Editor's Notebook

 


Twice while I was a student attending Kansas State University I had jobs helping with camps designed for high school students.

My primary task during the day was working with the advanced photography students. At night I helped supervise a residence hall. There were various camps scheduled between the end of the spring semester and the beginning of summer school. The dormitories I worked in housed the high school scholars participating in the journalism and FFA camps. I had little contact with the FFA members but a news release about this year’s camp sounds like the FFA members may have had interesting camps that would have provided picture opportunities for my student photographers.

I should have encouraged the photography students to investigate the FFA camp. This year the FFA members made and tasted dog biscuits.

Faced with the prospect of tasting a dog biscuit, one young woman wrinkled her nose, relaxed and gave it a try.

She said it tasted better than she expected.

Greg Aldrich, an associate professor in grain science and coordinator of the pet food program, led the students through a session titled, EPAW – Every Pet A Wildcat.

K-State’s pet food lab includes industrial stand mixers, ovens and a moulding machine that makes dog biscuits with a “KSU” imprint. Aldrich told the FFA members the university’s pet food program focuses on research and the science behind the ingredients they use.

Aldrich also likes experimenting with different flavored biscuits, “and they’re all safe for humans to taste,” he said.

Aldrich and the students mixed dough for cheddar and regular flavored biscuits and poured it into the moulding machine. While the biscuits baked, Aldrich talked to the students about the science that’s involved with the ingredients they had combined.

In this case, he said, the binding agent was gluten from wheat, but Aldrich has also tried using sorghum, gelatin and egg whites.

When the biscuits came out of the oven, the students were allowed to taste their creations; a variety of reactions ensued. One hesitant FFA member described the experience as “similar to eating a thick wheat cracker. Really dry, but good.”

Most students only took a small bite, but one young man had no such reservations, eating almost three whole biscuits. Asked why, he said: “I wanted to try both flavors, and they were really good.”

Aldrich said hands-on opportunities for students to use all of their senses are important to their education and development.

“It makes it real,” he said. “So much of what we do in learning is intangibles or abstractions, -- words on a page -- so when we can bring students into a manufacturing environment and give them (a chance to) touch, taste, smell, it reinforces what they’ve learned in their books…. They’ll never forget it.”

I’ve never tasted a dog biscuit but I have tasted mud cookies.

When I was a wee lad, a family working on a highway construction project parked their trailer in the side yard of my parents’ home. The family included a girl not much older than me. One day, we made mud cookies. I helped her find all the necessary ingredients and listened to her rave about how good the cookies would taste.

The “dough” was mostly dirt combined with things like water and used motor oil. It was shaped into cookies and left in the sun to bake. When dried, I watched as she took and appeared to eat one of the cookies. She said it was good and offered me one.

I’ve always liked cookies and I took a big bite. It tasted terrible.

Now I suspect she only pretended to eat her cookie.

Ever since I have been hesitant about tasting new things.

Another playmate, claimed the pelletized hog feed my father kept for his hogs was good. I remember him, opening the hog feed box and taking out hog pellets for a snack.

In later years, I observed a resident of Superior’s hobo village, buying cans of Alpo dog food. I was surprised to observe a hobo buying such expensive dog food and shared my surprise with the store manager.

I learned the hobo regularly bought the dog food and the store employees suspect the dog food became hobo food.

While preparing this notebook entry, I asked Google if humans could safely eat dog food.

I’m not ready to try it but I was told “Dog foods that have been properly stored can be consumed by humans because of the way they are handled and processed. Since dog food is formulated to be a complete source of nutrition, they are packed with proteins, carbohydrates and fats alongside other added minerals and vitamins. The truth is, because of the nutritionally completeness of dog food, it would be an upgrade over many commonly consumed foods that people each such as overly processed sugary cereals and snacks that are widely available and full of empty calories.”

Perhaps it is okay to eat both dog and hog food but thus far I haven’t found anyone who suggests I should have eaten mud cookies baked in the Kansas sun.

 

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