Tag Archives: grassfed veal

Just One Sit-Down Family Meal

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heirloom-tomatoes

One of the pleasures of growing your own food is having a change to try heirloom varieties. These pear and cherry tomatoes do not travel well but have amazing flavor. You wont find these tomatoes at a grocery store but your local farmer's market will have them in season.

This is a post I wrote back in early October. It is quite a contrast from today, since we are pulling out our winter boots, snow pants and jackets after the first snow of the year:

Shaen and I spent the afternoon working at cutting back the tomato plants. We removed leaves and extra green growth from the tomato plants in an attempt to encourage the plant to put its energy into ripening the tomatoes before the first killer frost. Shaen found a monster eggplant and numerous hot peppers hiding in the greenhouse. Sonja worked on pulling up beets and baby carrots. Erika found a potato plant and dug up the tubers. Erika danced through the garden collecting ripe cherry tomatoes like some sort of fairy nymph. The girls cleaned and processed their vegetables.

For dinner, I made a mixture of baked vegetables in a glass baking dish. Most of the vegetables came from Farmhouse Herbs an organic farm that sells at the Kamloops Farmer’s Market. It hasn’t been a good year for our garden and Farmhouse Herbs has supplied my household with much of our vegetables. The vegetables included: parsnips, onions, green onion tops, garlic, beets and carrots. (By the way, those golden beets were the best beets I have ever eaten.) I added herbs gathered by the garden nymph, and mixed in sea salt and fat from my grease bucket. Please read The Great Grease Bucket: Something for Nothing for more information. In another glass baking dish, I cut the freshly dug potatoes and added sea salt and fat. I used our own garden carrots, lightly cooked in butter and dressed with fresh garden parsley.

When Shaen came in at the end of the day, he cooked three chuck steaks on the barbecue. Chuck steak is normally not grilled because it is considered a tough cut of meat but these steaks were tender and very juicy. We got the grassfed veal from Jocko Creek Ranch last winter. For more information please read Grassfed Veal and Cooking With Grass-Fed Meat and Fowl.

When we sat down to our meal, we each enjoyed a glass of fresh cow’s milk. There was a salad of sun ripened cherry tomatoes and herbs. The girls loaded their potatoes with raw butter I made last year. (I privately thanked Patty, our Jersey cow, for the wonderful dairy products.) It was a delicious meal. The meal was wonderful because so much of the food came from our own land or from the land of people we know and trust. We were hungry after working the afternoon in the garden. What also made the meal special is that we ate it together and enjoyed each other’s company.

I just wanted to tell about one sit-down family meal. It wasn’t a special meal but the way we eat normally. This meal might seem odd to the modern eater, rushing between the office, take-out, and home but this meal would have been the norm a generation ago.

Oven Baked Seasonal Vegetables
4-6 large carrots, cut into large 3″ pieces
4-6 parsnips, cut into large 3″ pieces
2 orange beets or turnips, cut into wedges
1 large onion, cut into wedges
1-2 leek tops, cut into large 3″ pieces
2-3 large garlic cloves, cut in half
1T fresh rosemary, chopped
1tsp sea salt
1tsp fresh growing black pepper
1T grease from the grease bucket
1-2 potatoes, cut into wedges, optional
The trick to this meal is to use the best seasonal vegetables you can find. Cut all the vegetables into pieces about the same size so they will cook evenly. Use a large glass baking dish and mix all the cut vegetables together with the grease, black pepper, sea salt and rosemary. Cook at 350F and stir every 15 minutes for about 45 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked through.

Sun Ripened Tomato Salad
2-3c sun ripened cherry tomatoes, whole
1/2c garden parsley, finely chopped
1/4c red onion, finely chopped (optional)
Add all ingredients together in a wooden salad bowl. Add 2-3T of Whole Seed Mustard Dressing. The recipe can be found in Making Homemade Lacto-Fermentation Whole Seed Mustard.

Hey farmer farmer
Put away the DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

Visit to the Killing Floor at Kam Lake View Meats

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Yesterday I visited the killing floor at Kam Lake View Meats. I had a very interesting experience and I am very grateful to Kam Lake View Meats and the local inspector for allowing it. I was there to harvest organs and glands from three heifers from Jocko Creek Ranch. I had ordered from Jocko Creek Ranch, one grassfed two year old heifer and two grassfed veal calves. For more information on why I like grassfed veal read Grassfed Veal. If you are looking for a full service butcher, here is their information:
Kam Lake View Meats Ltd.
Ron Keely
6453 Buckhorn Rd, Kamloops, BC, V1S 2A1
T: 250.828.1015
27 km
government inspected abbatoir, slaughtering, custom cutting, smoking, sausage making, good source for local meat, run The Cutting Block in Kamloops

That day, I learned many things on the killing floor. The hides, once a valuable byproduct, are now almost a waste product. The inspector said: “we are close to the day when the customer will have to pay extra to dispose of the hide.” The kill floor manager said: “when I started twenty years ago, the hides were worth $50.00 each. Now they get $5.00 a hide.”

It makes me think about my vegetarian days, when I did not want to wear leather because I thought it was environmentally unfriendly and cruel to animals. I thought we all should use cotton clothing. Of course, I did not think about all the water, energy, pesticides and herbicides used to produce industrial cotton. I do not think cotton clothing is environmentally friendly anymore. Now, I think about how long a piece of clothing made of leather or fur would last. I think about the skill of being able to tan that hide and make it into a piece of useful clothing, has almost been lost.

The internal organs and waste not harvested from animals includes the head, stomach, intestines, reproductive organs, tail end, hooves, and extra fat. Some can be used in raw pet foods but most has to be composted. There are parts of the intestine that are considered “toxic waste” and must be incinerated due to fears of Mad Cow Disease. The Weston A. Price Foundation has a number of essays on Mad Cow Disease by Mark Purdey called Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

These waste materials are shipped to Alberta because no one in the area wants to have a composting plant in their area. So, trucks full of animal waste moves up and down our roadways. The inspector shared some black humor regarding all the wishful thinking about “reducing our carbon footprint” while regulations require such inefficiencies. Again, the government always thinks big. Big composting plants cause big problems. Little composting plants cause little problems. But for the government it is hard to regulate small operations. For the small operations, government inspection and regulation is not cost effective.

Organs are normally harvested, though the interest in these foods have dwindled over the years. These foods are now commonly added to raw pet foods. This is ironic, because traditional people preferred the organ meats and fat over the muscle meat. During periods of good hunting, traditional people would eat organ meats and fat and would throw the muscle meat to the dogs. Traditional people would dry muscle meat as jerky and add fat to make pemmican. This was travel and starvation food. Read Guts and Grease for more information about traditional diets.

Kam Lake View Meats produces raw pet foods, so this would be a good local source if you need pet foods. Raw pet foods are called the Bone and Raw Food diet (BARF). In my opinion, raw food diets are far better for your dog or cat than dried or canned foods. Read Pottenger’s Cats by Francis Pottenger for more information about raw and cooked food feeding experiments. The Weston A. Price Foundation has an essay called Trends in Home Prepared Diets for Pets. There is a lot of controversy about raw food for your pet. Do your research and make your own informed decision.

We did not harvest the brain or pituitary glands. Kam Lake View Meats uses a 22 caliber rifle to kill the animal. This means the brain tissue is contaminated with lead and is unsafe to eat. In new slaughter houses they are required by law to use the humane hammer. The owner of Kam Lake View Meats has used this humane hammer and has renamed it the “inhumane hammer”. He has found the hammer causes more suffering for the animal but would allow the harvesting of the head meat, brains and brain organs.

The regular harvesting of glands has not been done for over eighty years. Before there was a pharmaceutic industry, people used glands to help heal endocrine problems. People with glands that were damaged by illness or injury might have to take glandulars for the rest of their lives or their condition would quickly deteriorate and they would die. For more information about glandulars read Royal Lee: Father of Natural Vitamins.

This is why I was on the killing floor. I wanted to harvest a number of glands from the three animals. With the help of these knowledgeable people, we located the thyroid, adrenals, ovaries, and pancreas. This wasn’t easy. Those pictures drawn by artists in textbooks does not do justice to the individuality found in all animals.

I brought home the following organs: heart, kidneys, and liver. I brought home the following glands: ovaries, thyroid, adrenals, and pancreas. When I got home, I cut up the glands into the smallest pieces I could. I cut up some of the heart and liver into small cubes. I then froze those glands and organs on a tray. After the pieces had frozen, I re-packed them into bags. I will leave the organs and glands for two weeks in the freezer to kill any parasites, before consuming raw. I will be able to eat the small pieces like a “frozen supplement pill”. The dose for organs is 1-2T a day or more. The dose for the glands is an issue. It will require some experimentation to get the dose right. I will be using Degeneration Regeneration by Melvin Page as a guide. I will contact Ron Schmid, who produces dried glandulars for human consumption. This will be a long term project for me. I will keep everyone posted about what happens and what I learn. If anyone knows about endocrine treatment with raw glands, please contact me.

Updated December 17, 2009: Here are two essays on adrenal function: What You Should Know About Your Glands and Further Experiments of Cortico-Adrenal Extract.

Grassfed Veal

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Confinement veal has a bad reputation. Standard veal production requires the calf to be separated from the mother after birth. The calf is confined in a pen just big enough for the calf to stand or lay down. The calf is fed only milk or a milk substitute for 18 weeks and then slaughtered. This feeding schedule brings on anemia in the calf which produces the characteristic white meat of veal. The meat has a very mild favor and is known for tenderness that can be cut with a fork. These calves are prone to illness and must be medicated to survive.

Grassfed veal is different. The grassfed veal calf stays with its mother on pasture. The calf has access to the mother’s milk and grass. The calf is butchered at 6 to 9 months old, giving a pink meat with more flavor, though it is not as tender as confinement, milk-fed veal. The calves are very healthy and rarely need medical attention. The calves have a better life, even if it is short. You will not be able to find grassfed veal without a serious search and you will pay top dollar for this premium product. Most grassfed veal is purchased by chefs in high end restaurants looking for more flavor from this old favorite. If you are interested in this specialty food please read The New York Times article called: Veal to Love – Without the Guilt.

Traditionally, grassfed veal was a side product of the dairy industry. The male calves would become veal and the females, unless culled, would become part of the milking herd. Traditionally, the offal from the veal calf is greatly prized. The stomach of the young calf is used to produce rennet required for cheese production. I had a chance to try this premium product when Patty’s calf went to slaughter. (Patty is our milking Jersey cow.) The grassfed veal was the best beef I have ever tasted. It was truly delicious. If anyone knows a rancher in the Kamloops area producing this product, I would like to know. Please email me and I will update this posting with the information.

Updated October 2, 2009: I have just talked to Susan McGillivray at Jocko Creek Ranch. They have grassfed veal for sale. These animals normally go to the feedlot for grain fattening over the winter. The steers are worth more that the heifers because the steers will fatten-up better in the feedlot. This product is seasonal and must be bought in October or November before they go to the feedlot. You purchase by the animal. The calves will weight about 500-600 pounds and you will have to pay for slaughtering. Right now the cost is $1.00/pound for heifers and $1.12/pound for steers. This is a live weight price. I would buy the heifers because they are cheaper and it doesn’t matter how well they do in the feedlot. If you are interested in getting this wonderful meat please call Jason or Susan McGillivray at 250.374.9495.

Updated June 23, 2010: Grassfed veal may be wonderful but I have found something even better. Last year we bought half, of an eight-year-old spent Dexter Jersey Cross milking cow. A cow is considered “spent” when she is getting old and does not conceive. When this happens it is time to replace the cow. This cow spent her life on green pasture with a small amount of dairy ration during milking season. The butcher wanted to grind her up into hamburger, which would have been standard procedure for a cow of her age. Since the cow was over thirty months old, by regulation, no part of the spinal column can be consumed. We had the butcher cut her up into roasts, steaks, stewing meat and hamburger.

That eight-year-old cow has been the best meat we have ever tasted. I think back in horror that she might have been ground up into hamburger. The meat had a tender, beefy, full flavor with marbled fat throughout. Part of the reason the meat was so delicious was the cow was part Dexter, a breed known for its wonderful meat. We would even lightly barbecue the stewing meat. It was tender and juicy. Can you believe that! Unfortunately, this meat will be impossible to get from the Industrial Food System. The only way to get this meat is buying an animal directly from the rancher or dairy farmer.

So, Harold McGee was right: “Full-flavored meat comes from animals that have led a full life? Life intensifies flavor, and modern meat animals are living less and less.” He believed cattle reached their peak of flavor around four years of age, but this was before the time of Mad Cow Disease. What Harold McGee fails to mention when he says “modern meat animals are living less and less” is that, you could not find a confinement animal from the Industrial Food System that was eight years old. If you did, it would be so diseased and sickly, no one in their right mind would eat it’s flesh. I sometimes wonder if the whole thirty month rule has more to do with the general poor health of confinement animals, rather than avoiding Mad Cow Disease. For more information about Mad Cow Disease please read Visit to the Killing Floor at Kam Lake View Meats and read the series of essays by Mark Purdey.

If you are looking for a small family cow that is good for milk and meat, please see the Canadian Dexter Cattle Association.