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While I enjoy feasting on a gourmet meal as much as anyone, my days aren't just brimming with the extra minutes necessary to prepare such a dinner. For many of us with our fast-paced lifestyle, having time to microwave a meal may be difficult as well. So, the thought of preparing a meal for your pet maybe seem down right impossible.

However, as Dr. Martin Goldstein will tell you as he so aptly does in his book The Nature of Animal Healing, when you discover what's really in many processed pet foods, you will make time to ensure that your pet stays healthy as well as happy with some simple and delicious meals. It's not all cooking, but it's plain to see that Dr. Goldstein thinks the best way to truly care for your pet is through healthy organic food.

Here are a few suggestions he gives in the chapter "It All Starts with Food":

I feed my pets a wide variety of raw vegetables, which contain important enzymes lost during the cooking process. These range from alfalfa sprouts to zucchini, and include asparagus, carrots, and even lettuce (though tomatoes aren't usually a hit). I feed them fruits, too, including grapes, peaches, plums, and bananas. I once had a cat named Sparsely Populated who loved cantaloupe and had an absolutely uncanny affinity for it. I have a house with a long from lawn, and Sparsely would be in the woods at the end of it. I'd take a cantaloupe out of the refrigerator and start slicing it—with the windows closed. As I looked out the window, Sparsely's head would instantly go up. He couldn't smell it, he couldn't see it, but still he'd zoom home to get some! This cat would kill for cantaloupe; cooked winter squash, too.

In fact, both my dogs and cats happily dine on a far wider range of real food than I ever imagined when I threw out the Gaines Burgers those many years ago. Yesterday, I took two organic potatoes, diced them up, and simmered them in a skillet with some olive oil and water. Then I put in a lamb burger and some broccoli, and just before they wre done, I added a few pieces of organic cheese. Admittedly, that took twenty minutes. But it was a one-pan dish that required no more than a bit of slicing and stirring, and both my dogs and my cats loved it. Other nights I'll cook some yellow squash and mushrooms, or scrambled eggs with leftover chicken and rice. Or pasta! Pasta in a pesto sauce with broccoli rabe is their new fixation. Tonight, as I was working on this chapter, I gave my dog Clayton my leftover sauteed garlic veggies over chopped lettuce salad and watched him lick the bowl clean. Is that sort of cooking such a sacrifice, really, for the joy and good health it brings?