Dinner tonight

I took a bulgur/red quinoa mix, added some ginger, garlic, crushed red pepper, frozen mixed vegetables, frozen sweet potato, and chopped chard:

And then mixed in red palm oil and chopped raspberries!

YUMMY! (No videos of Violet, she is staunchly opposed to anything fresh. I mix her special seed mix into her meals to at least get her interacting with her food, but she only picks the seeds out. But I persist!)

Found a great new food product

At HEB, a texas based grocery store:

I cooked up some of the five grain mix, with carrots, broccoli and purple cabbage, cumin, garlic, cinnamon and ginger.

Yummy! And so quick!

Home-made Foraging Toy-Making Session!

Tonka can go through several of these a week on a good week! A year ago she wouldn't chew paper at all, now she blazes through toys like this! :D

Now to teach Perry!

Freshly updated Etsy Shop

I will admit I am bad about adding toys to my etsy shop. I rarely sell toys through etsy- most of my toys I sell through my local parrot society. But I did just update it yesterday with a few toys!

Available at http://www.etsy.com/shop/Pollyoopiepettoys?ref=si_shop

Home-mixed cockatiel seed blend

While my cockatiel Violet took to eating her pellets right off the bat, she has been much more stubborn about eating ANYTHING else besides millet and seeds. I limit her pellets, since the info out there seems to point to tiels not doing so well on a high-pellet diet. And cockatiels need more seed in their diet than the big birds, but also can/should eat veggies, cooked beans, grains, bird bread, even a bit of fruit. Violet won't have anything to do with this *yucky* stuff! I continue to feed her a warm mash/cooked grain type meal every day with the big birds, but wanted to have a super healthy seed type mix to feed in the meantime. But I was really aiming for more of a whole foods, high nutrition mix, than just a bunch of seeds.

I started with a base of Higgins Sunburst Cockatiel, but I picked out the big chunks of dried fruit and nuts first and put those aside for the bigger birds.
http://www.higginspremium.com/SunburstIntro.htm

To that I added a bit of Goldenfeast Petite Hookbill blend, and Goldenfeast Gardenflora, and Gardenflora II.
http://www.goldenfeastfoods.com/online/products-page/small-birds/cockatiel/petite-hookbill-legume-blend/

http://www.goldenfeastfoods.com/online/products-page/small-birds/cockatiel/gardenflora-blend/

http://www.goldenfeastfoods.com/online/products-page/small-birds/cockatiel/gardenflora-blend-ii/

Then I mixed in some of the smaller bits from Phoenix Foraging's Unpellet Mix- full of herbs, spices, etc.
http://phoenixforagingrolls.com/UnPellet-Mix-011.htm

Next went in Just Tomatoes brand dried peppers, tomatoes, carrots, peas.
http://www.justtomatoes.com/jtstore/pc/Just-Veggies-3p157.htm

After that, I went on an "everything but the kitchen sink" spree to see what I had in my cupboard. I added:

Bob's Red Mill 5 grain cereal mix
steel cut oats
quinoa
barley
kamut
fennel seed
crushed red pepper
bee pollen
flax seed
chia seed
mustard seed


Whew! This mix is SO pretty, and smells great. Violet is really liking it, too. She doesn't eat everything in it yet, but will spend whole minutes at a stretch grubbing through it, obviously enjoying herself! I usually feed it out of foraging toys, as opposed to a bowl, as well.