lady butcher vs. soy protein

alternate title: keep soy out of my meat!

you can get adequate nutrition while on a vegetarian diet by eating the right combinations of grains, legumes, and dairy products, which is why i had to revert back to my carnivorous ways when i began developing and discoving my food allergies. my conclusion is that fermented soy (tempeh, miso, etc.) on occasion isn't a bad addition to any diet, but a diet dependant on soy for protein is not ideal-- especially for women and children. if you are choosing vegetarianism, please don't be lazy about it. all of the processed, packaged vegetarian food options may look like a fun and easy way to eliminate meat from your diet and be "healthier," but think about these things--

• soy has one of the highest amounts of pesticides of any food we eat
• over 90% of soy is genetically modified
• soy may speed up the aging of brain cells
• increased soy consumption disrupts hormone balance, often disrupting women's menstrual cycles*
• babies on soy formula receive the estrogenic equivalent of at least 5 birth control pills per day
• soy has been linked to countless thyroid problems such as hypothyroidism in women, and in asian countries that eat large amounts of soy, rates of thyroid cancer are staggering
• soy is the primary ingredient in many processed foods
• and, since the government started subsidising soy farming in 1998 (nearly 70% of soy profits are from the government), soy production has raised 25%, resulting in soy being crammed in everything from hamburgers to bread

(sources: www.cnn.com, www.westonaprice.org/soy/birthcontrolbabies.html)

*refers to unfermented soy products

and for people like myself with allergies, it is quite bothersome that soy has found its way into the american diet just like corn has-- as an additive to nearly every processed food product, even many meats! in fact, there have been several reported allergy-related deaths linked to soy in unsuspecting meat products. so, think about that next time you order your late-night 2 for $1 tacos...

*not vegetarian as sometimes speculated, soy is actually the third ingredient in a j-box taco, behind beef and water.

so, do your research. here are a couple of places to start.
is soy healthy?
the whole soy story

this week's cut:

elk!



and here's a link to a elk-butchering diagram- well, technically this is goes for any large game meat, which i think i'm on a kick with... maybe it is leading me to taking up a new hobby? we'll see about that.

i think that hunting has been completely misrepresented, perhaps because of hunting purely for sport or perhaps just for meat. the Native American outlook is something to be admired (in my opinion, at least), which is almost reverent. the animals are respected and every part of them used - protein for food, bone for implements, sinew for cordage, fur, feathers, rawhide and leather for clothing... this might be politically incorrect, but i don't understand holding an objection to wearing fur or leather or to hunting (for food, not for sport) but eating meat or being vegetarian/vegan but still wearing fur or leather. to be a good steward of our "resources," shouldn't we be willing to use all parts of an animal? (e.g. last week's buffalo diagram!) i would also like to think that if i am willing to eat meat and wear leather/fur, i would be willing, even just once in my life, to see the process all the way through, from hunting the animal to seeing it on the table. this may not be for everyone and i know i have to accept that, but i think it would be a very rewarding experience. i guess i am still working through my thoughts on this.

just from a health standpoint, i'm pretty fascinated by what i'm learning about the nutrition of eating meat from animals who live in their more "natural" states. i wonder if meats like buffalo and elk would still be lean if they were factory farmed? and are they leaner than beef and chicken in general, or only than meat from factory farmed cows and chickens? i was quite surprised to look at a package of elk from broad leaf game and find that it only had 120 calories and 0 grams of fat! don't get me wrong, i'm defiantely for having some fat in my foods- gosh, i could eat piles of bacon- but it seems so bizarre that there would be that much of a discrepency between tasty game meat and, say, ground beef.



and if you are so inclined, check out these websites:
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (click on the carnivore's kitchen link!)
Wild Eats

recession-proof your meats

a relevent discussion for today may be how to maintain a realistic food budget and still eat good-quality products... here's my eating/cooking/shopping tips of the moment:

eat in! why go out for a steak dinner when you can make a great one at home? even if you buy the best cuts of meat you can find, i guarantee it will be cheaper than paying for a mid-quality restaurant steak. steak cooking is so easy with just a few tools. i usually just marinate it for a few hours in red wine (or 100% cranberry or cherry juice), olive oil, garlic and onions, then sear it in my fabulous cast iron skillet while the oven preheats to 400ish, transfer to a baking dish and cook until the internal temperature reaches about 135 on your trusty meat thermometer for medium rare. while your steak is in the oven, reduce your marinade juices with the meat juices in the skillet for a tasty sauce. don't forget to let your meat rest before slicing! you'll have a perfect steak every time with almost no effort. (and look here! slashfood finally confirms that my dad did teach me the best way to season cast iron.)

stock up on stocks! not the store-bought ones- make your own. much cheaper if you do it frequently, and so much tastier! i buy cheap hunks of meat and boil them to death with onions, garlic, lemon, and whatever fresh herbs i have around. then, i freeze the stock in small containers and use it in soups for weeks-- and you also have lots of low-fat cooked meat to shread on salads or fill sandwiches for days! my favorites are the turkey thighs from whole foods-- huge hunks or organic turkey for less than $3 a pound (or 99-cents a pound if the butcher mischarges you like he did me this week)= yummy food for days. one more plug for whole foods: they also sell additive-free bacon. no nitrates for this lady!

don't disregard "big box" or discount stores completely! costco's meat sells for about a third of the price of grocery store meat- and often is higher in quality. not for the faint of heart- unless you're feeding multitudes of people or shop with meat-loving friends- dividing and freezing that ten-pound pork loin will be necessary. fresh and easy also has decent meats for cheap if you have one in your area-- just make sure to read the labels carefully. their sell-by dates can be tricky, and not all of their meats are happy.

simply eat smaller portions of meat! in meal prep, i try to fill half of our plates with fresh fruits and veggies and cheap, healthy staples like brown rice or sweet potatoes. then, we can be satisfied with little bits of the good stuff without breaking the budget. remember, meat portions need only be about four ounces, or the size of your palm or a deck of cards.

that's all for now! happy (cheap) eating!

therapy: a backstory.

i always thought it was a scam; some sort of excuse for being picky or weak or just plain scared. i still don't have it figured out, but i guess that's why i'm working through it now.

when i was young, i ate whatever i wanted. i will clarify-- i ate whatever my parents made. they made everything from scratch and shopped at co-ops and farmers' markets-- not exclusively, but often. my dad ran the sound system for ethnic festivals at hart plaza in detroit when i was young and at the end of the festivals, vendors would toss cases of food. my wonderfully resourceful dad saw it as a great opportunity and would bring home ethiopian food, indian, thai and greek before it was available on every corner, enough to feed an army! some of my most vivid childhood memories were grudgingly eating curried eggs behind the door in the corner of the living room... and the day my dad came home with a case of brussel sprouts and turned them into soup. vats of the lumpy green stuff seemed to fill the freezer for months. i can still taste it! i was made fun of for my pesto pizza in elementry school, a result of a case of wilting basil and several smoking blenders.

so how did i get here? eating an organic banana and brown rice cake (ingredients: brown rice, salt. gluten- and wheat-free.) and looking forward to my plain buffalo burger i'm planning for lunch? i decided to stop eating meat my junior year of college while studying abroad in ireland. it was my first time living on my own and since i didn't eat much meat and honestly, raw chicken is just icky, i thought, why not? i'll cut out meat for a while and see how i feel. i knew how to make complete proteins with whole grains, beans, and dairy. i grew up eating tofu, drinking chai with soy milk. i woundn't live off of pasta and potato chips or fake vegetarian bacon, i would be healthy. i looked into the big brown eyes of the cow that lived across the street and promised it i would not eat it or its family members anymore. and so it went, for six years.

i don't know what to blame it on-- overconsumption of processed soy products and nuts, stress, not enough variety in my diet (hey, i was single and making $11/hour!), or simply a cycle my body went through, but two years ago, i just started rejecting all sorts of foods. i began to cough to the point of choking after meals; my breathing was strained and my throat tight. then one night, after a dinner of almonds, cashews, cheese, and dried papaya, my body had had enough. my stomach wretched and throat tightened. i took a handful of benedryl and had my roommate drive me to urgent care. but having no medical insurance,we just sat in the waiting room for a couple of hours, finally deciding that if i didn't get worse, i would just pay $90 to go to a clinic in the morning instead of $500 for the emergency room.

after that, i stopped eating nuts, but the mild-to-moderate symptoms didn't subside. most days, i would cough, feel my throat tightening, my tongue buzzing, aching, and going numb. i thought i was going crazy. i didn't want to be alone. i remember one night my roommate and my boyfriend were both out of town, so i drove to a 24-hour store at midnight and wandered around for hours because i wanted someone to find me if i keeled over.

a few months later, my boyfriend fudged some paperwork and added me to his health insurance so i could have allergy testing. at the point of my first appointment, i had lost about fifteen pounds and was completely confused. my doctor wanted to put me on anxiety medication, but that seemed wrong. he did a blood test and called me at 7am the next day. "well, it looks like you have some allergies," he said. then he proceeded to list off nuts, peanuts, beans (yes, that means coffee! chocolate! vanilla!), wheat, soy, corn, oats, eggs, trees, flowers.. you know, food! air! life! "you had asthma as a child, right?" he asked. no! i didn't!!! then he hung up.

i immediately made an appointment with an allergist for more extensive testing and for the next few weeks, at spinach, tomatoes and cheese. the prick test from the allergist confirmed everything that my first doctor found, and that i also should stay away from pineapple, grapefruit, and spinach! now, i was really at a loss. i immediately started eating meat again, starting with chicken and beef broth and slowly adding more, but my weight kept falling. i went to my regular doctor every week for the next month, but he was unconcerned as he watched my weight drop to 114 (i'm five-foot-eight) and told me that i could survive on cheese. my throat was feeling a bit better, but i barely had the energy to get out of bed! i saw ear, nose, and throat specialists and the allergist a few more times, but the solution seemed to be to take a daily allergy pill, carry and epi-pen, and avoid what bothered me.

at that time, eating meat again was not a choice, it was a matter of survival. but in the following months, i started to question my relationship with food. maybe vegetarianism wasn't as healthy as i had thought. maybe i didn't enter into it for the right reasons (laziness? fear of cooking it improperly and getting sick? sadness for cows?). all i knew was that if i ate even a few bites of meat, i immediately felt strong and healthy. what i was questioning was the quality of the meats available to the average american. lunch meat was not an option. everything had fillers that i was avoiding-- various starches, corn syrup, etc. products containing nitrates just seemed wrong. i never wanted to be in a bag about food, but i became an obsessive label-reader and never ate out. it has taken a long time for me to enjoy food again, and i'm finding new excitement in bacon, lamb, really good steaks, and pots of soup with homemade stocks, vegetables, and rice. maybe these are the foods i should have been eating in the first place!

needless to say, i love food. i love cooking and baking and i want my food to be the best. i need you to tell me my cookies are better than the rest, to ask me for my recipes so i can tilt my head and say "hmm..? i just.. made it," with faux modesty. but i've always known that the secret to good food is good ingredients. margerine, processed white sugar, and imitation vanilla will not make good cookies. i cook for others all of the time, even though i can't eat much of what i make. it isn't accurate for me to think that i'd be entering into the butchering world as a masochist-- just the opposite, really. i want to provide people with healthy, happy meats, foods that i can have a hand in preparing and consume myself! i wouldn't be a trustworthy baker if i'd never tasted my breads, i'd be a mediocre dessert chef without sampling my pies! but i can learn how good meat looks, feels, and smells, how the animals are raised and slaughtered, the best way to butcher the meat, and innovative methods of preparation-- and i can participate in the feast that results! perhaps the best way to take care of animals is to feed them well, let them roam free, and then responsibly use them for meat.

i know my story is not unique, but perhaps it provides an unexpected backstory to my inspiration. i will try not to be so long winded and humorless in the future.

the hip and healthy butchers!

while looking for a good wine pairing chart, i came across this site.
http://www.thehealthybutcher.com/
i really love what they're doing.. and in canada! those canadians, you never know what they're up to! i was pleasantly surprised and inspired to see that it is run by a young, hip-looking group of people with a really great mission-- to be an old-fashioned butcher shop providing their customers with with fresh, local, organic meats. what more could you want? butchering and cooking classes, did you say? weekly newsletters with recipes? they do that, too.

oh, the wine chart.
http://www.thehealthybutcher.com/livetoeat/volume11/TheHealthyButcher-WinePairingGuide.pdf

and also, my recommended reading for the week:


here's the blurb from the inside cover:
"For all of history, minus the last thirty years, fat has been at the center of human diets and cultures. When scientists theorized a link between saturated fat and heart disease, industry, media, and government joined forces to label fat a greasy killer, best avoided. But according to Jennifer McLagan, not only is fat phobia overwrought, it also hasn't benefited us in any way. Instead it has driven us into the arms of trans fats and refined carbohydrated, and fostered punitive, dreary attitudes toward food-- that wellspring of life and pleasure.
In Fat, McLagan sets out with equal parts passion, scholarship, and appetite to win us back to a healthy relationship with animal fats. She starts by defusing fat's bad rap, both reminding us of what we already know-- that fat is fundamental to the flavor of our food-- and enlightening us with the many ways fat (yes, even animal fat) is indespensable to our health.
Mostly, though, Fat is about pleasures, the satisfactions of handling good ingredients skillfully, learning the cultural associations of these primal foodstuffs, recollecting and creating personal memories of beloved dishes, and gratifying the palate and the soul with fat's irreplacable savor..."
(image and text courtesy of http://www.amazon.com/)

i know what i'll be using my next border's coupon on!