You may know Temma as the lady who writes all of the emails, and greets you during delivery day. She also happens to be a pretty amazing painter and her latest show opens next week. The opening is on Saturday April 27th, 3-6pm – if you attend you can meet the whole family as we celebrate her latest works. Temma’s recent paintings focus on scenes of life on the farm, from family portraits, still lifes, landscapes and lively barnyard portraits of our farm animals. You are also free to see the show during normal gallery hours, 11-6 Tuesday to Saturday from April 23rd till May 18th at the Bowery Gallery (530 West 25th st, 4th floor New York, NY 10011).

I may be biased – but I wouldn’t miss it.

Melkorka Kjarval

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Fascinating. I have a theory. that the digestive system is different in the sexes, that men need differnet food than women, having to do with that the paleo male did the hunting and needed higher energy food. That human males  maybe have a different digestion to be able to deliver energy bursts. I know my father, his father and now me, had digestive problems. My digestive problems were getting worse when my daughter suggested I suffered from gluten intolerance  At that time, I learned about the paleo diet from her and the reasoning behind it. We began to provide meat to the http://www.meetup.com/meatshare/ and I thought, why not try their diet, logical.

To make a long story longer, now for two years  I have been experimented with my diet. My conclusion that the paleo people are on to something and that my health has changed dramatically for the better in these two years.

First, I have burned of all my excess weight, to a point that when I meet somebody I havn´t seen a while, their first uttering is “you have lost weight“. Early this month I went for my annual doctor’s inspection and passed. I had lost almost 10 pounds from last year, think 7 pounds the year before. Blood pressure fine (high blood pressure runs in my family, killed my other grandfather). The only thing, that five years ago I had colonoscopy and they found a polyp, the doctor wanted it checked again. Today I am convinced (no proof of course), that the polyp had  something to do with my diet, logical right?

Today my diet is quite simple. I strictly eat our own meat, believing  the omega 3 ratio in our meat is important. In the morning I have three eggs, store bought is we don´t have our own, half a pound of ground pork fried and two slices of non gluten bread with pork fat and raw honey. Sometimes I have something in middle of the day sometime not, the breakfast is so filling I don’t get hungry all day. Now that we raise our own chicken ,  Temma makes soup with chicken giblets etc, all our own, Maybe a cold cut of meat from the night before, maybe she makes us a hamburger, all strictly our meat.

For dinner our meat. Temma makes rice, greens, potatoes or sweet-potatoes but I try to eat as little as possible of it, find it upsetting my digestion  but still experimenting. I don’t eat any milk products, but sometimes on Sundays, when we have tea in afternoon, I have blue cheese on non gluten crackers. No cakes no sweets but mid-morning we have coffee and I have raisins, dades,  dried pineapple, prunesand maybe a piece of chocolate. For dinner a glass of red vine. This is about it, if I said 94% of my diet was our own meat I am not far off. Lot of fat  form our own animals in my diet, I deliberately go after it.

So as You see I am a walking medical experiment (62 years old), will keep you informed. I take no medications and no vitamins, getting concerned about where they are made, one reason I don’t like feeding supplements to my livestock, who know s where they come from or what is actually in them, industrial waste maybe??

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My last recipe was a roasted fresh ham with cracklings.  In hindsight maybe a roasted pork recipe during an unprecedented heat wave might seem bizarre but in the summer, we aren’t inside much. There is so much to do outside, so it’s not that uncommon for us to slow roast something, giving us time to work on other things. Here, instead of a slow braise I used the pressure cooker to minimize my time in the kitchen and it turned out fabulous! Ever since reading about Marc’s of No Recipes beef rendang I have been wanting to use his technique.  It looks so incredible, but the idea of braising something for 4 hours in the summer didn’t quite work, hence the pressure cooker. It came out perfectly, and because we hadn’t had beef in so long, it was absolutely delicious.

I used our bull stew meat in this dish, but you could use chuck, boneless short ribs, or shank here. Our bull meat is lean and most rendang recipes call for fatty cuts but it turned out wonderfully! I also didn’t have access to many Thai ingredients, and I am on a budget so I used extra ginger for the galangal and lemon juice for the lemon grass.

Brown the beef in batches so that you get a real sear going

My small food processor isn’t working properly so my paste wasn’t very paste-like (but it still tasted amazing and looked pretty good too!)

All the ingredients in the pressure cooker before I pressured it. Is that how you say it?

After it had been pressure cooked.

I placed it in a skillet, brought it to a boil lowered the temperature to low and simmered it for 30 minutes.

This is fifteen minutes in at a very, very low heat. It’s starting to thicken.

After thirty minutes. The liquid is all gone and the spicy paste clings to the tender meat.

Pressure Cooked Grassfed Beef Rendang

Inspired by No Recipes Beef Rendang

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds beef cut up into 1 inch cubes

• For the paste:

• half a red onion (you can also use 1/2 cup shallots)
• 6 cloves garlic
• 3 -1 inch pieces of ginger (this is a lot of ginger)
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon coriander powder
• 2-3 tablespoons red chili flakes ( I used 2 tablespoons)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• zest of half a lemon

For the braise (in the pressure cooker)

• juice of one lemon
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 cinnamon bark
• 6 cloves
• 4 cardamon pods
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup

Special equipment:

12 inch skillet

pressure cooker

Preparation:

1. In a large 12 inch skillet add olive oil and brown the meat in batches. You want to get a nice brown color.
2. Set aside (I placed it in the pressure cooker)
3. Process the paste ingredients in a food processor
4. Add to skillet and simmer at a low heat for about 10-15 minutes(you might need to add some more olive oil), until the paste is thick but not burned
5. Add cooked paste, coconut milk, and spices to the pressure cooker and cook under high pressure for 10-15 minutes. Check the times on your pressure cooker manual for cubed beef. Pressure cooking meat is a bit counter intuitive as it will become tough if you cook it too long. So be mindful of proper cooking times.
6. After you have pressure cooked and released the pressure add to skillet, bring to a boil and simmer at a very low heat for about 30 minutes, until the paste clings to the beef and the liquid is fully evaporated.
7. Serve with rice. Enjoy!

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It’s been said that bacon can convert vegetarians back to the omnivore camp but I would venture to say that a pork roast with cracklings is just as alluring. A proper pork roast with cracklings is a Danish classic, and as a kid it was my favorite meal hands down–we like to use the fresh ham because it’s filled with flavor. My mother made this last night after a day of picking currants, raspberries, blackberries and gooseberries. It was so good. It’s hard to describe in words the pleasure of a pork roast with cracklings.  Like bacon, it’s one of life’s pleasures that is best left to the experience.

Mamma’s Roasted Fresh Ham With Cracklings

Ingredients:

• One 4-6lb fresh ham with skin on
• sea salt and freshly cracked pepper

Special Equipment:

• A roasting pan with a rack
• A very sharp knife
• Meat thermometer

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees
2. Score the fresh ham by cutting the skin into small squares, about 1/2 inches in length and width, cutting it to where the fat meets the meat. (the skin will be tough, so use a sharp knife)
3. Season the roast as you like. At the farm my parents don’t use salt or pepper, so it is only pork flavor.
4. Place the meat thermometer into the center of the roast, making sure not to touch the bone.
5. Place the scored fresh ham in the hot oven for around 3-5 minutes.
6. Then reduce the heat to 325 and bake until the roast reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees. For a 4 pound roast it took around 3 hours.
7. Let rest and serve!

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The WTO just ruled against the U.S., making our country of origin label rule also known as COOL in violation of WTO laws. This means that meats from other countries can be sold to you without labeling. The beef, lamb and pork you buy at your local grocery store could be coming from abroad without your knowledge.  All the more reason to buy meat from a local farmer you trust! Here is the Reuters story. 

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“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”
― Wendell Berry

There are many benefits to buying meat from a local farmer. There is the taste; our meats are delicious and have a unique flavor profile. There is provenance; our meats are a reflection of the place the animal was born, the grasses they ate and the season they were slaughtered.  But there are also important economic reasons to buy your food from local producers like us. Our meats are dry aged, by a local butcher, who is paid a fair wage and learned his craft from those that came before him. We invest in our local economy: we employ local upstate New Yorkers, buy farm equipment from local dealers and grain for our pigs from local businesses. We are a local business ourselves.

At the core of all the romance of farming, the beauty, hardships and challenges, is that we are a family business. A small one, reliant on support from our community. When you drive by a farm where cows are grazing you might be lulled into believing that this scene will always be there because it seems so natural, and yes, cows eating grass outside is natural.  However, running a farm is expensive and without monetary support working landscapes aren’t economically viable.

Farms add to property values because they are beautiful, but they can also have important financial benefits for communities.  We use far fewer public services and lower property taxes for our neighbors.  One reason for soaring property taxes in our state is that many communities don’t have a diverse tax base, lacking farms and a thriving main street. A hundred acre farm uses far fewer community resources than a hundred houses on 1 acre lots.  Many misguided local municipalities have given huge tax subsidies to large chain stores in hopes that they will promote economic activity, but unfortunately the opposite is true.  They hurt small businesses who would otherwise have paid more in local taxes, and this raises taxes for local residents. Believe it or not,  paying more for local food might actually help you save money in the end.

Local food, based on beneficial relationships, could help to fend off industry consolidation that has plagued the meat industry. In the past 30 years, America has lost more than 500,000 family beef ranches, and many contract growers of pork and chicken are caught in a cruel system of diminishing returns, living in debt, with many more losing their farms every year. Consumers lose in this equation too; they get bland, standardized food that doesn’t nourish their bodies or their communities. Buying directly from farmers helps us all build a food system together, and it is a tastier food system too!

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Source: FrugalDad

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