Cricket is my sous chef. She stands in the kitchen while I’m making dinner, and tries to reach her paws up to the cutting board to steal red bell peppers. If she doesn’t feel like jumping, she scratches at Grandma’s leg to be lifted up so she can see the vegetables up close. If Grandma picks her up near a fresh cut onion, she sneezes. But once the sauté pan is on and the oil is heating the garlic and peppers and onions, Cricket twitches her nose and then licks her lips, at which point she has to be put down on the floor to avoid her jumping into the pan with all four feet.
Who me? I wasn’t anywhere near those beets.
I’ve been tempted to buy Cricket a white toque to wear on her head, or a chef’s jacket with buttons, but she is not a fan of clothes.
Butterfly is more circumspect about the kitchen. She tends to stand in the doorway, or stretch out with her head on her paws, and stare. She’s afraid of all of the noise, like knives on cutting boards, sizzling pans, and whirring mixers, and she’s afraid she will get stepped on. Her spatial relations are, legitimately, not very good. Cricket is better at negotiating small spaces and human legs; she’s more bendy.
Butterfly tends to stand back and let Cricket get first crack at any dish at the end of a meal, because Cricket is a superb dish cleaner and Butterfly’s skills have not yet risen to Cricket’s level. It will come with time.
Class is in session
But Cricket is still the master
I used to bake a lot when Cricket was a puppy, and she learned to take part in the process: supervising the mixer, sniffing for cookie doneness, and, of course, cleaning up afterward. She gets angry, now, when I make something with chocolate in it, because then she can’t clean the bowl, or the beater, when we’re done. She would like for me to always make sugar cookies, or something with peanut butter.
Cricket is very busy
Cricket is teaching Butterfly how to listen for the oven timer, a very important skill. They get up from their rest positions on the living room rug and stare at me until I get up. If Cricket thinks the food is ready early, despite the lack of a beep, she will let me know.
In pursuit of her goal of one day becoming a chef with a kitchen of her own, Cricket prefers that we test chicken recipes. She likes when I make chicken wings, because I never eat the skin, and therefore she gets to taste test a chicken’s worth of skin. She is less interested in recipes that ask for boneless, skinless chicken breast, because she’s never offered the leftovers from those.
Pizza is also a favorite of hers, and of Butterfly’s. At this point, I have to give them the pizza crusts, even if they are the rare edible pizza crusts. I remove all tomato sauce possible, because I worry the spices will make them sick, and I divvy up the pieces into their bowls, and then they inevitably bring the crusts to the living room rug for chewing.
At Cricket’s restaurant, the pizza would probably be topped with: chicken, red bell peppers, pumpkin, Parmesan cheese, and olives. This would be the Cricket special. The Butterfly special would be covered in dry dog food and probably not go over as well.
Butterfly’s favorite pizza topping: kibble
The waitresses at Cricket’s restaurant would sit at the tables with the customers and feed them by hand. One blueberry at a time.
While Cricket pursues her cooking repertoire, and Butterfly attempts to scale the steeply competitive sous chef ladder, the girls are still grand champion eaters. Butterfly is a big fan of high fiber pasta, especially the little ears (orrichete). I choose to believe she is being health conscious, and attempting to improve her hearing as well.
Butterfly has followed Cricket’s example and learned how to stand on her back feet, leaning her front paws on Grandma’s knee during dinner. This is a very effective method of persuasion. Grandma is a pushover for puppy dog eyes and always finds something yummy to share. Cricket has been an incredible teacher, in this as in all things.
One day, Butterfly, the student will become the master
rachelmankowitz 
When Cricket opens her restaurant, ask her to please seat me at the table where the prettiest waitress is feeding me, ok?? 🙂
Butterfly Rocks!!
I seriously think a backer is out there for Cricket’s restaurant, but maybe I should send Butterfly in for the pitch meetings.
Cricket you are a very good chef – you even made the ear-test – I will try it too it looks cool :o)
Sticking your head into a bowl of leftover cookie dough is awesome! Just sayin’.
Dogs can be such a support in the kitchen. My Bonnie is a food critic through her actions. Perhaps Butterfly is a critic in training….
Butterfly is a bit too eager to sample my dinner while I am still eating it, but her food writing would be so effusive and exclamatory she could convince anyone to try a piece of doggy kibble.
😀
What a great Chef! and those red whiskers haaahaha too cute 🙂
Have a great cooking day my sweets 🙂 fozziemum
I left out the picture where Cricket’s whole head was dripping with pink cookie icing. That was a very happy day, for her.
Hahahahaah I can imagine it was 🙂 🙂
Chienne and The Man are less interested in the preparing of food, just the eating of it. Although they do like cheese. They are the outdoor types – sort of Assistant Gardeners. actually, they really like digging, which is much the same thing I suppose :o) Excellent post.
Cricket likes to visit her “salad bar” out in the backyard a few times a day, to cleanse her palate between heavier meals.
Licking the beaters, dog nirvana.
I like licking the beaters myself. I think I taught Cricket about that particular joy.
I’m a big fan of green beans, never the canned junk, but frozen is great in the summer. I eat them right out of the freezer and beg for MORE.
I’ll have to try the frozen green beans out on my girls, though Butterfly isn’t a big fan of vegetables yet. Cricket is working on her.
I call pizza crust ends pizza bones. Which reminds me, we haven’t had pizza in awhile. Hey Jen!
My girls like when the pizza crusts take a lot of work to eat, like bones. Soft and fluffy is boring. Here’s hoping your pizza is on the way!
Cricket and Butterfly are so CUTE! Loved this. :o)
Thank you! I think they go to cuteness camp while I’m sleeping so I won’t figure out how hard they have to work at it.
Sounds very familiar to my three house pups! Let us know when ‘Chez Cricket’ opens for business? I’ll need reservations for three! LOL!
She’s testing a chicken soup recipe right now, sniffing for the perfect mix of flavors in the air. We have to get our menu just right before we open our doors.
Reblogged this on Dog blogging… and commented:
A fellow dog blogger’s piece that is really cute.
“Cricket is teaching Butterfly how to listen for the oven timer, a very important skill” ….HAHAHA! My dog does the same thing! Great post, thanks for the laughs. 🙂
Thank you! I could probably leave the oven timer off and just let Cricket tell me when things are done. But I worry she might open the oven without me.
hello rachel its dennis the vizsla dog hay dada sez at lees cricket duznt sit on yore hed and pull yore hair to direkt yore cooking aktiviteez!!! i hav no ideea wot he is tawking about as yoozhual!!! ok bye
If Cricket could climb up onto the counter and direct the action up close, she would. Thank God for short legs.
I loved this post, we also call our girl Minnie (Chubs if you read my blog) our Sous Chef as she is always in the kitchen with my husband. Hoovering up and general cleaning duties. Harvey (Bandy) is now training under Minnie’s watchful eye, she will allow him the odd dropped scrap but it’s hit and miss to when he has had one to many and only a bite to his nose will let him know he has over stepped the cleaning duties. 🙂
I’ve been very lucky that Cricket’s teaching methods with Butterfly are gentler than they’ve been with me. She uses role modeling and indifference with Butterfly, with me, she bites.
You have very lucky and helpful dogs:) Fun post.
Thank You!
Oh, we so enjoyed this post. Cricket you make a very good chef we would love to come eat with you if we could. Chancy loves green peas and his nose works overtime when we have them. He will stand on his hind legs which is not an easy task for him since he has a long body waiting for his peas. You two are just the cutest little sweeties ever!! Loved that little beet face. Hugs and nose kisses
Cricket likes peas too! I should add that to her special pizza recipe. She especially likes snap peas straight from the garden, because of that great crunch.
I always help my mom with whatever she is doing in the kitchen. She lets me lick everything (that I can) too.
Walter
Cricket seems to think that all food tastes better with a little human spit added in. You?
Love reading about these 2 cuties. I think you’ve got a little Pavlovian classical conditioning going on with the oven timer! Max loves pizza bones but so do I so he doesn’t them all.
Isee enormous amounts of money being made from pizzarias selling their dried crusts as “pizza bones.” How can I get in on the ground floor of this?
How about 2 businesses – Pizza Bones for Your Dog & New Lower-Calorie Crustless Pizza for You lol
Perfect!
haha meant “he doesn’t get them all”. 🙂
For a second I thought the streaked red “beard” was a Halloween vampire imitation! 😉
Well, she does keep trying to draw blood from my arms…
Nothing like team work! Sounds like my Marcel and Marceau. What one can’t do the other can.
The problem is when they double up, because, with Cricket covering such a large barking gamut, does Butterfly really need to add her two cents? Do they both need to scratch my skin off trying to convince me to cook them a chicken?
Great story. As you know Ruby is completely banned from the kitchen although I know she’d like to help with menu selection and cleaning up 🙂
We will need a large team of dog dishwashers for the restaurant, so start training now!
I am ready for a restaurant where I get hand-fed blueberries!
Wouldn’t that be awesome?! Just don’t request the table where Cricket is the server. Really, it won’t go well.
Jack Henry is very good at supervising things in the kitchen and like Cricket is an excellent eater-particularly fruits and vegetables. He also likes to keep an eye on things when baking is underway-glad to hear that other K9 pals are kitchen helpers too-great post Rachel!
Thank you! I think we should get all of the dogs together so they can cook a meal for us. I wonder what we’d be eating for that dinner?
Who knows? It might be healthier than we think-
Cricket is adorable!!
Thank you!
I’m not much of a cook, but when I finish a pint of strawberry Haagen Dazs I let my dog lick the inside. It is definitely his favorite people treat! Your pups are too cute!
Cricket wants to visit your house. She is a very big fan of dessert.
Cricket is such a cutie!!
Thank you!
What an adorable story! Had me laughing. I, too, love chicken and peanut butter (although now I am on a no-beef-or-chicken diet since I have allergies) and fear the whirring of the mixer and blender. A big dog like me! Barking at the “Ninja”. I love hearing about Cricket and Butterfly. Thank you for such a nice blog!
No beef or chicken? Butterfly is hiding her face in horror, or taking a nap, I’m not sure. Allergies are no fun.
Well, I get lamb, salmon, and bison, so it’s not all bad. (dogsmile)
Like Cricket, Lucy’s favorite place is the kitchen, especially when chicken is on the menu because I too give her the chicken skin, and she’s happy to get tastes of everything. However, she’s absolutely clueless about being a large dog and not being underfoot to trip me, so for safety (for both of us) I send her out, and this makes her sad. You see, she thinks she’s very small – like a teacup sized dog – and can’t possibly be in the way. With a glum expression, she takes up her prime viewing spot just outside the doorway and waits patiently.
Butterfly likes to rest her forearms in the entryway to the kitchen, with the rest of her body safely out in the dining room. She’s getting a little bit better about keeping track of where people and dogs may be, but in the kitchen it’s too overwhelming. I think the smell of chicken messes with her mind.
That could be. Maybe she needs some turkey with its mild tranquilizing effect!
My blog reader doesn’t seem to update all the blogs I follow faithfully on my phone…so sorry I missed yours this week…you are one of my faves!!!! Cricket is quite the kitchen helper…I don’t have a dishwasher…she would enjoy visiting us here…BOL!!!! Happy weekend especially to Cricket and Butterfly!!!!
Thank you! We only recently moved to a place with a dishwasher, after fifteen years without one. So Cricket had a lot of opportunities to train her dish washing skills. She listens to the hum of the dishwasher now with suspicion and resentment.
Haaaaa Haaaa…”with suspicion and resentment”…I can honestly see her expression now!!!!
Hi Rachel! How old are they again?
Butterfly is eight and a half (and a rescue) and Cricket turned six this July.
You’re lucky to have spent that much time with them. My gucci is only 4 years old but she’s sickly – probably something that wasn’t disclosed to me when I got her. I hope to spend six more years with her, beyond that is a big bonus. After coming from the hospital, she is like a baby again always wants to be cuddled and wants to sleep with me again. Cricket and Butterfly are adorable =)
Thank you. I hope I will get a long time with both of my girls. They are wonderful cuddlers.
It’s a joy to read your blog, and see the photos of your beautiful pets!
Thank you so much!