Simple and Sublime Hambone Soup

Our meaty adventure this week was Hambone soup. I saw this recipe posted by my friend Shannon from the New York Times. It sounded so simple that I had to try it.Here were my modifications: I didn't have a hambone, so I used a smoked ham hock from Whole Foods. The ham hock (cost about $3) is around the ankle of the pig as I was informed. I really have to say that the folks in the meat department at the Whole Foods in Chapel Hill are my new best friends. Infinitely helpful and friendly, these folks love to talk meat. Just ask for something out of the ordinary and they jump to figure out what will work. Oops! I digress. So here's what a ham hock looks like:
Ok, I skipped the bacon (I know, tragic), but I knew I would get plenty of meaty flavor off the ham hock. Also, I used a crockpot instead of cooking it on the stovetop and put everything in except the kale and cooked it overnight on low. The ham hock pretty much disintegrated all the meaty goodness into the soup. I transferred it to a pot around 4pm and drove it over to my parent's for dinner there. I plopped in the kale and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Done.

One other note: one of my biggest challenges is finding the time to cook real food. I work a lot of nights and weekends and don't really have the time especially during the week to cook. The crockpot has solved all that as I can put the recipe on in the morning and all the work is already done. Love that crockpot for soups, stews and slow cooking meats.

I also whipped up some of my favorite gluten free cornbread and it was the perfect match for the thick and hearty soup. And of course got the thumbs up from Eric and everyone else.
Costs on this meal: $3 for the ham hock, $12 for the veggies/beans from Whole Foods, and $6 for the buttermilk and cornmeal for the cornbread. All told, $21 for a great meal for four and leftovers for all us. This soup is easy and inexpensive and can feed a crowd. Cheers!

Slow Cooked Goat Stew

In the fall of 2009, I made the decision to start eating meat again and the first meat I had was goat. I had talked at length with my friend Suzanne, of Cozi Farm, about what meat to eat, how to prepare it, and how to enjoy it again. She also offered to cook my first meat meal. She braised a goat roast, that had come from one of their own goats on their farm and we shared it over dinner. Braising or slow cooking, makes meat extremely tender and easier to digest. I was a little concerned about having digestive problems. Everyone at the table suggested I only have a little to see how my body did with it. It was wonderful! Flavor and texture and mouth "feel" that was familiar, but better than I ever remembered. I had two helpings. And my body felt really, really good. Like I could have left the table and sprinted home. Before this meal, I had never thought about eating goat.

Goat meat is the most widely consumed meat in the world. It can be tough if cooked at high temperatures and the taste depends on the age of the goat. It's definitely not beefy, but has a similar mouth feel to beef and not as gamey as venison (which I'm hoping to work with soon).

Last week, I purchased some goat stew meat and ground goat from my friend Roland of Walters Unlimited (his beautiful pasture fed goats are pictured above) and found this recipe on FoodNetwork.com for Goat Stew. Although many goat stews are spiced, I decided to keep it simple and try a variation close to a beef/vegetable soup.
And I cooked it all in the crock-pot. As I've learned, I think the crock-pot's greatest value is slow cooking meat. We ate our goat stew in-between football playoff games and everyone agreed it was terrific, but more like a soup than a stew. My mom gave the official thumb's up.
The cost breakdown was about $5 for 1lb. of goat stew meat and $10.50 for the carrots, potatoes, celery and garlic from Whole Foods. I already had the tomato paste and used a can of chopped tomotoes vs. fresh. So, the entire meal was about $20 and fed four people easily with enough leftovers for Eric and I for two nights. I'd really like to try goat stew again, trying a recipe like the goat stew at the Saxapahaw General Store, our local five star restaurant/gas station.

A Veggie's Tale

A little more backstory because I think that why I became a vegetarian in the first place has to fit in somewhere. For most of my life before becoming a vegetarian, I ate mostly chicken, some beef, some pork, but mainly chicken. I'd buy it at the supermarket, getting the best price I could. Never really a thought about where the meat came from. It couldn't really matter that much right?

In 1998, I was working for a company that did phone support for animal pharmaceuticals, mainly those used with large animals in the chicken, pig and cattle industries. This included growth hormones and antibiotics. The more phone calls I dealt with, the more I was realizing how these substances were not only universally used in industrial meat production, which is where most of the meat that America eats comes from, but also misused, overused, etc. The kicker, was being sent out with a sales rep to a factory production hog farm in Eastern North Carolina.

The farm was contracted by the largest hog production company in the US and raised hogs from piglets to slaughter. The pigs were confined in pens in huge warehouses which we toured.
The first thing that hit me was the smell and the second thing that hit me was the smell. I've never smelled anything like that. Worse than anything, and as some of you know, I've smelled a lot of horrendous things most people haven't (including decomposing tissue). This was different, it was like hitting a nauseating brick wall. It was in my throat, in my lungs.

We entered the first building and saw the sows. The sows are kept in a variety of small stalls. They spent the majority of their lives not being able to move freely, never seeing the sun, never feeling grass. The tour only got worse from here.
I don't know how many shades of green I had turned, but one of the employees came up to me and asked if this was the first large production farm I had visited. I told him that I was a bit shocked by it. He said that he had worked at several places before this one, and that it was cleaner here than anywhere else he had been. He also said that if I really wanted to see the worst of the worst, I should visit a chicken facility.

I came home, drank half a bottle of wine, threw out every piece of meat in my house, and vowed to never eat meat again. That smell was in my hair, my clothes and stuck in my throat for days.

My decision to give up meat was set off by the horror of the conditions that the animals existed in and thinking that the meat I was eating every day was coming from facilities just like the one I visited or worse, much worse. But also the knowledge that everything I was eating had been influence by mass amounts of unchecked hormones and antibiotics.

When I decided to start eating meat again, I knew that the meat I was going to eat was going to come from outside of industrial meat production.

The Lymie

So my 13 years of living a vegetarian lifestyle came to a screeching halt due to two main things: getting Lyme Disease and subsequently becoming gluten intolerant. I was first diagnosed with tick borne Lyme Disease in the late summer of 2009, but I probably became infected many months or even years earlier from the bite of a deer tick. I was one of those lucky people that never developed the initial, early symptoms of Lyme. So, the bacteria spread through my body and eventually to my brain. Truth be told, I had been feeling tired, run down, mentally foggy, and generally crappy for a long time, but my then doctor told me to just take a vacation. I came back even more tired. Then she suggested that I was going into menopause. At 37??!! My second doctor discovered the Lyme. My symptoms had progressed to be neurological (memory loss, tingling in my hands and feet), arthritic (swollen, calcified joints in my hands, feet and knees), and other weirdness we won't discuss.

One of the many side effects of Lyme Disease and long term antibiotic treatment is that the body sometimes develops allergies among many other oddities. I started getting horrible stomach cramps when I ate bread, pasta, and especially when I drank beer (horrors!). I soon discovered that I had become gluten intolerant, also called idiopathic gluten sensitivity (IGS) which arises from an "unknown" cause. Some people with gluten intolerance get diagnosed with Coeliac Disease. I was tested for Coeliac, but came back negative. The bottom line was I had to start eating a gluten free diet. Possibly forever. Which meant giving up all bread, pasta, pizza, crackers, pretty much all prepared foods, most restaurant foods, and beer.
Here's the rub: I basically existed on gluten as a vegetarian. If I couldn't eat gluten, what was left?

The answer was meat. I felt so awful, I would have done anything to just feel healthy again. So I made the jump back into being an omnivore. The problem was I hadn't eaten meat for 13 years. I had never even learned how to cook it properly. That was about to change...

What do you do with an Oxtail?

Every Sunday, my husband and I make dinner for my parents. They live about 20 minutes from us and seeing them is a weekly excuse to take the time to cook up a great meal, usually involving great meat. My parents are pretty lucky that they timed their move to our area to coincide with my new meat eating lifestyle. So this week, we're making oxtail.

I purchased an oxtail that last time I visited my farmer friend Roland, at Walters Unlimited in Mebane. Not only had I never eaten oxtail, I've never seen one. An oxtail is actually not from an ox, but the culinary name for the tail of a cow and it weighs about 3 pounds. A cut up oxtail looks like this: Oxtail has often been known as a "garbage cut" used as a depression era staple and it is still quite economical, about $2 a pound. It has many uses from sauces to stews, but slow cooking is the key. I found this recipe from epicurious.com called Oxtail Soup with Red Wine and Root Vegetables. It calls for 3 lbs of oxtail, onions, leeks, parsnips, carrots, garlic and potatoes (purchased at Whole Foods for about $15). You begin by searing the oxtails on all sides for about 20 minutes.
At this point, you'll add beef broth. For convenient soups and stews, I use Better Than Bouillon. A paste that you keep in the fridge that is more economical and better tasting than any boullion cube or canned broth.
So, add broth and red wine and let is simmer about three hours. I found it helpful to slow cook the oxtail the day before and skim the fat off the broth after being in the fridge overnight. Oxtail is definitely fatty and you will need to remove all the meat and discard the bones. Next, chop up all the veggies, cook them about 10 minutes. Add the broth and potatoes and simmer 1/2 hour.
This turned out amazing! Probably one of the best meaty meals I've made. Even my dad was impressed and mentioned that he liked it better than a similar soup his mother used to make. Can't think of a higher complement than that.
Other than slow cooking the day before, quite an easy soup and it is very filling. 1/2 the recipe easily fed four people and we've got leftovers for at least two days. Total cost for this meal was about $21. Additional cost for beef broth. Cheers!

I Eat Meat

I was proud to be a vegetarian for 13 years. I felt like I was doing my small part to save animals, to save the planet and I felt enlightened. Until I got sick. Really sick. Part of getting healthy was a complete 180 degree change in the way I ate, the way I saw food in general, and the way I prepared food. I read the book "Nourishing Traditions", started drinking raw milk, using real butter and banned soy and all soy products.

And I started eating meat. And I started getting better. And I started truly enjoying meat.

This blog is going to be about eating and preparing meat and other nutrient dense foods. And not just any meat. Meat that has been raised locally, humanely, without hormones or antibiotics and with great reverence. I'll detail where the meat comes from and feature some of the local farmers that I know, providing information about their farms, their practices, and how hard they all work to provide food for their families and others. I'll also add in information about how I feed my dogs a species appropriate diet (raw meat).

And lastly, kudos to those living a vegetarian or a vegan. My opinions are by no means disrespecting anyone that chooses that lifestyle. It just didn't work for me.

With all that out of the way, read on....