The Tortoise Chef

yaycolin

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I need to get in the habit of hanging on to all the food I buy; sometimes I dispose of half of the huge bundles we get of the farmers market when we get home but I realize now she’ll usually eat most of it. This week I saved it all.

We were late to the market so it was one of those times when you couldn’t take a leasurely stroll to see what was available; we made purchases of whatever was available at several markets, only to find out the last one we could have purchased many of the same things at once. Oh well. At any rate we brought home a big bag: sourleaf, moringa, ong choy, beautiful sow thistle ($6 per organic pound, hilarious), jute mallow. One vendor gave us a tiny lemon cucumber which indeed looks like a lemon when you cut it and smells slightly of citrus; took her a minute but she got into it pretty fast after that. One green bean for protein. Not pictured is a piece of a green onion top, not okay on the Tortoise Table blah blah blah. She LOVED it and ate it before anything else, weird. She likes her occasional bit of chives or green onions but not like this.

View attachment 329060

Where is this farmers market you purchased these plants from? I am located in Huntington Beach and would love to check it out!
 

RosemaryDW

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Where is this farmers market you purchased these plants from? I am located in Huntington Beach and would love to check it out!
It's the Irvine farmers market located in the Mariner's Church parking lot just off the 73; best market in the county. Saturdays from eight a.m. to noon. Take a walk around the entire food side (not the side with prepared food and doo dads) before buying anything. Or don't; you never know what will be sold out by the time you get back. Worst thing that can happen is you end up out of $30, which isn't that bad for a morning's worth of activity. Watch the five percent roll off with hundreds of dollars worth of organic meat, just for one week. :eek:

The really long line is for one of the egg vendors. Avocados and citrus from Jimmy are excellent. Frog's Bakery on the prepared foods side is legit French. Somewhere between Frog's and the fish place is a legit French cheese monger who will drain you dry but you'll die happy!

Okra leaves are now in season and very popular at our house. $2.50.
 

RosemaryDW

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View attachment 347309
Breakfast for the omnivorous tortoises:

Fresh greens
Zucchini blossoms
Rosehips
Cucumber
Carrots
2 types of Mazuri (tort & croc)

I picked a bunch more of the greens from the raised bed, and gave some to each of the Russians, as well as another handful to the two omnivores.

Jamie
How do the rose hips go over? I can't get any interest here but I don't have an adventurous omnivore!
 

jsheffield

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How do the rose hips go over? I can't get any interest here but I don't have an adventurous omnivore!
There were clean plates in Casa Sheffield, but my RFT and my MEP are serious eaters... I just saw the rosehips, glowing there on the rosebush and thought I'd try.

Jamie
 

Cathie G

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It's the Irvine farmers market located in the Mariner's Church parking lot just off the 73; best market in the county. Saturdays from eight a.m. to noon. Take a walk around the entire food side (not the side with prepared food and doo dads) before buying anything. Or don't; you never know what will be sold out by the time you get back. Worst thing that can happen is you end up out of $30, which isn't that bad for a morning's worth of activity. Watch the five percent roll off with hundreds of dollars worth of organic meat, just for one week. :eek:

The really long line is for one of the egg vendors. Avocados and citrus from Jimmy are excellent. Frog's Bakery on the prepared foods side is legit French. Somewhere between Frog's and the fish place is a legit French cheese monger who will drain you dry but you'll die happy!

Okra leaves are now in season and very popular at our house. $2.50.
Do they actually sell okra leaves? I'll have to try and grow some okra. Sapphire will eat okra but it's hard to find fresh ones here. Possibly he would enjoy the leaves too.
 

RosemaryDW

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Do they actually sell okra leaves? I'll have to try and grow some okra. Sapphire will eat okra but it's hard to find fresh ones here. Possibly he would enjoy the leaves too.
Oh shoot, I should have said bush okra; not the okra we think of here. It is a relative of okra, in the mallow family. It does have an edible fruit but the leaves—which have the okra slime—are more commonly eaten. One puts it in stews and such as a thickener.

Bush okra is also known as jute mallow, dried jute being used to make twine among other things. But it is sold at this market as okra.

But yes, he would likely enjoy regular okra leaves as well, mine does. They look closer to hibiscus leaves, which are mallows as well. Some of our neighbors grow okra in the community garden and will sometimes have plants going as late as December.
 

Cathie G

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Oh shoot, I should have said bush okra; not the okra we think of here. It is a relative of okra, in the mallow family. It does have an edible fruit but the leaves—which have the okra slime—are more commonly eaten. One puts it in stews and such as a thickener.

Bush okra is also known as jute mallow, dried jute being used to make twine among other things. But it is sold at this market as okra.

But yes, he would likely enjoy regular okra leaves as well, mine does. They look closer to hibiscus leaves, which are mallows as well. Some of our neighbors grow okra in the community garden and will sometimes have plants going as late as December.
Thank you so much. I personally love okra myself 😁. And so does Sapphire ☺️ I'll have to check out the jute mallow too. Seems to me if the vines can be dried for jute, the leaves have to be pretty high in fiber also. If he doesn't like it more for me 😁
 

RosemaryDW

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Thank you so much. I personally love okra myself 😁. And so does Sapphire ☺️ I'll have to check out the jute mallow too. Seems to me if the vines can be dried for jute, the leaves have to be pretty high in fiber also. If he doesn't like it more for me 😁
They are definitely fibrous but not as much as "real" okra leaves. Much thinner leaves although she eats the smaller stems as well. Regular okra looks more like its hibiscus cousin to me and perhaps less likely to wilt? All mallows are good so I'm happy with any I can get!
 

Cookiesandcream1.

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Hey! I really wanted to try this place for my tort, however I am from the UK and cannot access the site etc from my country. Do you know of a UK based company who offer a similar product?
Thanks
 

RosemaryDW

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Well I've got nothing on @jsheffield. After two up and down weeks trying to bring our Russian out of brumation between California storms only to find her "waterproof" night box completely flooded and in need of a professional fan to dry it out, we are pleased she is up and around at all. As a result of the delay she was presented with all the weeds growing within reach I could snip before leaving on a work trip, along with a rose. As usual she didn't wait for us. While we were anxiously awaiting her full awakening we went outside the third morning to see she had eaten every yellow flower in our diamondia ground cover down to the nubs.

Picture this, now without flowers:

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I recommend diamondia; it's a great, drought resistant and sturdy ground cover once it grows in; fortunately the flowers are just a bonus. I had put down desert primrose seed hoping to replace what she destroyed last year--she ate everything before it could set seed--but it was too cold here to take off. Better luck next year.

She won't starve but it wasn't the most exciting emergence we've had. I'm out this weekend as well but should have time to pick some of the more exciting weeds the rain has allowed us.
 

RosemaryDW

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Breakfast for the tortoises today: kale, cactus pad, acorn squash, carrot, Mazuri dressing with hibiscus.

I'm going to ask if there aren't any downsides to feeding both squash and carrot at the same time? My Russian gets digestive problems pretty quick if she gets much carrot so the occasional top is all she gets now, never with anything else. Maybe she's just sensitive to this one item, as I know you wouldn't feed anything that resulted in poor outcomes and mine typically eats like a dog from a garbage can.
 

RosemaryDW

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Hey! I really wanted to try this place for my tort, however I am from the UK and cannot access the site etc from my country. Do you know of a UK based company who offer a similar product?
Thanks
This thread is mainly for people who are posting what they are actively feeding their animals; other questions about foods are limited to the regular diet area. That said you might look into Pre Alpin, which we can't get here. You can look at the Shelled Warrior in UK site for options if you can't find it online but call to place an order.
 

jsheffield

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I'm going to ask if there aren't any downsides to feeding both squash and carrot at the same time? My Russian gets digestive problems pretty quick if she gets much carrot so the occasional top is all she gets now, never with anything else. Maybe she's just sensitive to this one item, as I know you wouldn't feed anything that resulted in poor outcomes and mine typically eats like a dog from a garbage can.
90+ percent of the meal was made up kale and cactus pads, then a bit of squash, and really just enough carrot for the color, which seems to really get my Russians excited about eating... I agree that the majority of their diet should be greens and lean away from starchy veg like carrot.

J
 

RosemaryDW

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We had such crazy rain this year, our Russian had to stay in her fridge for nearly a month longer than I'd prefer. Which means I had one less month to see what kind of thing she'll eat in a given year. This week I tried something different, mixing in a bunch of things she isn't fond of, rather than the just one or two I usually try in a given week. Due to the rain there are a few more choices than usual.

I found a wild pea, which never happens at our elevation; lambs quarters; an escapee from the community garden I decided was spinach; iceberg plant; a couple of the first leaves from a very large and prickly invasive thistle, wild sunflower; burr and sweet clover. I was feeling adventurous and brought in some of that bugaboo, oxalis. Not the tiny rust colored one that sometimes pops up in the yard, which she ignores, but the big green one with yellow flowers sometimes known as wood sorrel. It has naturalized near the community garden.

IMG_0354.jpeg

She had plenty of her favorites too so wasn't going to go hungry but she's likely to try at least a few bites of non favorites in the spring, when she is at her hungriest. How did she decide?

Wild pea: acceptable. Must have been the purple flowers as she is usually not a fan.

Lambs quarters, not so much, she will only eat a few bites of this most years so not surprising.

Spinach was a hard pass. I expected this and had already set aside most of it for human consumption.

She tried the iceberg for the first time ever and ate the entire flower.

No to thistle. I don't get this, it's a thistle! But she won't even eat the flowers off these.

She hasn't eaten wild sunflower for years and that didn't change, spoiled!

Some burr clover was eaten, which is normal. Sweet clover was entirely ignored, also normal.

Surprisingly she ate a few leaves of the oxalis that got mixed in without my noticing a few days after she first saw and ignored the whole thing. Didn't do so much as nibble a flower the entire time. It's a fairly sour plant so I was a bit surprised but as always, she does what she wants, when she wants.
 

RosemaryDW

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Fastest trip to the market ever.

After returning home from a couple weeks's vacation we wanted to get the tortoise's refocused from what I imagine was a glorious chance to eat only delicious grocery-store escarole and radicchio.

I got exactly two stalls in. A large vendor was selling loose cactus pads for some reason--they normally only sell large bags of cut up paddles. I bought just the one, to some odd looks.

Directly across is a newer vendor that sells primarily plants for cooking Indian foods. They had bags of squash flowers for a good price and I was happy to see the bush okra hadn't been sold out. I asked the vendor if I could have a few of the radish leaves he had just torn off a bundle for my tortoise. He returned the face of excitement I sometimes get and dove down to retrieve a handful of things, including some Napa cabbage and a single large zucchini leaf. BOOM, all the variety in five minutes. I told my husband we were done, he didn't believe me at first.

Back at home there was something I've wanted to try. Over the rainy winter and spring we'd somehow had some wild carrot establish itself in the front yard. It never grew up high or produced any flowers and we eventually pulled it. I had my husband save me the roots to see how close they tasted to modern carrots. Tortoise's answer? Nothing like carrots at all, no thank you!

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RosemaryDW

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Another one and done market trip. I spent forever in line for everything-free chicken thighs so put my remaining energies to this newest Indian stall. Bush okra leaves are still popular at home but they don't last in the heat so I purchased a big handful of regular okra (the vegetable). Also a romano-type bean known as sem fhali in India. There was something interesting looking, a baseball-sized vegetable that I couldn't decide was a summer squash or a winter one. Neither! It was a very thick skinned cucumber: sambar cucumber. It's looks like it's typically cooked or pickled, not one you would eat raw. She wasn't all that interested, turns out that thick skin is bitter, as are the seeds. Seeds removed she would eat it. Flat beans and okra are always welcome.

She also got a few sweet potato peels. Fall is here and I feel orange foods are important before hibernation. Couldn't say why, I just do.

I managed to drag myself to the French bakery for some chocolate-stuffed beignets on the way out. The sacrifices I make for this tortoise lol. 🙄
 
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