The book
“Love Me, Feed Me: Sharing With Your Dog the Everyday Good Food You Cook and Enjoy” by Judith Jones (Knopf, 180 pages, $24.95)
We spend our lives making choices: Do we invest our precious time watching that film? Listening to this music? Eating that food? Reading this book? I often push away books because they were not appealing.
I recently finished reading a novel. I stuck with it to the very end. It was a nonstop cascade of senseless, confusing and meaningless violence. I actually had to put it down repeatedly because it was depressing me. When I got to the last 10 pages I still held out a faint hope that the author might redeem himself with an ending that justified the horror of the story. He did not. A book like that can make a reader feel like this has become a shared failure in a way because you wasted some of your life with it.
After that I had to read something that might make me feel cleansed — to purge the foul taste this flawed novel had left upon my literary palate. I revisited a book I had already read, a book I loved. It is a new cookbook written by a woman who is in her 90s: Judith Jones lives with her dog in a New York City apartment.
Her dog, a Havanese named Mabon, is quite the lucky pooch. You see, Jones cooks for him. Every day. Mabon gets his scoop of kibble for breakfast. For their main meal at suppertime Mabon savors the gourmet cooking of his loving companion. Jones describes the meals that she prepares for Mabon and for herself in her delightful book “Love Me, Feed Me: Sharing With Your Dog the Everyday Good Food You Cook and Enjoy.”
The author spent half a century editing books by legendary cooks such as James Beard and Julia Child. This cookbook is filled with appealing recipes interspersed with photos of her charming dog as he anticipates what Jones is preparing for their dinner.
Over the course of years and numerous hounds Jones finally recognized that this current one deserves better fare than the canned dog foods which are so prevalent. Mabon is happy and healthy, and he has never tasted any canned dog food.
“Love Me, Feed Me” is a practical guide to preparing meals for our canine companions. It is a feel good book that reads like a love letter to Mabon. After just a few minutes perusing it again I had forgotten the agonies of that horrid novel. The photos alone filled this reviewer with joy.
Jones typically prepares enough food at dinnertime so that Mabon can have one-third of the main course that she is preparing. She makes sure that his meals are well balanced and has identified particular vegetables that Mabon has found to be palatable.
Don’t get the wrong impression; Mabon doesn’t take his meals at the dinner table. He is allowed to help out with washing up the dishes afterward, but this task is accomplished in a location some distance from the dinner table. Jones doesn’t want to encourage bad behaviors like begging at the table.
Mabon can be a bit of a rascal however; Jones describes how the pup has been known to abscond with a fragrant chunk of cheese or some other tasty tidbit when she wasn’t being vigilant. Mabon has even snatched that most forbidden of doggie no-nos, chocolate, and suffered no apparent harm by it.
About the Author