The new veal is raised humanely, more flavorful, and commanding a premium price for small farmers.
I call that a win. About several years back I switched to many organic products- milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables, meat when I can get it, and I have no tlooked back. Yes, it is more expensive. But there really is no comparison when it comes to the quality and flavor, and there is something to be said about knowing there is not a bunch of crap in your food.
Keith
I love the segment of food culture that is “reverting” back to artisinal methods of preparing food – from raising small flocks of lamb instead of conveyor belt farms (and Thomas Keller’s excellent “French Laundry” cookbook has great anecdotes about his purveyors that are very much in the same vein) to buying locally-bought organic greens to organic eggs (amazingly, eggs are healthier when the hens aren’t fed crap).
On the topic of veal, I’m 30 years old and I’ve had veal maybe 5 times in my whole life (calf liver even less). It’s something I might pick up if I’m buying a bunch of special order meat, but I might have to start trying more recipes with it.
chopper
it’s good to see others catching up. luckily, i live in an area with a good access to local foods, although winter is a little thin for produce.
‘ethical’ veal is for sale in most of the decent shops around here and i live in a liberal area. seems people are coming back to it. i dunno, it’s a bit bland for my tastes.
chopper
oh yeah, try full-on pastured eggs sometime. the orange yolk may throw you, but they’re faaaantastic.
Tsulagi
Jesus, why don’t you just put on a French beret now and change your name to Jean. And you call yourself a Republican? If God hadn’t meant for you to ingest pesticides and synthetic hormones in your food, He wouldn’t have invented them.
Seriously, for the organic meat is probably the major reason why I still go hunting. Some have a problem with that. If you’re a true vegetarian say like a vegan, I’ll respect your argument. Won’t agree, but I’ll respect it.
But if you stop for lunch at a Burger King or lust after a good Philly cheesesteak, don’t even start with me. Hunting is a far more humane way to put meat on the table than what it takes to put it in supermarket coolers.
tBone
Real men eat factory-farmed food with extra crap supplements, you dirty hippy.
chopper
depends on how good a shot you are.
ThymeZone
As we all know, those old methods were the best.
Or, something.
Pb
I had an organic/crap fusion dish recently — that is to say, there’s now a Moosewood line of tv dinners. I figured, for $2 dollars ($4 / “buy one get one free”, that is), I’d try it–and the Moroccan stew was pretty tasty!
jake
Man, this is great news. I stopped eating veal before I was 12 because my dirty hippy teachers told us how it was raised.
I missed it sooo much.
Every so often I’ll see veal on the menu and be tempted. Now I’ll know to look for some indication it is raised under humane conditions. Thanks.
I’ve heard game is a lot healthier for the animal that consumes it. I’m thinking venison will have to catch on in the DC/Metro area in a few years. I say “have to” because if we don’t start eating the deer those suckers will take over.
The Other Steve
I’ve never liked veal. I like pork, I like lamb, and chicken.
We buy a lot of organic, and it is amazing just how much better the food tastes. Milk especially.
I’m glad that it’s coming into style, the old small farms are so much better than the big corporate ones.
chopper
the difference in pastured chicken is especially noticable. lamb as well, but lots of lamb is pastured anyways, i don’t think there’s as much a demand as beef so there aren’t as many feedlots etc.
there’s a farm w/in 60 miles that has allegedly the best pork in the area from an heirloom breed. i don’t eat pork, but i’ve had lamb and eggs from their farm and it’s quite good.
yeah, and grass-fed milk is very noticable. i just have to get the GF to start to like it so we can do a full switch.
chopper
BTW, whatever happened to beer blogging?
RSA
I stopped eating foie gras for similar reasons. Still, yum.
grumpy realist
Be careful with wild game and make sure it’s cooked properly–one problem can be parasites (although if I remember correctly the form of trichonosis found in deer isn’t as dangerous as that found in swine.)
There was one 19th-century polar expedition that did itself in by eating unsufficiently cooked polar bear meat, if I remember correctly. The present consensus is they fell victim to trichonosis.
curtadams
I think the biggest problem with improperly prepared polar bear is that even a fairly small amount of liver carries a lethal dose of vitamin A. According to Wikipedia, 30 to ninety grams (1 to 4 ounces) is lethal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinol That said, they do pack a lot of parasites from the seals they eat.
Ross
I’m lucky enough to be able to get raw milk locally. (unpasteurized, unhomogenized.) It’s delicious. Only downside is that it doesn’t last 3 weeks like the “normal” stuff.
Sri Ramkrishna
Ross:
I would love to be able to get milk that way. In India, milk is just so yummy and creamy everything just tastes so good. I think they do some pasteurizations, but they don’t do homogenized. Nevertheless, I don’t mind just boiling the milk myself and consuming it that way if I can get the same creamy taste.
I’ve switched to using organic foods as well. I’ve also started trying to use as ‘green’ products as possible like using bamboo for flooring or natural fibers for carpet. One trip to the city dump really got me thinking what all I’m burying into the ground. Everytime I throw something away now I’m thinking what is getting buried. Bleah.
sri
Walker
As someone who lives in Ithaca, the Moosewood is one of the more disappointing places to eat. The restaurant is a coop, and so you are highly likely to get a newbie as your chef one evening. You are much better off cooking their recipes yourself.
jnfr
I think it’s possible to want animals treated humanely in life and death, and still insist on modern standards of cleanliness in how the meat is processed. It’s the best of both worlds.
Grrr
Organic foods make little Archer Daniels Midland Baby Jesus cry.
The Other Steve
My family grew up on farms. My father’s family raised chickens and dairy cattle and a few hogs. My mother’s family raised black angus, hogs and a few chickens.
When I was growing up, we’d get meat from the family. Usually they’d butcher their best hog or cow and then divide it up. I recall my uncle once butchering a hog out on in the corn crib. I just remember it hanging up to drain.
These were small family farms. Times have changed. My father’s family sold their farm a few years back. My mother’s family, they inherited it after my grandfather passed. My uncle still farms the land, but he no longer raises hogs. There is no money in it. There is no longer an open commodity market for hogs, everything today is bought on contract by the meat packers.
There are a lot of misperceptions about farming. Truth is, the animals raised today on the big factory farms are probably in a cleaner environment. But they’re holed up in cages and barns, not running around in the yard.
The problem is density.
Two big things I’ve noticed. First is what to do with all the shit. There’s too much in one place for the earth to process.
The second, and this is horrible… Many of the cattle raised up say Iowa and north are from Scotland and other northern climates. Black Angus and such. When we have a heatwave, they suffer. In a small family farm, there are usually enough trees and sheds to provide shade. Not on the factory farms. They try to hose them down with water, but they usually lose a lot of cattle due to the heat.
Same with turkeys and such. Farm buildings aren’t air conditioned.
Ohwell. Times they are a changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
The Other Steve
Oh, and BTW… You haven’t had fresh milk, until you’ve had it warm. My grandfather used to bring a pitcher in for breakfast, after having milked the cows in the morning.
That was something.
I hear stories now that some people are keeping chickens in their backyards just for the fresh eggs. Not a bad idea, I guess. I’d have to get used to scrambled eggs for dinner every morning. I think I could do it.
Punchy
Please…PLEASE tell me that “yum” is pure snark. Otherwise….wow. Just wow.
srv
John, man, get with the times.
As we all know, under this administration, all good things must come to an end. The FDA is working on new regulations on organic coops.
This may mean each member of a coop has to certify individually, and not the coop as a whole. So you can kiss all those organic coops buh-bye.
Not that there aren’t problems with coops, but do you really think ADM, Cargill, et al, are just going to sit around and let you Volvo driving moonbats sip your organic latte without getting a cut of it?
Grrr
Yeah, really, enough of that socialist crap. From now on, its sink or swim – rugged individual faith based organic farming.
Frank
Whats up with you people? Do you think you’re too good to drink pus?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Iraqis have always eaten organic foods. Therefore, not only has their nation shown remarkable progress in embracing freedom, but in terms of lifestyle and cuisine they’ve actually been ahead of us all this time. Take that, moonbats!
DougJ
First the organic fruits, then the Hola whatever the fuck it is sherbets…where does it end? If you don’t eat antibiotic laden, growth hormone contaminated crap, the terrorists win. Organic foods make you weak. Just look at the Democratic party if you don’t believe me.
Sine.Qua.Non
Including genetic insect materials, hormones and who knows what else. Cripes, McDonalds even sugars their damned french fries.
There are a lot of products out there claiming to be organic that are not. So stick with a reputable market or find a grower/small farmer around your area or join a coop.
I’m gonna tie you in the dungeon Dougie and force feed you organics for a year.
Sine.Qua.Non
BTW-It’s good to see you are all just as snarky and sarcastic as ever. I’ve missed it.
Keith
I’ve heard that, like veal, fois gras can be made humanely. Instead of force-feeding the ducks/geese their feed via a funnel, the food is placed at one end of the pen while the water is placed at the other. The animal gets parched eating & goes for water, which makes it hungry again, at which point it overeats. Basically, unwitting exercise is used to impel the duck/goose to choose to overeat.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Or the Iraqis. Saddam made sure they never got to eat anything else.
chopper
just like the current administration to try to ruin it for the rest of us just to please a few bigwig friends…
chopper
Krusty: About the Ribwich: there aren’t gonna be any more. The animal we made them from is now extinct.
Homer: The pig?
Otto: The cow?
Krusty: You’re waaay off. Think smaller. Think more legs.
Punchy
Yeah, THATS humane. Why not just order two livers instead of needing one completely hypertrophied, enlarged, engorged, incredibly poisoned (metabolites) liver made huge by artificially forcing the animal to eat WAY more than nature intended?
I give props to Mayor Daley.
Krista
The regulation is the tricky thing — because organic foods have become popular, you see a lot of people slapping the “organic” label on their foods, and I really wonder how much testing had to be done for them to earn that label.
On the topic of pasteurization, I can definitely see the point of it, but exceptions should be made. There’s a Dutch guy around here who made THE most incredible cheese from unpasteurized milk, and the government kept getting on his ass about it. So…the cheese is still pretty decent, but it’s nowhere near as good. I think it would have been better for the government to make him put a label on his cheese stating that it was made from unpasteurized milk, and let the consumer decide.
Krista
Oh, and free-range poultry is awesome. We had a turkey last week, and it was just phenomenal. I do grow my own veggies, but I don’t think I could raise my own chickens or pigs and then kill them. I know, it’s hypocritical, because I do love pork and poultry. But I know I’d start naming them and getting attached to them or some such thing.
Mary
I’ve just started buying meat and poultry from the local organic butcher instead of the corner Dominion, and there is a definite difference in quality. If I can get meat with much less crap in it, from an animal that had a reasonably decent life and a quick and humane death, then it’s worth paying more.
I’m eating less meat, anyway. My shopping list includes more beans, more nuts, some omega-3 eggs from cage-free chickens (I know that “free range” chicken is a myth), more fish, and meat as a treat or a condiment. Last week I made up a large pot of pasta sauce that used maybe 8 ounces of lean ground beef and loads of veggies along with the tomato sauce. I’ve had it for lunch every day, getting just a small hit of beef with each serving. I don’t know if I could handle a classic meat-dense Bolognese sauce now.
Mary
Not to pick on Krista, who rocks, but what is commonly called “free-range” chicken is usually chicken allowed to roam around a barn instead of being crammed into cages. There are doors in the barn that allow the chickens to go outside if they want, but they generally don’t.
That said, there may well be some local farms, especially in Nova Scotia, where the poultry really is allowed to roam free. Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” describes some awesome, creative and humane organic farming approaches.
RSA
I won’t defend my taste buds; they are totally amoral. My behavior, on the other hand, I can do something about.
DougJ
I’ve got a good foie gras quote for you from an old Herb Caen column in the San Fran Chroncile. He visited a foie gras farm and said something to the farmer about the forced feedings and whether the geese liked it or not. The farmer said “They’re like women: at first, they hate it, then they get to like it, and pretty soon they’re begging for it.”
I imagine it sounds even better in French.
AkaDad
I think the French bashing should stop.
French-Americans exude and represent the patriotic values that make America great, which is why our Government was compelled to classify us as Freedom-Americans.
Tulkinghorn
Krista is referring to Canadian chickens… they prefer not to go outside into the arctic weather. Plus, once the keg is tapped and le hockey is on le tv, those chickens aren’t going anywhere.
Krista
Piss off, Tulkinghorn.
First of all, thanks for the “rocks” bit. :)
And yeah, I’ve heard of the “free-range” chicken and how to get that label, they only have to be outside for 5 minutes a day. The free-range chicken and turkey I was referring to, however, is from a local farm. I drive past it every day to work, and see those little buggers outside all the time. He’s got them in a large, moveable fenced-in area w/ a roof (so that they don’t take off), and moves the fence to a different area every day so that they have fresh grass and bugs to eat. The difference in flavour is astonishing.
Judy
Now that we now longer have a FDA that inspects food
AkaDad
I will verbally abuse anyone who doesn’t share that sentiment. =]
Randy Paul
Grass-fed free-range beef like the kind you get in Argentina and Brazil is reported to have about as much cholesterol as chicken. It’s certainly leaner and tastes better.
Mary
Ah, Krista, I wondered if you were lucky enough to get the real thing. Pollan describes a very similar outfit in his book, but here in Toronto, most “free-range” chicken available to us — ain’t.
Additional source of bad karma: I live in the northern fringes of the Junction in Toronto, where we have quite the collection of chicken and pork slaughterhouses. I see way too many big red trucks stuffed with sad little sacks of feathers every day.
Krista
Wow, you guys. I don’t know what I did to deserve all this love today, but it’s awfully sweet of you.
AkaDad
Oh wait. I just remembered, you’re a Canadian…:D
/snark on steroids
RSA
Cutting out the middleman would also result in an astonishing difference in flavor :-).
grumpy realist
That was one good thing about living in Nebraska–very easy to get my hands on buffalo.
Oh, and anyone living in Ithaca (I grew up there) , how many have seen the pheasants running around the pheasant farm with their little purple goggles on? (Large pheasant farm used to exist near Turkey Hill Rd, on the way to Varna). Dunno if it’s still there.
(Pheasants are very territorial and the blinders were the solution to keep them from pecking each other to death.)
demimondian
Regrettably, John, the “flavor” of the veal is a flaw. True milk-fed veal is supposed to be bland and textureless, and the only way to effect that is to deny the animal exercise. Period.
There’s almost nothing I won’t eat, although I confess to not eating either veal or foie gras. Although, like RSA says…yum. Foie gras is pure luscious joy.
Punchy
I love it. There’s so much flavour in Canadian chickens that they need an extra letter to describe it. He he he.
The Other Steve
free-range simply means they aren’t trapped in a one foot by one foot cage all day long.
That’s how my grandparents raised chickens. You call it free-range, I call it the way God intended it to be.
Jess
I remember when I went from a meat-heavy diet to a meat-free one more-or-less overnight–my system completely freaked out from the sudden lack of synthetic hormones. Very scary lesson on the effect of those hormones on the human body…
I occasionally eat small amounts of meat or fish now, organic when I can, but whenever I’m reminded about the horrible effects of the livestock industry on our health, the environment, the slaughterhouse workers, and of course the animals themselves, I swear off it entirely for awhile. But some dishes are just sooo good with meat, and the tofu fake-meat just doesn’t cut it.
Anybody read Fast-Food Nation? Interesting book. I tried to watch the movie, but it was excruciatingly boring despite being so philosophically worthy.
Rome Again
But the Purdue family would have such a hard time rounding them up, they wouldn’t be able to spend time at the oceanside condo in Ocean City, Maryland with seven hot blonds and a limo to take you anywhere you wanted to go. [ True story, back when I was a teen, Frank Purdue, Sr. (dead now) had a condo right next door to us. We saw him escorting the ladies frequently.]
Rusty Shackleford
Actually, what do you think the main source of fertilizer is?
You’re 8x more likely to get food poisoning from organic food than your are non-organic.
chopper
that’s because idiots think ‘organic’ means ‘you don’t have to wash it’.
demimondian
Well, actually, washing the tainted spinach wouldn’t have helped much, since it had already been washed prior to shipment.
Washing the dirt and muck off of an organic vegetable is only effective if you use clean water. If you use tainted water, you leave behind tainted food which is far harder to clean. As a result, for my part, I’d prefer to get a vegetable which is caked in dirt, because then many of the bacteria on the surface are carried away when I scrub the veggie. (CSA’s rock, by the way…at least, if you like lettuce. Fortunately for me, the FDDD and the demi-offspring do, so my own distaste for it doesn’t matter.)
chopper
i don’t care if it’s been prewashed, i always wash it anyways prior to use.
CSAs are okay, but you sure get sick of nothing but squash and lettuce in the winter. but it’s pretty cool to support local farms.
crack
Did you read the part where demi mentioned washing it would have been ineffective?
You may have less metaphorical crap in your organic food, but you’ll get more actual crap on your organic food.
Punchy
People still wash veggies? After the Alar scare, aren’t all/most veggies and fruits prewashed?
Besides, what the hell do I have this kick-ass immune system for if I don’t ever use it? Would you keep your Ferrari in the garage its whole life? Why do I need to park my IgGs on my B-cells for eternity? B-cells want something to do, ya know.
RSA
I wish I could get my vegetables specially shipped from India, where they’d be washed in the Ganges. Veggie washing plus the maintenance of one’s immune system plus the spiritual benefit.
Dreggas
Growing up we used to raise pigs. Kept them in a clean pen with plenty of hay and fed them a diet of corn, period. Made for some of the best pork ever. Same thing with raising chickens for the eggs, never had better eggs than those. My cousins had a dairy farm where they raised their own chicken, beef, and pork as well as having fresh milk, oh and it was a maple sugar farm too. Nothing like sitting their with them having a glass of fresh, fresh milk and some crackers with fresh maple butter on them.
I’ve actually been looking into going organic myself. The taste of everything was always better. If you think there’s no difference, go buy rainbow trout that were farm raised in a store, then go catch some native rainbows and tell me there’s no difference. Nastiest thing I ever ate was a farm raised rainbow trout.
demimondian
If you buy them in the store, yes. (Consumers don’t like dirt on their veggies, I guess.) If you buy them from a farm, though, no.
Either way, though, wash ’em again — a major source of home food poisoning is now actually poorly handled vegetables.
chopper
mee-ow. yes, i read it. but that spinach came from a large supplier, and i don’t exactly trust the big vegetable baggers (or really anyone) to do a great job prewashing anything. that’s why i always wash it again, because for all i know they misted it with water once or twice and stamped the bag ‘pre-washed’. spinach is notorious for being dirty, you have to really wash the hell out of it.
Dave
Isn’t Organic to Conservative as Volvo or Latte to Conservative? hehe
I’ve actually skipped organic and buy as local as possible. Luckily where I live that’s relatively easy. It’s cheaper than organic (and usually the regular crap at the local supermarket) tastes better and lasts longer.
Bubblegum Tate
I’m the same way. I used to not really care, but a number of things (including reading Fast Food Nation and, well, trying some proper organic meats) have put me pretty much completely off that path. Nowadays, I buy from the local butcher shop and/or insist on Niman Ranch meats. It makes a huge difference in a lot of ways.
Devon Cole
J.G. Come on! There is NOTHING humane about veal. Give me a break. What’s next- more humanly produced foie gras- they only SLAUGHTER geese that are compulsive overeaters?