I created a video assembled from photos sent by friends and Parrot Nation Readers from all over the place. It was a small project and I did the editing in about two days, but it was a lot of fun to put together. What I wanted to do was show you that Chop is indeed a “Concept.” As available ingredients vary from place to place and from Continent to Continent, Chop is never going to be the same.

You will also find your own Chop varying from season to season.  It was a quick and dirty editing job. I didn’t have the time to spend day-after-day fine-tuning it and photoshopping it, but I made a copy so I can work on it later should I need to.  You might want to keep it on the small screen as blowing it up to full size will be disappointing. I couldn’t render the images the way I wanted them as I am still learning, but it’s not bad for two days of work.

This is your Chop. Your way. From your kitchens. With your birds. Congratulations! You’re doing a beautiful job making it your own.

Here is the Video of Chop from, well, everywhere and also from many of you. Thank you to all who sent me photos. I hope you like it:

The revolution I’m talking about is what’s going on in the average parrot’s diet. Yes, I’m talking about the “Chop Revolution.” It seems to be spreading far and wide and I couldn’t be happier. And if you’re in the Springfield, VA area this Saturday, January 7th, you have an opportunity to attend a Phoenix Landing event at ten a.m. in the morning. I’ll be talking about “Chop” and the entire concept and story behind it.  Here is the information:

Click on the Logo for more information!

NOURISH TO FLOURISH: CHOP CHOP! with PATRICIA SUND

SPRINGFIELD, VA
SATURDAY
January 7th
10:00 AM – 12:00 Noon
Grace Presbyterian Church
7434 Bath Street

I’ve been invited by Phoenix Landing to give a bit of an overview on “Chop;” how to make it, how to store it, and the benefits. I know it’ll be a ton of fun. Lots of people I haven’t met but have communicated with will be there and I’m very excited to be able to meet them. And I’d love to meet you too. I mean really; this is going to be fun.

First off, I can talk about Chop until I’m blue in the face:

I love talking about something I believe in. Ever notice when you take a photo of someone who’s speaking, their mouth is always open?

Phoenix Landing is a wonderful organization that was founded by Ann Brooks. And she got behind the Chop concept as soon as she saw the benefits and its efficiency. So I’m quite happy to come up and answer questions, fill in some blank spots and encourage people to make some Chop. So if you’re in the neighborhood, please, please swing by and say “Hi!” I hope to make sure it’s entertaining. See you there!

Oy! I’ve been meaning to post again for a week now, but I’ve had my hands full. I’ve been doing a lot of flying. It’s all been out of Miami Airport so the drive is kicking my keester. It’s been fun flying out of there but driving on I95 twice a day has been a killer.

I made this ginormous batch of Chop that’s going to last me until hell freezes over, or five months. Whichever comes first. I got a bit carried away at the market where I shop for Chop ingredients and ended up with enough Chop to fill my Big-ass stock pot twice. I was bagging the stuff for five hours. But I got some pretty cool ingredients in it:

Wheat Grass anyone?

I found some pretty kinky stuff to put into it. Can anyone tell me what this is?

It’s a black radish. And it’s about the size of a tennis ball. I thought it was cool, so I got one for my Chop. It’s chewier than a red radish and spicier. I really liked the flavor and I thought the “woodiness” of the texture would appeal to my Greys. And get a load of the collard greens I had to chop up and throw in!

It was like trimming  a hedge, there was so much of it. But collard greens are REALLY good for the birds, so I didn’t mind doing it. And it all went in, stems and leaves alike.  But I wasn’t done with the weird stuff:

Yup, that’s okra. If you live in the south, that might not be weird to you, but I grew up in an Irish-Danish household in the suburbs of Chicago. In the 60′s. Okra might as well have been sushi to my family. No okra, no grits, no raw fish. I grew up in a typical white-bread, middle-class family. We ate broiled chicken, potatoes, roast beef, oatmeal for breakfast and peanut butter sandwiches. But my parents did manage to have some fun with food. I am embarrassed to report that we had an orange fondue pot with those idiotic long forks.

My Mother enjoyed making the old Jewish standby, Chopped Liver and sending that along with some matzoh in my school lunches so she could freak out the nuns. She loved getting a rise out of the penguins.  I also recall beef tongue sandwiches. On white bread. With mustard. I think about eating that now, with white bread and mustard and I want to heave. But at the time, I thought it was just fine. And of course, the nuns would have a coronary. So that always worked out.

My father was a bit of a food elitist, and ventured out with some fairly outrageous food items for the time. I remember him making stuff like pots de creme, which is a chocolate pudding-like desert, and he liked cooking roast goose on the barbecue outside. Dad had a recipe for Danish brandy cookies he would make at Christmas. We always knew when they were done because he put so much brandy in them, the oven door would blow open:

Ka-Blam!

“Dad! The Cookies are done!”

So the idea of putting okra in my chop is a fairly novel idea to me. But I digress…

Let’s see, let’s see. What else did I throw in this el mondo-grosso batch of Chop? Oh yeah!

Radicchio

Yup. Radicchio. It’s colorful, a member of the cabbage family and it has a snappy taste, so what the hell…

And this? This is swiss chard. Leafy, colorful and crisp, this stuff is a must have in Chop. You want to look for really colorful, leafy stuff to throw in there.

And by the way, almost every vegetable I bought was organic. I have no idea how I managed that, but I did. So it was a very successful batch.

I got lentils, quinoa, brown and wild rice, spelt, whole wheat pasta, cooked up and tossed in there. I also have a new find:

Isn’t this whole grain cereal cool? And it’s got 4 grains in it. Anything to add variety as far as I’m concerned. It goes in uncooked. And these?

These are the tops of the red jalapeños that I added. I told you it was a big batch! I also found the organic dandelion greens again. I’m always happy to see that go in.

And another standard I like to include is zucchini:

All in all, I got 280 meals for my three birds. It cost me about 34 cents a meal. I can live with that. And my birds are going to be eating well for months.

Bob’s Chop! Gorgeous!

Robert is a bird person in a big way. What I mean by that is that he has big birds. Here is Bob’s bio that he wrote and sent along to me for the post:

“Robert is not exactly a newcomer to aviculture, he has been in its midst for over 30 years. Robert’s passion first took off when he saw the Dr. Dolittle’s companion, a Blue and Gold Macaw named Polynesia in the famous film starring Rex Harrison. From that point, there was no looking back. In Bob’s pre-teen years his parents bought him a cockatiel from a bird studio in the Chicago Old Town area. The store, Sedgewick Studios was owned by an older gentleman from Germany named Erlang—Erlang became a model of what Bob wanted to become. Later on, Bob saw his first Hyacinth and that species became the Macaw he wanted to have one day.

His passion took him through having budgies, cockatiels, Amazons, conures, cockatoos, and finally to his true passion—macaws. Bob currently shares his life with a Hyacinth Macaw named Miss Maggie:

a Greenwing Macaw named Blaze:

and a Blue-front Amazon named Popeye:

Typical of many bird people, Bob’s birds eat a more balanced diet than he does and striving to find a perfect diet for his flock brought him to Chop.  As we all know, getting our birds to eat a variety of foods is difficult and in his opinion, it is even more difficult for those with Hyacinths. In order to maintain these magnificent psitticines we must offer a variety that is packed with healthy nutrients and fats and to ensure that it is done efficiently. Every mouthful has to count.

After reading Patricia Sund’s blog, and discussing Chop with her, he made his first batch. Bob’s Hyacinth picked through it and Chop made her more inquisitive compared to other foods. Now, she will take other foods without them being chopped, but Bob believes Chop initiated her curiosity towards other foods.

Robert is a graphic designer by profession and education, but his true passion is parrots.”

Bob lives in the Chicago area and is very devoted to his flock. So devoted in fact, that for their sake, he did this to his kitchen making Chop:

Compared to what my kitchen looks like Après Chop, this is actually quite neat. My kitchen on the other hand, looks like the inside of a dumpster after I’m done making a batch. I never could get the hang of that “clean up as you go” concept. However, I can assure you, it’s worth it. But I digress…

Bob did some research and settled on making Chop for his crew. The results were astounding as you will see. Bob made about 20 pounds which, even with his crew of jetliner birds, will last for quite a while. Bob chose a nice array of vegetables that seemed to work well together in terms of color and nutrition balance.  He also chose to add beans right in with his Chop instead of making a separate bean mix which is just fine.

Jacqueline Johnson, the Parrot Garden Manager at Best Friends does the same thing. But you can always mix things up with an assortment of toppings to get more of a taste variety.

Bob used kale, collards and other greens, a very nutritious and important part of Chop.  He selected brown rice, quinoa, and whole grain pasta as his starches and carbs; all excellent choices.

His other vegetables included carrots, zucchini, broccoli, red and green peppers and cooked pumpkin. This batch is dead on for a nice smack of Vitamin A and calcium!

Bob also did something I used to do and is still a good alternative if you like what you see. He used 2 five pound bags of mixed frozen vegetables. He used cinnamon as a spice which world with the pumpkin addition:

Some carrots for the crowd:

All in all, Bob did a great job with his Chop and I believe that he’s gotten the hang of making it in short order. Sometimes people have an issue with getting it dry enough to freeze fresh. If it’s too moist, it has a tendency to thaw out with a mushy texture; something you don’t want. So undercook the rice, quinoa or pastas a bit so they can readily sop up some of the moisture from the vegetables.

I’m curious to find out how long Bob’s Chop is going to last. Which reminds me, I’m getting a little low myself. So soon it’ll be time to haul out my big-ass stock pot and make another batch. Stay tuned! Many thanks to Bob for allowing me to profile his Chop making efforts.

I got Heidi’s photo Here.

I watched the show Prostitutes to Parrots on Animal Planet last night. It seems that Heidi Fleiss has a new gig. After adopting 20 macaws, Heidi has to figure out how to efficiently care for them while trying to make enough money to support herself and her flock. Now this is a problem. All of her macaws are free-flighted and have the run of the house. From what I’ve been able to observe, the house isn’t sufficiently parrot-proofed to cope with the onslaught of such massive beaks.

There is a way to handle this. She has the space. And if she’d knock off the runs to Whole Foods for pre-made butternut squash soup, she’d be able to afford them. I like the show, but until she gets a staff together and trained to look after her flock, there’s going to be hell to pay. There’s tons of things she could do to make the situation easier for her and better for her flock. It doesn’t have to be hard. And she doesn’t have to be as anxious about the situation as she is. I’d simply love to see this work for her. Her heart’s in the right place and she appears to absolutely adore her flock. And if she changed some things, and improved the environment for them, it could work. The trick isn’t to be critical, but constructive.

Now here is the rub: Does Animal Planet want to see her succeed? Or does AP think the inherent drama of the situation makes for better T.V.? I don’t know, but I’m staying tuned.

Over the years, I have tried different types of bird supplements for my birds. I think it’s smart to add a vitamin supplement to a bird’s diet. Even though my Greys have  a very nutritious daily menu, I still sprinkle their food with a vitamin supplement a couple of times a week. I do it because “I want to make sure I get the corners when I’m cleaning the window.”

It certainly won’t hurt them, and it might offer their little feathered keesters a mineral or an amino acid I may have missed when I was preparing their food.

I’ve switched back and forth between supplements, but I’ve finally settled on one that I like: Prime by Hagen.

And I use it for one damn good reason: Parker, Pepper and Nyla will actually eat whatever it is I’ve sprinkled it on.

Now this sounds like a strange reason to select a particular supplement. But if you think about it, what good is buying a supplement if your birds won’t eat it? There are other reasons I selected Prime, but that’s the primary one. I’ve tried other brands and the birds won’t touch the food it’s sprinkled on.

First of all, it also doesn’t smell like a bad chemistry experiment; in fact it smells pretty good. I never knew why until I began looking at what Prime offers.  Or in this case, what it doesn’t offer. According to HARI, “Some other supplements use yeast as a carrier. Yeast has a strong smell which many birds try to avoid.”  I’ve always wondered what that smell was in other supplements. Yeast.

And yes, I actually tried it. It’s pretty tasty stuff.  It’s tangy and it tastes like a crushed Sweetart. It also doesn’t stiffen up and turn into a cement-like consistency in the Florida humidity. And at that point, you simply have to toss the bag because, well, ewww! And here’s why the other supplements turn into a brick after time: It comes down to sugar; or rather, the lack of it. This subject of sugar according to HARI:

Nutrient Carrier vs. Sugar

Several supplements use sugar as a carrier. They try to cover this up by using technical descriptions of the sugars such as glucose, dextrose or fructose on the product label. These sugars tend to cake up over time making accurate measuring of dosages difficult. Another problem with sugar bases is that they provide an excellent food source for unwanted micro-organisms in the drinking water. These harmful bacteria may cause an imbalance in the normal gut flora – exactly what Prime is trying to correct.

Prime uses a required nutrient ingredient as a carrier, namely calcium gluconate.

Of course, I had no idea what calcium gluconate is. And of course, because this is a full-service blog, I saved you the trip to Google:

“Calcium Gluconate is the calcium salt of gluconic acid, an oxidation product of glucose, and contains 9.3% calcium.”

I’ve purchased different brands of vitamins, but this is the only one I’ve found that doesn’t stink to high heaven, doesn’t turn into a brick in the bag and actually makes its way into my birds.

But wait! There’s more! According to HARI, (The Hagen Avian Research Institute):

“The result of our research is a unique formulation in the form of a water soluble concentrated powder of 14 vitamins, 9 minerals and 2 limiting amino acids which birds cannot manufacture themselves. Additionally over other supplements beneficial bacteria, acids, electrolytes and enzymes were included in the formulation. Prime however is not a dumping ground for every nutrient known to man – ingredients and their quantities were selected on the basis of need.”

In other words, Hagen didn’t just throw a bunch of vitamins in there; they thought about what was necessary to the bird. Here’s another fact. Not all supplements contain vitamins, minerals and amino acids. But Prime has all three. For more information on Prime, Just click on Parker:

Information on Prime here!

Dry Ingredients for "Chop"

“Less Work For Mother”

I’ve always liked that phrase. The first time I ever saw it used tongue-in-cheek was by the writer and now director and producer, Nora Ephron. She wrote a very witty book back in the 70’s titled Crazy Salad.

Ephron called her book Crazy Salad, I think because it was a series of essays that had absolutely no relation to each other whatsoever. She did one essay on the star of the movie, Deep Throat, the infamous Linda Lovelace and other various subjects. But my favorite essay she wrote was about the Pillsbury Bake-Off, titled, Baking Off.

I don’t have the book any more but I can remember this essay very well. Ephron went to the Pillsbury Bake-Off and talked about how strange it was to be there as a reporter witnessing this popular yet strange competition. Anyway, Ephron is a Foodie, which is why the food shots in her movie, “Julie and Julia” were so maddeningly beautiful. But when she went to the bake-off, it was all cake mixes, frosting, sugar and refrigerated dough. I remember the line where she was smelling all of the sugar and cinnamon and dough baking. She wrote something like, “After about three hours in there all I could think about was a steak.”

But she seemed a bit disgusted by the use of “instant” this and “powdered” that. To paraphrase, and this is reaching back in my memory three decades, “Why chop fresh onions when instant minced onions will do?

This was ‘Less work for Mother time.””

There is a time and place for this. I agree that in the day-to-day, “Less Work for Mother” is the way to go. But in many ways I refuse to bend to the “instant” way of life. I like soup but I can barely tolerate the canned variety. So I make my own in about a half an hour. It’s usually delicious and lasts me a few days carrying it to work in a tiffin. After 24 years, I can’t stand the food on the plane any more. Until South Florida comes up with some better food vendors in the airports that serve up something other than barbecue or rice and beans, I’m stuck with hauling my own grub or swinging by a place to buy lunch on my way to work.

A bean, vegetable and feta cheese salad in a tiffin for work

Think about it: How long does it really take to make a batch of Chop or frozen bean mix relative to the amount of time it would take you to make fresh every day? The issue is, you probably can’t make it fresh every day. And that’s a big issue.

Doing a "Chop" Demo at the Midwest Bird Expo 2011

Before I thought up the  “Chop Concept,” I thought some of those “cook and serve” products were going to end my daily “slave to the chopping board issue.” And they were great! Problem was, Parker wouldn’t eat them, which I suppose defeats the purpose. So I had to come up with another time-saving solution that served the same purpose as the “Cook and Serve” variety. And that’t how I came up with “Chop.”

The "Chopettes"

I’m really big on the “Less Work for Mother” concept. But not if it compromises my birds.

I’m all for efficiency. The trick isn’t knowing how to feed your parrots well. The trick is how to get the damned food into your birds. And I’m not talking about actually making the food. Look, most of us are running at breakneck speed. It’s tougher to make a living, employers are cutting back on their employees so more work is being done by less people and most people are just really tired when they get home. I know, I know. I’m beat too. The trick is finding the time to actually dish up good, nutritional food and placing it before your birds.

But there are some things you can do to make life easier for you when you get up in the morning.

I used to have to get up at about four in the morning to get to work. I don’t have to now, but I never know when that ugly little mutt is going to rear its head again.

It was tough and grinding getting up at that hour, but it was what I had to do.

The upside was that I got home about one in the afternoon. However, there was that little matter of feeding the birds and taking the dog out before I left that made life a little harried at that time of the day.

Let me preface this by saying that I can’t ever be late for work. Let me repeat that.

I. Can’t. Ever. Be. Late. For Work.

Cindy Crawford’s agent once said, “Her body is her office.”

Well, my office takes off and hits a cruising altitude of about 35,000 feet whether I’m on it or not. And it’s not going to wait for me. Consequently, I’ve been late for work twice in 24 years. My company tends to take a rather dim view of those who can’t make it on time. So I had to come up with some tricks that made getting up at 4 a.m. a little less horrifying.

I figured out that when I got home from work at about one in the afternoon, I should immediately jump out of my uniform,  get comfy in my jeans, sneaks and t-shirt and then get set up for the next day while I still had the focus and the energy.

First, I would set up the coffee and lay out my clothes for the next day. (I wear a uniform so that’s kind of a no-brainer…) Second, I’d retrieve their bowls off of their play gyms from the morning, (that’s where they eat) and wash out the bowls.

Next, it was time to set up for their meals.  I would set up two plates for my three Greys. One for dinner that night, and one for breakfast the next morning. I would make their bowls of food with “Chop,” a bean mix, and various toppings to make that meal somewhat different; I’d top their dinner bowl with a nut mix and sprouts. On their breakfast bowl, maybe I’d add some bee pollen and sprinkle with sprouts, but I’d add some pepper flakes or celery seed to their dinners.  Anything to jazz up their meal a bit. The bowls would be set on their respective plates (breakfast or dinner), wrapped in saran wrap and placed back in the fridge.

Then I would make my “lunch” for the next day. Lunch to us at the time was usually breakfast to you. I ate my lunch at about nine in the morning, so it could have been anything from a pre-made grilled cheese sandwich wrapped in foil to heat in the convection oven to a taco bar for the entire crew. The point is, I would set it up when I got home from work the day before, place in my tiffin or wrap it up, bag it, and put it in the fridge ready to go for the following morning. All of this took about twenty minutes.

Once all of that was done, I could relax. It wasn’t hanging over my head. I knew that when dinner time swung around in a few hours it was all set to go. Even if I took a nap on the couch that afternoon (which happens frequently when you get up at 4 a.m.), I wasn’t thinking about having to prepare their meals when it was dinner time for the Greys. I could just take it out of the fridge, let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes or so to take the chill off and serve it to Parker, Pepper and Nyla. While I was at it , I’d change the water on their play gyms. No muss, no fuss.

When they were through eating,  I’d wash out their bowls and put them in the drainer, ready for their next set of plates the following day. We were all usually down for the count by 8:30.

I’d get up at four a.m. and snap on the coffee, remove their breakfast plate from the fridge, take shower and get dressed while it was brewing. I’d take Mattie out, come back, pour a cup of coffee and put the bowls in their gyms.

I’d get the birds up get them eating, feed Mattie, and sit down to put on my makeup while they were eating.

From getting up out of bed to sitting down to do my makeup was about 20 minutes. They had a half an hour to mess around with their food, play a little bit and stretch until it was time to place them back in their cages. Once they were in their respective rooms, I’d “bid them adieu,” give Mattie a scratch and I was out the door and on my way to the airport by five in the morning.

Mattie with her friend, Bodhi

The beauty of it is doing what you have to do before you have to do it. I found that it was easier for me to put together all of our meals the minute I got home: two of theirs and one of mine. I mean, if you’re in the kitchen, as long as you’re in there banging some bowls together, you might as well group together some meals.

It worked really well for a long time. Maybe something like this could work for your schedule.

People occasionally ask me how they can get their parrots to eat something that’s  good for them when their parrots look at them as though they were serving them strychnine.

I always tell them the same thing. The answer lies in your refrigerator. It’s made by Wish Bone or any of the other salad dressing companies.

Yup. Salad dressing. Now I’m not saying it will work with everyone’s parrot, but it works on mine. Anytime my birds get that “up-your-bucket” look when it comes to their food, as they occasionally do, I take out the salad dressing and do a bit of a “schmear” onto their “Chop.”

I think parrots are just like us. We tend to like the rich stuff, the french fried stuff. I don’t know anyone who would pass up the jumbo shrimp at a free buffet unless they’re allergic to shellfish.

Who doesn’t like a nice, fresh doughnut? Who can pass up crab legs? Or lobster? Or really good french fries? This is all rich, not-so-good-for-you stuff. But we love it. Crave it. Gotta have it on occasion. Be as virtuous as you want, occasionally we all break down and stuff our faces with this kind of stuff.

My birds are the same way. And their diet is good but they occasionally get picky and cranky and want something other than their usual stuff. That little schmear of light blue cheese salad dressing from the back of a spoon onto their Chop isn’t going to kill them. It might get them to eat their dinner. And that’s the important thing. Don’t worry about it. If they’re eating the good stuff, that little bit of salad dressing isn’t going to do any damage every once in a while. Just like us, they need a bit of the sublime. And if you have them on a good diet in the first place, that little treat isn’t going to hurt them. And if you do it right, even salad can be fabulous.

What is fine dining to a parrot? No, this is not a rhetorical question. I’m really asking. I think fine dining  for a parrot is, or should be something that is not only good for them, but is fun for them as well. Now Parker’s idea of fine dining is eating directly off of my plate.  I eat pretty healthy stuff most of the time. Salads with a bit of protein on the top with some hard boiled egg, some beans and some feta cheese. I love that stuff and I tend to eat this way often.

Naturally, the little hog goes right for cheese and the meat, as if to say, “Whoah! Now this is something I can sink my beak into.” while he tucks into it as if I hadn’t fed the little dude for two days. Now I can get away with this occasionally because of their staple diet. They are on a really good diet. Between all of the “Chop,” and their bean mix which has a ton of vegetables in it, my guys eat really, really, well. They tend to be “every other day” heavy eaters. I’ve asked them about that, but to date I’ve received no answers.

They just eat heavily on one day and lightly the next. This has been going on for years and if anyone can explain this to me, I’d love to know why.

When it comes to their food, I don’t screw around. Aside from all that “Chop,” their bean mix, and some of my vegetable leftovers, they also get toppings of bee pollen, nuts, some fruit and milk thistle seed. So they’re in pretty good shape.

Every year their Avian Vet, Sam Backos sort of quietly shakes his head and says, “I wish I could find something wrong with Parker, but he’s in terrific shape.” This makes me smile because I know Sam’s kidding me.

I had what I thought was a great idea a while back. Here’s the idea:

I took some pasta shells and stuffed them with “Chop.” They hit the deck. I guess I’ll have to come up with something else because that little gem struck out. Now if I had stuffed them with cheese, that might have been another story.