Grassfed Beef comes to South Pasadena!

This is very exciting! At the South Pasadena Farmer's Market this evening, my kids and I discovered a new vendor: J&J Grassfed Beef, from Tehachapi, CA, which is about as local as we could hope for given our urban setting. The pricing was *very* competitive, and we immediately bought some ground beef, and a couple of steaks, as well as the tri-tip that the kids insisted on. :) Though I'm willing to order beef in bulk if necessary, it sure will be convenient to have a "local" vendor I can go to on a weekly basis. Hurrayyyy!

Meanwhile, the Open Space Meats (see previous posts) beef we've been eating has been excellent. I can definitely taste the difference in the ground beef, especially. I haven't actually tried any of the steaks yet, but the stew we made (in a crockpot using a simple recipe off the web) from the bottom round cut was excellent!

Sources for Pork, Lamb, Chicken, and Turkey

It bothered me that I haven't eaten any pork or lamb for awhile, now that I'm trying to eat only "good" meat. My earlier web-search via eatwild.com hadn't turned up anything promising. But I expanded my search to outside of California, and find a couple of promising sites that say that they'll still ship to where I am in South Pasadena:

• Grass-Fed Traditions: Looks like there is a membership option for getting bulk discounts. Source of poultry, whose feed apparently includes that derived from coconuts (after the oil is removed).
  
• Deck Family: This Oregon farm markets just about everything: Beef, several kinds of chicken and turkey, lamb, pork, and goat. They have "sampler boxes" which look interesting.

Beef, then Chicken

I tried my first package of ground beef from Open Space Meats last night, and made a soup, sort of adapted from a recipe I found online. (Sorry, didn't bookmark it.) The soup wasn't that great, I think I put a bit too much beef bouillon in, so it was a bit strong, even after adding water. My brother, who politely shared it with me, said it was more like chili. Robert, if you're reading this, it was better today than yesterday... :)

Anyway, the meat browned very nicely. In fact, I could be fooling myself, especially since I didn't do a "side-by-side" test, but I think the juices from the browned beef looked darker than I'm used to seeing, and that seemed like a good sign.

Today, at Farmer's Market, I bought a whole "organic, free-range chicken". Once I got home, I feared I had bought it more whole than I was intending. I noticed that the head and the feet were still attached. Yikes! I started reading blogs about how to dress chickens. Actually, I found some excellent resources on the web, some of whom reference Joel Salatin, so they have to be okay. (Right?) Here is one I was planning to follow like a Bible when I thought I was going to have to do all the evisceration, etc, of this chicken: How to Butcher A Chicken. Very thorough, detailed, pictorial series of steps, not as much about butchering as about dressing and preparing for use as a meal. I learned a lot. Which fortunately, I ended up not having to use. (Thank goodness!) Even thought the head, neck, and feet were still attached (including the funny little bill and disturbingly lifelike toes) the insides had been taken care of for me. I really think I prefer my chickens this way! But who knows, someday I may be "doing my own", so it's great to have a website reference for that.

Meanwhile, I have never done a whole roast chicken before (though I have done a turkey, but always in a bag), so I looked up a couple of cooking sites, and found these two, which I sort of put together for what I did: All-Recipes, which recommends soaking the chicken in a brine solution, which I did, and Taunton Fine Cooking, which has a nice section on deglazing. It took about 5 min to start the brining, then the bird sat in the fridge in the brining solution for about 4 hours. After that, I took it out, chopped off the head, neck, and feet (should have done that earlier), rinsed it thoroughly, and patted it dry. This took another 10 min, then back in fridge for another hour. Rubbing with butter, applying salt and pepper, and inserting lemon, rosemary, sage, and garlic took another 15 min (I'm new at this and slow), by which time I had the oven pre-heated to 450 F. The 3 1/3 lb chook went in for 30 min at 450F, then 375 F for about 40 min. Anyway, it was all very good. The roasted veggies I did simultaneously were all from farmer's market this morning: onions, potato, yam, red potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, and beets.

Here are some pics. Next time, I should have a dinner guest. :)

And Next, The Thumbs...

There are a few food-related things I'm keen to do:

1. Eat better meat
2. Eat better dairy
   
3. Eat local organic produce
4. Grow some of my own food, including herbs for cooking.

I've already made a start on the first three. Today, I took a feeble step towards the last item. Bought a (local, non-chain, not that I think this matters *that* much) terra-cotta pot, some organic potting soil (complete, apparently, with things like bat guano!), and a little oregano plant. My compost isn't ready for prime-time, so I'm still buying potting soil. I hope eventually not to have to do that.

I have wanted to grow my own herbs and things like lettuce for quite some time. I've had a funny obstacle to this, though. Don't laugh -- I don't actually know how to harvest these things. I'm sure it's trivial, and my uncertainty would seem stupid if I'd ever seen it done even once. I've grown tomatoes and fruit in the past, and it's obvious how to harvest them -- just pick them. But with lettuce, do you cut off half a leaf? The whole leaf? Pull it out at the roots? And when is it ready? Do the leaves grow back? I just don't have any experience with these things. I guess I'll just find out -- nothing to lose. Anyway, oregano is what the local nursery had, and I certainly use plenty of oregano, so we'll see if this works, or if my thumbs are black.

Pasture-Raised, Grass-fed Beef

My first shipment arrived today, from "Open-Space Meats". A large styrofoam container was dropped at my front door. I received an email yesterday letting me know it was coming. All the meat was good and frozen when I got home, so all-in-all the shipment process went just fine -- and really didn't take that long, either. It arrived on the fourth business day after my order. Both kids and dogs seemed very excited about the package. This package was for 40 lbs of beef. 20 lbs of ground beef and 20 lbs of steaks and roasts. Here are some photos of the packaging and the meet in my new freezer. I'll post again after I've dried some of the beef.

Christmas Gift

Thanks for my Christmas gift, Wendy! This compost bin comes from LA County, and has already been put to good use.

Meat Sources

I'm about to take the plunge and order some pasture-raised grass-fed meat. I've been gathering California-vicinity sources from the web. There seems to be nothing available within driving range of South Pasadena, though the local farmer's market in Alhambra on Sunday morning has a seller for "organic free-range chicken" and both that farmer's market and the one in South Pasadena on Thursday nights have sellers for organic free-range chicken eggs. After reading Pollan's book about what can constitute "free-range" I realize that the "organic, free-range chicken" eggs I've been buying from Trader Joes may not be quite the same as the pasture-raised free-range chicken eggs I've read about in Pollan and also Salatin. I think the eggs from the South Pasadena are the real thing, though -- I was shown pictures of the happy chickens. :)

Here are the links to the meat sources, from at least one of which I will order today. I selected these from a list I found at the Eatwild site for California.

Bison:

• Lindner Bison: ordering page. (Can't order online.) Phone is 866-247-8753, email: klindner@lindnerbison.com; they have a video tour of their ranch.

Beef:

• Hearst Beef: contact page. Hearst (in San Simeon) seems to be a member of a whole series of "eco-friendly / sustainable" farming associations: "Heritage Foods USA", "Changemakers' Day 2008", "Slow Food Nation 2008", "American Land Conservancy", "California Rangeland Trust", "Good Housekeeping Seal", "American Grassfed Association", "Certified Humane by Humane Farm Animal Care", "Food Alliance Certified for Sustainable Practices". The contact page allows you to request a flier / price-list, which they mail to you. Ordering is by phone: 866-547-2624. Ground beef is $6/lb; NY is $36-$40/lb.
• Bear River Valley Beef: order page. Located in Humboldt County. Can order online. Ground Beef is $4.5 / lb. Quarter Beef (105 lbs): $6.30/lb; half is $6.15/lb; whole is $6/lb. (420 lbs). Shipping extra.
• Albough's Frosty Acres: half beef is $7/lb, quarter beef is $8/lb, including cutting and packaging but not shipping. Can't order online. Email: sales@frostyacres.net; phone: 530 299-3261 or 530 540 0172. Located in Adin, CA.
• Lazy 69 Ranch: sells 1/10 beef (35 lbs = $250, or a bit over $7/lb). Both 1/10 beef and 1/4 beef includes free shipping. Handy freezer guide: Apparently a whole beef requires about 24 cubic feet of freezer volume. So 1/10 is 2-3 cu feet. Contact info: Dan@Lazy69Ranch.com; phone: 530-355-3451. Located in Round Mountain, CA.
• Chaffin Family Orchards: Appears to be an excellent source of a wide-range of products, but I'm having trouble deciphering whether I can actually order meat here. Need to phone them: 530.533.8239 or 530.533.1676 or email: chris_kerston@chaffinfamilyorchards.com
• Tawanda Meats: (also sells lamb). NY Steaks: $15.60/lb. (Can this be right??) Ground Beef (85%) $4.75/lb. Looks like you can order online. Lamb stew meat is $5.50/lb. Can also order "mixed packages" of beef and lamb. Located in Montague, CA.
• Open Space Meats: have ordering by "packages", which can be ordered online. Seems like a good system. For example, "Medium Package" is 20 lbs ground beef, 10 lbs steaks, 10 lbs roasts: $279; i.e., about $7/lb. Seems like a good deal. You can also "build your own package" with differing costs/lb: NY is $14/lb, ground beef is $4.79/lb.
  

Of all of these, I like the free shipping on Lazy 69 ranch and the "package ordering" on Open Space Meats. Shipping and Handling on the Open Space Medium package added $58.59 to the order, bringing the total price to $8.44/lb. (But ordering on Open Space was very convenient.)

Lamb:

• Tawanda Meats. (See under Beef, above.)
• Sorensen Farms: They invite contact, but don't actually provide an email or phone! Contact page (web-submission).