WFP: The first freezer installments, and using the whole animal
I’m happy to get in another Wednesday food post before I have a newborn. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have my hands full the next couple of Wednesdays. I plan to keep up on posting, but I am not going to drive myself nuts trying to do new and innovative things in the kitchen… yet. So I’d love some ideas from all of you- if there’s anything I’ve talked about or you wanted me to follow up on, let me know.
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Blueberries. The farming cooperative I belong to (where I get all my raw milk and sometimes some meat) has organic blueberries for 2.70 a pound. Pretty luscious. We’ve basically been inhaling them.
Anyway, this is around the time of year that I’m having to start thinking about our food in terms of investments. I’m fortunate to have a master-budgeter for a partner, and I happen to be really frugal… the combo keeps us buying 10 lb boxes of organic blueberries to store, bulk meat, etc. even on a small budget. It’s not down to a science yet or anything, but we eat really well and don’t make many food quality sacrifices (usually only in the case of a "treat" or something). Each year I try to ration our investments- whether it be meat from the freezer or canned stuff from the garden- and while I’ve improved a lot (there’s still a quart of tomatoes left to use!), I haven’t made it full years with a lot of this stuff. I have friends who really do have it down to a science, and they have sheets of paper that record their stocks of each food item, and then they record when they ran out of each item or how many was left over by storing time again. I hope to take really good records this year. Obviously things will change as kids grow and eat more, etc, but I can at least have a rough idea.
So I plan to store at least another 6 quarts of blueberries- making a total of 12, and I’ll ration them to one a month. Vera basically could live on blueberries, so I’ll have to keep limits on it and swap it out with other fruits.
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On using the whole animal- We are meat eaters. All the research that I’ve done on nutrition tells me that you basically can’t replace animal fats in your diet. I was happy to let that go and become a vegetarian in favor of environmental reasons, but I found that it wasn’t consistent and that eating some meat from trusted and known sources is actually a better and more sustainable way to go (at least for my climate). Mostly I’ve found that if we return to our traditional ways of eating, we are actually much much closer to health- both physically and environmentally. Anyway, that being said, I’m emphatically NOT in favor of the modern omnivorous diet. It’s crazy, destructive, and not good for our bodies. We do a lot of really insane things these days. Anyway, long story short, we buy our meat mostly in bulk, and freeze and ration it through the year.
Now, I’ve learned not to only have chicken breasts and ground beef as our main dishes- we incorporate lots of different things into our meals, basically what’s in our freezer is what we get for the year, and often meat is just in the backdrop- rice cooked in stock, beans cooked with some bones, etc. Making your own stock is a really great step in the right direction- both in terms of health and frugality. I really think that using the whole animal is the best way to honor the life that was taken to nourish us, but also to get the most nutritional benefits. But something I haven’t really embraced yet is the use of organ meats. I mean… I’m just not that excited about them, and I’m not really familiar with them either. Plus, liver is the ONE thing that I find repulsive. I’ll eat just about anything, I’m pretty adventurous… but liver is straight-up nasty to me. I keep trying it too, and it keeps being totally gross. The sad thing is that it’s really really good for you. Several months ago, however, I tasted a chicken liver pate that my friend’s mother made. It was actually… good. I would voluntarily eat it. Crazy! I don’t know what it was, and I’ve asked them if it was merely a fluke and if it is really gross most of the time, but they swear that it’s always that good… So, on Thursday (if I don’t have a baby) I’m getting together with them to recreate this pate. We’ll see.
On my own, I bought a couple of pounds of both chicken hearts and gizzards (in addition to the livers I’ll be using for the pate), and I planned to use them. My other motivation is to raise Vera so that she’s used to seeing stuff like this in her diet. I don’t see any reason for us to be squeamish about these parts- and actually many things that seem gross to the modern American are actually prized in other cultures. So it’s really just about perspective. Plus, if we’re going to eat animals, we need to eat them and know what they are. I’ve heard stories of kids who are appalled to find that the chicken they’d been eating all along is actually an animal. That’s crazy to me! I’m pretty sure that Vera knows that a chicken is a chicken, and she’s only two. We also talk about how other animals eat each other- one of her favorite stories is Peter and the Wolf. She knows that the duck gets eaten and that the cat really really wants that bird… Anyway. My first project: gizzards.
They were delicious. I looked up classic southern recipes for them and ended up simply simmering them and then pan frying them. Served next to some pesto spinach pasta, a raw zucchini slaw, and a honey mustard dipping sauce, we found that they tasted like good dark chicken meat. Jeff called them good, slightly chewy chicken nuggets. Vera loved them and didn’t bat an eye. So, easy as that. We’ll look forward to gizzard dinners from now on… crazy.
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Once again, I admire you. My husband and I really need to learn how to store and ration foods, and eat more responsibly.
What farming co-op do you belong to? I’ve been looking to join one, Brett is weary of it though because we only have our fridge/freezer, and nowhere else to store food. Do you have a chest freezer?
Do you have any resources for someone like myself who is just getting into living a more sustainable life?
How did you first get into it?
Aw thanks! It’s always a work in progress. We just keep slowly refining it all and it gets better and better.
The farming coop is called “family farms cooperative” haha. Here’s their website:
http://sites.google.com/site/familyfarmscoop/
It’s actually a great source for someone who doesn’t have a lot of freezer space, because they offer stuff by the pound and if it’s not available then it’s just not the season for it. It’s a good way to eat more sustainably even with a small freezer. It can be more expensive, but I think about it like that’s just what food should cost. We did invest in a chest freezer, but if I didn’t have one then I’d likely do more drying of fruit, buying meat by the pound (likely from FFC) and stretching it even more, foraging and storing what I could (you’d be amazed how many people are happy to let you come take all the pears from their pear trees), etc. There are a lot of ways to store/get food!
I’m always happy to give the resources I know of. Feel free to ask me about whatever! It’s definitely been a process, and I just keep adding to it. What are you interested in doing? A fun and easy book to read is Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”. That one is not super overwhelming but has loads of info and ideas. And it’s just a fun inspiring read. Also you can check out this family- http://urbanhomestead.org/ They are super fun and inspiring. I guess I’d say that in the beginning, sticking to stuff that inspires rather than overwhelms is a good first step. That’s how Jeff and I have found the energy to keep taking on more- we have to have fun with it and do it because we feel like we can! 🙂
One of my cousin’s kids was having dinner with the family and looked up from the table shocked and worried. Somebody had put “dog bones” in her chicken. Apparently, up until that point she had only experienced things like chicken nuggets and had never seen bones in food before. So sad. 🙁
I think of poultry organ meats as a really special treat. I suppose it’s because my dad liked them and made me feel like it was really great that we were allowed to eat them–like it was some kind of secret club. Not that he said that, but it was just the way we experienced it. Now, after many years of not eating meat at all, then only limited parts, I’m back to whole chickens, organs and all. I was kind of disappointed at first because gizzards aren’t as magical as they seemed when I was a kid, but that’s not going to stop me.
Dog bones! Like they just exist on their own… I suspect this happens all the time. Crazy.
Also, I have a similar memory of getting to eat a chicken heart. It was really good, and a treat… I haven’t had one in years, so we’ll see how they turn out now that I got a bundle of them!
Blueberries….yum. I wish there was a blueberry farm near here, they’re my favourite:)
What’s your pesto spinach pasta recipe? Sounds good. Have you been making pasta often? And have you dried or frozen any? I’ve been thinking of storing some to have on hand,since I don’t always feel like making it.
That slaw looks great, what’s in it besides zucchini?
I haven’t made pasta much! I should though… That pasta was actually just some that we had on hand that we made pesto for. But now I really want to make some spinach pesto pasta! Definitely let me know how your storing goes- so far I’ve just made it fresh.
The slaw was just some shredded zucchini and kohlrabi. The sauce was some homemade mayo, a little sugar (although I’d use honey next time), a splash of apple cider vinegar and soy sauce, and a little salt and pepper. Yum!
that slaw sounds really good, though I’m not too familiar with kohlrabi, I think I may have had it once a long time ago…I’ll have to try it again.
I let some of my last batch dry for a couple of hours, then stored it in the fridge for a few days, and it cooked up perfectly. Next time, I might freeze some, or dry it completely. Or both, just to experiment:)
If I find any organic basil the next time I’m shopping, I’m going to try my hand at pesto pasta, possibly with spinach, we’ll see. And roasted red pepper pasta sounds good, too. My friend said he just roasts them until the skins are black, peels them, and purees them right into the dough. Sounds so good!
I don’t think I could ever eat liver or kidney. Just knowing that those are the organs that process everything going through the body and deal with toxins the animal is exposed to makes me creeped out. Still, gizzards and hearts and necks mean gravy making time to me!
Did your gizzards come as part of a whole chicken or did you buy them separately? I was wondering what the cost for chicken gizzards would be… I would think fairly cheap as not many other people would want them.
I’ve been freezing quarts of blackberries for this winter! 🙂
Yeah, I’m not doing kidney yet… and I’d actually stay away from brains and lungs as they are potentially dangerous. At least, that’s how I feel about them at this stage.
I just bought a package from the farming coop. They sell whole chickens, but they are cleaned out and then the organs are sold in 1 lb packages. I think the gizzards were 2.00 a pound, actually, but they are normally about 3. Still, a package definitely fed our family with a little leftover, so a very cheap meal all in all!
I’m a vegetarian myself, but I whole-heartedly applaud and support the way in which your family uses animals. So many people are very disconnected from the process by which an animal comes to be dinner, and don’t like to think about it. By using as much of the animal as possible, making sure the meat comes from trusted sources, and teaching your child(ren) to understand and respect the process, you are absolutely giving respect to the lives of the animals you’re consuming.
While we keep a vegetarian household, my husband does eat some meat outside of the home. When Delilah is old enough to fully understand what meat is and where it comes from, the choice will be hers as to whether to consume it or not.
Aw thanks! I’m always glad that people have taken a look at the way that they eat- regardless of whether or not they eat meat, etc. We just have to do something about this terribly unsustainable food system! How long have you been a vegetarian? What got you to make the switch (assuming it was a switch)?
My first pass at vegetarianism started when I was 17. My parents moved to a more rural area, and one day, I was eating a hamburger and gazing over at the cows grazing in the pasture across the road, and it clicked in my brain that what I was eating was an animal. I had lived totally disconnected from where my food came from, and was raised in a very stereotypical midwesten meat & potatoes (and dairy!) way.
Unfortunately, at that time, I not only hated vegetables, but knew very little about proper nutrition, so my “vegetarian diet” consisted of things like candy, chips, and macaroni and cheese. I started getting sick a lot, so I started eating meat again.
As I learned more about nutrition, I gradually started adding other (healthy) foods to my diet, and gradually eliminating meat. I started by eliminating red meat, then poultry, and then finally fish. I’ve been eating a completely vegetarian diet for 6 (I think?) years now, including a year when I was eating a strictly vegan diet.
The more I learned, the more reasons I had for maintaining a vegetarian diet. First and foremost, eating animals just doesn’t feel right to me. I feel that animals are friends, not food. So, while I’m grateful that there are farmers who treat their animals well, I’m still not interested in consuming animal flesh. I’m also ethically opposed to factory farming processes and the cruelty to so many food animals. Then there are the environmental factors, and the amount of resources it takes to raise one animal for food, compared to growing grains, produce, etc.
Thanks for sharing that with me. I’m always interested in why people make the food choices that they do. I’m glad you’re doing what you feel is right! 🙂
when i was a meat eater liver was all time favorite…mmmmm ask gretchen when i made it for her to try!!
I actually have this really funny memory of you making and scarfing a bunch of liver at Pearl Street- and Gretchen and I were really grossed out… hahaha!
Yeah, you TRICKED me into eating it and it was SO GROSS. I made myself eat it because I love you. YUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKK.
I love blueberries. They are so good.
On using the whole animal – I’m a meat eater but I do so with some guilt because I feel bad that it’s dead because of me. Speaking of ignorant children – Ste’s sister has a ten year old daughter who loves animals and still believes that meat and milk don’t come from living things. Her mum lies to her because she knows she won’t eat them if she thinks they come from animals. I’ve always thought that was pretty weird. She’s bound to stop being so naïve and find out the truth one day soon.
I would be squeamish about eating other organs and stuff, but I do appreciate the thought behind it – the respect for the animal’s life, and not wanting to waste any of it if possible. A couple of years ago I met this guy who told me that his uncle took him hunting once and they shot a deer, and the uncle wanted to use all of the animal. They ate some of it and drank the blood for some reason. He told me that he immediately threw up, but he did appreciate the idea.
Anyway, I actually think it’s great that your kids will grow up eating such healthy food, and know where all of it comes from.
Sorry for rambling, heh.
I really don’t think people should eat meat without knowing what it is… I was actually just talking to a friend this morning about my “quest” to kill a chicken soon. It’s not that I really want to kill one, but I just think if I eat it then I should know what it’s like to take the chicken’s life. Anyway. I’m sure I’ll post about that when I do it.
Just thinking about what you said about guilt- it doesn’t really bother me that the animal is dead. It just seems like the natural cycle of life. Honestly I’ve started to feel worse about the consumption and toxification of habitat, etc, that come from a number of things- not the least of which is industrial agriculture. I guess that’s part of why I have started to think about things in terms of “what did this meal really cost?”. When I see the meat on my plate, I know that it came from a farm nearby after grazing on fields, etc. When I see a package of soy something-or-other, I wonder about the packaging, the shipping, the farmland used, the runoff, the pesticides/herbicides, if it’s GMO, the habitat that was destroyed in the conversion of that farmland, whether or not the soil is being depleted… the list goes on and on. We really live in a culture that has allowed us to believe that all this stuff comes without the cost that it does. That’s the only reason I think people feel bad about the death of a single animal on our plate, versus something like, say, our complete dependence on oil- which, if you take a look at the Gulf of Mexico right now, is coming at a huge cost in terms of animal life. Not to mention that roads are basically free kill zones… Anyway, now I’m rambling!
🙂