Thursday, June 10, 2010

Paralyzed by Quality

I’m trying to integrate more organic and locally grown food in my diet, with a slight hope that the more expensive the food the less of it I’ll eat, and the more weight I will keep off. This hasn’t worked so far as I am making lots of ice cream. Lots of local dairy, local eggs and local & organic fruit with organic sugar.
The problem I am now increasingly facing is meat. I’ve been buying locally grown or organic fruits and veggies and have no problem deciding what to do with them. I can eat them straight, put them in something healthy (or not so much), or let them become at one with the composter. But with meat, because of the expense I am sometimes paralyzed as to what to do with it. Considering a whole chicken I bought for $17, it took me a couple of weeks to decide what to do with it. I finally took it out of the freezer and cooked it, only after deciding what would be the best way to make the most of the bird. I was giving this bird more consideration than I had given any other chicken. I didn’t want to waste the bird on some unproven recipe, or drown it in sauces so I couldn’t taste it, and soup (tomato veggie) seemed to be unworthy. I finally decided on a chicken curry that was just lots of onions, salt, cinnamon and another spice. I had set aside the breast meat for my classic chicken marsala. It was good in the onion gravy and I could definitely taste the chicken.
Though I felt wasteful tossing the skin. I did save the wing tips for chicken stock. Also since buying the $17 local chickie, I had not bought any conventional chicken out of wanting to try to live more organically. But I do see myself buying conventional chicken to test out new recipes. Once tried and true it may be set aside for local chicken.
There is a piece of buffalo in the freezer waiting for me to figure out what to do with it.
I’m still going to buy conventional lamb, because I haven’t heard anything really bad about it. Yes, it has to get from down under to me in DC, but during its life it is feeding upon grass and apparently don’t take as much energy to raise and even when accounting for shipping uses less energy than local sheep farmers. Yet, beef and veal need to be local and grass fed, as well as goats.
The problem with buying higher quality and expensive food is I feel worse when I have to throw it out.

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