Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Eating Real Food Is NOT Snobby, but Wise
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
photo credit: jessicareeder
As more and more people are giving up factory food for something real, the industry has come up with a sleazy, deceptive argument to get us back to buying their chemical-filled concoctions—guilt.
If you try to avoid toxins, GMOs, chemicals, and try to eat the pure foods of our ancestors, you are a snob, and a bad person.
This is absolute nonsense, and I have written a guest blog explaining why.
Real Food vs. Industrial Food
The real food movement has become a threat to industrial food producers. People are realizing that real food is much better. Industrial food manufacturers are trying to demonize real food and the people who eat it. They claim:
Click here to read the rest of the article at Hartke Is Online!
Grassfed Cooking Tips
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grassfed steaks, properly cooked, are the best tasting.
Many people have heard of the health benefits of grassfed meat. Just as I once did, they will buy some grassfed meat, cook it the same way they cook other meat—and ruin it. Many of these people will never try grassfed meat again, convinced that it is tough and tastes bad. This can happen even to professional chefs. It certainly happened to me.
Yet I will tell you that grassfed meat is incredibly tender, with flavors that make conventional meat taste like cardboard. I now find the taste of grain-fed meat to be totally blah, and the texture of grain-fed meat to be repulsive.
The difference is all in how you cook it, though the meat itself is just as important. Knowing what meat to select, and how to cook it, has resulted in hundreds, perhaps thousands of wonderful grassfed meals for me and my family. And the meat is always tender.
When I became frustrated with my failures in cooking grassfed meat, I realized that our ancestors knew how to cook it. They had to. There was no other red meat. And I read many accounts of how humans have loved and cherished red meat for thousands of years, and used red meat to recover from wounds and illness.
I went to work, researching many older cookbooks, histories, and old novels. I came to understand that our ancestors cooked grassfed meat very differently than we cook factory meat, and decided to use the old ways, adjust them for modern kitchens, and see what I could do. After years of research, experimentation, and cooking hundreds of meals, I finally learned how to cook this wonderful meat.
And I discovered a secret—properly cooked grassfed meat is not only much healthier for us, with large amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, CLAs, and vital amino acids in a form that our bodies easily absorb—it tastes much better than conventional meat. And it is more tender, with wonderful mouth feel and texture.
The details of how to cook grassfed meat and to have it come out tender and delicious every time, using easy methods, are contained in my cookbooks: Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue.
Each book contains over a hundred detailed recipes.
In response to a request from my good friend Kimberly Hartke, I have decided to share some tips on cooking grassfed meat. These tips will be useful for most people who are learning to cook grassfed meat.
Here is the link, to my article on Kimberly’s great blog, Hartke is Online:
The Cooking of Grassfed Meat, Tips and Tricks
Michigan Massacre Kills Freedom, As Well As Hogs
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
photo credit: Caveman Chuck Coker
The Michigan Massacre continues. Heritage pigs are being slaughtered, down to the last baby piglet. The farmers who own these pigs are forced to kill them, or watch them be killed by DNR agents. If they fail to cooperate, or resist, they face years in state prison and a felony conviction, along with huge fines. These farmers are having their herds destroyed without trial or hearing, losing their livelihoods without compensation. It is not only the pigs that are being massacred in Michigan, it is our liberty.
The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America provides in part:
“(N)or shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. . . ”
Due process means a fair hearing, with the right of appeal, except in the most dire emergency circumstances.
And domestic farm animals, including heritage pigs, are property.
Heritage hogs behind a fence are not that kind of emergency, not by any means. What due process did the Michigan pig farmers get?
There was no trial, no hearing of any kind, no right of appeal. The kill-all-pigs order did not even come from the state legislature. Instead, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources issued a regulation. A regulation that is totally insane. A regulation that demands the extermination of almost every breed of pig in the state, based on how they look, including all heritage breeds raised by small farmers. This applies even when the pigs are behind strong fences, with no chance of escape. Oh, but the pigs in the CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), raised in confinement, are not affected by the regulation. The Michigan Pork Producers Association used its lobbying power to block an attempt in the state legislature to delay the implementation of the regulation.
In other words, big corporate hog farms are not affected, while small farmers raising heritage pork will have all their pigs killed, without compensation.
What “due process” do the small farmers get? Several carloads of armed DNR agents, who show up at their farm giving the farmer the choice of killing all their pigs or being charged with a felony that could put them in state prison for years. The fact that the agents may have a warrant is not due process. This is the same kind of process used in every totalitarian dictatorship, from Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia to East Germany to North Korea—those armed thugs had papers as well.
Liberty is dying in Michigan this month, while the federal government and the Michigan government do nothing.
If corporate America is allowed to destroy the production of real food by influencing state regulatory agencies, there will be no real food.
Many small pig farmers have already destroyed their herds, afraid of going to state prison for years, and being heavily fined. But a few farmers are standing strong. This article and the accompanying video, on the Hartke Is Online blog, describes how a brave man is standing against this tyranny:
On the Darkest Days of the Local Foods Movement, a Hero Takes a Stand
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday blog carnival.
Avoiding Pink Slime: The Grassfed Solution
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
No Pink Slime in this delicious grassfed cheeseburger.
Pink Slime, also known as “Soylent Pink,†has been in the news recently. Pink Slime is made from slaughterhouse scraps and inedible parts of the steer, which are so heavily contaminated with bacteria that the government requires that it be treated with ammonia, before being processed into a pink glop that is added to meat products, usually hamburger. The sole purpose for doing this appears to be to increase the weight of the hamburger, with this dirt cheap additive, to increase profits.
I cannot think of a single reason why anyone would want Pink Slime in their hamburgers. Even McDonalds and Burger King stopped using it. Yet the Department of Agriculture bought seven million pounds of Pink Slime for the school lunch program. And it is estimated that seventy percent of the hamburger sold in the United States contains Pink Slime.
Nobody wants to eat it, but it is not that easy to avoid. You will not find it on the label, because the government does not require that Pink Slime be labeled. But I have found a good way to avoid it—buy only grassfed hamburger, from a trusted source, preferably a small rancher.
Why I Avoid Pink Slime
Pink Slime is made from slaughterhouse scraps, parts of the steer that are exposed to fecal matter during processing, and inedible parts of the animal such as tendons. These animal parts can be made edible only through heavy processing.
These animal parts are so heavily contaminated with bacteria, including E. coli and salmonella, that the government requires that they be processed with ammonia, a caustic chemical. The U.S. government claims the processing makes it safe. But the U.S. government strictly limits the percentage of Pink Slime that can be added to meat products. If Pink Slime is totally safe, why limit the amount that can be added? And I do not want to ingest ammonia, which is a caustic poison, even in the amounts the government considers safe. Pink Slime is banned for human consumption in Great Britain.
Finally, even if the U.S. government is right, and Pink Slime is totally safe—why would anyone want to eat it? At best, it is nothing but a cheap filler material that increases the weight of the hamburger so the seller can make more profit. Do you want to eat a filler material? I do not. I don’t know anybody who does.
Pink Slime Is Not Labeled
The U.S. government refuses to require that Pink Slime be disclosed on food labels. They claim it is meat, and no further labeling is necessary. Of course, if Pink Slime was on food labels, in a way that customers understood, nobody would buy the product, and profits would suffer.
I think our basic human freedom to choose what we eat is denied when industry is not required to disclose the presence of ingredients that nobody would want to eat, but the government does not see it that way. So, if Pink Slime is not labeled, how do you avoid it?
How I Avoid Pink Slime
My method is simple. I buy grassfed hamburger only. Not only is it much tastier and healthier, it almost certainly does not contain Pink Slime. I found this out when I polled every rancher whose meat I eat.
I am happy to report that US Wellness Meats, Homestead Natural Foods, Alderspring Ranch, Gaucho Ranch, and Humboldt Grassfed Beef do not use Pink Slime, and never have. My rancher friends explained to me that the economics of using this kind of filler material have little or no benefit for a small operation. Even more importantly, none of these fine producers would want to ruin the quality of their terrific grassfed hamburger by adding processed glop to it.
While I will be sure to ask if I buy grassfed meat from another ranch, I am confident that I will not find Pink Slime in grassfed hamburger. And that is yet another reason to eat grassfed meat. After all, we are what we eat, and who wants to have any part of their body made from Pink Slime?
I want to recommend the Facebook page started by my friend Kimberly Hartke of the Weston A. Price Foundation—No Pink Slime in My Burger—as a great source of information about the Pink Slime issue, with many excellent links to informative articles.
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
The Traditional Highland Diet Continued
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
This post supplements the three-part article I did on the traditional diet of the Scottish Highlanders, their prowess in battle, and how the traditional Highland way of life was destroyed by the industrial agriculture of the day. The three-part article was posted on the excellent Hartke Is Online blog, and links to the articles are posted below.
Unlike other Europeans, the Scottish Highlanders had plentiful meat in their diet. The traditional Highland diet, described in Part 1 of the three-part article, also had a valuable feature that was missing from almost all the other diets eaten in Europe—free access to meat, wild game, and wild fish. Under the traditional system in the Scottish Highlands, the land was owned by the clans, though its use was given to individual families within the particular clan. Everyone in the clan could hunt the wild game that was so plentiful in the spring, summer, and early fall. Everyone could fish in the many small rivers, ponds, and lakes, which were full of wild fish most of the year. Every Highland farmer could kill some of his herd animals and salt their meat in preparation for the long winter.
This was very different from England, indeed from the rest of Europe, where wild game was considered the exclusive property of the King, or the nobles, or the rich landowners, and common folk were prevented from hunting by anti-poaching laws. Poaching (the crime of hunting game that belonged to the rich and powerful) often came with the death penalty. A peasant who killed a rabbit to feed his hungry family could be executed for doing so. The right to fish in a particular body of water was also heavily restricted, and a man who violated the fishing restrictions also faced death. While many peasants raised farm animals for meat, the animals were usually sold so the peasant could pay his taxes, and meat was rarely eaten by most of the population. In fact, in Ireland at the time, the family pig was often called “the gentleman who pays the rent.”
Though the death penalty was removed from anti-poaching laws in the nineteenth century, armed gamekeepers prevented most Europeans from hunting. Meat remained very expensive and usually unaffordable for most people, who were condemned to eat a diet consisting mostly of grains and vegetables. Many Europeans immigrated to the United States because they heard that even the poor could afford meat there, and hunt.
The situation in the Highlands changed with the Clearances, where restrictions on hunting and fishing where imposed along with the Clearances, which drove the Highlanders from their land as detailed in Part 3: Destruction of the Scottish Food Culture in the Highlands
But traditionally, the Highlanders had free access to wild game, wild fish, and the meat of their herds, which made them unique in Europe at the time. Game, fish, and meat were a large part of their traditional diet, and an important part of their incredible health, size, strength, and vitality, as shown in Part 2: Well Fed Scottish Warriors Waged Fierce Battles
The series begins with a description of the traditional Highland diet in Part 1: Scottish Highlanders Traditional Diet
This post is part of Monday Mania and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Grassfed Bison Ranchers Win Sustainability Award
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Bison in their natural winter habitat, a snow covered grass pasture.
I recently posted a detailed description of the ranching methods at Northstar Bison, where Lee and Mary Graese raise superb grassfed bison. Or rather, they pretty much let the bison raise themselves. Most of what the Graeses do is rotate the bison from one fenced pasture to another. This high-intensity rotational grazing actually renews the soil, instead of depleting it like modern commodity agriculture.
The bison select their food, all year round, digging right through the winter snows to reach the grass underneath. Their thick coats keep them warm in winter. The bison cluster together in a tight herd to defend against predators. They deliver their own healthy young, without human interference. They are healthy, hardy animals, who do not need or benefit from human doctors. And they let the ranchers know when it is time to move to a new pasture, by clustering around the gate when it is time for them to move to another pasture.
The meat from these bison has a wonderful, slightly sweet, unique taste that is nothing like commodity beef. It has all the nutritional benefits of wild game, because the bison are eating their natural diet and are pretty much taking care of themselves. This fine meat does not have the gamy taste associated with wild game, because the bison are killed instantly, by surprise, and do not suffer.
This wonderful ranching accomplishment has received some well deserved recognition. Kimberly Hartke of the Hartke is Online blog has given Lee and Mary Graese her “Heroes of Sustainable Agriculture†award. Here is a link to the guest blog post I did, where the award is announced.
Grassfed Ranchers Restore the Bison and Renew the Soil
Here is a link to a guest recipe post I did on the same blog, which details a simple and delicious way to cook bison steak.
Bison Steak and Blueberry Marinade Recipe
Collard Greens Make a Great Side Dish for Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Ingredients for traditional organic collard greens with natural uncured bacon, organic hot sauce, and unfiltered raw organic apple cider vinegar.
While grassfed meat is my favorite food, part of the pleasure comes from eating it with delicious side dishes. Some of these side dishes are so good they become favorites, and are made time and time again. The recipe in this post is one of my favorites, and I have made it often. It goes wonderfully with every kind of grassfed meat. I love to make this dish with collard greens that have deep green, firm leaves.
Collard greens originated in West Africa, and are loaded with nutrition, with many vitamins and minerals concentrated in their deep green leaves. They are a staple of traditional soul food. Traditionally, collard greens are cooked for a very long time, with some kind of fatty pork. More modern versions cut the fat, but not mine. I keep the pork fat but reduce the cooking time.
I happened to mention this recipe during an Internet chat on Twitter that was sponsored by Seeds of Change, a wonderful organic seed company that is preserving real organic seeds and making them available. My good friend Kimberly Hartke, of the blog Hartke Is Online, asked me to post the recipe, so here it is.
Quick Collard Greens with Bacon
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
2 thick slices fatty uncured bacon, or 4 thin slices, (if the uncured bacon is not salted, add 1 teaspoon of unrefined sea salt)
2 cups filtered water
1 large bunch fresh organic collard greens, with deep green leaves
3 tablespoons unfiltered raw organic apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon thick red organic hot sauce of your choice
1.     Wash the collard greens well with filtered water, making sure any soil or sand is washed off. Remove the leaves from the stem, tearing the leaves into 2 to 3 inch pieces. Discard the stems.
2.     Pour 2 quarts filtered water into a stainless steel pot with the bacon, and bring to a slow boil. Cover, and cook for 10 minutes. This will cook a lot of the fat into the water, where it will really flavor the greens.
3.     Add the greens, vinegar, and hot sauce to the pot. Bring the pot back to a strong simmer. Cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the greens to a serving dish with a slotted spoon.
Serve and enjoy with the grassfed meat of your choice. This recipe goes perfectly with the recipes for grassfed meat contained in my cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat.
This post is part of Weekend Gourmet, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
High-Fat, Low-Carb Side Dish—Turning the Food Pyramid Over
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Cheese Eggs with Onions and Butter is a delicious high-fat, low-carb side dish.
The new dietary guidelines issued by the United States government are a disgrace. These “guidelines†recommend large quantities of high-carb foods that can make people fat and sick, while practically banning the traditional animal fats we need for our bodies to function properly. The new guidelines were once again shown graphically in a new “food pyramid.†This new pyramid should be turned upside down, as all its recommendations are backwards. We need animal fats and proteins, not processed carbohydrates.
These new guidelines are simply a more extreme version of the previous guidelines. The previous guidelines were a miserable failure, as Americans got considerably fatter and sicker. The old guidelines did result in a huge increase in profits for the processed food industry, the diet industry, the drug companies, and the medical profession, and maybe that was the point.
Whatever the reason, the bureaucrats ignored a mountain of evidence and studies provided by the real food movement and low-carb advocates, including the Weston A. Price Foundation, many other organizations and scientists, and my friend Jimmy Moore. Kimberly Hartke has an index of testimony by many experts, including Sally Fallon Morell: USDA Dietary Guidelines Controversy. Here is a link to Jimmy’s excellent testimony on the subject: Having My Say. The testimony showed the harmful effects of the previous food guidelines. Overwhelming scientific evidence was presented to show that people need animal fats and proteins to function properly, and a wide variety of foods, while grains and carbohydrates should be limited. The evidence showed that processed foods and sugar in all its forms should be severely limited. None of this evidence appeared to make any difference to the Dietary Guidelines Committee.
The Weston A. Price Foundation has published its own set of Dietary Guidelines, which are based on science, not profit. My rejection of the new government guidelines inspired me to create some new high-fat, low-carb recipes that could be used as side dishes in place of high-carb foods like pasta and potatoes. This recipe meets my standards, since three of its four ingredients are practically banned by the new government guidelines, as they are rich in animal fats. It is also delicious, and goes well with any meat. This recipe also makes a nice breakfast.
Cheese Eggs with Onions and Butter
4 tablespoons pastured butter
1 medium organic onion, sliced
1 cup full fat natural cheese of your choice, chopped into small pieces, (cheddar and Havarti are very good with this dish)
4 organic eggs, with the yolks, beaten with a whisk or a fork until many small bubbles appear
1.     Heat the butter over medium heat in a 10 inch pan, preferably cast iron. When the butter is melted, add the onion, and sauté for 5 minutes.
2.     Add the cheese to the eggs and mix well. Pour the mixture over the onions. Reduce the heat to medium low. Cover, and cook until the eggs have set, about 5 minutes.
Serve with the grassfed meat of your choice, or enjoy for breakfast.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, Fight Back Friday, and Monday Mania blog carnivals.
Even More Reasons to Stop S510
By Stanley Fishman, Author of Tender Grassfed Meat
S510 is even worse than I thought. A fine article by Kimberly Usher, of the Antiphospholipid and Pesticide Effects blog, shows even more reasons why S510 must be stopped. Kimberly Usher points out the connections between government agencies and the large agricultural industry, the problems with pesticide-laden food, the fact that we can absorb pesticides through our skin, the fact that S510 commits us to a treaty that was developed by corporate interests to give them a monopoly over food and drugs, the effect of the Codex Alimentarious treaty on our food and freedom, the fact that that S510 will give the FDA the power to shut down any farm if they “have reason to believe†that something is wrong, even if they have no proof, and much more.
S510 must be stopped on Monday, November 29th, or we lose our freedom and all access to real food. Please, contact your Senators and ask them to vote against S510.
Everyone who wants real food and wants the freedom to choose their food should read this great post at Hartke Is Online:
Woman Poisoned by Pesticides Speaks Out on S510
All Milk Is Not the Same
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
We are told that all milk is the same. This is just not true. There have been at least two different kinds of milk for almost 200 years. There is the milk that has nourished humanity for thousands of years, and there is swill milk. Swill milk was invented to maximize profits at the expense of everything else. Dairy cows were fed the leftover garbage from making beer and other alcoholic drinks, instead of their natural food—grass. This brewery and distillery waste was called swill. Cows who ate swill were weak and sickly and had very short lives. Their milk was full of deadly bacteria that was often fatal to children. In fact, the city of New York once had a child mortality rate of 50%, largely because of swill milk. Swill milk was particularly deadly to the poor, as it was the cheapest milk available, and many parents bought it because they were short of money.
Illness from raw milk was very rare before the introduction of swill milk. Millions of children died from swill milk. Pasteurization was developed to deal with the dangers of swill milk. While pasteurization may keep swill milk from killing people, pasteurization does not make the milk nutritious. There is a lesson in this horrible history. We should not feed garbage to milk cows. We should not feed garbage to any food producing animal. We should only feed these animals the food that nature intended for them.
Swill milk had a devastating effect on my grandfather’s family. This led him to become the first dairy farmer in the history of his family. He produced clean, nutritious milk of the very highest quality from grassfed cows. This milk was not pasteurized, and was a blessing to his family.
I have told this story in a guest post on Kimberly Hartke’s fine blog. Click on this link to read more:
Russian Immigrant to Canada Discovers Healing Power of Raw Milk
This post is part of Monday Mania Blog Carnival at the Healthy Home Economist.
Next Page »