Courtesy of Open Space Meats

“For most of the 6,000 years since humans first domesticated cattle, they freely grazed hillsides, fields, and pastureland. If it’s tasty, natural, and nutritious beef you’re after, two words of advice: Go grass-fed.” —Al Sears, MD, author of The Doctor’s Heart Cure.

Okay, you may be thinking, what is the big fuss about grass-fed this and pastured that? If you’re new to cooking grass-fed meat, be forewarned that it’s truly different from conventional feedlot beef on many levels: the conditions the animals are raised in, the  nutritional content of the meat, and a different fatty acid profile that requires cooking it more gently for best results.

Open Space Meats, a family ranch in Newman, California, that raises cattle the traditional way, had this gem of advice on their website FAQ page:

Image via Wikipedia

Q. What is the best way to cook grass fed beef?

A. As you may know, the fat in grass fed beef is less saturated than the fat in conventional beef. It is also much higher in Omega 3 fatty acids. That means that this fat will liquefy at a lower temperature. So grass fed beef will cook faster than what you may be used to with conventional beef. It is best to use the rule of 25’s: 25 degrees less heat and 25% less time. That will help you consistently have a great eating experience.

From Open Space Meats – Healthy Grass Fed Natural Beef – About Us.

And of course, tougher cuts of meat benefit from long, low-temperature, moist cooking such as in a slow cooker or in a low oven.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s only since World War II that there was any other kind of meat available than pastured meat. As you may know from reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma or watching “Food Inc.,” the industrial agriculture model in U.S. has taken cattle off the pasture and put them in huge feedlots, where they are fed mountains of corn and soy, which turns into mountains of manure. Grains fatten up cattle fast, but at the cost of their health — as ruminants, with multiple stomachs designed to digest grass, a high-grain diet acidifies their stomachs and makes them prone to illness. The diet also changes the fatty acid profile of the meat, and not in our favor.

And where does all that corn and soy feed come from? Why, from clearing grasslands of every living thing so it can be planted end to end and soaked in chemicals derived from petroleum. Think for a moment about all the geopolitical implications. Why not just keep the cattle on the grassland? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier on everybody? Think of the cost savings, especially in terms of personal, animal, and environmental health.

The current dominant system hasn’t always been here, and fortunately, more and more farmers are turning back to their roots, literally. Here’s a wonderful, very short video on grasslands from Savory Institute Holistic Planned Management, and from there you’ll see other videos by the Savory Institute:

Image via Wikipedia

Grass is the basis of all sustainable animal husbandry, and sustainability of civilization in general. Much land that’s not suitable for growing row crops is beautifully suited to supporting ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats, which provide high-quality nutrient-dense food for humans. And when you raise animals on pasture, you can “stack” complementary species, such as cows, sheep, and goats, since they don’t eat exactly the same things (there is overlap), and poultry, which eat the bugs and larvae that are attracted to (or passed along in) the ruminants’ manure.

Poultry spread out the manure, making it more quickly absorbed back into the soil, thus helping to build soil fertility, while solving the pathogen problem. (They’re tasty, healthful snacks, to the chickens.) It’s a beautiful system, designed by nature, implemented by humans who live in harmony with nature.

Even more important, you don’t have to clear the land of all other living things, down to the bacteria, to graze ruminants, as you do for conventional agriculture. Your mixed-grass pasture can remain home to wildlife as well as livestock: birds, bees, butterflies and beneficial bacteria, as well as rodents, rabbits and other small mammals that are killed by combines if not already poisoned by chemical fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides. Biological diversity can and does flourish on the savannah/pasture. And all these animals will add to the soil fertility, the literal and metaphorical foundation of all life on earth. (Watch this interview of Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth and co-author of Deep Green Resistance, explaining the relationship between vegetarianism and ecosystem destruction, and between grazing cattle and building topsoil. This will help you get it.)

The presence of grazing animals is not just tolerated by grass, it benefits the grass. Here’s more from Open Space Meats (love that name!) about why grasslands want to be grazed:

Grass was meant to be grazed. Like most things in this world, “all things in moderation.” If you abuse your natural resources by overgrazing, eventually it will catch up to you. By overgrazing you diminish the grass’s ability to replenish its roots; if a plant has unhealthy roots, eventually there will be no plant, or it will be replaced by less beneficial plants. The opposite is also true. If grass is never grazed or burned, the old mature grasses that die eventually form a layer of thatch that keeps light from reaching new seedlings. If there is no new growth there will be less rootstock to hold the ground in place, leading to the erosion of the topsoil. So grazing our lands responsibly is a win-win situation. Not only do the cattle get to graze the most nutritious plants for them, it actually helps the grasses reproduce more effectively and keeps the rangeland healthy and the water clean.

For these farmers and ranchers dedicated to raising pastured animals, they must find a market so they can continue to be stewards of the land. What can you and I do? Find a local purveyor of grass-fed meats and get started eating. Open Space Meats sells online, as does U.S. Wellness Meats. (I’ve never ordered from either company and am not receiving money or products from them.) I’m fortunate to be able to buy grass-fed meat locally from Magruder Ranch and John Ford Ranch (which does both grass-fed and grain-fed, though not feedlot, meat).

You can also use resources such as eatwild.com, localharvest.org, your local farmers market, and your local Weston A. Price Foundation chapter to find sources of grass-fed meat close to you. They might also have pastured eggs!

Kind Food Farm eggs

Still inclined to order the vegetarian meal, thinking it’s more virtuous and green? This article quantifies some of the death and destruction inherent in agriculture. I also highly recommend reading The Vegetarian Myth, which covers in depth these and other issues around food choices, agriculture and environmental health.

I love this list, 12 Things Happy People Do Differently, from “Marc and Angel Hack Life.”

Please read the original post for explanation of each item, but meanwhile here’s the list:

1. Express gratitude.
2. Cultivate optimism.
3. Avoid over-thinking and social comparison.
4. Practice acts of kindness.
5. Nurture social relationships.
6. Develop strategies for coping.
7. Learn to forgive.
8. Increase flow experiences.
9. Savor life’s joys.
10. Commit to your goals.

Some of these, I do pretty well on (you’ll have to make your own judgement!), most are a challenge, but I’m working on it.

Filed under: Commentary, Link Love, Sustainability Tagged: gratitude, happiness, life hack ]]> http://jeanmarietodd.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/12-things-happy-people-do-differently/feed/ 2 jeanmarie http://jeanmarietodd.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/raised-garden-beds-hugelkultur-instead-of-irrigation/ http://jeanmarietodd.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/raised-garden-beds-hugelkultur-instead-of-irrigation/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:05:10 +0000 KindFoodFarm http://jeanmarietodd.wordpress.com/?p=1150 ]]>

Hugelkultur starts like this...

This looks so cool: raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation.

For some reason, people around here love to rake up their twigs and branches and whatnot into a big pile and burn it! They just burn it outdoors in a huge pile, in county-permitted burn days. Say, what? I mean, it’s one thing if you’re at least burning it in your wood-burning stove and getting the heat value from it.

And of course, there’s the occasional doofus who burns his plastic trash instead of hauling it to the dump.

We have a pile of branches in our front field that we just leave there for wildlife habitat. And I use it as a hay feeding station for the goats, which I am in fact moving to that very pasture tomorrow. I may haul some of the wood to the garden and start my very own Hugelkultur, or, maybe I’ll wait until David gets home so I can consult with him on the location.

Anything that promises to build the soil, replace irrigation, sequester carbon and make gardening easier… I’m there!

...and grows like this.

Note the butter dish is kept close by in case of emergency

I love having a chest freezer, because it makes a dinner like this possible in January.

David bought a fresh Chinook (king) salmon off the boat last summer, brought it home and cut it up into two-serving chunks, while I packed each in Ziploc vacuum freezer bags and employed one of those little hand pumps. They really work!

So yesterday David pulled a piece of salmon out of the freezer and let it thaw in the fridge. Tonight I pulled it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature while I started yellow potatoes and green beans steaming. Then David took over.

These aren't hedgehogs, they're just pretty. Image via Wikipedia

He first sauteed some wonderful hedgehog mushrooms—our favorite—that he got free from a local mushroom buyer. It’s a bumper mushroom crop this year on the North Coast of Mendocino, despite the lack of rain. It’s still drippy-wet in the forests at night. Apparently, the buyers have so much inventory built up, they can’t sell them all and temporarily stopped buying. Lucky us!

David sliced the mushrooms and sauteed them in a hot pan with ghee and a little salt. Lower the heat gradually as the moisture cooks off. Keep it on the edge of burning without letting it actually burn. The mushrooms will shrink and concentrate their flavors. It took about 10 minutes.

David then sauteed the salmon in ghee, about 3 minutes per side. He cautions that thin pieces should be separated from thick ones so the thin part doesn’t overcook. Or, cut a thick piece down to size so the outsides don’t burn before the insides are done. We had the salmon and hedgehogs with the potatoes and green beans and, of course, lots of butter.

These mushrooms would also be fantastic stirred into eggs for scrambled eggs, as would any leftover salmon.

Alas, there was none.

For months I became a bit obsessed with making this frozen dessert and tried a bunch of recipes, such as these from Kelly the Kitchen Kop, and I learned the tricks to making truly wonderful, and nutritious, ice cream. The main requirement, hands down, is top-quality ingredients. Second, it helps to have a powerful ice cream maker, like my David’s wonderful Italian ice cream freezer. A Cuisinart will do in a pinch, but it’s really nice not having to stick your ice cream maker in the the freezer.

Thanks to the rich, classic recipe in Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, I learned that I could use 9 or more egg yolks in a batch of ice cream. I was game to try it. I have wonderful egg yolks, thanks to my chickens, and I use them liberally.

ingredients for maple nut ice cream

I use much less sugar than Ruhlman’s recipe, and no white sugar at all. Instead I use a combination of maple syrup and stevia for all flavors. I’ve tried a number of recipes for chocolate, maple  nut, and coffee ice cream from a number of books and blogs. (Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s  strawberry ice cream was an unexpected hit—we didn’t know we’d like strawberry so much! And I intend to try this coffee ice cream recipe soon.)

I haven’t settled on all my recipes yet, but my maple nut is pretty much there. I didn’t even bother to look up a recipe this time, I just winged it from memory. Here’s what I did:

Maple Nut Ice Cream

Ingredients:

Yolks from 9 pastured eggs (don’t faint, you can always use more, but a minimum of 6)

3/4 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B (darker and more flavorful) and organic (I’ve used as little as 1/2 cup with more stevia)

3 1/2 cups heavy cream, organic, raw if possible (I used pasteurized, but never ultra-pasteurized)

Dropper full of liquid stevia, if desired/needed for more sweetness (more or less depending on your brand and preference)

Pinch of sea salt (up to 1/4 tsp)

Maple flavoring, optional, 1-2 tsp

1/2 to 3/4 cup chopped crispy walnuts (raw nuts soaked overnight in salted water, dehydrated at low temp until crispy), added when mixture is almost done churning.

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, whisk egg yolks together until blended, then whisk in maple syrup and flavoring, stevia, and cream. Once blended, you can chill mixture in refrigerator before freezing in an ice cream freezer, or just go for it. It may take a little longer, depending on your ice cream maker.

Add chopped walnuts 5 or 10 minutes before ice cream is done (that’s with a typical 30-35 minute churning/freezing time in our ice cream maker)

When ice cream is done (ours is on a timer), you’ll probably want to scoop it into a freezer container and let it harden a bit more in the freezer.

For vanilla ice cream, substitute 1 Tbsp vanilla, and lose the nuts.

Then enjoy!

Mmmm, maple nut

This low sugar, moderate protein and high fat delight is pretty darned nutritious, a wonderful source of healthful saturated fat, cholesterol, choline, Vitamins A and D, and it’s very, very satisfying.

Check out this post from Chris Kresser on why you should eat more cholesterol, not less.

– Observations of change: Ask the person what changes they have seen in a particular area of business, sports, movies or some other topic over the past year. This creates a conversation rather than an interrogation with monosyllabic answers.

– Superlative comparisons: Ask questions with the words “best”, “worst”, “most” and “least” in them. Through these questions, you get a comparative conversation with some intensity and passion in it. You may not like the answers you get, but you will get some engagement and increase the interest.

– Future predictions: Ask the person what they believe will happen in the next year in a particular topic. Sports is always safe and politics usually risky. However, that doesn’t mean that you should stay away from one and favor the other. The point is to create dialogue, and speculation about the future does just that.

From: 6 small talk ninja skills for the socially challenged – Sales Machine – CBS News.

Instructions for Life by The Dalai Lama

Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

Follow the three R’s:
-  Respect for self,
-  Respect for others and
-  Responsibility for all your actions.

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.

When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

Spend some time alone every day.

Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.

Be gentle with the earth.

Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.

If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

From:  20 Ways to Get Good Karma – By The Dalai Lama.

Favorite quick dinner

Once every week or two, we just want a quick dinner with no fuss, and something Mexican sounds right. It’s not authentic, not even Tex-Mex— call it Cal-Mex.

Our favorite garnishes are sour cream, avocado, chopped green onions and cilantro, accompanied by a glass of cold kombucha.

Just a few quick steps and this meal can be yours:

Put a big spoonful of lard from pastured pigs (thanks to Lovers Lane Farm, also known for their honey) in a large cast-iron pan and bring to medium/medium-low heat.

Add about 1/2 pound of  ground beef from grass-fed cows (thank-you, Magruder Ranch) to the hot pan, cook on medium-low heat (depending on your stove and burner size; remember that grass-fed beef generally needs lower temperatures and a gentler touch) until browned. We liked the proportion of more meat, less bean. We’ll use the rest of the beans in soup.

After the meat is browned, add 1/2 can of Amy’s Organic refried beans, traditional style (we usually soak and cook our own beans from scratch, but I keep a few cans around for the times we haven’t planned ahead, or can’t find our beans in the freezer!)

Reduce heat so meat mixture just stays warm, season with sea salt and hot sauce such as Cholula. Don’t be shy. You can always soothe your burning tongue with cool sour cream.

In a large, flat skillet, heat 2 tbsp lard from pastured pigs or ghee made from butter from pastured cows (David used ghee tonight). Gently toast sprouted corn tortillas (Food Life brand is what we have locally) on each side, to desired degree of doneness. Two per person was plenty for us.

Top each tortilla with a big spoonful of bean/meat mixture, add grated cheese (we used jalapeno-Jack raw milk cheese), then sprinkle on chopped green onions, mashed avocado, salsa (preferably lacto-fermented salsa, which I made in August, still good in January!), and sour cream. Bonus: fresh cilantro can’t be beat (we forgot).

Cal-Mex happy meal

If you want to fold them over like tacos, use less filling; for tostada-style, leave open face.

OK, it’s not paleo or low carb, but it was all real food. Even better if we’d soaked and slow-cooked beans in our own chicken or beef stock. Next time.

What did you have for dinner?

I couldn’t help responding to this opinion piece (note how devoid of research it is) from foodsafetynews.com: Don’t Eat Like a Caveman.

The article is bad enough, with the same old platitudes about how we need our whole grains and legumes to be healthy, warnings against eating too much meat, the supposed environmental unsustainability of a paleo/primal diet, and that paleo = low carb/high protein and that’s bad. Oh, where do I start?

Most of the comments were from people who claimed great success in weight loss, repaired health and boosted energy from changing to a paleo/primal diet. OK, let’s just call it an ancestral diet.

However, one comment was so inane I just had to respond. I know, I know—as if anyone is ever convinced of their own wrongness by a comment on a blog. But still, I had to try. Here’s the offending comment from “Shelley”:

As most nutritionist would agree, eliminating legumes from our diets is foolish, indeed.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sc-health-0420-palos-diet-20110420,0,7758445.story

Meat, especially beef and pork, are inefficient protein sources compared to the protein you can get from legumes. Fish and chicken are better sources, but no longer sustainable approaches given the present world population.

Frankly, I find the premise of eating like out ancestors did several thousand years ago to be absurd. Should we also get rid of our cars and planes, and only walk, too? That would be healthier, but sure would put a crimp on our lifestyles.

Let’s also eliminate most if not all of our medical advances–after all, didn’t have those 12,000 years ago.

We could eliminate most of our art, too, as well as are technology.

Silly. Just plain silly.

My response here:

Anything that most nutritionists would agree to is probably a good thing to stay away from, as most of them are stuck in the lowfat, anti-cholesterol, “healthy whole grains” paradigm. If it works for you, go for it, but many of us have found it doesn’t. Plants want to avoid being eaten, too, which is why they’ve developed an array of defenses against animals: trypsin and other protease inhibitors, saponins, gluten and gliaden, phytic acid, salicylates, oxalates, goitrogens, phytoestrogens and other anti-nutrients. (That doesn’t mean don’t eat plants, but don’t eat just plants, and prepare them properly, and rotate.)

As to sustainability, pastured animal-based, nontoxic small-scale farming is not only very productive, it nurtures the soil, promotes biodiversity, sequesters carbon, and provides a healthful environment for animals, plants, humans and the invisible microflora we all depend on for life. Cows and pigs can eat plants, such as grass and corn stalks respectively, that humans can’t, and they help rebuild the soil while they’re at it. Grass farming systems such as Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, are extremely productive and actually build topsoil, while conventional monoculture agriculture destroys topsoil and wildlife habitat, pollutes groundwater, etc etc. Pastured farming is more productive per acre of land than conventional, partly because multiple species can graze at the same time or in sequence under an intelligently managed rotational grazing system that combines herbivorous ruminants and omnivorous poultry.

Eating like our ancestors has nothing to do with whether we use cars and planes. Our species evolved on a diet far different from the Standard American Diet, and our genes are adapted to that diet, the point of paleo/primal eating. Our ancestral diets are big clues as to what is optimal for modern humans to eat as well.

What’s silly, just silly, is conflating a return to our ancestral diets with rejecting all the trappings of civilization.

* * *

Another commenter named Chris Sturdy also responded to the “silly, just silly” bit with this:

What’s “silly” is your (il)logical leap from advocates suggesting that people eat a biologically-appropriate diet to suggesting that those same people are also suggesting that we turn our backs on all the amazing advances we have made that actually help us. This is utterly false and in mu opinion, silly, plain and simple.

I could have made a lot of other points, that other commenters did make:

• Meat and animal foods are packed with nutrients, and are the very definition of nutrient-dense foods
• Whole grains are indigestible and/or allergenic for increasing numbers of people; they also interfere with mineral absorption, with disastrous effects on bones and teeth
• A paleo diet isn’t necessarily “low carb/high protein,” since macronutrient composition of the diet will vary depending on the person’s preferences, constitution, and energy requirements due to activity level
• The typically high carbohydrate level of a grain-based diet tends to send blood sugar levels soaring, and that’s not healthy for anybody
• While healthful traditional diets include varying amounts of animal foods, they all include some, and no long-term traditional diet is vegan. Vegan diets don’t provide enough of the key nutrients and fats that make reproduction possible
• You can’t call it a fad diet when your species evolved on it.

The ultimate proof is in the results, and you just can’t shut up the paleo folks who have had success with this approach. I’m working on it!

Zimmy airing out his ears.

Who doesn’t love the goofiness of dogs? Zimmy is gorgeous, but he’s also a goofball, and completely unaware of it, making it all the more endearing.

Dogs are on my mind after I discovered a lovely dog-related blog today, called Doggerel, A Year of Learning About Dogs. The author posted a lovely passage from the memoir Dog Years, by poet Mark Doty. It captures something of why we love dogs so much:

Being human is most likely a much lonelier endeavor than being a dog. Of course, many dogs spend a great deal of their time in solitude, waiting for someone to come home, for the world to begin again–but they live in a state of connectedness, it seems, that we have lost, if indeed we ever possessed it. Is that why we turn to them, they who are always ready to receive, to join in wholeheartedly, as we so often cannot? To be human is to be a watcher; sometimes even at our moments of great joy or great grief there is a part of us conscious of our being, observing that being. I do not think dogs have such a part; they are all right here, involved in whatever it is, and therefore they are a sort of cure for our great, abiding loneliness. A temporary cure, but a real one.

The blog has lovely dog photos, lots of interesting -looking dog links, and minimal commentary.

Dogs are cozy.

Dogs are cudddly.

They're inquisitive,

Responsive,

Optimistic,Nature-loving,

Exuberant,

And relaxed.