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Another Writer: Cricket: 30-something, married, educated, kitty mom, fairy lover, writer, daydreamer, child of God, and so much more. Subscribe to AnotherWriter.net
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Grass-fed beef for me, please!May 7, 2008 | 1:10 pm | No Comments | Archive/Search I had a meal last night that has forever changed the way I feel about the U.S. beef supply and what meat I am willing to put into my body. I had certified grass-fed beef in hamburger form and it was the most amazing experience I have had with food in a long time. It totally blew my mind, that’s for sure. So here is how it went down…
We recently joined a CSA (I plan to blog on this soon), and through that group found connections to a local farm that raises grass-fed beef. The CSA members buy 7-8 cows a year and sell the halves and quarters to members. I was home from work yesterday and happened to connect with one of the CSA Board members over email and the phone, which resulted in her bringing by a pound of ground grass-fed beef and a stack of 10 grass-fed beef hamburger patties for us to try. I thawed the patties out and we decide to grill the grass-fed ones and taste test them along with our usual burgers. For the grass-fed burgers, we added nothing. We thawed them out, added a little salt and pepper and grilled them. For the regular beef we got at the store, we made them our usual way with an egg, a bit of Worchestershire Sauce and a little bread crumb mix. We cooked the grass-fed ones slightly less than the other patties because grass-fed has a lower fat content, but added cheese and traditional burger condiments to both. The difference was life-changing, and I am not just being dramatic. Let me back up a second. Before we started preparing the patties for the grill, I noticed how the meat looked different. The packaged meat from the grocery store was bright red with little evident juice and much visible fat. The grass-fed beef was a much deeper shade of red, almost burgundy, had less visible fat and was quite juicy…bloody you could say. Fast forward back to the final product…We decide to eat the grass-fed beef first because we know what the beef we always eat tastes like already. For the first bite, I chewed carefully and tired to listen to my taste buds. It WAS a different flavor, but not a bad one. Just a…beefier one. The meat was good. It had a flavor I knew I have had before, I just couldn’t remember when. In doing research about grass-fed beef, I read an article somewhere (can’t find it, sorry!) about a grass-fed beef vendor that would recall the “look” that older people would get when they ate his beef. The look that told him they were remembering the tastes from their childhoods, before meat manufacturing changed so much, back when cows actually lived in pastures and not feedlots. Anyway, I think I had that same sensation. I knew I had tasted that taste before, probably from meat I had as a kid back home in Kansas. And, I liked it! It was not at all the huge taste difference that I expected, but a pleasant good difference. Like I said…BEEFIER! After we ate our grass-fed burgers we decided to split a burger of the store bought beef for a taste comparison. Hubby and I each doctored up our half, took a bite, chewed two or three times, and then spit the meat out and looked at each other. It was AWFUL. And I do mean awful. Not only was the texture soft, mushy and not at all meaty, but the flavor was dirty tasting and bland. I took another bite, chewed it some and spit it out, marveling at how I could taste the nasty, grainy properties of the meat. And I did it again. Bite. Chew. Spit. Finally my husband said, “You know, it isn’t going to get any better.” And he was right. I threw my plate of chewed up burger out. I do not want to eat grain-fed beef raised on traditional U.S. feedlots any more. I am convicted that we are eating crappy beef that is poisoned by our methods of producing it. There are a ton of websites out there with information about how meat is produced and why you should consider alternative meat sources, but here are a few of the things that have convicted me:
There are a ton of websites, documentaries and informative sources out there. Educate yourself, and consider trying grass-fed beef. Some people may not like it. But shop around. I read in an article, that just as the type and quality of the soil affects how a wine tastes, the food a cow eats affects how its meat and milk tastes. We personally have bought a 1/4 of a cow for this fall, and I can not wait! Some links I found interesting:
posted in WLS & weight loss, Organic Organic doesn’t always mean healthyMay 5, 2008 | 2:44 pm | No Comments | Archive/Search This past weekend my hubby ran in the Indianapolis 500 Festival mini-marathon, so we took Friday off to get there early and do a little shopping. One of the places that I was interested to check out was a Whole Foods Market in Carmel. The majority of their foods are organic, and the items that aren’t organic are at least minimally processed and as close to “natural” as possible. I was amazed by this store to be honest. They had the best organic produce I’ve seen yet and if you wanted to eat every single thing in your diet from an organic producer, you could at this store. One thing I noticed right away though was that organic does NOT mean healthy. They had all the same junk food I’ve been buying, but all with organic labels on it. So sure, it is made with less chemicals and preservatives, but it still has all the fat and calories as everything else. (Don’t tell anyone, but organic chocolate is DIVINE!) The biggest thing that impressed me was the bulk foods section. You could get flax seed, oatmeal, flour, sugar, etc in bulk - all organic of course. We bought some raisins, golden flax seeds and oatmeal for hubby. He eats oatmeal most every day and can’t stand the little packets that I prefer. But all in all, I am glad we went and got to see what an “organic” market looks like. (I won’t even go into the prices of everything though…it would blow your mind!) [edit: I decided to add the word “always” to my blog title, because after reading this again tonight, I realized that I might be giving the impression that I don’t think organic food is healthy. I do believe organic food is a healthy choice, but I guess my point was that not ALL organic food is healthy in terms of fat and calorie content. So yeah…just wanted to clarify!] posted in Organic The hunt for organicApril 30, 2008 | 3:42 pm | No Comments | Archive/Search Okay, so this past weekend we decided to check out some of the local grocery stores and see exactly what we could find in terms of organic foods. We were pleasantly surprised given the size of our town (about 60,000 residents I think). We hit the local Wal-mart Super Store (where we normally shop) and then also Baesler’s and Kroger. We spent plenty of time at each store wandering the aisles, looking at all the meat and produce and dusting boxes off to inspect them. Here is what we found: Baesler’s: This is a local market and the one thing I always liked about this store was that despite being a little higher on the price side of things, they have an AMAZING selection of foods, and carry many speciality items. We found organic milk, eggs, yogurt, lots of veggies and fruit and even cage-free chicken. Two varieties of chicken actually, including one from an Amish farm. They also had random organic items throughout the non-perishable sections too, but it was pretty random. Since this was our first store, we felt the full extent of the sticker shock when shopping organic. For example, one organic tomato cost about $2.45 with a package of two being over 4 dollars. Pretty steep! But, overall, they had some really nice options, and we even found organic orange juice on sale for 99 cents! The yogurt was the best though. They sell Trader’s Point Creamery yogurt and milk, which is made about an hour from here. It comes in glass containers and is absolutely DIVINE! Wal-mart: Actually not too bad considering it is such a large chain. We found one loaf of organic bread. One loaf. Not one variety or one brand, but one single loaf! They had a little bit of organic yogurt and milk, but nothing in the way of eggs or meat. They had a some organic veggies, mostly lettuces and some carrots. For the few things that we found here that we had seen at Baesler’s, the price was definitely cheaper. Oh! And I almost forgot! I found organic ice cream, too! In COFFEE flavor! YUM! It was really, really good. From Breyers! Kroger: They actually had the best selection of organic items minus the few things they didn’t carry that the other two did (namely meat and the yogurt we like from Baesler’s). The nice thing was that they had most of their organic items all grouped together in one big section. All the veggies and fruits were in the produce area but then they had 3-4 “mini” aisles off to the side that were only organic and “health food” items. And man, they had everything! Whatever we had been missing at the other stores, we found it here - breads, cereal, condiments, ice cream, noodles, maple syrup, frozen items…even pizza! I was really impressed. And their prices weren’t terrible either. So we ended buying as much organic as we could and despite the extra expense in the bill, I felt really good about the purchases. Once we get the hang of which items are at which stores, and which store has the cheaper price, I am sure we can cut down the price a lot. Once the farmer’s market opens up here for the summer, that will help, too. So, that was our first organic adventure. More to come, I’m sure! posted in Organic Healthy eating…April 24, 2008 | 5:18 pm | No Comments | Archive/Search At work I belong to a Fitness Challenge. Each year we track our activity points and then get prizes every so often. We also have “wellness” speakers on a variety of topics. Today’s speaker was about eating healthier. I signed up purely for the social aspect of it, because I assumed the topic would be the same old “portion control is key” type of speaker. Oh how wrong I was!
I have decided to do some reading and see if making some changes in my diet might be a good idea. I am all for eating more natural and less processed foods, and if making a change like this can help make me healthier, then count me in! I will try and post here as I learn more. This is all very new…but exciting! posted in Personal, WLS & weight loss, Organic Earthquakes….in IndianaApril 19, 2008 | 7:50 am | No Comments | Archive/Search Well technically they were in Illinois, but it woke me up out of bed yesterday morning just after 5:30am, which sucked! Yeah, we had earthquakes yesterday. It’s so weird to write that, and for a Kansas girl, that’s a weird sensation to FEEL it. I don’t care for it one bit. I was in bed, sleeping away with my cat and all of a sudden I heard all this noise. The bed and whole wall started moving back and forth, and then in 15-20 seconds, it was over. The cats were freaked, I jumped out of bed hollering, and you could see everyone in the neighborhood flipping on their lights and looking outside. Really weird. Here is some data if you like that kind of thing. 5.2 in magnitude. Nothing to sneeze at! And then the 2nd one came mid-morning while we were at work. I was standing in the hallway outside a co-worker’s office and I heard all this noise that sounded like high winds and everything started moving again. So bizarre. It was much shorter that time. It was only 4.6. The scary thing isn’t that we can have earthquakes in this area, because you can have earth movement almost everywhere, but if you look at the data for the 18th (yesterday), that same area of Illinois was having tremors continually throughout the day and there was even one this morning! Scary stuff! So yeah, it’s been a little shaky around here…literally! har har… posted in Total Miscellany, Newsworthy |
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We had planned on having burgers on the grill last night after we went shopping this weekend. We have been wanting to try grass-fed beef as opposed to the grain-fed beef all the stores normally carry, but have been unable to find any, so we bought our usual pound of ground beef and planned for burgers.
The speaker today was awesome. She is a self-taught advocate for organic eating and local food production. She presented so many neat facts and interesting concepts about food! Her outlook was so very refreshing and the way she talked about food made me feel like I could change my eating, too! We talked about everything from why processed foods can be bad to how grass fed beef is better for you than corn fed beef. She told us about all sorts of local (within an hour) places that I never knew existed where you can get quality, organic and whole foods that are good for you.