Hydrating Maya's Kibbles

I had some fun with Maya's food. The pawrents gave their green light for me to experiment. Maya has an iron stomach, but I still have to be careful. She's 18 kg, so she needs a fair volume of food a day. If we go by fresh or raw foods, it's about 450g a day, or 2 cups of kibbles a day. 

Maya is on a kibbles base. Currently, it's chicken with fish oil. I can't completely ditch that. I'm mindful not to have her reject her usual food when she goes home. If feeding a dog kibbles makes sense for the family's schedules and household budget, and such, then so be it. 

The choice of commercial kibbles nowadays are wider. More brands are putting effort into making them grain-free and have fewer unnecessary fillers. It is still highly processed though. We would do better to hydrate these kibbles. You wouldn't want to be eating dry biscuits or army pre-packed rations all day right?

Doing toppers of fresh foods and bone broth would be the easiest in terms of managing the cost of a dog's monthly food expenses. That would also add some needed moisture to the meal. It has been humid and mad hot. While Singapore is pretty much like this all year round, we still need to be mindful of keeping our floofs' bodies cool. 

I keep Maya's base of kibbles, adding on air-dried venison squares, and then a hydration boost by way of bone broth (pork, beef and chicken). I also add on freeze-dried treats in the form of sweet potato, pork and bell peppers and such. Single-protein toppers such as sous vide pork, duck, lamb or chicken are also included. I don't need to cook for Maya. I got single packs of frozen cooked food which are sooooo convenient to thaw out and serve. Hahahahah. 

I don't hesitate sprinkling psyllium husk to soothe the gut or a supplement for joints via a tub of beef collagen (type II) and chondroitin. Maya is 6.5 years old; she can do with easy supplements for her joints and hips. I'm liking how her powdery kibble-poop has decreased in volume and firming up to be dense and doing a solid chocolate. 

Choya does three meals a day. That Smol Girl is SPOILT. So Maya follows suit to have the three meals a day too. I admit, it's a bit tedious cleaning up after Maya. She's much bigger, so water and food simply spill out everywhere after each meal. Choya is very much neater. With Maya eating thrice a day instead of her usual two, I just need to ensure that her total daily volume remains similar. I think she has been enjoying her meals very much and eating really well. She loves bone broth and all the foods, and cleans out hew bowl at each meal.

The People, Then & Now

It was a read into both the narrator and the author's thoughts about cultural history, family roots and cities lived in. This is 'Jubilee' by Jhumpa Lahiri, published in The New Yorker on June 30, 2025.

The year is 1977, in London, during Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. The 10-year-old narrator had came over to London from New England. London was where she was born before her parents took her to America. The narrator also took a family trip to visit Kolkata when her maternal grandmother passed away. Kolkata is the country where her parents were born. 

The author's childhood friend Joya still lived in London and was glad to have her visit. The narrator had her tenth birthday party in London. There were many descriptions about the sights and sounds, and the conversations between the narrator and Joya, and what she saw in London as well as Kolkata.

Before we knew it, many years have passed. We see the narrator and Joya as mothers with children of their own. Their own mothers have grown much older and frail. The childhood friends couldn't even attend each other's weddings although invitations were sent. As adults, they lived in different countries and continents. Then Joya unexpectedly died from a fall.

Joya and I were both mothers when she fell on the sidewalk one afternoon in a suburb of London not far from where she grew up. She was walking quickly to pick up her younger child from school. Our vow to write to each other after 1977 was short-lived, and many years had passed since our families were in touch, though the ersatz-silver salt and pepper shakers still sat in my mother’s china cabinet—her most prized piece of furniture—and were pulled out for special occasions. Wedding invitations were sent, but none of us had the time or energy to attend our respective ceremonies and receptions overseas. Even the cursory holiday cards had tapered off. I had married a man I was devoted to, I had an infant daughter, the silver double-decker bus I’d handed down with quiet ceremony to my son lived in a plastic tub in the jumble of his other toys. Joya had given birth to two girls. Her parents called mine when it was all over. An inoperable mass in her brain—she’d survived six months. Her daughters were already teen-agers. She’d married at eighteen, like her mother, less than ten years after we’d played two balls and sat in a bathtub together. I pictured her on the same sidewalk where we’d posed in matching green tops, thinking she’d merely tripped, before getting up and continuing on her way, putting it out of her mind until the day the headaches became too much to bear and she’d called the doctor.

The narrator's mother didn't do well with the news of her mother's death. She crumbled, and had to be sustained by pills. She didn't like to deal with death, and even with Joya's death, as much as she would like to go to support Joya's mother, her long-time friend, she couldn't bear to. The narrator encouraged her mother to go grieve with her old friend, but the mother found many excuses not to, and claimed poor health. A bit of confidence and independence was lost since the grandmother's passing. The narrator said, 

She had always been afraid to look death in the face. It was among the many things I held against her, and have let go of now that she’s gone.

There're the themes of childhood memories and emotions that carry over to adulthood, cultural displacement and the idea of one's roots. Between the lines lie regrets, and a wistfulness for the past. But the current realities and life's situations often restrict what we would like to do for old friends and loved ones. 

The author said that this story is inspired by Mavis Gallant's 'Voices Lost in Snow' (1976). The author is in her fifties now, and feels that there's a similarity between her and Mavis Gallant, as fifty-something authors looking back on their childhood. Jhumpa Lahiri said that, 

I suppose a fundamental difference between my story and Gallant’s is that mine includes a friendship between two girls, whereas Linnet is utterly alone in a world of adults. The godparent tradition is absent in Bengali culture; all the same, like Linnet, I was raised not only by my mother and father but by other adults, members of their social circle, who exerted their influences on me. The final paragraph of Gallant’s story refers to a spiderweb. Mine mentions a lace curtain. Both images are planted earlier in our stories, and are tied to the workings of memory. Spiderwebs and lace curtains have something in common: seemingly insubstantial, even ghostly, they are in fact sturdy, carefully wrought. I did not set out to replicate the gesture, but I am old enough to know that children sometimes mimic parental figures in unconscious, mysterious ways.

To Pastaro for Some Pastas

While I've seen these girls individually over the past few months, we hadn't caught up together for years. Many months ago, Y called and we made a dinner date at Pastaro. So pleased that everyone could make it!

Although we were a table of four, we decided to be prudent with our orders. After all, pasta is very many much carbs. LOL We had sides of tempura mushrooms and calamari, and TWO portions of charred miso napa cabbage. Ordered three pastas to share — the prawn spaghetti aglio e olio, carbonara fettuccine and spaghetti vongole. 

There was a dessert. They shared a chocolate lava cake. I forgot to take a photo of it since I didn't bother to taste it. I simply had another highball. Heheheh. I got all the highballs I wanted. Easy drinks, nothing crazy. After the initial craziness, the restaurant is now quieter on a week day night. While that isn't great for business, we didn't feel too bad talking a bit louder. Oooof.  

Too cute. We all turned up in black and white. Hehehe. It made for such a harmonious group photos — monochrome collars. Wheeeeee. It was a lovely time catching up with everyone. 2.5 hours went by so quickly. Time flies by too fast.