Beef and Olive Stew with Scented Red Wine

Another great recipe from Deborah Krasner’s cookbook Good Meat! I let the beef stew meat wet-dry (thaw) in fridge for about 7 to 10 days before making this stew. The meat was incredibly tender. I cook with salted, whole milk, raw butter from my farmer and I used my homemade beef stock and I used pasture raised bacon.

For the Marinade:
2/3 cup red wine
Zest of 1 orange removed with a vegetable peeler in big strips
1 stick cinnamon
3 whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme

Other Ingredients:
1 to 1 1/2 pounds grass-fed stew beef
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup chopped bacon or pancetta (or all olive oil, if preferred)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
1 cup water or homemade beef stock
1 cup of olives, mixed green and black or all one type
Kosher salt

Optional Topping:
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Creme Fraiche

Mix the marinade ingredients together and add the beef. Refrigerate all day or overnight. Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Remove the meat from the marinade, reserving the marinade. Bring the beef to room temperature and blot it dry. Heat the pot you will cook the stew in, and add the olive oil. Brown the meat on all sides and remove it to a plate.

Add the bacon or pancetta to the pot and cook it over medium-low heat to render the fat (or use 1/4 cup olive oil); add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally,  until the vegetables have softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Return the meat to the pot, along with the marinade. Add as much water or stock as necessary to just cover the meat. Add the olives and salt to taste. Bring just to a boil and immediately remove from the heat.

Put the pot in the middle of the oven and slow-bake for about 2 hours, or until the meat is soft and fragrant. If you plan to use the topping, mix all the chopped ingredients together. To serve, discard the stems left from the thyme, as well as the orange peel. Ladle the stew into shallow bowls on top of noodles, polenta, rice, or mashed potatoes. Sprinkle with a little of the topping and a dollop of Creme Fraiche.

Lamb Meatballs

Whether you enjoy lamb or not, you are sure to love this recipe by Sally Fallon in Nourishing Traditions.

2 pounds of grass-fed/finished pasture raised ground lamb
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon dried rosemary or thyme
2 eggs
2 cups whole grain bread crumbs
1 cup cream
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
about 1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup red wine
2-3 cups of beef or lamb stock
2-4 ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped or 1 can tomatoes, drained and chopped
2 cups spinach, chard, kale or beet greens, chopped

Saute onion and rosemary in 2 tablespoons olive oil until soft. Meanwhile, soak bread crumbs in cream. Mix onion mixture, eggs, bread crumbs, sea salt and pepper with ground lamb. Form into 1-inch balls. Dredge in flour and saute a few at a time in olive oil. Pour out browning oil and add red wine to the pan. Bring to a boil, scraping up coagulated juices in the pan with a wooden spoon. Add stock and tomatoes and reduce by boiling until sauce thickens, skimming occasionally. Add meatballs and chopped greens to sauce and simmer for about 15 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through. Serve with basic brown rice or buckwheat or brown rice noodles.

Brown rice or Jasmine rice should be soaked and fermented in a mixture of water and whey for 7 to 24 hours before cooking in butter and sea salt. 2 cups of rice to 4 cups of cold filtered water and 4 tablespoons of whey. After soaking add butter and Celtic salt, bring to a boil, skim, reduce heat and let cook for 45 minutes or until done. Season to taste. This process neutralizes a large portion of phytic acid in grains and will vastly improve nutritional benefits and digestibility. Along with cooking the rice in butter, an necessary digestive aid when consuming grains and vegetables. Believe me this process really makes incredibly delicious rice.

I paired a 2007 Carpe Diem Pinto Noir with this dish.

See all photos here.

Man has been eating meat and fat for thousands of years, but hardening of the arteries is a new disease. My father, practicing medicine in Georgia fifty years ago, rarely saw a heart attack. Heart attacks have only become common since the advent of homogenized pasteurized milk, oleo-margarine, and the increased consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils. William Campbell Douglass, MD The Milk Book

Cream of Vegetable Soup

Another fantastic soup from Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook. This is a meal in and of itself and takes less than an hour to make. However, you will need to plan in advance to make sure you have 2 quarts of homemade chicken stock on hand. Additionally, I highly recommend investing in a handheld blender to make pureeing simple with whole lot less mess.

2 medium onions or leeks, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
4 tablespoons butter
3 medium backing potatoes or 6 red potatoes, washed and cut up
2 quarts homemade chicken stock (click link for recipe)
several sprigs fresh thyme, tied together
1/2 teaspoon dried green peppercorns, crushed
4 zucchini, ends removed and sliced
sea salt or fish sauce
pepper
piima cream or creme fraiche

Melt butter in a large, stainless steel post and add onions or leeks and carrots. Cover and cook over lowest possible heat for at least 1/2 hour. The vegetables should soften but not burn. Add potatoes and stock, bring to a rapid boil and skim. Reduce heath and add thyme sprigs and crushed peppercorns. Cover and cook until the potatoes are soft. Add zucchini and cook until they are just tender–about 5 to 10 min. Remove the thyme sprigs. Puree the soup with a handheld blender. If soup is to thick, think with filtered water. Season to taste. Ladle into heated bowls and garnish with cultured cream.

Side Note: Make sure that the soup has cooled down and you can taste it without burning your tongue before you add the cultured cream. If you put the cream in while the soup is to hot, you will kill all the enzymes and lacto-bacteria that aids in digestion. According to Sally Fallon, “Cultured dairy products provide beneficial bacteria and lactic acid to the digestive tract. These friendly creatures and their by-products keep pathogens at bay, guard against infectious illness and aid in the fullest possible digestion of all food we consume.” It basically turns into a dead food.

Raw foods enthusiasts point to scientific evidence which shows that when cooked foods are consumed, the white blood cell count immediately rises, while no such increase occurs when eating raw fruit or vegetables. The white blood cells function as immune system scavengers, removing foreign organisms and any chemical compounds the body considers invasive. The conclusion is drawn that, therefore, cooked foods are bad because the body considers them invasive and toxic, and raw foods are good because they evoke no immune system response. However, one can look at the same results and conclude that the cooked food is stimulating the immune function and causing the increase in white blood cells not because the food itself is toxic, but because a function of cooked food is to “exercise” the immune system in producing white blood cells for real emergencies, somewhat akin to a biological fire drill. Indeed, it is quite natural for the body to use the invasion of low doses of microorganisms or chemical poisons to immunize itself against greater danger. And on one level food is a foreign substance that the body must “overcome” through the process of digestion and assimilation. In this sense cooked food can be seen to strengthen the system while raw foods simply do not have the same white-blood-cell-stimulating effect. – Marc David Nourishing Wisdom

Interview: Organic Consumers Association’s Ronnie Cummins tells the truth about organic milk that isn’t

This article was originally found on NaturalNews.com

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

With consumer demand for organic products continuing to grow, more large corporations are entering the organic market. To maximize profits, some of these companies don’t follow organic standards but still label products as organic. For example, Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, sold by Wal-Mart and other retailers, continue to produce “organic” milk under factory-farm conditions that few reasonable people would consider truly organic.

According to the Organic Consumers Association, half of Horizon’s “organic” milk today comes from what can only be considered “factory” dairy feedlots — and much of Aurora’s organic milk does as well. Rather than buy organic calves that have been raised from birth on organic farms, these companies seemed to have discovered it’s cheaper to buy conventional calves that have been raised on conventional farms, install them in factory feedlots, then milk them and call it organic.

The situation has become so alarming that the Organic Consumers Association ultimately called for a boycott, and many knowledgeable consumers are now avoiding the Horizon brand entirely.

The organic milk controversy extends to organic soy milk as well. Horizon Organic’s parent company, Dean Foods, also bought out Silk, the leading organic soy milk brand in the United States. Dean Foods has pushed for lower organic standards in the United States and to allow industrial-style production to be called “organic.”

Meanwhile, major grocery chains import cheap, so-called “organic” soybeans from China, where the workers are treated much like slaves and organic standards are dubious. They are also imported from Brazil where the Amazon rainforest is being bulldozed in order to create more acreage for growing soybeans.

To gain more insight on the details of this emerging battle over organic standards, NaturalNews editor Mike Adams sat down with Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association for some straight talk on organic milk. What follows is the full interview.

Mike: I am here today talking with Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. That is at www.OrganicConsumers.org. What’s the overview of the situation on organic milk, Ronnie?

Ronnie: Well, the good news is, there is such a huge demand for organic products across the United States and North America that there is a serious shortage of supply. One of the types of products that are in serious short supply is organic milk. This is already more than a $1-billion-a-year industry in the United States, out of the $15 billion in organic food sales last year.

The problem is that our government – specifically the U. S. Department of Agriculture – takes about $90 billion of our tax money every year, and they give subsidies to all of these factory farms to go organic, but they give no subsidies to help family-scale dairies make the transition to organic. We literally do not have enough family farmers with the wherewithal to achieve organic certification and make the product.

At the same time, we have these giant retail giants like Wal-Mart who have noticed that the public wants organic food and they are willing to pay a premium price for it, so they and the other retail chain stores have moved with a vengeance to dominate the organic market. Wal-Mart is now the number-one seller of organic milk in the country. The problem is that the milk they are selling – Horizon Organic – is not really organic. It is coming from the factory-style dairy farms where the animals are kept in intensive confinement and have been imported from conventional farms as calves. They simply label it organic, and the USDA lets them get away with it.

Mike: Let us get into more detail on that, because I want people to understand how they do an end-run around this organic label. First, do you agree that there is some degree of success in the fact that consumer demand for organic products is now so strong? Is that not a success by itself?

Ronnie: It is a tremendous success. It is attributed to the fact that a lot of us spent the last 30 years building up an alternative food and farming system in the United States. This alternative system has proved to be much better than industrial agriculture, and so now the latest polls show 75 percent of Americans say they are shopping for healthier food. If you look at the statistics, about 12 cents of every grocery store dollar are going for foods that are labeled as either natural or organic.

Mike: Well, that is a substantial sum. That is growing at, what, about 20 percent a year or something?

Ronnie: Growing at 20 percent a year, whereas conventional food sales tend to grow about 2 percent a year. This 20 percent-a-year growth has been steady ever since 1991. It appears that it will continue through the end of this decade, so by then most food sold in grocery stores will have a label that says ‘natural’ or ‘organic’.

The question is: If we let these gigantic corporations like Horizon and Wal-Mart take over the industry, will it really be organic?

How the USDA enables big business to corrupt organic standards for profit

Mike: Let’s talk about the definition of organic, then. What should organic really mean in terms of, not only the treatment of the cows, but also what chemicals are not in the milk, for example? What is the real definition?

Ronnie: There are organic farmers all over the world – in about 100 countries – who are certified organic nowadays. Traditionally, organic has always meant that you raise crops without chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers and that you raise animals without drugging them up with hormones or antibiotics. You cannot take sewage sludge and put it on farmlands. You cannot feed animals things like blood, slaughterhouse waste, manure and municipal garbage, and you cannot use untested and hazardous technologies like genetic engineering or fruit irradiation. The animals have to be raised on pasture – which is their natural behavior – where every day of the growing season, weather permitting, they are out on pasture eating grass and foraging as they have evolved to do.

What has happened recently is that Wal-Mart was buying their organic milk from genuine organic dairy farmers that pastured their animals, and then they turned around to that company – Organic Valley – and they said, “Hey, we want a lower price,” just as Wal-Mart always does. Organic Valley said no, so Wal-Mart then turned to Dean Foods, the largest dairy conglomerate in the world – which had bought out Horizon Organic – and said, “Would you sell to us?” To which Horizon said, “We will sell you the cheapest organic milk you have ever seen.”

Horizon conveniently took advantage of the fact that Federal Organic Standards say the cows must have access to pasture, and they said, “Oh well, I guess theoretical access to pasture is good enough. We are going to chain up our cows and milk them three times a day, and they will never get out pasturing unless there is a news organization coming to the farm that day. We will still call it organic.” They have been doing this for four years, and there have been complaints from the Organic Consumers Association and organic farmers all over the country.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has completely ignored these complaints for four years. However, now this controversy has reached such a state, with the mass media covering it and retail stores across the country starting to drop Horizon and Aurora Organic, that the USDA is finally making noises that they will clear up this situation and promulgate federal regulations that actually require the animals to be pastured.

They will make sure that the animals were not imported from some conventional dairy farm where they were weaned on blood, fed antibiotics, slaughterhouse waste and chicken manure and then called “organic.” The animals must be raised from birth as organic, and they must be pastured every day during t he growing season – a minimum of 120 days a year. This is what organic has always meant in terms of raising cows, and it is what it should mean now.

Mike: Now, these are pretty serious accusations of Horizon Milk or Dean Foods’ behavior. How are you able to support this? Do you have an insider taking pictures, or how did you become aware of this behavior on their part?

Ronnie: It was called to our attention by a watchdog organization called The Cornucopia Institute, which actually visited some of these factory-style dairy farms that Horizon and Aurora call organic. They witnessed first-hand things like a farm where there are 4,000 animals, but only a few hundred acres of pasture. You cannot possibly pasture animals on that little pasture, especially when they are in semi-arid parts of Idaho, Colorado and West Texas.

Then beyond that, workers on these farms started coming forth as whistleblowers. There was a story in the Chicago Tribune about one of these whistleblowers who pointed out that these cows are not put out to pasture. The only time they are put out to pasture is when there is a media organization or an important person coming out.

Yes, it is first-hand information. It is a look at the terrain that these factory-style dairy feedlots are set on. Look at the size of their pasture, and then the fact that there was a national survey of organic dairy farms that came out March 22 – which the unethical dairies did not respond to or they got really low ranks – whereas, the ethical producers were happy to be transparent about their practices.

The good news is, almost all the organic farmers in the country are actually practicing real organic standards. The bad news is that the market leader, Horizon Organic, and their junior partner, Aurora Organic, are flagrantly violating organic standards to the point where we, the Organic Consumers Association, had to call for a boycott. We have never called for a boycott against an organic product before. This was going too far, so starting in early April, we called on consumers across the country to start boycotting the products of Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, and to boycott the brand names that the leading retailers are selling from Horizon and Aurora at Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, Giant, Publix and Wild Oats.

Mike: Well, this seems like a clear case in which big business is now seeing dollar signs whenever the word “organic” appears, so they are doing the minimum necessary or even just blatantly violating the rules in order to put that word on their products, regardless of the spirit of the law or the original intent of organics. Is this just corporate greed?

Ronnie: This is, and the sad thing is, how easy it would be to help 5,000 or 10,000 conventional family farmers make the transition in their dairies to organic. It would not be that hard. It would not cost that much money, and this way we could still have organic standards that were real, animals treated humanely and not damage the environment.

Of course, we have not even mentioned that one of the reasons you want organic animals to be outdoors and pastured is because the quality of the meat and milk is much higher if the animals are raised naturally on grass. The other organic requirements mean that the end product is going to be healthier as well. They are not going to have antibiotic residues or genetically engineered hormones. They are not going to be spreading mad cow disease and so on. We, right now in the United States, have an excess of milk being produced by family-scale dairy farmers who are not yet organic. It would be very simple to help those who want to make the transition do so if we were to force the government to give us a fair share of our subsidies to help these farmers do that.

Lax standards of corporate manufacturers and retailers affect both organic milk and soymilk products

Mike: Now, you mentioned that pasture-fed cows are healthier cows. This gets back to something you mentioned earlier that needs to be emphasized, because most people simply do not believe this is happening. Conventional cows, in fact, are being fed chicken litter and other animals.

Ronnie: Yes, they take it from birth. Cows were traditionally weaned on their mother’s milk, but industrial agriculture figured out that it’s pretty expensive to wean the calves on milk, so they decided to wean them on blood. That is common practice nowadays on a conventional dairy farm. Then, you feed them primarily grains that are genetically engineered, but mixed in with those grains are things that make the animals grow faster and put on weight, like slaughterhouse waste – basically ground up pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and everything else are fed to them.

They found out all these factory poultry farms around the country were producing billions of pounds of manure that pollute the environment. What can we do with all this manure? Presto, they feed it back to cows. They sweep up the manure, the feathers and the dropped bits of cattle that are fed to chickens in their feed. They sweep that all up, turn around and feed it back to cows.

Most people in the United States are shocked when they hear that 80 percent of the drugs and antibiotics made in this country are not fed to humans to cure them of some illness, but fed to animals in their feed every day to make them grow faster. Scientists do not totally understand why, but they do know that if you cram thousands of animals together in unsanitary or unhygienic – not to mention inhumane – conditions, they all get sick and die.

The only way to keep them alive is to constantly feed them antibiotics. Of course, what that means is you turn around and drink a glass of dairy milk from a conventional farm, and you are getting residues of antibiotics in every drink. They also figured out, “We could use our genetically engineered hormone to shoot up these cows with this hormone produced by Monsanto, even though it is banned in just about every industrialized country in the world except for the United States.” If you shoot up dairy cows with this hormone, you can force them to give more milk, and you can keep milking them even past their lactation period. You can actually milk a cow not for a year, but for up to a thousand days. Of course, the cow will drop dead after that, but they do not care.

For all these reasons, there is a huge movement on the part of American consumers and especially concerned parents and concerned grandparents – if they drink milk and if their kids and grandparents drink – to switch to organic.

Mike: Is it fair to say, Ronnie, that the organic-labeled Horizon Milk on the shelves in Wal-Mart right now comes, at least in part, from cows that were at one point in their lives fed blood, manure, chicken litter and some other things you mentioned? Is that accurate?

Ronnie: Yes, half of Horizon Organic’s milk today comes from these factory dairy feedlots. One hundred percent of Aurora Organic’s milk comes from these factory dairy feedlots. It is cheaper to not buy organic calves that have been raised from birth on an organic farm, but to buy conventional calves that have been raised as cheaply as possible on a conventional farm. The routine practice today on a conventional farm is feeding the animals blood plasma as a milk replacer. You feed them genetically engineered grains, slaughterhouse waste and chicken manure. That is industry standard. Why? You can make more money doing it that way.

Mike: Okay, so for those reading this, take a closer look at that bowl of cereal next time. If you are pouring cow’s milk in there, you might want to buy genuine organic and not the cheap stuff.

Ronnie: Here is another point that you might think about: for those people who do not drink dairy milk, but who buy organic soy milk, the leading organic soy milk brand in the United States is Silk. Many consumers have no idea that Silk – just like Horizon Organic Milk – was bought out by this giant conglomerate, Dean Foods.

Silk used to buy their organic soybeans from U.S. and Canadian organic soybean farmers, and they paid them a decent price – $16 to $21 a bushel – for these organic soybeans. Well, now that Dean Foods has bought out Silk, they are starting to import cheap, so-called organic soybeans from China, where the workers are treated like slaves and organic standards are dubious. Or, they are importing soybeans from Brazil where there is a huge uproar over the fact that people are whacking down the Amazon – the lungs of the planet – in order to plant export crops, specifically soybeans, to export.

Even if we think this does not affect us, because we do not eat meat or we do not eat dairy, we have to see the effect of these big corporations like Dean Foods coming into organic. Wal-Mart wants to sell you stuff that is cheaper than their competitors, and the only way they can do that is to outsource it from overseas – places like China and Brazil – where worker rights and environmental standards are routinely violated, or else lower standards in the United States and allow industrial-style production to call itself organic.

Mike: Now, this is obviously a very important story for consumers to follow. How can they continue to get updates from you on this story?

Ronnie: Every day on our news site, www.OrganicConsumers.org you will find updates. We have a whole section of our website called “Safeguard Organic Standards,” where you can take action … send a message to what we are calling the “Shameless Seven.” These are the large corporations trying to defraud consumers and put ethical organic farmers out of business by labeling factory farm production – and slave labor production, in the case of China – as organic.

Mike: I want to thank you, Ronnie, for taking the time to give us all of this shocking information today.

Ronnie: Thank you.

Related Resources
• Organic Consumers Association – (www.organicconsumers.org)

• The Cornucopia Institute – (www.cornucopia.org)

• USDA’s National Organic Program (http://www.ams.usda.gov/NOP)

Chicken Liver Pâté

I love liverwurst and Pâté but never thought I would make it. However, I found a recipe in Nourishing Traditions and wanted to try it. Not only was it super easy to make, but it was very yummy as well. It was just as good, if not better, than purchasing from a gourmet store.

Almost all traditional cultures prize organ meats for their ability to build reserves of strength and vitality. Organ meats are extremely rich in fat-soluble vitamins A and D, as well as essential fatty acids, important very-long-chain superunsaturated fatty acids and the whole gamut of macro and trace minerals. Wild animals eat the organs of their kill first, thus showing a wisdom superior to our own.

While you can buy Pâté, Mousse, and Liverwurst at the grocery store, I like to make my own because like most grocery store meat, it is made from animals that are raised in industrial farms and feedlots under a toxic and horrible farming model. Why does it even matter? Well, it is especially important to eat organ meats from really healthy animals that are healthy, free of hormones, antibiotics, synthetic products and have been raised and fed properly. Otherwise you ingesting all those toxins into your own body. You are what you eat is really ringing true in this day and age. – Sally Fallon Nourishing Traditions Cookbook

This recipe serves 12 – 18

3 tablespoon butter
1 pound chicken or duck livers, or a combination
1/2 pound mushrooms, washed, dried and coarsely chopped
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
2/3 cup dry white wine or vermouth
1 clove of garlic, mashed
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon dried dill
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 stick butter, softened
sea salt

Melt butter in a heavy skillet. Add livers, onions and mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes until livers are browned. Add wine, garlic, mustard, lemon juice and herbs. Bring to a boil and cook, uncovered, until the liquid is gone. Allow to cool. Process in a food processor with softened butter. Season to taste. Place in a crock or mold and chill well. Serve with homemade whole grain bread or homemade triangle croutons. Top with black caviar.

If you don’t want to make your own liver Pâté, have no fear, you can purchase organic Pâté, mousse, liverwurst from sustainably raised animals from Les Trois Petits Cochons (The Three Little Pigs) or D’Artagnan Gourmet Meat.

Bon Appetit!

Partially hydrogenated margarine and shortenings are even worse for you than the highly refined vegetable oils from which they are made because of chemical changes that occur during the hydrogenation process. Under high temperatures, the nickel catalyst causes the hydrogen atoms to change position on the fatty acid chain. Before hydrogenation, pairs of hydrogen atoms occur together on the chain, causing the chain to bend slightly and creating a concentration of electrons at the site of the double bond. This is called the cis formation, the configuration most commonly found in nature. With hydrogenation, one hydrogen atom of the pair is moved to the other side so that the molecule straightens. This is called the trans formation, rarely found in nature. Most of these man-made trans fats are toxins to the body, but unfortunately your digestive system does not recognize them as such. Instead of eliminating them, your body incorporates trans fats into the cell membranes as though they were cis fats–your cells actually become partially hydrogenated! Once in place, trans fatty acids wreak havoc with cell metabolism because chemical reactions can take place only when electrons in the cell membranes are in certain arrangements or patterns, which they hydrogenation process has distributed. -Sally Fallon Nourishing Traditions Cookbook

Slow-Cooked Pork Shoulder in Milk, White Wine, & Spices – An Italian Classic

Another great recipe from Deborah Krasner’s cookbook Good Meat. My farmer, Nick Wallace from Wallace Farms, offers so many great cuts of meat from many different animals  that I’ve never heard of or really tried so I’ve been working my way through all these cuts of meat and offal’s.

“Fresh Air” Pork
All sausages, ham and bacon are made WITHOUT nitrites, MSG, or preservatives. Our pork is raised by small farmers who believe hogs should be raised outdoors and on deep bedded straw and never given hormones or anti-biotics. “Fresh Air” is a phrase the captures our pork best vs. the large confinement systems that most pork is raised in. – Wallace Farms

This was the first time I’ve made this and I was having guests over for dinner. Let me tell you how stressful it is when you’re making something for the first time not knowing what it is going to taste like. Ugh. It didn’t dawn on me until about the time I added the milk, I started to worry. BUT, I had it on good authority that this was a spectacular culinary delight, so I took the risk.

Pork cooked in milk is an Italian classic. All you need is about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of pastured pork shoulder, 2 tablespoons of raw butter, 2 tablespoons of EVO, Celtic salt, freshly ground black pepper, 4 cloves of garlic chopped, 1 tablespoon of ground fennel, 1 tablespoon of ground sage, 1/2 teaspoon ground Aleppo pepper, 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or verjuice, 1 1/4 cup of white wine, and 1 1/2 cups of raw, whole milk.

I rinse all of my meat before cooking, except for ground meat. I also make sure I bring it down to room temperature before cooking, so I let it sit out for a few hours. If you are worried about parasites simply freeze the meat for 14 days prior to cooking it. According to the USDA this will kill off all parasites.

Make sure to blot it dry before beginning your preparations. You will need a braising pot or casserole dish that fits the pork shoulder tightly. I used my cast-iron double broiler by Le Creuset. Generously salt and pepper the meat and then brown it on all sides. A great tip is to have tongs so that you can hold and press all sides of the meat to the pan without burning yourself.

When done browning, remove meat from pot and discard the excess fat. After that place the pot back on the stove and toss in your garlic and let it cook down. Then add your fennel, sage, and hot pepper. After that add the vinegar, and white wine, making sure that you are string and scraping the bottom of the pot to incorporate all the browned bits. After that add the milk. Put the meat in the pan and boil. Once it comes to a boil, reduce and let simmer. Cook gently, with the lid slightly ajar, for about 3 hours or until meat is tender.

When the meat has reached the desired tenderness that you want, remove it from the pot and let it cool. Raise the heat under the left over gravy or sauce in the pan until the liquid is reduced to half, or it is rich and intense. Season if necessary and then drizzle each slice with some of the pan gravy and serve.

I realized I had nothing to be nervous about because it turned out to be absolutely spectacular, melting in our mouth. As a side I made rice and puréed acorn squash with butter. It was a very filling meal.

We had a 2008 Sanford Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir with this meal.

See all photos here

Wallace Farms was co-founded by several members of the Wallace Family, who believe in the dramatic health benefits provided in grass-fed beef. We grew up in rural Iowa, where growing corn and soybeans is the livelihood of our fathers and grandfathers. As you might expect, our family, friends and neighbors have been raising grain-fed beef for decades. Nonetheless, in 2001, we began taking note of the mounting evidence that illustrated significant health benefits in eating grass-fed vs. grain-fed meat.

Steve Wallace, our patriarch, is a 30-year veteran in agri-business with unique qualifications in the area of forage grasses. His years of experience and connections with grass growers and beef producers is the framework for our vision and passion. Steve has a Masters degree in ruminant nutrition from Iowa State University and has worked as a family farmer and farm management consultant for years. He is currently active as a sales/marketing executive and research consultant for a leading, international grass seed company.

Nick Wallace joined his father at the company in 2004. Nick now oversees all day-to-day operations at the company, in addition to living on the farm that includes the Wallace Farms headquarters.

Lisa Wallace – Nick’s sister-in-law – manages the new Wallace Farms warehouse in Naperville, IL. Lisa also works with Nick in our effort to expand Wallace Farms reach throughout the Chicagoland area.

It is our collective mission to bring superior grass-fed beef and other naturally-raised meats and wild fish to all of our customers. Wallace Farms is your alternative to food that is raised and processed in a factory-like setting. The recent, Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. has been widely acclaimed for shedding light on these unhealthy practices. – Wallace Farms

Why Eat Grass-Fed?
Not so many years ago, a majority of the beef in the United States was produced and finished by using grass exclusively. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1950′s that large feed lots and grain-fed techniques became widely popular. The grain-fed movement spread very quickly and by the 1980′s, large feed lots were responsible for producing nearly 100% of this country’s beef.

The nation’s switch to grain had a strong rationale. Grain-fed techniques have neutralized many of the unpredictable variables associated with raising cattle (favorable weather, green grass, and steady pricing in the market) and significantly streamlined the nation’s beef supply chain. However, several nutritional experts now believe that this migration to grain-fed beef was not in the best interest of our nation’s long-term health. For instance, rates of heart disease and obesity in the U.S. have increased significantly during the last four decades. Many researchers believe that the timing of these two events is more than just a mere coincidence.

While still a niche movement, grass-fed beef production and consumption is making a comeback. To better understand why, consider the following comparisons of grass-fed compared to grain-fed beef:

Just finished cooking. Now it's time to make the gravy out of all this yummy sauce!

Grass-fed Beef
* Low saturated fat levels (similar to the levels found in lean chicken breasts)
* High in “good fat” omega-3′s (also commonly found in certain fish, such as salmon and tuna)
* High doses of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), thought by many to be a cancer fighter
* Reduced exposure to E.coli bacteria
* Features an agriculture process that is ecologically friendly

Grain-fed Beef
* Saturated fat levels are often up to 3-4 times higher than those found in grass-fed beef
* Limited Omega-3 content
* Limited CLA content (because CLA comes directly from the grass)
* E.coli risks remain a constant and growing concern
* Production system requires significant use of chemicals, fertilizers and gasoline

More About CLA
Research on the cancer fighter aspects of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is quite promising. The passage below is a direct quote from the book “Why Grassfed is Best,” by prominent author Jo Robinson:

“Researchers did not get their first glimpse of the many health benefits of CLA until 1987. Although the research is in its earliest stages, CLA shows promise of reducing the risk of cancer, obesity, diabetes, and a number of immune disorders. What’s more, CLA appears to be perfectly safe. Even in very large doses, this good fat has shown no harmful effects in laboratory animals.”

“At this point in time, the research on CLA and cancer is the most promising. When rats are fed very small amounts of CLA – a mere 0.1 percent of their total calories – they show a significant reduction in tumor growth. At 1.5 percent of their caloric intake, tumor size is reduced by as much as 60 percent.”

“So, is there enough CLA in grass-fed products to reduce your risk of cancer? Probably so. It has been estimated that people eating ordinary grain-fed meat and dairy products consume about 1 gram of CLA a day. Judging by animal studies, this is one-third of the amount required to reduce the risk of cancer. Switching to grass-fed animal products would increase your CLA intake three to five times, which could make the all-important difference.” Note: You can read more about Jo Robinson and her research at the following website – www.eatwild.com.

Raw Honey: A Tablespoon A Day Keeps The Doctor Away!

Bee Pollen is considered a superfood. We eat a tablespoon of raw honey a day, most of the time we eat more. Raw honey is thick, almost like paste. I have two sources that I buy from: ReallyRawHoney.com and my local farmer. With digestive disorders skyrocketing each year, honey is a great addition to your diet.

Chronic disease wreaks havoc on the American populace. One million Americans suffer from AIDS; eight million have cancer, and twelve million battle heart disease. However, there is one disorder that afflicts more individuals than the combined total of all of these other potentially deadly disorders, and, surprisingly, it is rarely mentioned. Thirty-eight million Americans are victims of digestive disorders, including Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, diverticulitis, celiac disease, IBS, constipation, diarrhea, GERD, candida and food allergies. – Jordon S. Rubin How To Restore Digestive Health

Really Raw® Honey is totally unprocessed honey. It still contains pollen, propolis, honeycomb and live enzymes — all the goodness the bees put in! That’s why Really Raw® Honey is creamy, smooth and spreadable with sweet and crunchy cappings. Really Raw® Honey is gathered from fields of wildflowers planted by nature. You can read about all of the benefits of eating raw honey here. From allergies to ulcers to stomach disorders, raw honey is a must in our modern diet.

You can also buy Bee Pollen by the jar too.

Bee Pollen has been popularized by famous athletes who take it regularly for strength and endurance. It has been used successfully to treat a variety of ailments including allergies, asthma, menstrual irregularities, constipation, diarrhea, anemia, low energy, cancer, rheumatism, arthritis and toxic conditions. A Russian study of the inhabitants of the province of Georgie, where many live to 100 years and a few to age 150, revealed that a large portion of these centenarians were beekeepers who often ate raw, unprocessed honey with all its “impurities,” that is, with the pollen. Bee pollen contains 22 amino acids including the eight essential ones, 27 minerals and the full gamut of vitamins, hormones and fatty acids. Most importantly, bee pollen contains more than 5,000 enzymes and coenzymes. It is the presence of enzymes, many of which have immediate detoxifying effects, that sometimes provokes allergic reactions in those taking bee pollen for the first time. If this happens, start with very small amounts and slowly build up to a tablespoon or so per day. Some brands are more easily tolerable than others. Avoid pollen that has been dried at temperatures higher than 130 degrees F. Bee Pollen can be taken in powder, capsule or tablet form–or in raw unprocessed honey spread on toast. – Sally Fallon Nourishing Traditions

3-Meat Loaf Layered with Bacon and Served with Homemade Ketchup!

This has to be one of my favorite dishes yet. I only cook from 2 cook books; Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions and Deborah Krasner’s Good Meat. Between these two cookbooks I’ve have access to over 500 delicious recipes and I haven’t made one yet that wasn’t yummy. But this one was over the top.

I can’t emphasize this enough, the tremendous flavors I achieve in these recipes are largely due to the quality and type of meat that is being used. I buy everything from my local farmer where cows are eating a salad bar everyday and pigs are doing what pigs are supposed to and lambs are happy grazing in the pasture. Truly this shouldn’t be something I have to educate people on, it should be the normal farming practice. That being said, industrial farmers spend billions of dollars on clever marketing to portray their model as the farms we grew up with.

I just found out today that Iowa has officially banned feedlots or industrial farms. Nothing could thrill me more. While we are looking for alternative fuel we should turn our focus on one of the biggest contributing factors to our current environmental issues and should be focusing on eliminating food models that facilitate the break down and destruction of our environment and our health. Feedlot/CAFO/industrial farming models should be eliminated. But why are they still here and why are they getting more government support than the small farmer? Because it is cheaper to raise, feed, and produce animals in this model. The farmers or corporations behind these farms get to keep more money in their pocket. Additionally, Americans demand cheap food. We can’t fathom paying $5 for a dozen eggs made by really happy and healthy chickens or milk and dairy from healthy, happy cows as well as happy farmers who are committed to the animals health, but more importantly our health. We are what we eat and feedlot animals are sick and toxic. Becoming a vegetarian isn’t the answer, especially when most ruminants have a special stomach containing as much as four compartments to break down and digest those foods and passing them onto us in a digestible form. What vegetarians and vegans don’t understand is that you while you can wash chemicals and pesticides off of the skin of fruits and vegetables, you can’t wash it out of the cells or membranes of the fruits and vegetables because they get into the soil and ultimately into the cells of the plants. Fruits and vegetables don’t have a liver to eliminate toxins while animals do. The answer is to change the conventional farming model and get back to traditional farming methods. Oh, but I digress…

This recipe from Good Meat was super simple to make, but requires some planning in advance to make sure you purchase all three ground meats from your farmer. All you need is 1 pound of ground beef, 1 pound of ground lamb, 1 pound of ground pork, a carrot, an onion, fresh flat-leaf parsley, some oats, raw whole milk, eggs, Parmigiano-Reggiano and bacon. There are many cheeses at Whole Foods that aren’t pasteurized and fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano is one of them and worth the price.

After you finely chop up the onion, carrot, and parsley, you throw everything into a bowl and mix it by hand making sure not to over mix it. You have the option of making this into a pate by putting in a loaf pan or a meat loaf by placing it in a cast-iron frying pan and forming into a oval and patting down, then layering uncooked bacon strips on the top of the loaf or pate. Place in oven at 300 to 350 for an hour. I prefer slow cooking over lower heat for longer periods cook. Relish in the aroma as all the juices and flavors meld into a fantastic epicurean delight!

WAIT! After removing the finished meat loaf from the oven, let it stand for ten to fifteen minutes before cutting and serving. Americans are the only people in the world who are hell bent on eating hot food. No other country in the world eats their food without letting it cool down. You can’t taste your food when it is hot, now there is a novel idea. Additionally, you burn your tongue, mouth, and end up swallowing it in chunks because you can’t chew and you mess up your digestive juices.  So chill out, drink some wine and don’t scream at the chef because your food is warm rather than scorching hot.

***Again the bacon is from farm raised, happy pigs so the quality shows up in the flavor of the bacon.

I also made homemade ketchup because I couldn’t find any ketchup that didn’t have sugar, soy, and a other unnecessary additives and fillers. Sally Fallon has a very simple and delicious ketchup recipe in Nourishing Traditions that is fermented in the traditional way and acts as a digestive aid rather than a burden. It is hard to believe that you can make ketchup from simple, real ingredients without manipulating and replacing with synthetic food flavors and additives.

Ketchup
3 cups of organic canned tomato paste
1/4 cup of whey
1 tablespoon sea salt
1/2 cup of maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup of homemade fish sauce or commercial fish sauce

Just mix everything together and transfer into a quart-sized wide mouth mason jar. Leave at room temperature for about 2 days before transferring to refrigerator. It’s easy and it’s healthy. You can make your own mustard,  BBQ sauce,  Teriyaki sauce, dressings, horseradish, pesto, chutney, salsa and so much more without all the crap in it and in a form that is very digestible.

Ketchup provides us with an excellent example of a condiment that was formerly fermented and therefore health promoting, but whose benefits were lost with large scale canning methods and a reliance on sugar rather than lactic acid as a preservative.

The  word “ketchup” derives from the Chinese Amoy dialect ke-tsiap or pickled fish-brine or sauce, the universal condiment of the ancient world. The English added foods like mushrooms, walnuts, cucumbers and oysters to this fermented brew; Americans added tomatoes from Mexico to make tomato ketchup.

Writing in 1730, Dean Swift mentions ketchup as one of several fermented foods favored by the English. ‘And for our home-bred British cheer, Botargo (fish roe relish), catsup and cabiar (caviar).’

Americans consume one-half billion bottles of ketchup per year. The chief ingredient of the modern version, after tomatoes, is high fructose corn syrup. A return to ancient preservation methods would transform America’s favorite condiment from a health liability (produced in huge factories) to a beneficial digestive aid (produced as an artisanal product in farming communities.) Sally Fallon Nourishing Traditions

Stuffed Green Peppers with Brown Rice

This was a great recipe from Nourishing Traditions Cookbook. More over, it wasn’t very difficult to prepare and was a culinary delight. Simply purchase 6 organic green peppers, 1 pound of grass-fed/finished ground beef, olive oil, onion, tomato paste, homemade beef stock, some herbs, grated Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper. You will also need rice which is a separate recipe that requires some planing. As you will need to soak and ferment the rice in whey for 7 to 24 hours before cooking in butter. This process neutralizes a large portion of phytic acid in grains and will vastly improve nutritional benefits and digestibility. Along with cooking the rice in butter, an necessary digestive aid when consuming grains and vegetables. Believe me this process really makes incredibly delicious rice.

An optional ingredient is 1/4 ground heart. I purchase beef and chicken hearts from my local co-op and they are from grass-fed/finished, pasture raised farm animals. I wouldn’t recommend eating the organ of commercially farmed animals.

After you remove the stems, simply brown your meat then add the other ingredients boil until liquid reduces to half. Stir in rice and season to taste. Make sure to butter a Pyrex dish before setting the peppers in them. After filling each pepper, top with cheese and cook. Like so many of the meals in Nourishing Traditions, this is a meal in and of itself. It is very satisfying and filling.See all photos here.

We drank a very nice bottle of one of my favorite wines; a 2008 Gaja Ca’Marcanda Promis.

Bon Appetit!

This is not the place to speculate on the mysterious instructive spirit that taught our ancestors to sak and ferment their grains before eating them; the important thing to realize is that these practices accord very well with what modern science has discovered about grains. All grains contain phytic acid (an organic acid in which phosphorus is bound) in the outer layer or bran. Untreated phytic acid can combine with calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and especially zinc inn the intestinal tract and block their absorption. This is why a diet high in unfermented whole grains may lead to serious mineral deficiencies and bone loss. The modern misguided practice of consuming large amounts of unprocessed bran often improves colon transit time at first but may lead to irritable bowel syndrome and, in the long term, many other adverse effects. Soaking allows enzymes, lactobacilli and other helpful organisms to break down and neutralize phytic acid. As little as seven hours of soaking in warm acidulated water will neutralize a large portion of phytic acid in grains. The simple practice of soaking cracked or rolled cereal grains overnight will vastly improve their nutritional benefits.

Soaking in warm water also neutralizes enzyme inhibitors, present in all seeds, and encourages the production of numerous beneficial enzymes. The action of these enzymes also increases the amounts of many vitamins, especially B vitamins.

Scientists have learned that proteins in grains, especially gluten, are very difficult to digest.  A diet high in unfermented whole grains, particularly high-gluten grains like wheat,  puts an enormous strain on the whole digestive mechanism. When this mechanism breaks down with age or overuse, the results take the form of allergies, celiac disease, mental illness, chronic indigestion and candida albicans overgrowth. Recent research links gluten intolerance with multiple sclerosis. During the process of soaking and fermenting, gluten and other difficult-to-digest proteins are partially broken down into simpler components that are more readily available for absorption. – Sally Fallon Nourishing Traditions

Gaja Ca’Marcanda Promis 2008

Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats

Another great book by the dynamic-duo Dr. Mary Enig, author of Know Your Fats, and co-author of Nourishing Traditions, and Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions. Dr. Mary Enig is an international expert on the biochemistry of food and fat and Sally Fallon is a well respected nutrition researcher that specializes in uncovering modern food myths and revealing startling truths from our primitive ancestors and their traditional diets and good health.

Eat Fat, Lose Fat is not your typical dieting book, nor is it a dieting regimen that is over once you reach your goal, this is a lifestyle change with lasting results of weight loss, healing, and great health. When you learn what makes you fat and why millions of obese are actually starving to death because their food, while high in calories, is void in any nutritional value, you will rethink the way you eat. Additionally, learn why so many more millions are struggling with their weight in spite of exercise and diet after diet after diet. Learn why foods like margarine, shortening and trans fats are incredibly toxic to your body and while being promoted as a health and diet food are actually keeping your from health and your ideal weight.

The food industry is a multi-trillion dollar a year business, along with the agricultural industry. They don’t want you to know because your awareness and ability to make better choices takes away from their profit margins.

The body needs good quality fat to survive, yet we are bombarded on a daily basis that animal fat is bad and synthetic fats are good. Yet, there is a startling correlation that can’t be ignored between chronic disease, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer and the introduction of this “new” way of eating over the past fifty years. The more we removed things like raw butter, milk, eggs, lard, tallow and others, the fatter and sicker we’ve become to the point that obesity is an epidemic that is spreading throughout the world as more countries adopt our westernized way of eating. These new fangled fats are one of the underlying causes to the multi-trillion dollar obesity and chronic illness issue we are facing today.

Learn why tropical oils like coconut oil, a saturated fat that is a medium chain fatty acid, is a huge secret to losing weight, as well as, the health benefits it provides to every system throughout the body. Additionally, it is a great way to reintroduce fat back into your diet as it is incredibly easy to digest. And because it is a medium-chain fatty acid the body does not store it or hold on to it either.

This is more than a book, hardly a diet book, but a way of life. Packed with supporting research and information, you will quickly be on the path to eating right and turning your health around. It truly is based on the idea of satiation. Feeding the body what it needs and not starving yourself. Eating adequate amounts of quality fat satiate the body and in turn you eat less, snack rarely, and cravings disappear because your body registers full. Most diets are based on calorie restriction and will power, which never last because as your body starts starving to death you will naturally reach out to feed it. Usually through binge eating and then the cycle of binging and purging begins.

Eat Fat, Lose Fat offers three plans: Quick and Easy Weight Loss (a streamlined two-week program for healthy, long-term weight loss), Healthy Recovery (a program specially designed to facilitate healing), and Everyday Gourmet (a hearty, delicious maintenance program the whole family will enjoy–for life). Reset your metabolism, boost your energy, banish fatigue, eliminate cravings, and fight disease. This is the way we eat and the recipes, if you haven’t noticed, are yummy. Our food is nutrient-dense, rich and easy to digest. There is no starving or punishment here!

Eating should be incredibly enjoyable and a time to relax, connect, share and be grateful. Eating healthy is one of our birth rights yet is a lost pleasure in the name of losing weight. Lose the guilt and get back to enjoying food and eating in a way that promotes health, well-being, and your healthy weight.

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