My new best friend

The food processor.

This is a batch of fresh food for the birds I made this morning



Normally my mix of greens is slightly more chunky; I would cut everything by hand. It would take a long time, as I would try to cut the vegetables really small, but at one point, I would get a little tired and the chunks wouldn't be as small as when I started.

This morning I remembered we had a food processor; a tiny little thing (it holds 3 cups max and even then..it doesn't like to be filled up past the half way point) that Bram's old landlords had given to us when he moved out as they had got a much better one as a wedding gift..Anyways, we had seldom used it and it lay in the cupboard above the fridge, forgotten.

Well I gave it a whirl this morning and I doubt I'll go back to manually cutting veggies for the birds again; it took me much less time to go through the pile of veggies (list to be found below) and everything was cut so small. What a revelation! So much so, that I'm considering getting a better one in the near future (which can hold more and has different cutting options). Plus, it will be much harder for the birds to pick out what they do not like and for the same amount of veggies, it take much less storage space!

Here is the list of what when in the mix this morning:



-1 big carrot
-1 stalk of broccoli
-A couple florets of cauliflower
-1/3 of a large sweet potato, peeled
-1 red bell pepper
-A couple strands of rapini
-A couple leafs of collard greens
-A handful of Brussels sprouts
-1 orange (mostly for the citrus juice which helps keep everything fresh)

I think that is it. It tasted quite good too!

From 5 to 7 - Days 14, 15 & 16

Not much that happened lately worth talking about, but I did promise myself that I would continue this until my parents' birds head back home.

Shade has definitively stopped wanting to go at Nemo, or at least hasn't shown any aggression towards him in the last week or so. However, Nemo seems to now want to get at Shade if I let him. Apparently, I can't have both Senegals on their best behavior. I am tempted to say it's because they are siblings (because of typical sibling rivalry) but it most likely has nothing to do with this (will not "humanize" this type of behavior).

Nemo has also started to be particularly clingy with me. In the beginning, he could handle being on my boyfriend as well, but lately, it's me or nothing. And when it's "nothing", he tries to find his way to me. And like I mentioned earlier, he is not too keen to share me with Shade or Itsy.

I also made some greens today, aka the mix of fresh food. I didn't have any for a little less than a week, I just gave them fresh foods that I prepared on the go as well as some sprouts. I also started a new batch of sprouts yesterday and finished the old one (aka 3 days old) today.

Examples of fresh foods I give my birds

I actually can't figure out why it took me this long to write an entry on the subject.

I usually chop a number of fresh food items and put them in a bowl to last me a few days. This saves me time each evening, and frankly, there are some evenings where I just rather do nothing. I usually put either an orange or a lemon in the mix so that the citrus juice helps keep the food fresher longer.

Here are some examples of what I do:

Batch #1

It contained in no particular order:
-Collard Greens
-Swiss Chard
-Pomegranate seeds
-An orange
-Yellow Bell Pepper
-Corn (freshly cut off the cob)
-Broccoli
-(Orange) Cauliflower
-Carrots
-Sweet Potatoes
-Snow Peas






Batch #2

It contained in no particular order

-1 big carrot
-Broccoli
-(1) Orange pepper and (half) a red pepper
-Some sweet potato
-Some red cabbage
-A couple leafs of Red chard
-A couple leafs of Kale
-An orange
-Pomegranate seeds from one Pomegranate





I also often add sprouted grains on top of the greens when I feed them to my birds.