Catching Up

Another post without very many pictures (and the few that are here are way down at the bottom). My apologies. I'm also going to jump around a lot, so bear with me or come back for my next post, which may or may not have pictures or coherence. I make no promises.

Here's a picture of an amazing sunset we saw last week:
I had an amazing experience this weekend and figured I would rush home to write a post, but that never happened . . . it turns out that a 5 pound tub of lard isn't really cut out for having its picture taken.

I picked up a copy of Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions at the library two weekends ago. I wanted to buy the book, but decided to read it first and see whether it is a keeper. (I figure it will be because it is mostly a cookbook, so I am going to want the recipes . . . but I might not be able to make many of the recipes anyway, so it might be kind of useless sitting on my kitchen counter collecting dust.)

Holy cow, is this book fascinating. I first heard about it over at Table of Promise. I was intrigued, and needed to read for myself all about how mono- and poly-unsaturated fats are bad for us, and how saturated fats are good for us. I read some of the introductory section while my husband drove us to Madison for a bunch of shopping. We had gift cards left over from our wedding that we (I) wanted to spend. I bought several sweaters, Michael got a new umbrella, we both got feather pillows, and then we stopped at a relatively new grocery store on the east side of town (it's a Hy-Vee, Rachel!) because Michael heard they have a good sushi selection. We can get real restaurant sushi about forty-five minutes from home, and buying pre-packed sushi in the grocery store is certainly not the best "real food" choice, but we certainly don't eat sushi every week!

I checked out the milk selection at the new grocery store and was shocked to find that a gallon of whole milk from a local (less than an hour away by car) creamery which is certified bovine growth hormone free, sells for $3.57, and this particular gallon of milk was NOT ultra-pasturized. (I got a half gallon of skim for my husband too, but I don't remember how much it cost.) I believed the milk was organic because I've never seen milk from this company that was NOT organic, and there was a tag attached to the milk, kind of like the card on a gift bag, that showed a picture of a Holstein cow standing in front of a red barn. This milk was a present to me. Surely it was organic, right? Ah, the supermarket pastoral genre. It gets the un-savvy shopper every time.

See? They're little gift tags. This image is from the Sassy Cow Website.

The milk is not organic. (The cost should have been my first sign, the lack of ultra-pasteurization should have been my second.) I didn't realize that until I went back for more last weekend. During that trip I realized that this particular store does not have ANY organic milk AT ALL. At least not in the regular dairy case. I did notice that they sell cheese from pastured cows, made by the same company - Grass Point Farms - whose grass-fed milk I had been buying before I switched to whole milk. (My normal grocery store only sells the 2% and skim varieties currently, although I just sent an email to Grass Point Farms letting them know I'm interested in their whole milk, cheese, and butter.)

I had been considering switching to whole milk ever since I read in one of Michael Pollan's books that the ingredients that are added to reduced-fat milk to make it palatable are not necessarily healthy. (I used to believe that skim milk was healthier because it had *more* of whatever the good stuff in milk was, because I'd read that they have to add powdered milk protein to skim milk in order to make it opaque. Kind of like how they added yellow coloring to oleo back when it first came out so that people weren't freaked out by a butter replacement product that looked like cloudy Vaseline, but in theory it seems like more milk protein would be a good thing whereas artificial coloring is either a negative quality or neutral.)

Sally Fallon started to convince me that whole milk is better because she is a big proponent of re-replacing unsaturated fats with saturated ones. Don't get me wrong, Sally Fallon is not saying we should have potato chips fried in lard instead of corn oil. She is saying that we should not eat potato chips at all (or at least very rarely) but when we do need to use fat, we should choose saturated fats. One phrase which I read with pleasure (but, sorry, am not going to look up for you right now) was that we should eat vegetables with as much butter as we want. All of the good macro and micro nutrients in the butter help make the nutrients in the veggies more available to our bodies. Whoopee! I love butter.

I also love popcorn, but was kind of freaked out about what I've been reading about canola oil, which I usually pop my popcorn in. (I have asked for an air popper for Christmas, but I may be taking it off of my list shortly. Keep reading . . .) One thing I already knew about the oil was that it sure as heck makes my popcorn pan sticky and gross when the corn is done popping. I wanted popcorn a few days ago as an evening snack, but didn't want to use oil. So I melted some butter, waited for the solid butter fats to separate from the liquid, then poured the clear yellow liquid (that, ironically, looks a lot like the fake butter from the movie theater) into the bottom of my pan. Butter has a lower smoking point than oil, and it burns before the popcorn is hot enough to explode, but if you separate off the butterfat, you can cook popcorn in butter. I just used the solid part (mixed with another pat of melted butter) to flavor the popcorn when it was done. The popcorn tasted great, and the pan was a lot easier to clean up. Plus, when I ate the leftover popcorn for breakfast the next day it did not taste like old oil at all.

If you don't want to find a copy of Nourishing Traditions at the moment, pop over to Table of Promise, where some of these ideas have been condensed.

I came to the book with a closed mind, not an open one. What I mean is, I was totally prepared and willing to be converted into the cult of saturated fat. (My sister told me that the food products I am buying for her family for Thanksgiving "go against my religion" and she might be onto something. More on that later.) I wasn't really open to the possibility that processed foods are good for me. I was just interested to find out more about what I really should be eating. Maybe I should take this newest book (in my personal collection) with a bigger grain of salt. But overall I am convinced that American eating habits need to be changed.

So anyway, I was saying that Sally Fallon and Nourishing Traditions *started* to convince me that whole milk is best. But then I kept reading, and I discovered that Sally Fallon would not currently approve of any of the milk choices that I have in the heart of America's dairyland. It is illegal to sell (or presumably buy) raw milk in the state of Wisconsin. In theory, this is to keep people safe from nasty bacteria. We know how effectively government regulations get this job done. And if you actually think that the government does a good job of keeping us safe from food-born pathogens, you should watch Food, Inc. (I don't blame the government, I blame the food industry and lobbying for the lack of corporate oversight and responsibility.) Sally Fallon says that while there have been numerous outbreaks of salmonella from pasteurized milk over the last few decades, there are enzymes in raw milk that actually prevent yucky bacteria from thriving. I need to do more research about raw milk before I decide if I need to move to a different state in order to purchase it for use in my kitchen, but I'm leaning in favor of raw milk. I love milk, and I want to believe it is good for me. But what I've been reading about conventional milk indicates that it is not.

It turns out that Sally Fallon lists "raw, whole, uncultured milk from conventional dairies, pasteurized, cultured milk products, and pasteurized cheeses" on her "compromise foods" list, which should only be eaten in moderate amounts, whereas"Pasteurized, homogenized commercial milk; ultrapasteurized cream and milk . . . [and] reduced-fat dairy products" only make it onto her "Newfangled Foods" list which she advises against eating. Her exact words are "Newfangled foods are best avoided by everybody" (Nourishing Traditions, p. 64-65). On her "nourishing traditional foods" list she has "raw, whole milk and cultured dairy products such as yoghurt" (64). Not going to find those in Wisconsin any time soon. Something tells me our incoming governor likes the idea of raw milk about as much as he likes the idea of a commuter rail between Madison and Milwaukee. Enjoy the raw milk with your money, Illinois.

I may not run right out and purchase a copy of Nourishing Traditions because many of the recipes included in the book call for the whey from raw milk. And I don't have any raw milk. Apparently it is possible to buy non-homogenized milk in some parts of the country, but I have never seen it.

Okay, I'm going to try to get off of the topic of milk for a while. But it is difficult.

So I bought lard at the first indoor farmers' market of the season last weekend. My dad and I went together. Not only is it a great farmers' market, but it is held inside the Monona Terrace, which was designed in part by Frank Lloyd Wright, who also designed the church I was married in. (My dad and I enjoyed a little post-shopping snack overlooking Lake Monona where, approximately 50 weeks earlier, my wedding party had several fun pictures taken.)

I had three things on my list: sausages, soup bones, and lard. I discovered a couple of weeks ago that the farm that is growing my Thanksgiving turkey also sells rendered lard. I don't know as much about lard as some people yet, but I wanted to give it a try, and what better season than Thanksgiving, where I can put all of this glorious saturated fat into a pie crust that my relatives will unknowingly eat and love.

They were out of soup bones, but I bought sausages and lard, plus some stew meat and a package of ox tail. I wasn't sure about the ox tail. Before I opened the package I was afraid that the tail would come out with fur on it. I know, that was a ridiculous thought. But new foods can be scary!

I took a couple of pictures of the melting lard for the soup, and some of the veggies, but not a single picture of the ox tail. The bones looked like really big vertebrae with a little meat on them. When I say "really big" I'm comparing them to a chicken backbone, which I have seen plenty of. The soup was decent. I made the broth with the ox tail and stew meat browned in lard (Betty Crocker said to use vegetable oil but Sally Fallon trumped her.) and added 16 cups of water, three bay leaves, several peppercorns, a pinch or two of thyme, and several cloves, plus a bunch of fennel, carrots, onion and onion skins (some of which came off of the onions that I would later put in the finished soup, and one of which came from the onion I cooked the night before - I saved it in the fridge overnight), and what was labeled "Celery root" but seemed indistinguishable from celeriac. To the soup I added barley, more carrots, onions, a little bit more fennel, celeriac (labeled as such) and . . . that might have been all.

The soup was a little bit too sweet. I think the fennel did that. But I couldn't help it - there was no celery to be found at the farmers' market (my mouth still waters when I think about the celery from my CSA that was too strong for some of the members) and I opted not to buy any at the grocery store. Fennel is a reasonable substitute.

I made another entirely Midwestern dish the previous night - sausage from Jordandal, wild rice from Minnesota, carrots from the farmers' market, local candy onions from my grocery store, and corn from my freezer that I think came from my local Thursday farmers' market that ended in October. I've made this dish before but, lacking local meat, I had been using commercial sausage that was manufactured by a WI company, but heaven only knows where the meat (and added nitrates) came from. (The packaging for my local sausage had the words "nitrates" crossed off - this was intriguing. I wonder if they changed their recipe but have leftover labels?)

I have leftover rice, sausages, and soup in my fridge right now, so I haven't had to cook dinner yet this week. So far we haven't gotten sick of the rice dish or soup (I pray that we never get sick of soup. It is such a comfort to make - I love it when my whole house smells like good food, and, in the case of beef soup, I can just throw in whatever I have.)

Eating real foods is a learning and growing experience. As you can see, I am currently baffled about how to make the best milk choice possible. I'm sure the milk situation will resolve itself. Other issues will pop up, and I'll deal with them as the do.