Back in May, Rod and I joined the Family Farm Cooperatives. It's a herd-share coop, where each member owns a portion of the herd, which is the only way we can legally get whole, raw milk in the state of Michigan.I had been pushing for several years to join a CSA, but as Rod wisely pointed out, we have a lot of work to do on using fresh produce.
We tend, out of habit, to use a lot of frozen vegetables, even when we have a fridge full of fresh. It would be a shame to haul that much fresh produce in, only to let it rot because we forgot to eat it.
So to change our habits, I started buying a lot more fresh produce, and of course the garden has given us a good bit of training in making fresh veg a part of our every-day routine. We're still ot ready for a HUGE box of mixed vegetables every week just yet, but I am not ready to stop pushing, I'm just putting the idea on hold.
Meanwhile, I brought up the idea of joining a herd-share. We had already been treated to the amazing flavour of really fresh eggs from mostly pastured hens (thanks, Nerida!!!) and so Rod, who had been skeptical a few years before, was willing to believe that there might be a difference in the quality.
It seemed especially worthwhile since when he first arrived in the US, Rod was absolutely sickened by US commercial meat. The smell nauseated him and when he ate it anyway, he felt dreadful for days. However, Rod isn't built to be a vegetarian and over time, his need for the nutrients he doesn't absorb well from vegetarian sources forced him to adapt to what was available.
Once he did adapt, though, his health started to deteriorate dramatically. His formerly normal blood pressure soared, he developed gout, and his strength and stamina started to wane. The vibrant, energetic, positive man I'd fallen in love with became tired, ill, and old. We weren't sure what had caused the problem, but the commercial meat that had made him so sick in his early months here seemed like a candidate worth eliminating.
We started with raw milk. Interestingly, Jack, who has gotten a blistered bottom from pasteurized homogenized milk every time we've experimented, is able to drink raw milk without a problem. (We tried it because I had read that it was often the case that people who can't tolerate treated milks are fine with raw.) Even more interestingly, within a few weeks of trying raw milk, Rod's gout was completed gone. (I don't drink much milk -- just a splash in my coffee in the morning, usually. But I really liked the taste and I miss it when I have to resort to coffee at the office.)
Then we started trying the meats. They're a bit more expensive so Rod agreed to try them with a certain amount of trepidation. But once we tasted the difference, there was no going back. I had assumed that my taste buds had just dulled over time, but these meats taste a lot like I remember meat tasting when I was a kid.
Even better, from my point of view, the animals the meats are made from live a natural, pastured life right up to the end. No feed lots, no hormones, no antibiotics, no grains to "fatten them up". They just live as cows and pigs and sheep have always lived, right down to choosing what kind of forage they feel like today. I feel a lot better about that.
We love the flavours and Rod's health has returned, bit by bit. He has energy to tackle projects and has begun to be that positive, vibrant man again! He says that he has never felt so healthy. Jack seems to enjoy them, too.
There is a down side, of course.We used to celebrate payday by going out to eat. In the days before Jack was eating, we'd choose a cuisine we weren't familiar with and explore. Once Jack was at the table, we started choosing places on the basis of where Jack would find something. That was a bit less fun, but it was still enjoyable, And from time to time, when neither of us had the energy to cook or it was just too hot in the kitchen, we'd dine out, too.
These days when we go out to eat, not only doesn't it taste as good as cooking at home (that has been the case for a long time) but we all feel mildly queasy for a while afterward. We didn't mention it to one another nor even identify the pattern until the day that we went to Jack's favorite place and he decided as soon as we walked in, that he'd wait till we got home to eat.
Ahh, well. The price we pay. ;)
Okay first of all, that picture is quite simply the cutest cow face I have ever seen (never thought I'd put those words together in a sentence!) Also, my checking account would love it if my entire family lost the taste for eating out! So maybe your "downside" is really an "upside".
ReplyDeletePassing your blog address along to some likeminded Michigan moms...
Yeah, Rod cracked up when he found that cow photo on flickr. He has a long explanation about why it's the perfect shot for this post. ;)
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's kind of an upside for our checkbook not to want to eat out anymore...we're thinking maybe vegetarian restaurants would be the way to go when it's simply *too* hot to cook.
Ohh, thanks for passing on the URL!
What a cute cow!
ReplyDeleteOne of the cows in our share just died, so no milk for us for awhile. I can't even imagine going back to the old kind of milk. I think we'll just go without for awhile.
How do ya'll afford grassfed meat? We wanted to go that way, but it's just so expensive. Maybe it's where we live. Virginia has taken it's time coming around to that sort of thing.
Affording grass-fed meat requires going back to what out forebears did with meat.
ReplyDeleteWhile "Nourishing Traditions" is politically well to the right of where we stand, its nevertheless a great resource for what to do with cheap cuts of high quality meat.
We started off doing lots of bone-broth and soups, because the bones are cheap and the nutrition is high. Then we graduated to ground meat and pork, again fairly cheap but extremely versatile and easy to stretch.
We're still moving up the price-scale a bit at a time when the budget allows.
Having tasted meat like the meat from home (Australia) I really don't much care for the flavour of the mass produced stuff that we get here as a rule. In fact, when I first got here, I was unable to eat meat for a month, it made me ill... I eventually adapted
misti, we've been trying to change what we eat as well and have noticed the same things you decribe once we go out and eat something "bad". It makes us feel yucky and sick. We're hoping to join a CSA next year but like you, I tend to let fresh produce go bad so we need some practice first!
ReplyDeleteI loved this post!
Evie
Ouch, I'd be very unhappy if we had to go without milk for a while! We'd cope, of course, but...ouch.
ReplyDeleteWe afford grass fed meat by, as Rod says, using a lot of bone broth and and very small amounts in meals -- a recent pound of Italian sausage fed us for three meals. We made a Bolognaise spaghetti sauce and had that over noodles. The the leftover sauce went into two lasagnas. We ate one at a meal a half a week or so apart.
If your reason for eating meat is aesthetic -- that is, you want the taste and feel of a chunk of meat at a meal, this method is pretty unsatisfying, but if you're mostly after the nutrients you can get them by tucking bone broth and/or small amounts of ground meat into casseroles and sauces. Done that way, it's not terribly expensive.
As Rod says, as the budget allows, we do get bigger cuts of meat for special occasions, but we don't feel we need them. (We were mostly vegetarian for a long time, until Rod just couldn't do it anymore. We like the flavours and textures a lot, so we just add a bit of meat to the same, familiar dishes.)