fat there is. There aren’t any annoying pockets of deep yellow wobbly fats that you find stuck liberally onto chicken here, there, everywhere. The turkey fat comes off cleanly in one big piece… sort of like a big white jacket of fat and all you have to do is peel it off!

The readers who’ve told me that they abhor giving poultry because of the psychological need to remove ‘gross-looking’ chicken fats may rejoice! 😛

In any case, some fats are needed in any diet–and fats are good for fur quality! Do be careful if your pet is older or suffers from pancreatits…you may need to reduce the amount of fats given. This goes as well for fat pets!

Turkey is generally lean throughout and is good for pets and humans.

According to Nutrition Data, a serving of turkey has only 1gram of fat and 0 grams of trans and saturated fats. So if your pet is fat, this is a good choice for variety.

I’d say this is a good substitute for lean beef or pork, or chicken, if you really don’t like sawing your way through mounds of chicken fat! 😛

Unfortunately…the TRE cats do not like turkey (canned or kibble). I have mentally prepared myself for a possible kitty strike:

I then cooked the turkey bits to see if that will tempt them…

Ah, that’s a relief. Whatever would I do with 1kg of turkey if they didn’t eat it? Probably I’d add it to my stir-fried vegetables…the catch is, I’m not a real fan of turkey either! Way too lean and tough for me!

Stay tuned to see what I did to the turkey! 😉

Categories: The Raw Explorer, Uncategorized