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3 Simple Ways to Eat Healthier in the New Year

Three Simple Ways to Eat Healthier in the New Year

Now’s the time, right? You’re sick of sweets and ready and motivated to eat better. Don’t get overwhelmed by the elaborate meal plans and complicated recipes one sees “out there” these days. Don’t go crazy trashing everything in your pantry and fridge and leaving the family hungry and tempted to grab a pizza on the way home.

Instead, gently move toward a better way of eating healthy foods regularly. And if you’re anything like me, if you’re going to do something regularly, it has to be pretty simple.

Here are 3 really simple (and delicious!) ways to eat healthier in 2018:

  1. Eat real food for breakfast.
  2. Make bone broth.
  3. Use your crockpot wisely.

Eat Real Food for Breakfast

I wrote last month about a perfect breakfast food: Smoked Ham Steak. I called it this not because there’s nothing “healthier” out there that a person could eat for breakfast, but because sometimes something really tasty but still really good for you, all the while being really easy to incorporate in a fast-paced lifestyle… those criteria are what make a good food great. If “healthy food” requires so much work, planning, and supplemental ingredients  that we end up saving it for when we “have time”… that’s just not sustainable, and we’re going to fall right back into the processed-food rut. Why? Because it’s easier.

But I’m convinced that homemade food doesn’t have to be difficult. I DO think it’s best to approach it with baby-steps, and that’s why I’m writing this article.

So now that the holidays are behind us and the last of the Christmas cookies, candies, and pie are eaten up, we’re all thinking about how much we want to start our new year out making good food choices and instituting new, healthier routines. May I just remind you to be sure that they are doable routines?

Here’s a very doable breakfast item that I would encourage you to incorporate at least once a week. It’s done in less than 10 minutes with no extra ingredients required. And it’s on sale this month, just in time for our January deliveries! Add Ham Steak to the menu!

Make Bone Broth

I can’t tell you how many food bloggers and recipe sites I’ve come across that just make broth too complicated, and they intimidate perfectly capable people out of making this nourishing and delicious food.

There is no “right way” to do broth. But a definite wrong way to do it is not to do it at all! Now you have no reason not too—we’ve got chicken soup bones back in stock, and beef soup bones are on sale for half price this month. Read my Broth Tutorial to learn how very simple and no-nonsense broth-making actually is.

So what do you do with this broth? Well, one really easy way to use it during cold weather, is to make soup! The simplest soup I know of is French Onion Soup. Are you ready for the recipe? It’s a 3-liner: Thinly slice a large yellow onion, then sauté it in a saucepan over medium heat in a few tablespoons of butter or lard. Once the onions are soft and translucent (about 5 minutes), pour in 2-4 cups of prepared homemade beef broth. Add salt and pepper to taste. That’s it! You will not believe how delicious and simple this is. Go for it!

Use Your Crock-pot Wisely

What do I mean by wisely? Well, for one, you’ll need to thaw the meat the night before you set this up, so add that to your evening routine. That’s probably the hardest part of this healthy-eating strategy! But I’ve even been known to cook a partially frozen roast if I forget to take it out the day before.  The texture will be nicer if the meat can be allowed to do a slow thaw, but in a pinch, frozen works, too. For mostly-frozen roasts, just plan for some extra cook time, and add a touch of liquid at the beginning of cooking.

But I think a bigger issue than remembering-to-thaw-the-meat is when people assume that recipes have to be super-elaborate to be tasty. Again, if a mile-long list of ingredients is holding you back from real home cooking, you’re doing something wrong. You don’t need exotic spices to make a good meal. When you use good meats, their flavor is brought out by a good sea salt and appropriate cooking time. That’s all you really need.

My favorite way to make a crockpot roast is to take either a beef chuck roast or a pork shoulder roast and place it at the bottom of the crock. Sprinkle it with salt, then add whatever veggies you like: potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, garlic. You can even mix it up and use rutabaga, turnips, cabbage, peppers, or sauerkraut! If you prefer a soupier roast, add a little homemade broth or water. You could even add beer or wine! I do not usually add any liquid, as the roast will produce plenty of liquid on its own. Fit the lid on snugly, then turn it on low and cook for 6-8 hours.

That’s it!

Don’t add cans of cola or cream-of-chemical soup. You don’t need Italian seasoning mix or meat tenderizer powder (MSG, anyone?). Just let the meat be delicious because of the clean way it was raised.

Recap!

  1. Eat real food for breakfast.
  2. Make bone broth.
  3. Use your crockpot wisely.

I hope these 3 strategies will help you include more real food in the coming year. Happy, Healthy Eating!

–Jerica  

Why Pasture-Raised Meats? No Arsenic

Why Pasture-Raised Meats?

No Arsenic…

Last time, we talked about why we (Matt and Jerica) chose to pursue eating and producing animal products (meats, bones, fats, eggs, etc) because they are more nutrient-dense and digestible than vegetables. For a sick body, every bite counts, and for impaired digestion, those bites have to be highly digestible. Enter Animal Products.

With his ongoing and terrible flare-ups of ulcerative colitis, Matt could not tolerate the fiber and phytochemicals of raw, and even most cooked vegetable foods. So on his sickest days, he would eat homemade broth, white rice cooked with broth, whole milk yogurt, and pastured meats. 

This pork broth was so gelatinous that I could carry it around in my hand!

Did he choose pasture-raised meats because they are humanely raised?

Nope.

Did he choose them because they are good for the environment?

Again, no.

Not saying those things are not good things, but his primary concern at the time was nutrients to heal his body. Matt needed the most nutritious food he could get into his belly. But he also needed to avoid harmful inputs that might contribute to his ailment. Hopefully another time, we’ll get to things to do with the environmental and stewardship issues, because those are certainly important. Hold on to your hat because we’re going to talk about some of the problems with conventional meats for consumers.

The first, and perhaps scariest, issue with conventional meats is the feed additives–the things they feed the animals that you are ultimately going to eat.

Harmful Feed Additives 

This is not an exhaustive discussion of the problems, and today, I’m only going to address one aspect of the feeding practices of one species of farm animal. But you should know that, shockingly, EVERY time I dig deeper into the questionable practices of the conventional food industry, I discover new atrocities. That’s pretty scary considering how much I have already researched, and considering that I have been in “the industry” for over 8 years now!

Chicken with a Side of Arsenic?

The first additive I want to address is plain ol’ poison. Arsenic. Yep. It’s the stuff of fictional murder mysteries, and yet it is a common feed additive in poultry and pork production. Truth really is stranger than fiction! Why would they add poison to our food, you may ask. The answer: It’s mostly for efficiency and cosmetic reasons (read: profits and marketing reasons). It “pinks” up the poultry, which would otherwise have a disturbing grayish hue. It irritates their intestines causing them to eat more and get fatter faster. It also “helps” combat coccidiosis, a disease that can easily overtake a flock of chickens if they are kept in filthy, crowded conditions, and that last condition is the main one publicly cited as to why arsenic is added to our food’s food.

The justification when this began back in the 40’s was that, first, all the arsenic *should* be excreted in the feces [which are subsequently fed to dairy cows… or spread on organic produce fields! One way or another, the stuff never leaves the food system.]. Just in case it isn’t all excreted, it is the organic (as in carbon-based) form of arsenic, which is not nearly as toxic or potent as the inorganic form.

Fast forward 60 years when technology advanced enough to actually measure the arsenic in the birds’ tissues. Surprise! Arsenic was present at a much higher level than originally supposed. But it’s still the “less toxic” organic form, and so supposedly didn’t pose an immediate threat to consumers, so they quietly removed the first form (nitarsone) and replaced it with another (roxarsone). Eventually they “voluntarily recalled” that one, too, and it’s hard to say whether there is still a product widely in use since technically it’s not illegal, and being an organic compound, it’s pretty easy to come up with a new formula.

I won’t go into my concerns over how they actually did the testing to detect the poison in the meat or their justifications for allowing this to go on even after the testing was actually done, but I will say this: It is clear that for 60 years, the FDA allowed this practice to go on with no studies to prove its safety. Once there were studies that did question the safety, hardly any corrective action occurred, and organic arsenic may still be in use under a new name. Things haven’t changed much–if anything, the industry pressure on the FDA to allow all sorts of untested drugs is far worse now. In fact, a consumer petition to ban the use of organic arsenic in poultry feed was denied in 2013, even after the first recall, because the FDA was still trying to decide whether or not arsenic in poultry is dangerous.

It’s up to you to understand where your food comes from and how it is produced. Once upon a time, someone decided arsenic in chicken was safe, and they didn’t feel the need to tell you about it.

Think if you buy “organic,” you’re safe? If you search carefully on the organic poultry standards, it is mysteriously silent on the use of arsenic in livestock production. It is neither allowed nor prohibited. Does that mean they use it? Not necessarily. But it certainly doesn’t mean they don’t.

Broilers are moved daily to new pasture ground.

We control every ingredient in our chicken feed, and there is no arsenic. Our chickens take at least 2 weeks longer to grow than conventional, in addition to the increased labor it takes to move the birds to fresh ground daily. I know it’s a tough price point, paying 3-4 times as much for meat as you could. And I know cooking a whole chicken can be intimidating at first, especially when it’s so easy to grab one of those rotisserie concoctions from the local grocery store. But it’s important that we, as consumers, open our eyes and support the industries worth supporting. Every bite counts, not only for your health, but also for the success of the farms you care about.

Would you pay extra to know there’s no poison in your chicken? Know your farmer.

Three Things I Never Throw Away

I was of a frugal nature before we started farming, and have become all the more so now that we are full-fledged self-employed workers of the land. We count ourselves as highly blessed, despite a tight budget most of the time. We have plenty to eat, sturdy clothes to wear, and a lovely farm to live on and work, so I’m not sure whether it’s the self-employed part or the our-own-farm part that makes me stretch every dollar or that makes me want to use every ounce of food that comes across my table. But the bottom line is that I do. I hate to see food go to waste because we’ve worked so hard to produce it, or in some cases, we’ve gone to great lengths to buy it from some other farmer, or from the best source we can find locally.

So what are three things I never throw away?

This thought process began yesterday at a lunch gathering after our church met for morning worship. We brought a simple meal for our family to eat there “on the grounds”—leftover butternut squash and grilled pork chops. Once finished, I tried to discreetly scoop up all the bones from our plates and hide them away near our things so no one would inadvertently throw them in the trash. “They’re not trash!” my inner crunchy weirdo shouted, so I brought extra plastic wrap with the intention of carrying them back home again. I always do stuff like this. Why?

Because there’s still a lot of good stuff in those bones! Even after we’d picked the bones clean of meat (and our pork chops are worth picking because the meat is soooo good!), I intended to make broth from those bones. And so I thought I’d share a few other things that I never throw away in the kitchen. Here are my top three:

Bones.

Any bone that comes across my table is broth-worthy. It’s like free food, and you’d be surprised how fast a stash of bones will grow into a large enough batch to make some broth. I just keep a plastic grocery sack in the freezer, and into there the bones and bits of veggie trimmings go until it’s full, a handful at a time. Once it’s full, I start another, and when I have two full bags, it’s time to make broth.

Other kinds of things I save for broth: Onion Scraps!

Other kinds of things I save for broth: Onion Scraps!

My favorite thing to save for broth (besides bones) is corn cobs and potato peelings. The flavor they add to the broth is so delicious. So as long as whatever I have isn’t rotting or moldy, it goes into the broth bag. Even after it’s made into broth, all the well-cooked bits then win their place as compost and dog food. The dogs have no problem chomping through the softened bones after I’ve cooked them for 48 hours. They turn their noses up at kibble when they have bones to chew. Every scrap counts!

Grease.

As a kid, you and I were taught clever ways to dispose of the grease that cooks out of hamburger meat, sausage, or bacon, like pouring it into a tinfoil-lined bowl and sticking that in the freezer. And of course, we were taught NEVER to pour it down the drain. Right?

But once I learned about the benefits of pasture-raised meats, my cleverness was diverted to thinking of ways to incorporate that “grease” into our diets! Yes! The fear of the fat clogging the sink should not mislead the eater to thinking that same fat will likewise clog their major blood vessels. Nope. Doesn’t work that way. At least not the right kind of fat. Animal fat. Yep. Read about it. No more fat phobia!

So now I try never to waste any fat. I save it in little containers on the counter for basting the next chicken or for greasing the egg skillet or for frying some potatoes. I even take a little pleasure in the ability to transfer the unique flavor of a particular batch of fat into some new dish. Like bacon flavoring for the chicken I’m roasting. Or onion ring flavoring for the eggs I’m scrambling. Fat is so interesting and so filling. So I never throw it away. Even when I clean out the fryer, that grainy, dark brown gooey stuff just goes to the dogs. They like it salted. Yep. Salted fat dog food. No waste.

Sour milk.

Once upon a not-so-long-ago time, we had milk cows. And it was a lot of work to get out there every morning and evening to milk those cows, on Christmas, on Thanksgiving, on birthdays, rain or shine, at 20 degrees and 110 degrees outside. So the milk became quite precious. And though we now purchase our raw milk from another farm instead of raising it ourselves, it’s still regarded as super-valuable, and you do your best never to waste it.

So when our raw milk gets to be about two weeks old and starts to turn “wonky,” as we call it, I begin to find uses for it other than just drinking. Unlike pasteurized milk, which goes truly gross when it sours, raw milk sours by transforming into buttermilk, so I start using it in pancakes or biscuits. I’ve even had great success using it in gravy and cheese sauces! It is cheese, in some sense, or at least the beginning of many types of cheese. And it will keep in the fridge as “buttermilk” for a month. I’ve used the same gallon of milk for 6 weeks! Talk about shelf life!

Here I am being excited about raw milk.

Here I am being excited about raw milk.

I know, I’m weird. But maybe there’s something to this. We can get a lot of miles out of a little bit of high-quality food by taking care to use every last bit of that food for something in the kitchen. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “But I don’t have grass-fed burger or raw milk. Is it safe to save the bones/fat/sour milk from conventionally raised animals?” Well. The truth is, I don’t know. It begs the question, is the protein portion safe? If the bones and fat from cheap, poorly raised meats aren’t safe and nourishing, why would the protein from those sources be safe and nourishing? But cheap protein is still protein, right? 

That’s a question we all have to deal with. I dealt with it after the last time I ever bought conventional ground beef. I made spaghetti for my coworkers one summer (they were starving bachelor students, and I was newly married with a heart for cooking and a love for nourishing food). At home we used grass-fed ground beef, which was quite expensive, so I decided to go halvsies and do a chub of cheap stuff and a couple packs of premium grass-fed. I’ll never forget the stark contrast in texture of the two meats in the sauce. You could plainly tell the difference, and the store-bought stuff was DISGUSTING. It reminded me of canned Beanie Weanie. I never bought hamburger at the store again.

So I hope this article has given you a few tips to save money so you have more money to put toward the good stuff. Happy eating!

Chicken Backs for Soup

Question: What are chicken backs?

Answer: “Chicken backs” are the core of the chicken that is left after the breast, wings, and legs have been cut away for parts.

Our chicken backs are fairly meaty and are typically used to make broth and to harvest the remaining meat. 2013 is the first year we have been able to offer this cut, and we are excited to share the results with you.

9 Chicken Backs in a 16-quart stock pot, ready for cooking!

9 Chicken Backs in a 16-quart stock pot, ready for cooking!

 

I (Jerica) love making huge batches of broth as opposed to small ones, since it is a time-intensive process, and adding more bones and water simply increases the yield, but not really the work. In this case, I decided to make about a half batch in my 16-quart pot just so I could document what I did easily. I used 3 bags of chicken backs, which have 3 carcasses each, so 9 total. It was about 13 lb of chicken backs, and would have cost me roughly $35 if I had bought them from myself at farmers’ market.

I took the thawed chicken backs overnight and placed them in the pot and covered them with water. I put it on medium-high and brought it to a boil, then reduced the heat to low to keep the broth at a visible simmer.

Stock Cooking

Let ‘dem bones simmer for at least 20 hours, removing the meat from the bones after the first hour. Add a little apple cider vinegar to improve the mineral extraction.

After an hour*, I removed the backs to a platter, let them cool for 20 minutes, and then picked off the meat from under the shoulder blades, along the back and neck, and what remained on the breast.

*The cooking time for meat-on cuts is important. If you cook it more than an hour, the bones will begin to fall apart and the meat will turn tough and stringy. It is best to pick off the meat after an hour of simmering, then return the bones to the pot to continue simmering.

Cooked chicken that used to be trash

The grand finale–cooked chicken meat gathered about an hour into the cooking process. This will be used for soup, tacos, or some other quick meal calling for cooked, boneless chicken.

With moderate thriftiness (aka no, I didn’t get every tiny scrap of meat, but I did try to get most of it), I was able to collect about ½ cup of meat per carcass, or about 1.5 cups per package of 3 backs. I tossed the bones back into the pot, put the meat into the fridge, and kept cooking the bones for another 20 hours or so.

When the time came, I poured the broth through a colander into a large metal bowl (careful—it’s HOT!). I got about 4 quarts of broth which was not terribly golden because I had neither used vegetables nor roasted the backs, which are nice touches but not necessary. I usually use broth in things like rice or as a soup base to which I will add veggies anyway, so I don’t worry about adding the flavor during the broth-making process. It comes later.
I was pretty happy with the yield. The leftover meat is great for tacos, casseroles, BBQ sandwiches, or even to throw into soup that you make with all that broth.

So for $35 and some elbow grease, I got 4 quarts of broth and 4.5 cups of meat. That’s about 2 lb of meat. If we assign a price to that, say $8/lb, that leaves about $19 for the broth, or about $5 per quart. I have no idea what the going rate is for store-bought broth or ground chicken, but I can tell you that this stuff is the best quality you can get. Homemade bone broth is rich in minerals and gelatin (that’s why it gels in the fridge and the commercial stuff doesn’t!). And it is an excellent way to get additional value from parts of your meat that you otherwise might have just thrown in the trash.

In this case, I’d say the chicken backs are wonderful if your primary goal is to get loads of broth plus a little meat if you don’t mind the work. If you want the golden chicken broth color right off the bat, you’ll need to add bouquet to this, such as herbs, carrots, celery, and onion. I usually opt to wait to add the veggies and use them as part of the meal for frugality’s sake, but I frequently add scraps that I have saved in the freezer, such as potato peels, carrot tops, celery leaves, onion roots, etc, in order to improve the flavor, and again, make something out of nothing that is extremely nutritious.

So from chicken backs you get two things: broth AND meat, which is perfect for making chicken tacos. Check out Jerica’s real lard-made flour tortilla recipe here.

Or you can read about how to make homemade broth and soup in more detail.