Category: Food

Please ignore Roscoe

On By bertie bootsIn Food4 Comments

Hi everyone, Bertie here.

I don’t know what was up with Roscoe last week.  He’s exaggerating wildly, and it’s not fair on Mummy. He’s just being a drama queen at present, and nobody can say why. He bumped his nose in the week, and sat in the corner of his cage saying ‘woe is me’ and other things.  Mummy saw he was all fluffed up and took him to Dr Sally.  Dr Sally couldn’t find anything wrong with him either.  I think he had some Metacam and was better straight away.

Maybe Roscoe is just sensitive to all the things going on at present. Mummy explains everything to us, and we never go hungry, even if she’s away overnight.  And mostly when she goes away she takes us with her these days.

Mummy’s very busy with her books and with legal things, and anxious about things that nobody can do anything about. I heard her saying to Uncle James on the phone she was worried about having fresh veg for us this winter, because there won’t be any in the new garden.  Apparently famers in the UK can’t grow many lettuces in the winter, so there’ll be a shortage until the new import/export rules come in.

She’s been looking at the labels on our veggies now that autumn has come.  Cucumbers come from the Netherlands, along with peppers, broccoli and cauliflower. Lettuce mostly comes from Spain. Beans come from Italy or Egypt. I like beans but Roscoe and Neville still don’t eat them. Cabbage and kale comes from the UK, but we can’t have much of those.  The big bunches of herbs come from Italy, Spain or Belgium.  Mummy says that if we move to our new garden we might have to go without fresh veg for a few days a week, but she’ll look for dandelion leaves and things like that. She’s planted some pots and troughs of carrots, lettuce and kale to take with us. And there’s a big pot of lavender, and she’ll put some mint in a pot before it dies back.

So, don’t believe Roscoe when he says Mummy isn’t looking after us properly.  She says she’s also stockpiling hay and readigrass, just in case. Whatever that means.

See you next week.

Love,

Bertie xxxx

 

Roscoe and Neville2019

Slimmers World, first report

On By geordieroscoeIn Food, Health3 Comments

Hi there, Roscoe here.

Well, we’ve been eating these pellets for over a week now, and we’re all okay with them.  They’re not perfect, but you kinda get used to them.  I reckon in a week or two I’ll be saying they’re right tasty.

Biggles in a Bed

Update on our weights: Bertie is about the same.  Biggles went up 10 grams and down twenty grams.  That could be just that he’s wee’d or not.  I’ve done much the same. Saturday I was up 10 grams, but Mam says I’m doing okay really.  Neville’s a little star, he put on 20 grams the first week and lost 40 this week.

What I notice about Neville is he’s much keener to poke his nose into stuff and find tasty things to eat.  He used to just laze around and eat what was in front of him.  He even stood up against the cage side the other day when it was cucumber time.  Mam is real pleased with him being more mobile, but she doesn’t hear him moan that he’s starving.  He’s desperate for that cucumber!

I think the ready-grass is helping because it changes what we think of as food.  Mam’s putting it in our bowls, and it’s really difficult to have an empty bowl when you’ve got bits of grass in it.  We have managed to lick them clean on a couple of days though.  But we’ve always got lots of hay, so we can eat that, and play in it, and hide in it, and that keeps us from feeling hungry.

Mam says she’s doing well on her own diet some days, and not so good on others. But she’s doing her best, and she’s been doing more exercise too.  I think she does a lot of moving around to some special music she puts on every evening. Maybe we should have some music to move around to, too, Mam.

At least we’re all suffering together.

See you next time

Roscoe xxx

Bertie in his run

We got new pellets this week

On By bertie bootsIn Food5 Comments

Hello, Bertie here.

It’s all Roscoe’s fault.  He had tummy ache last Sunday and then again on Thursday he was a bit quiet, so Mummy took him to the vet.  It was a new vet, Dr Helen, because Dr Sally was having a baby.  In fact it turned out that Dr Sally was having her baby right then, because Mummy saw the announcement and picture on Facebook later in the day.  The baby’s a very small girl, only just a bit bigger than me.

And Dr Helen said that was the only problem with Roscoe.  Roscoe was too fat.  And I weigh more than him, and Biggles weighs more than me, and Neville weighs more than all of us. Dr Helen suggested Roscoe had new low-fat pellets, called Excel DualCare, so we all had to have them.

Bertie
Roscoe making a hay nest

Well, they tasted horrible to start with, but when you get used to them, they’re not bad.  And it’s better than having the tiny amount of Harrison’s pellets Mummy was giving us.  Mind you, she also gave us ProFibre, which is also low fat and high fibre, and I love that.  She first got it for Percy and Midge, and she used to give me just one for a treat.  Now I have a whole scoopful.  It’s a five mg scoop.  It’s not very big, but it’s better than just one.

Biggles doesn’t like the ProFibre, but apparently he finally finished his yesterday, since there was nothing else in his bowl for him to eat.  We also get yummy hay and ordinary hay, and lots of veggies for breakfast.  But we never see carrots any more, and rarely peppers, although Roscoe and Neville don’t like peppers.  I don’t know why.  I like them. So does Biggles.

But the good thing is, Mummy’s on a diet too and doesn’t eat bread or biscuits or anything like that any more.  That’s her equivalent of carrots.  But she can eat carrots, because they are good for her.

They’re good for me, too, Mummy.  Really.

I wish spring would come.  Then we could go outside and eat grass.

See you next time.

Bertie xxx

Roscoe with bean leaves

Even more leaves from the garden

On By geordieroscoeIn Food3 Comments

Mam’s been giving us even more leaves from the garden!

These are called cucumber leaves, and bean stalks.  She said the plants were finished now, but we could have what we liked from the stalks and stems.  Although there were a couple more beans and there just might be another cucumber coming.

Neville and the beanstalk

Then she was out for a few more days and told us it was too cold to go out in the evening now.  And there probably won’t be any more leaves if it gets colder at night.

It’s sunny in the day, though.  I hope it’s going to be warm enough for us to go out for a bit more grass this week.  Even half an hour will do.  Eh, Mam?

 

What are these green leaves?

On By geordieroscoeIn Food3 Comments

Hi, all.

One of the things Neville and I have got used to in the year we’ve been here is funny food. Winter is much the same as we were used to, but in summer, we get all sorts of stuff.

When we arrived, I don’t think Nev and I noticed what we got, to be truthful.  We got fed, and we seemed to be in a nice place, and settled, like.  I suppose it took us a month to start to relax, thinking we might be here for even longer than the last place we’d been at.  We liked it there, mind, it was very nice.  We got veggies and pellets and hay, and went out on the grass sometimes, so it was good.

Bertie
Biggles
Neville and Roscoe in the garden

We got veggies and pellets and hay here, but it tasted different and so did the water.  Nowadays it’s just water, mind.  I can’t tell you what the difference is, and I’ve forgotten anyway, it just was different.  The pellets are fine, too.  Yummy, in fact.  I look forward to getting them in the morning after we’ve had our run.  Builds up strength to tackle the veg.

I didn’t really notice that the veggies we got were different to start with, until we stopped getting them from the garden and settled to what I would call ‘normal’ food in winter. You know, cabbage, carrot, swede, that sort of stuff.  I don’t think we’ve had swede more than once here, though.  Lettuce, of course.  We get lots of different types of lettuce here, which is nice, nosing through the different flavours and textures. And carrot tops!  Those are yummy.  Maybe they’re my favourite.

But Mam throws in weird things, like pepper. It’s mostly red, but sometimes it’s orange or yellow.  I see Biggles and Bertie wolfing it down and I nose it a bit, and maybe nibble it, and Nev does too, and we exchange glances and leave it.  Although last week I did spot Neville eating a whole slice.  I got through about half of mine, so maybe it’s an acquired taste and we’re finally acquiring it.

We’ve discovered broccoli.  I thought it was posh cabbage to start with, but the others say it’s normal, and what’s cabbage, so I go along with it. It’s pretty yummy, really. Mam realised we liked the cabbagey things, I think.  We get kale, which we all like, and sometimes she does an ordinary cabbage, which we like but Biggles and Bertie turn their noses up at.  Strange boys.

What’s best though, is the weird things we get from the garden. We’re getting them again, now.  Mam apologised when it had been hot for ages that all the home grown things had run out.  Now they’ve grown again and we’re eating posh spinach called chard, which has interesting colour stems, and posh lettuce called frizee, which has crinkly edges to the leaves. And we get loads of herby things and some leaves from the fruit trees and bushes.

Biggles eats a Bean
Neville

And beans.  Now, who on earth wants to eat beans?  Berties and Biggles, that’s who.  The leaves are great, mind, I like those, but the long pods and the beans inside, no thank you.  Mam even pulled a trick on us on Saturday when she gave us the pods without the beans in.  They were a bit crunchy, and again, those other piggies munched them down, but Nev and I tried it politely then peed on it. I mean…

There’s this new thing that came this week… paper outsides of corn cobs.  I’ve realised that the tiny corn cobs that haven’t grown up to be big and sweet are actually edible, but I never knew the corn came in a delicious wrapping.  I’m looking forward to some more of that, I can tell you.

Who’d have know there were so many nice things to eat?

And I haven’t even mentioned root celery and stalk celery… another time, maybe.

See ya!

Roscoe

Emergency! Send cucumber!

On By geordieroscoeIn Food2 Comments

There was no cucumber this morning!

It’s the end of the world!

First the grass disappears, then the cucumber disappears.  What’s gonna happen next?

Neville doing the edges

We’ve been running around on hard brown grass for the weeks now. It’s even browner than in those pictures.  I don’t mind that much.  There’s a tiny weeny piece of grass that appears just outside our run, and Mam moves the last panel slightly so we can get at it.  I always share what’s left with Neville.  I have to test it first. Mam gives us readigrass when we go in, which is nice.

Testing the green grass

Mam says she’s making it rain just a little on our grass when we’ve gone inside in the evening.  She usually makes it rain on the vegetables and some of the flowers, and even one of the trees when we’re still out. We’re staying in that area because it’s nice and shady, and the rest of the grass is even browner.

It’s not going to rain anytime soon.  I saw the weather forecast this morning. When we did NOT have cucumber with our cuddles. (She said there were none in the store when she went to get some more). We did have parsley instead.  But it’s just not the ticket, Mam.

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