 And Hatchelings, my name is Marlene McCohen, and this is Tracy Galmitty from Results With Tracy, and we wanna welcome you to our new show, Parrot Chop Chef. So here's why this show is different. Not only are we going to make some fancy parrot chop, but in all of our episodes, we're gonna start off with a parrot chop and then show you how to turn that into something else just for you, so that you can learn how to eat healthy with your parrot. What are we making today, Tracy? We're gonna make a summer salad, a chopped summer salad actually. So we've already washed all of our ingredients, which is very important. Always wash your food before you eat it. So we have some cabbage, a little bit of carrot and romaine, spinach, cucumbers. This is actually basil and mint, strawberries and some raw pumpkin seeds. And then over here we have broccoli and lemon and the lemon will come into play later. And just so you guys know, for those of you who are completely new to parrot chop and wondering what it is, this is generally how you should feed your birds. Seeds, pellets, that should all be a very secondary part of the diet and really this is what you should be relying on to make food for your birds. So you wanna start the chop to include mostly a lot of leafy greens and then next you wanna have some vegetables and then only 20% fruit. What do we do first, Tracy? Okay, so we've washed everything and we've compartmentalized. So we're gonna chop. What am I gonna do? You are going to stand there and look pretty. Okay, I mean I might be a little bit useful. We have a large cutting board. If you only have a small cutting board, you don't have to do this all at once. If you only have a cutting board. I've actually never seen a cutting board this big. What you want to chop is you wanna protect your fingers and nobody wants chopped finger in their chop. You're gonna place your hands, is this important, how to tell them how to chop? Absolutely, what I'm going to make sure is that no birds check out your chop. So I'm just gonna cut some parrots, keep going. Place your palm here and you're using it to hold and you're just chopped. There should be like a song. Chop, chop, chop it up. With some special music for this. Cue the theme song. Chop, no. If you chop up spinach too much, it's going to become spinach mash and you don't want that. It gets like a flavor to it. That doesn't come as long as it's still crisp. What, you like chop it and a little bit of flour comes out? Yeah, well because have you ever seen spinach like you pull spinach out of your fridge and like you haven't used it all the time and then there's like darker and wilted? What, you can literally wilt it as you chop? Yeah, if you chop, if you over chop. Are you, is she serious? All right guys, so I want to actually tell you about once Tracy stops banging away here and slicing and cutting and all of that. And then the meal is done. When we set out all our ingredients to make this salad, we realized we didn't have enough dark leafy greens as many as we thought we did. So we utilized something that we had in our fridge which was the Trader Joe's chop, like the Southwestern salad. So other pieces come in the bag that we're not adding for the birds clearly. So this is pre-chopped and Tracy washed it and so this is us utilizing something that is already kind of made. Pre-made salad mix are sold in every single grocery store. Whoa. I don't prefer eating this part. So I'm going to get rid of it. Should I be trying this chopping? I'm actually watching this feeling motivated to when they try it by myself. This is looking really nice and green for the birds. Like I feel so happy knowing that they're getting all of these rich greens. They're starting off strong. We are starting off very strong. So what are you doing now, Tracy? You didn't even- I have reached for it out for everybody to see. Okay, so this is what I like to do. I like to slice it. So you have a firm, flat base. I need to find a parrot. I'm feeling very lonely, but they're all napping. Like what is it napping on here? So when you're chopping, chop your fingers in. For those of you new to the channel, this is Monty, he's mad, mad Monty. And this is Nelly and they're here to witness what Tracy is doing. They are ecstics. Hey, you should do a cold couples therapy with birds. Nelly, tell us what Monty did to make you angry. Monty, tell us why you have such hostility towards Nelly. She really just took advantage of everything. I mean, I gave her everything and then when we split up, she looked better in hells. She just bats her eyes and gets everything she wants from anyone. And I'm just kind of ignored. You know what I'm saying? Just remember, whenever you're adding seeds to anything, your salad for birds, the raw is always the most beneficial. You don't want to have like added salt or sometimes they smoke them or whatever else they do this stuff. Everything especially for birds should be in the raw format. Don't you guys agree? Yes, yes, yes. Okay, great. All right guys, so we're taking the stems out. Generally we take the stems out for obviously a little bit of looks. It's a little weird if you have stems floating around in there, but also the flavor of anything but the stem is more on that harsh woody side. You could give it to your parrots, especially if it's not stems of tomatoes. Never give your parrots tomato stems. Wow, this is doing the same thing that the spinach does. This stuff, it's okay. This stuff is like, it doesn't matter how mashed up you get. It smells like you made dressing. You know what I mean? It smells like a super, like I walked into a super healthy, I smelled lemon juice even. I know that's not in there. No, it's in the lemon. Okay, so as it is now, this already would be good enough chopped for your carrot. It is mostly dark leafy greens and some really green vegetables, which is just amazing. You could stop right here and this would be good, okay? But if you want to add some fruit to it, some of you might not want to just in case, you know, your bird is addicted to sugar or you're afraid for your bird to have too much sugar, but we're going to add the strawberries to it and we're going to add the pumpkin seeds. Two things that if you want to do without, you absolutely can. So strawberries as well as blackberries, berries in general, have less sugar content than other fruits. Is it okay to slice the strawberries for a chop or do you have to chop the strawberries? Listen, they're birds. They can eat things bigger than their head if they want. So you don't actually have to chop everything. It's really up to you, but just remember, if your bird is picky and there are certain things they're going to throw out of the mix, the more finely chopped things are, the harder it is for them to get rid of it all together. The bigger the items are, the more wasteful they can be. Hey, if you come over here and then you're here, you guys are going to, you know. So that is one reason why chopping all of the ingredients finally just helps them eat more of what you want them to eat. Another thing that you guys want to remember, I have fairly large birds. So I'm used to leaving things a little bit bigger, they can pick it up, they can hold it with their little footsie, but smaller birds like cockatiels and budgies and birds like I, Luca, who you guys see on the channel all the time, they can't necessarily pick up and hold their food. So you want to make sure things are as finely chopped as possible. I would go so far as to say even blending a lot of it will help them get all of those vegetables and nutrients that you want them to get. But for this situation, all of my birds are pretty large. So this is an okay situation for us right now, but you probably do want to go the extra mile to get things very finely chopped. And it won't destroy the salad that you're essentially making for yourself. It'll just be a more chopped salad. And I think you'll actually really like it. This is the perfect addition. And also for those of you with picky birds, this might be a great enticer to get your bird to start eating something a lot of the time. When people say, oh my bird won't eat that, if your bird refuses to try it or throws it away, sometimes if you could just get them to taste it in their mouth, you actually can make a win. By the way, this has absolutely no dressing and it honestly smells like it does. It literally smells like it's got some sort of mint strawberry dressing. Yeah, mint strawberry. I know, it's like amazing. So now it is time to serve our chop to the parrots. You've tossed it. Oh, chop and toss. Let's put it on a plate right there. Man! For a chop and make something healthy for you by simply adding one or two ingredients, we're gonna improve this and make it really exciting for you. What are we gonna add today, Tracy? We're gonna add lemon and that's our dressing and then we're gonna add it. It's ready. You don't need a lemon squeezer, you're gonna just squeeze by hand, but... I like lemon squeezers because then you don't get any seeds in a salad. Rocky, how about we move you over to this salad right here where mommy has found a lot and he's like, no, I need my big bowl. This is totally a preference. I like to add the lemon before the goat cheese because then the lemon soaks into the salad. He does not care. He's like, I will be involved in this no matter what you're mixing. Well, now we're adding the goat cheese. If you wanna, say you make a lot and you're like, I'm gonna put it in the fridge, I'm gonna have slaw or chop for days, you can always just add the goat cheese to your individual bowl. That's another thing. You could section this off and take a whole bunch of it and put it in the fridge for your birds for a few days and then just add goat cheese to servings that are gonna be for you. See, the whole thing here is that birds don't have the enzymes to break down dairy in their body. So that's why we're saving the goat cheese to add for our salad specifically. If you are a vegan or you prefer to not eat real dairy. There's vegan cheese. There's vegan cheeses that you can add to your salad just to make them better for you. This salad is completely vegan before the goat cheese. I love it. The birds love it. It was simple, easy, very fresh. It tastes very fresh and I'm excited about it. And if there's anything that you guys wanna see us make or create, put it in the comments and we will, we'll do it. Yeah, let us know also your birds favorite chop. And don't forget like, comment and subscribe and thank you for watching. Parrot Shop Chef.