Ancient Hieroglyphic Depictions of Cruelty

As far back as 2500 BC it has been said that the Egyptians allegedly began force feeding birds, noting the apparent tastiness that resulted.

Thousands of years later we are still at it, although the process has become more technologically refined. Most notably, the French have taken the Egyptian ideas and made them one of the most important part of their food culture. They call the process of force-feeding the birds gavage, and it basically involves someone holding a goose or a duck and inserting a tube down its throat while feeding it a few ounces of food, two or three times per day. This goes on for a couple of weeks before the birds are finally harvested. The result is what we have come to know as foie gras. After gavage, the bird’s liver is said to be ten to twelve times the size that it was before.

Don't mess with the old French lady, she'll sit on your back and shove a tube down your throat too if you're not careful.

At first glance the process seems downright unpleasant even to simply describe, but pro-foie people quickly point out several things in defense of the practice. 1) The fattening of the birds before migration is natural. Their liver plumps up in a similar manner (albeit not as extreme) and then decreases in as the birds migrate. The same thing happens if gavage is stopped—the livers are said to return to their normal size. 2) Ducks and geese are obviously built differently than humans. They have no gag reflex and the insertion of the tube paired with the mere seconds that it takes to feed them is allegedly not uncomfortable. 3) Birds that live in the wild and have to fend for themselves, are purported to be under more stress than say birds that live their lives for several months at Hudson Valley Foie Gras Farm in Upstate New York.

Last year a friend of ours gave me a documentary about the Hudson Valley Foie Gras Farm and in my opinion, the operation looks pretty good. Yes, I understand that documentaries typically get the points across that advance their causes or agendas, but I was nonetheless left wondering why people were so willing to fall on swords about a product of which a very small percentage of the population partakes, while atrocities at factory farms go on daily and nobody blinks an eye.

Chefs are now seemingly forced into making a decision that alienates some in order to please others. Even if gavage is not painful, uncomfortable, or downright unhealthy for the birds, a cloud of controversy surrounds it that may well be easier to avoid by simply not serving foie gras—which is unfortunate because it’s so freaking tasty.

Enter Spaniard, Eduardo de Sousa. Sousa’s company Pateria de Sousa has been getting a lot of press in the last few years, primarily for winning the Coups de Couer from the Paris International Food Salon. This prestigious award is given yearly to innovators in the food industry. To hear Eduardo say it, it really “pissed the French” off that he was given the award. Eduardo produces what he deems Ethical Foie Gras. His geese roam around his pastures in Extremadura, feeding on figs, olives, acorns and other vegetation during the Fall, storing up for their migration. Now, don’t miss understand, his geese are not migratory geese, they’re domesticated, but they still feed as if they’re going to migrate. Then, during the winter, after their abundant feeding, the birds are harvested. Their sizable livers are then turned into pate and other foie products by Eduardo’s company.

In a side-by-side comparison, the gavage livers are still quite a bit larger than the pastured foie, but in taste tests, the latter is said to be amazing. Chef of Blue Hill restaurant in New York City and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Dan Barber (champion of local agriculture) describes his visit to Eduardo de Sousa’s farm as one of the most important culinary moments of his life. The following video is Barber’s recollection of his trip as well as a vision for producing foie of this sort stateside.

Personally, as much as I love foie gras, I feel that if we have the option to produce it without gavage, then why not? One of the downsides, if it is to be considered a downside, is that when we let the birds fatten naturally, they do it one time per year. It then becomes a truly seasonal product which we as Americans are not used to anymore. It wouldn’t kill us to get away from feeling the need to eat things like tomatoes all-year round, even when they are hard as a rock, flown in from Holland and gassed to turn them an acceptable color, but I digress. That is for a different conversation altogether.

Disclaimer:  Since the original posting of “A Campaign for Raw Milk”, I felt it was necessary to convey what should be obvious:  That unpasteurized milk is a raw product that contains live bacteria, beneficial and non-beneficial, which under rare circumstances in these modern times have been known to cause illness—especially if said milk is acquired from a facility that is not licensed to sell it.  If drinking raw milk, it is of utmost importance that the milk comes from a regulated and certified dairy that holds a Texas State Health Department “Grade A Raw for Retail Milk Permit”.

I am neither a chemist nor a microbiologist, and the assumptions that appeared in the original post were based on research that I did, which heavily relied on studies provided by the Weston A. Price Foundation.  I’ll be the first to admit that I was blown away by the plethora of facts or “facts” that can be found on the internets purporting raw milk’s alleged health benefits.  After several conversations with a chemist as well as our local microbiology expert, Dr. Richard Sucgang, it appears that most of the health benefits of raw milk are to this day, highly questionable. Aside from the argument of miraculous benefits that some have associated with raw milk, I feel there are still extremely important reasons to support its production and partake of the bovine elixir. Swim at your own risk…

 That being said: 

Honestly, I’ve never been much of a milk drinker. I wasn’t the type of person who would step up to the fridge, pour myself a tall glass of ice-cold milk and gulp it down. In fact, just the thought of that, even to this day, makes me want to throw up a bit—something about the way it smelled after I swallowed. I grew up around these people though. I was good friends with a guy who drank massive quantities of the stuff for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Weird, I thought.

Good Old Fashioned, Raw Milk

Chocolate milk? Now that was a different story. Put enough chocolate and sugar in something and believe you me, I’ll get it down. That’s about as far as my milk bastardization went though. Of course I had no problem with milk on my cereal. And, ice cream is one of my favorite things in the entire world. Drinking milk for milk’s sake though? Never. It probably didn’t help my milk outlook that the only milk my parents had around was of the skim variety. In hindsight, if I don’t get the “whole-milk drinker” then I really don’t get “the skim-milk drinker”. Chalky, white water? Thanks, no, I’ll pass.

Over the last couple of years, in our effort to eat less-processed foods, of course the question of milk came up. Real unpasteurized, unhomogenized, no rBST (recombinant bovine Stomtotropin—this is an anacronym for a genetically engineered growth hormone that is used to increase a cow’s natural milk supply) , straight out of the cow, raw milk. 

Depending on your location in this fine country of ours, procuring milk of that sort can be a tricky endeavor. In some states its plain illegal to sell or buy it. In other states it is legal to drink real milk from a cow that you own. So what did people do? Cow shares, that’s what. Dairy’s would sell a portion of a cow to their customers and the customers in turn could have all the real milk that they could use. Obviously, this was a loophole in the system; one that the Man has mostly closed in the last few years.

In other states, real milk can be sold to the general public as long as it is labeled “not for human consumption”. I’m thinking, “Ok, THIS milk…the milk I’m paying $7 per gallon for is for my dog. Really, it is. I won’t be drinking it. You don’t have to worry about that.” Really? Now this is becoming silly. The Fed is telling me that they’re fine with smoking (which has obvious harmful effects), but drinking milk in the same manner that people have drunk it for thousands of years is not only bad for me, but a punishable crime? Wow.  (Note to self:  must cut raw fish out of my diet as well as raw and/or undercooked beef…oh, and must start cooking pork to point where it sucks the moisture out of my body as I chew it.)

Jerseys in the Sun

So why all the fuss? To adequately answer that question, some historical context is needed. During the mid-19th Century, industrialized cities seemed growing at an alarming rate. To meet the burgeoning demand for milk, inner-city dairies began to pop up. Because space was limited, the dairies simply crammed as many cows together as possible and fed them the most economical feed available (not much has changed in those regards). A century-and-half later, we understand that feeding cows a diet consisting of anything other than hay or grass, takes a serious toll on their bodies. The unnatural diets, paired with disgusting, squalored conditions produced milk that was heavily contaminated with pathogens that wreaked havoc on whom most partook.

As is typical, we decided to figure out how to make the filthy milk drinkable, instead of simply addressing the way in which the animals lived that in turn made the milk toxic to begin with. In 1864, microbiologist pioneer, Louis Pasteur developed a technique to kill the harmful pathogens in the filthy milk, thusly saving the world from certain destruction. Bless his heart.

[Granted, the above video documents the "post-dairy life" of many dairy cattle, but it struck me that it was stated that many times the cows come to the auction barely able to stand, and often extremely sick.  Check out the cow's udder around the three minute mark]

By forcing milk between steel plates or through pipes heated on the outside with 161 degree water for roughly 15-20 seconds, the harmful pathogens in the filthy milk are killed, thusly eliminating most of the risk associated with drinking it. There is another process used with organic milk called Ultra-Pasteurization. I remember the first time we picked up a gallon of organic milk. I had no idea what ultra-pasteurization was, nor did I care. I just slept soundly at night knowing I was drinking (on cereal only of course) organic milk. Notice the next time you pop into the grocery store that non-organic milk is rarely ultra-pasteurized and organic milk almost always is. This is yet another area in which the symptom is treated, not the problem. To meet the demand for organic milk, dairies still use the factory farm model. The problem is that they’re not able to use antibiotics in the feed per USDA guidelines, to keep disease down. The milk that comes from organic dairy cows that live in the same conditions as conventional dairy cows, but without the antibiotics to treat the diseases, is therefore dirtier and has to be dealt with in a different manner. Ultra-pasteurization was the obvious answer. In this process, the milk is heated evenly to 280 degrees for a fraction of a second. The resulting milk is said to be 99.999% dead—free of any pesky micro-organisms: yeasts, mold, bacteria (beneficial and non-beneficial). This is why ultra-pasteurized milk will pretty much last indefinitely in the fridge; there is simply nothing in it to spoil.

"Fleur" the Jersey Milk Cow

What about safety though? Did we not originally begin pasteurizing our milk because the raw stuff was killing people? Yes, and we already addressed that. But really, how safe is raw milk? The answer is, well, it depends. Would I ever suggest going to a large, industrial, factory farmed dairy to purchase raw milk? Not a chance (plus, more than likely, they can’t legally sell it raw anyway).

Regardless of one’s stance on pasteurization, the model that most modern dairies use to produce milk still leaves a lot to be desired.  In general, the factory-farmed methods for agriculture leave a lot to be desired.  It is for this main reason that we choose to support a small dairy.  At any given time, Bob Stryk owner of Stryk Dairy in Schuelenberg, Texas, is milking about thirty of his eighty Jersey cows which are kept rotating on approximately 100 or so acres (as opposed to Industrial Milk keeping hundreds  of cows crammed into small confinement operations). Everything from his pastures, to the milking facility, to the cheese room are clean as a whistle—they have to be or his license hangs in jeopardy. When a farmer removes the safety net of pasteurization, the accountability falls back to him and when that means his livelihood is at stake, you better believe he takes it seriously.

In Texas, only a handful of dairies have a “Grade A Raw for Retail Milk Permit” issued by the Texas Department of State Health Services. To qualify and maintain this permit, the Texas State Department inspects the facility, the milk, and the cows, every other day. As Bob Stryk, told me, “I don’t want to sell milk from a cow that I wouldn’t be comfortable milking from myself” (literally…stepping up to the teat and well, you know…). 

Stacey and the Calf

So why does the Fed make it so hard to acquire raw milk? We’ve all seen the Got Milk? campaign (and are all hopefully, eagerly waiting for that moment of marketing brilliance to die and never be ripped off again). It was created by the California Milk Processors Board in 1993 and then licensed by national dairy farms and milk processors across the country. This group obviously has a powerful lobby and as with most things in the agricultural world, they’re commingled politically with the powers that be. As with the beef industry, the dairy industry is heavily subsidized with inexpensive feed which in turn produces cheap milk. Maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me, but it makes sense that if large amounts of people turned back to drinking raw milk versus pasteurized, the milk industry would be left scratching their heads wondering what to do with all of the overhead that incorporates Industrial milk.  They would be forced to change.

Instead, they demonize raw milk and the farmers that produce it. The consumer is the one that loses in the end. In Houston, we either have to rely on people that frequent a dairy that provides raw milk, or we have to go to the dairy ourselves, which for most folks, is a major inconvenience.

So what constitutes a clean dairy? I suppose the answer to that is in the eye of the beholder. Being in Texas, we obviously don’t have a lot of choices at this point. We get our milk from Stryk Dairy. It’s convenient because it is on our way to the ranch in Yoakum. More than that though, it is a small operation that anyone with a smidge of desire, can drive to and see for themselves (…even pet a few calves if you’re little heart desires).

Whoah, did I actually forget to mention that the taste of raw milk will make you never want to drink that chalky, supermarket crap ever again? Well, it does.

I don’t know what to tell you…I just felt motivated.  Don’t get used to it though.

Cows & Oaks by friend Mitchell Franz. Used by Permission.

Humane Slaughter-This is the last step that no one wants to know or talk about.  They’re fine with the picture of pastoral harmony in their heads of happy cows on green grass and then seeing the faceless cuts of meat, wrapped up neatly in the supermarket.  A lot happens between that scenic field and the butcher’s case.  The slaughter part of the process is something that cannot be ignored.  When it does get ignored (as it is currently in our society), people get away with unnerving atrocities.  Humanely slaughtering animals should be a huge priority that needs to rightfully capture our attention.  It doesn’t matter how good the farmer or rancher is or how “humanely” he treated his animals when they were with him, it can all be messed up in an instant at the slaughterhouse if the process is handled poorly. 

The typical cow, pig, or sheep that has been on pasture for its whole life will immediately show signs of stress when their schedule gets altered (ie. loading them on a trailer, driving to the slaughterhouse, and being dropped into a new and foreign environment).  When the animals are stressed, their body releases hormones that can absolutely wreck their meat.  It becomes important for farmers to find a smaller slaughterhouse at which to take their animals.  At a smaller facility it is easier to develop relationships with the people that are going to be handling the animals during the last stage of their life.  Smaller facilities are also more apt to do things the right way or according to your own detailed instructions. The closest slaughterhouse to my hometown, is a small butcher shop that processes to one’s specifications (as long as those specifications fall within the broad set of rules outlined by the USDA).  Once the slaughter and evisceration process is complete, it’s also important to hang the carcass in order to let it age or cure (the curing process enables the lactic acid to dissipate and tenderize the meat).

The process is different for cattle, sheep and pigs.  Here is a link for the not-so-faint-of-heart, with pictures and descriptions of the humane  slaughter process of cattle.  The most commonly accepted way to slaughter pigs for example, is to stun them from behind without them knowing, rendering.  When done correctly, the pigs are reported to not feel a thing.  Then they’re hung and bled out.  No stress, no pain, tasty meat.

In conclusion I want to reiterate the importance of not taking everything for face value.  What better environment to learn about the food we put in our bodies than at the farmer’s market, with the people that actually grow it.  Consider it for a moment.  These farmers and ranchers are selling at a venue in the middle of inner-city Houston.  Many of them got up very, very early to get the morning farm chores out of the way, then pack a few coolers full of meat, and drive an hour or more to set up at the farmer’s market by 8:00am.  Then they sit in the ridiculous heat of a Houston summer, selling you their product.  To put themselves through that week after week, they obviously have some passion about what they do. Every farmer I have ever gotten into a conversation with at the market is always more than happy to tell me what type of beef I’m buying, how old it was at slaughter, what it was finished on, etc.  More times than not, they’re just delighted to know that you care and appreciate them and what they do.  I cannot think of any better system.  That, in the end is what gives me peace of mind.

*See USDA Regulations on acceptable uses of synthetic substance for cattle bound for the food chain.  CFR 205.603. Look at this, I’m even sweet enough to give you a link to see for yourselves.  In full disclosure there are certain vaccines that can be given to beeves, but they cannot be used in cattle that are bound slaughter, only dairy productions.

When I was planning these posts a few days ago I had no clue that the idea of humane vs. inhumane rearing and slaughtering could snowball into what it did.  Quickly, I realized that everything that I was thinking was going to take some time to flesh out and express on paper…err…computer screen.

Humane-It’s a word that’s like the girl in the 6^th grade that was kind of frumpy in May and then completely transformed by the time school resumed in the Fall.  It is becoming very popular. 

Napa Valley Holsteins

Humanely raised, humanely slaughtered.  We see it everywhere, but like sustainable, what does it really mean?  Assuming that we are cool with the idea of raising animals to eat, it makes sense that we provide those animals with the best life we can during their time with us, right? Let’s also assume that we all have a general concept of what humane is or what it is not.  We’ve all seen the Humane Society and PETA videos of workers pushing sickly cattle, barely able to stand on their own, through piles of sludgy manure on their way to the slaughterhouse (yum) or the turkeys getting their heads stomped on by bitter workers in confinement houses (those people have reserved seating in hell).  Let’s all assume that those situations are about as far from responsible husbandry as it gets and focus on the nitty gritty of what we can control or curb. 

More and more frequently, the topics such as worming animals or giving them antibiotics when they’re sick, come up for debate in the organic/humane conversation.  Going for a moment back to our organic conversation, the second an antibiotic or worming medication goes into an animal’s system, the animal can no longer be considered organic, ever*.  How humane is it though to let a cow live with worms or a lamb to suffer with pink eye?  How humane is it to let infection set in to a scrape on your pig’s rump? Worms and infections can kill an animal, slowly and painfully.  In my opinion, its not only inhumane, it’s also economically stupid.  These animals are a farmer’s primary source of income.  To let them die because of an absurd belief that giving a sick animal a shot of antibiotics to help heal it is ultimately worse for the animal, just doesn’t make sense to me.  Do you not take your child to the doctor when he/she is sick?  Do you not worm your dogs?  If you’re into the holistic medicine thing, then power to you (for with you, I have no argument), but a majority of the people that are screaming about the antibiotics used in the animals they eat and insist on them being certified organic, aren’t looking at life from the realistic perspective on a small farm.  Don’t misunderstand my argument.  I’m not trying to justify what confinement farms do either, which is to feed grain, laced with antibiotics in a “pre-emptive strike” sort of way; all to ultimately keep disease from rearing its ugly head.  In that situation the use of antibiotics is the least of the problems—this would be better discussed in another post as well.  In a properly managed environment, the need to use antibiotics and worming medication diminishes significantly, almost to a point of non-existence.  That should ultimately be our goal when we responsibly take care of our livestock.

Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

Another absurd idea on which the typical, self-proclaimed “animal lovah” finds a soapbox is the use of farrowing boxes for birthing pigs, Berkshires in particular.  Some pig breeds make better mothers than others. It is a simple fact.  The closer the breed is to its wild ancestry, the better mothers they typically make.  Berkshire pigs are a pretty hot commodity right now in the higher-end restaurant market.  They’re a heritage breed dating back to early Americana.  In reality though, they make TERRIBLE mothers in a pastured situation.  They’re lazy to begin with and when it comes time to farrow they’ll often begin building a nest and just stop before it’s complete.  Then they’ll have the babies.  Then they’ll roll over on, or step on the babies, often killing them.  In other cases, they’re known to birth them in terrible weather, not protected from the elements.  The results are either piglets that have drowned or died of exposure.  The most extreme cases are when a sow will eat a piglet.  That’s right…eat one.  The farmer’s solution to this problem is to use a farrowing box, a device that keeps the sow separated from her piglets except while nursing (keep in mind that a sow only nurses for 4-6 weeks and ideally is only in the farrowing box while the piglets are feeding).  This way she can’t accidentally (or purposefully) kill her piglets. Farmer’s catch a lot of grief because of the “humanity” or “inhumanity” associated with farrowing boxes.  It’s all about perspective though.

The bottom line is that any human that is not some sort of psychopath wants animals to be treated well.  The only reason a majority of our livestock live in their current conditions is because the masses are ignorant about the situation.  So what is the right answer?  How “wild” should our livestock be?  I like the idea of letting a chicken express its “chicken-ness” or a pig realize its natural tendencies to want to forage and root, but where does the line get drawn? Keeping pigs fenced in with portable electric fencing and moving them to new pasture every couple of weeks sounds pretty ideal when looking at their living conditions in a confinement house with a concrete floor and barely enough room to turn around, but why not give the pigs the whole unadulterated run of the ranch?  From that perspective, a small fenced-in paddock could begin to resemble the likes of the concrete-floored confinement house.  Following me?

Personally, I think we have to look at it from another point of view.  Through thousands of years of micro-evolution livestock have been domesticated and lost their inherent skills associated with survival and thereby rely on their relationship with humans to exist (one could make the argument that the animals over time have manipulated us for the furthering of their existence making us as dependent on them as they are on us for ultimate survival, but that’s another conversation, whoah). 

In the end, we have to look at this domestication dilemma as reasonable people and make the judgment call as to what might be considered humane enough.  At first, the concept of humane enough didn’t really sit well with me because it makes it sound like we can or should be able to do more.  Let me explain.

But throughout their entire life they only live on an acre or two of pasture?  One might ask how can that be enjoyable?  I can’t rightly answer that, but I CAN say with some confidence that if we let them do their own thing, unfettered in the pasture, they have a good chance of running into predators or dying of other diseases; not exactly an exciting alternative.

Polyface Pigs.

Photo By Steven David Johnson. Used by permission.

After seeing domestic pigs rooting around in a pack, grunting, rolling around in the dirt, nosing through fresh straw—after seeing two or three pigs resting in the shade of an oak tree in mid afternoon—after hearing the serene clanking of the full feeder as a group of pigs greedily gobbles up the supplement [organic] feed to their forage, it dawns on me that they look pretty dang content. That idea to me is humane enough.  Everyone should have different opinions though.  It is healthy.  By doing enough homework to form an opinion, the industry self-regulates through a consumer driven system of checks and balances.  People end up voting with their forks.  What could be better?

First off, it’s been kind of dead over here hasn’t?  Yeah.  I have no excuses.  I’ve been productive in other areas though—tons of yard and housework.  Last weekend we painted our bedroom AND worked on a dual purpose fence/trellis in our back yard.  No small task.

I also wanted to point out and thank Houstonians for looking to me (cough) as their farmers market guiding light.  I’m very humbled…right.

Bayou City Market Bag

A few months ago I wrote a little diddy about the insanity of having five or six farmers markets within a few blocks of each other (three of which are on the same day of the week!).  Well, in the past six months, the Bayou City Farmer’s Market (our personal favorite) has blown up!  Stacey and I dropped in Saturday morning at 9:15 and you couldn’t “stir people with a stick” (<–I love my grandpa’s old “sayin’s”).  It was a mad dash for people to get to specific vendors before they sold out.  I guess I should be careful for what I wish for in the future.  Our once leisurely Saturday morning excursion to the market has become something resembling Whole Foods the day before Thanksgiving.  I’m kidding it’s not like that at all. I’ve got a flare for the dramatic.  It makes for the good stories.

In all seriousness it is very encouraging for me to see a growing number of Houstonians that are deciding to opt out of supermarket shopping and instead patronize local agriculture.  It seems that the vendors are starting to “get it” as well.  At one point in time the Bayou City Market was the perfect place to go for say, beeswax candles or goat milk soap, but one never expected much beyond that.  Now consumers have more options:  Tamworth pigs, grassfed beef, and lamb from Olde World Farms, pastured chickens from Oaks of Mamre Farms (fed a complete diet of organic corn, roasted soybean meal, and kelp meal from Coyote Creek Organic Grain Mill in Elgin, TX), gelato by Trentino, a number of local fruit & vegetable vendors, as well as day-boat Gulf fish from Airline Seafood (fish purveyors to Reef, Feast, Textile, and Catalan).  All of this to say, it is now a realistic notion to “eat our view” in Houston, and people seem to be catching on.

All of that to say, a quick pass by the vendor’s stalls should still leave the thinking consumer with a number of questions.  Urban Harvest, the host of the market, seemingly tries to streamline things a bit by providing signs to vendors which they can tack on to the fronts of stalls extolling their all natural, or organic and sustainable virtues…or even (gasp) their “conventional” apathy.  The ultimate question that I’m left with is:  What is in a word?

Do the words “sustainable”, “organic”, “all-natural”, and my favorite, “humane” mean the same thing to you as they do to me?  No, probably not.  For the average consumers though (even the average consumers who are “opting out” by shopping at the farmer’s market), seeing some buzz words give them enough peace of mind to go normally about their business.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not intentionally picking on this sort of consumer mind set and I’m not picking on vendors who use the euphemisms as flash cards to quickly get their point across.  I want people to realize that one farm may do “sustainable” in a completely different way than the next and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  The same goes for “organic” and “all natural”.  I’ll get into “humane” later on.  It should become our responsibility to do the homework and figure out what we can and cannot live with.

Sustainable- What does sustainable mean?  What does it take to be sustainable?  In theory I suppose for a farm, sustainable ideally would mean that every aspect of an operation works together in a symbiotic relationship and that nothing from the “outside world” ever needs to be brought in or taken away in order for it to exist.  In practice this is virtually impossible.  If you’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemna you’re familiar with Polyface Farms in Swoope, Virginia.  They’re third generation farmers doing things as sustainably as economically possible.  The business model works, but even they have to make compromises to supplement their poultry, cattle, and pigs with feed or occasionally hay from a neighbor’s farm.  The second a farmer brings in something from outside his (or her) farm, the farm is no longer technically sustainable.  Without getting into a lengthy discussion about different degrees of sustainability, I’ll conclude by saying personally, I’m comfortable with the idea of being sustainable enough.  Utilize the soil to its maximum potential.  Compost animal waste efficiently.  Capture solar energy and rainwater. 

Lavaca County

Organic-It’s a pretty safe assumption to say that what organic has evolved into is not the originally intended definition.  During the 1960’s, when a group of hippies in Berkley, California decided to stick it to the Man and grow their own food without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, they were embarking on mostly uncharted territory.  It was unthinkable that 30 years later, their little “organic” idea would be an 11 billion dollar industry owned by large conglomerates that produce conventionally on one part of their property and organically on another, thereby capturing both audiences.  So yes, technically Horizon milk is organic which I suppose is a good thing.  The cows are fed organic feed instead of conventional feed, but they live in the same sort of environment that conventional dairy cows live—an intense monoculture of milk production; not the most pleasant of pictures, but I guess its still better to some degree, than the conventional alternative.  How about this scenario though:  A small farm west of Houston has a few Jersey cows that get rotated onto a new small paddock of pasture every day.  They eat nothing but grass (which is what they’re built to eat).  This grass hasn’t seen fertilizer in decades, but the USDA hasn’t put their stamp of approval on the operation (bless their hearts) and the farmer doesn’t care to jump through the Fed’s hoops to get it certified.  He knows that what he is doing is right and he doesn’t need the government’s fingers in his business.  Every day the farmer’s daughter (careful) hand milks the cows to sell at the farmer’s market (*labeled not for human consumption, of course).  The milk, as far as the USDA is concerned is not organic and can’t legally be labeled as such.  Which milk would you be more comfortable drinking?

And finally…

All Natural-This one is open to anyone’s interpretation.  Your guess is as good as mine.

When I began writing my thoughts down about this subject, I thought I would get everything into one post, but as I dove into what all “humane” can mean, it began to take on a life of its own.  In order to not cheat it out of a decent explanation, I decided that it might be better suited to its own post which will be coming shortly.

*It fascinates me that the government allows vices like smoking which is known to kill people…a good many people on an annual basis, but by and large prohibit the sale of raw milk to the public.  Makes a ton of sense…

The River Cottage Meat Book

A few week’s ago I ordered Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat Book. Whittingstall is an acclaimed chef, broadcaster, and writer from the UK who owns and manages the River Cottage, a 41-acre working farm full of sheep, goats, chickens, cattle, and of course, pigs. He has made quite the name for himself in the Nose-to-Tail movement, along with other supporters like Fergus Henderson and even our gents at Feast. Although it is a cookbook of sorts, the main focus of Whittingstall’s tome is that of an apologist, convincing the masses to turn away from buying the intensively-farmed meat found in a majority of our supermarkets across this great nation.

I think it is safe to say that the only reason this intensively farmed meat exists in its current capacity is because of the lack of knowledge in the public sector regarding the animal’s quality of life until slaughter and then, how the meat is treated from the time of death and the point at which that leaking container of cellophane-wrapped nasty finds its way into your shopping basket at the store. If everyone was aware of these goings-on,  we would probably be eating far less meat as a society, but I digress.

What we can do, is seek out and support producers like local favorites Olde World Farms and Jolie Vue Farms, who ARE doing their best to do things the right way. Both of these farms offer a wide variety of free-range heritage pork, chickens, and pasture-raised grass-fed beef. Both are extremely concerned with their animal’s quality of life and the most humane slaughtering procedures available.

Olde World Farms, Stuffed Pork Tenderloins

So Friday afternoon when we were considering what to cook for Easter, I phoned Olde World Farms to make sure she could set aside a couple of pork tenderloins for me. I picked them up Saturday morning at the Bayou City Farmer’s Market and from then, one thing after another just fell into place. I wasn’t planning a specifically local dinner, reminiscent of the Dark Day’s Challenge that Laura, over at (not so) Urban Hennery heads up every Winter, but it turned out similarly. I walked out to the garden and noticed that we had green beans ready for picking, as well as two of our Texas 1015 sweet onions. I thawed out some of that delicious bacon that I made a while back, and began to think about what starch we could do. We wouldn’t have a whole lot of time after church to get things going so I decided on simple baked sweet potatoes topped with a “light” mixture of whipped cream cheese, Worcestershire sauce (love me some tamarind), salt, pepper, and a bit of local honey, topped of course with some of that chopped, crispy bacon. Simple.

Slenderette Green Beans from the Garden

For the green beans, we snapped the ends off and cooked them for five or ten minutes in a huge pot of salted, boiling water until they were just tender. Then, they got a good shocking in an ice bath…brrrrr. While they cooled, we made a paste with brown sugar, salt, minced shallots, and garlic. We made “bundles” with the green beans by lining up 10 or 12, then wrapping and tying them with the bacon—finally topping them with a dollop (<–very technical word) of the brown sugar mixture. I preheated the oven to 350F and placed the green bean bundles in a casserole pan. They baked for 15 minutes or so to caramelize the sugar mixture and crisp up the bacon.

Green Beans & Homemade Bacon

The pork tenderloin got a treatment inspired by Mr. Whittingstall’s recipe for stuffed lamb loin, involving dried apricots, toasted pine nuts, Allspice (instead of cardamom), cumin, and our Texas 1015 sweet onions.

Texas 1015 Garden Onions

Pork Tenderloin
(adapted from The River Cottage Meat Book, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, 2007)

10-12 Dried, Un-sulfured Apricots, Chopped
1/2 cup Raw Pine Nuts
1/2 cup Coarse Breadcrumbs (I used Panko)
1 teaspoon freshly ground allspice
1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 D Fahrenheit.

In a skillet, dry-toast the pine nuts until they are golden brown. Then add the oil and lightly ‘fry’ them. I had fat leftover from frying the bacon for the sweet potatoes, so I used that instead of olive oil. Grapeseed oil is also a great substitute. After about three minutes, add the apricots and a little bit of liquid to help them rehydrate. This would be a fantastic time to use a couple of tablespoons of apricot brandy, but water will be perfectly acceptable. After two or three minutes, remove from the heat and transfer to a mixing bowl. Now combine the breadcrumbs, allspice, cumin, salt, and pepper. Taste and adjust seasonings accordingly.

With a sharp knife, make a slit down the middle of the tenderloins, going roughly 3/4 of the way through them. Stuff the apricot/pine nut mixture into the new cavity. With kitchen twine, begin tying the tenderloin together, each piece being spaced about an inch to an inch and a half apart. Place in the oven on a pan and roast at 400 for 15-20 minutes. Then turn the heat down to 350 and continue to roast for another 20-30 minutes.

I don’t like my pork cooked to the point that the FDA feels comfortable. I feel much better undercooking lovingly-raised pork from places like Olde World Farms or Jolie Vue than I would the intensively farmed meat from the super market. The free range stuff has a far, far less likelihood of carrying disease. If though, you don’t have access to the good pigs, I wouldn’t pull it out of the oven until it reaches 160-165d F. Otherwise, its coming out at about 145-150d F.

When it is finished roasting, let it rest for ten or fifteen minutes before carving. Resting the meat can also make or break the end product.

From start to finish the entire meal took just under an hour and a half to prep and complete. Obviously, I’m no professional, but after many holidays when hours upon hours are spent in the kitchen laboring over sauces, or preparations that have 35 ingredients and a dozen different steps, I’m coming to a point where simpler is always better—gives us more time to enjoy family.

It seems so foreign to me and I would think my generation, to have a meal in which almost every element (save those sweet potatoes) came from either the backyard garden or a farm just up the road. I’m sure my grandparents would be getting a good “belly laugh” (as my grandpa called it) at that notion if they were still around. Every meal they ate was based on that concept.

Ava

Meet Ava.  Our new German Shorthair Pointer puppy—eight weeks old and as wobbly as they come.  She’s finding her own though in the new surroundings and adjusting much better than we had ever anticipated, especially after having come from a big family with ten other siblings.

Doing what she currently does best.

We can’t thank Contrary Creek Kennels enough for the fantastic starter weeks they gave Ava.  We’re doing our best to take up where they left off in giving her a great home with plenty of love, excercise, and attention.  I’m definitely looking forward to getting in spending some quality time with her while quail and duck hunting.

Buc-ee's

They’re always located in the perfect place and they are starting to pop up more and more frequently.  Their flagship store is halfway between Houston and San Antonio on the aforementioned Interstate 10.  For the unprepared, walking into this ‘convenience’ store is the prairie equivalent of one’s first trip to Harrod’s in London (ok…maybe not, but hang with me here). To say that it is an assault on the senses is an understatement. They have jerkey made from just about everything imaginable, jar after jar of pickles and preserves, deer corn, ATV’s, Mesquite furniture, BBQ pits and most importantly, 20 oz. bottles of Dr. Pepper sweetened with not high fructose corn syrup, but Imperial Cane Sugar.

Imperial Sugar Dr. Pepper

I’ll be the first to say that I don’t buy into the “high fructose corn syrup is straight from the sauce pans of Lucifer himself” argument.  I tend to think its just really good marketing by the sugar people to make us think that if we consume loads of the stuff, it will give our grandkids cancer.  I think its generally a matter of taste and preference.  With Dr. Pepper though, in my opinion there is no better incarnation of the product than that which is made from Imperial Cane Sugar.

The first time my eyes landed on this nectar at the Buc-ee’s in Eagle Lake, I threw a shifty glance over my shoulder to see if anyone was about to tackle me, push me out of the way and take off with my not yet purchased loot.  To the innocent bystander, I must have looked like a crack head scoring something sweet at the corner of Elgin and Scott—what, with my arms full of 20oz bottles of the stuff.

During the remainder of my drive back to Houston I thought back to my days at Baylor.  The university was sponsored by Dr. Pepper and every Tuesday from 3:00-4:00pm, an event called Dr. Pepper Hour was held (gotta watch out for those crazy Baptists and their soda parties).  At Dr. Pepper Hour, there were three enormous punch bowls full of a semi-combined mixture of *Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream and Dr. Pepper.  It was somewhere between the consistency of a “Dr. Pepper Float” and a milk shake.  Last night’s beautiful March evening was the perfect setting to enjoy this concoction that immediately took me back to the “Good Ole Days” in the banquet hall of the Student Union Building at Baylor University.

Dr. Pepper Float

Do we really need instructions?

Combine the Ice Cream and the Dr. Pepper in a glass.  Briefly stir to combine.  I feel it is best when there are still chunks of ice cream floating around in the creamy goodness.

*If you live in Texas, there is NO excuse to use anything except Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla.  Keep your fancy Gelato for another occasion. If I find out that you did have this treat and you used something besides Blue Bell, let it be known that we will probably fight.

The One. The Only. Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

I also hate having to take time to eat breakfast (the most important meal of the day?) or make coffee in the morning. This is a problem though, because I’m not one that can skip breakfast. Anyone who works with me will vouch too, that I cannot go without caffeine. It took me quite a while to get a sustenance routine down in the wee small hours.

Iced Coffee

Then, last summer, Imbibe Magazine ran an article on iced coffee. For most of the year Houston is a hot, humid, muggy place to live (sounds pleasing, huh?). The thought of waking up, grinding beans, steeping a couple of cups of piping hot coffee, and stepping out into a steam bath on a cozy August morning, sounds about as fun as going through said month without electricity (…or the month after—thanks again, Ike). Iced coffee was a revelation.

There are two “camps” when it comes to iced coffee, the cold-brewed method (my personal preference) and the Japanese method. For Houstonians, Catalina Coffee on Washington Ave., does fantastic iced coffee in the Japanese tradition. Dumbed down, the method involves pouring near-boiling water over coffee grounds resting in a coffee filter  that then drips over ice into the container below (a contraption like this is reliably convenient). The hot coffee melts the ice as it cools into a pleasingly tasty beverage.

Whether or not the cold-brew method or the Japanese method is superior, it all boils down to personal preference. The big advantage in my opinion to the cold-brew method is that the final product is less bitter and less acidic than it’s hot-brewed counterpart. This comes as welcomed news to those who don’t love heartburn first thing in the morning.

In the article, they gave exact ratios of coffee concentrate to water. This was a terrific starting point for me, but after several mornings of using their measurements (roughly 4:1 water to coffee), I decided that I didn’t much care for coffee-flavored water and needed something stronger. Then in passing, I talked to David over at Tipsy Texan, who also happens to be the Katz Coffee representative in Austin. He agreed with me saying that he prefers his in equal parts (1 coffee concentrate : 1 water). That pretty much equaled “Iced Coffee Nirvana” for me.

Going back to my near-crazy obsession with getting out of the door as quickly as possible in the mornings, the following method proves to take less time than a trip to Starbuck’s on the way to the office—not to mention, it is world’s tastier.

Cold Brewed Katz Coffee

Tools & Ingredients:

Coffee Grinder (I use a Krups Burr Grinder)
12 cup French Press
Half Pound Coarsely-Ground Coffee (I use varying blends that I pick up at the Market or the coffee shop)
Purified Water

It doesn’t get much easier than this. Saturday evening, just before I head to bed, I usually grind the beans, throw them into the French Press, and fill it to the top with water. Apply the plunger and press it down until all of the grounds are submerged. The next day (after 12-24 hours of infusion), I pour the coffee concentrate into a carafe that holds roughly twice the amount of liquid as the coffee concentrate. I then fill the carafe with water (it ends up being roughly 1 : 1), leaving a little room at the top for simple syrup . Sweeten it to your taste. Sealed in the carafe, the pre-mixed coffee will keep for a week or longer. I’ve never really gone more than a week simply because it runs out so quickly.

Catalina Coffee Beans-El Salvador

If only though, I could leave it at that. I will be the first to admit that I’ve poked a decent amount of fun at those folks in the grocery store that buy flavored coffee. I always thought, “What’s the point?” Then, a few nights ago I was digging in the pantry when I ran across my enormous stash of Tahitian vanilla beans, gleefully residing in a canister of sugar. I have to say, my mind immediately thought about adding those puppies to the cold soak in this week’s coffee. Results? It was really, really nice. I still haven’t reckoned with myself about adding flavors to coffee, but this seems like a respectable approach.

In other experiments, I also added cocoa nibs (an obvious choice), and a few pinches of dried lavender buds to a couple of batches (gasp). Those were mighty tasty cups as well. I’ve now become the mad scientist of cold coffee brewerage. Stacey talked me off the ledge with my ideas about Roquefort coffee and cumin scented coffee. Alas, some ideas should never see the light of day.

Lastly, how bout a non-alcoholic coffee cocktail? David over at Tipsy Texan riffed on a drink that Bobby Heugel came up with, calling the variation on a theme:

The Cappucello (my own proportions)

3 oz. Iced Coffee Concentrate
1 oz. Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
1 oz. Simple Syrup*

Combine ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake hard and strain into an ice filled glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

*If there was a desire to make the Cappucello more of an adult beverage, substitute a half ounce of the simple syrup for a half ounce of Paula’s Texas Lemon Liqueur, or another limoncello of your preference.

Salad for the Cure

Occasionally, Stacey and I have a clean-out-the-fridge, salad dinner.  Its a good tradition.  We don’t really like to be wasteful and it serves as a time to make more room for new items in our refrigerator.  Also, we had a decent amount of lettuce in the garden that is getting a little bitter due to the heat.  “Getting a little bitter” might be an understatement.   Munching on a raw, unadulterated piece of our Butter Crunch lettuce tastes just this side of a wicked shot of Campari.

Nonetheless, we didn’t want to toss it out.  After perusing the fridge, I found some dried black mission figs that had been marinating in brandy and orange peel for a couple of months (a delicious recipe from the Zuni Cafe cookbook) that I thought would go wonderfully with the last bit of Rogue Creamery Bleu Cheese that I knew was hiding somewhere.  I also found some shallots and an avocado, along with a couple of cooked chicken breasts from earlier in the week.  We had the makings of a good, simple but tasty salad.

The problems began when I found the bleu cheese…ahem, the green, fuzzy, mold-covered bleu cheese.  I ended up with a great aged Gouda instead, but I really had my heart set on the bleu cheese with those figs.  I sliced the shallots and the avocado, threw in the chicken, and some croutons from Central Market.  I squeezed a couple of lemons into a small bowl and slowly drizzled in the olive oil.  To add a little sweetness, I remembered that I had some reduced prickly pear syrup and thought the bright magenta color would add at least some visual appeal to a somewhat mundane salad.

Upon adding the dressing, my snow white chicken turned the most horrifying shade of neon pink that one could imagine.  It makes total sense, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead—I was shooting from the hip with this salad.  Care for a closer look?

Oh yeah...its pink.

Stacey got a great laugh out of the whole event and snatched up my camera for a quick picture, noticing that the chicken matched my shirt perfectly.

Pink...Like my shirt, obviously

You win some, you lose some.  What are ya gonna do?