First Draft, Thanksgiving Menu

In the past week, I have been completely unable to avoid thinking about Thanksgiving, even if I tried. There are hundreds of turkeys for sale at work, my twitter feed is being barraged by others’ menu ideas, and holiday advertising is nearing its peak. I have been convinced by my family to keep things somewhat traditional, but I also want to try and get a little creative with some things. So here are my initial thoughts. The menu will of course develop in the next couple days, and I hope the end result will be deemed a success.

- Fennel and white bean soup with balsamic and thyme roasted butternut squash

I have made a simlilar soup to this before, and I hope to add to it some traditional Thanksgiving flavors. The butternut squash should give it a touch of fall, and maybe some nutmeg might add something to the overall flavor as well.

- Garlic and rosemary cauliflower puree

I plan on serving sweet potato, and I hope to bring some flavors of a classic mashed potato without doubling up on potatoes.

- Mesculin salad with apples, walnuts, bleu cheese, and maple balsamic vinaigrette

My mom requested a mesculin salad, and some local bleu cheese and apples will add a lot to this salad, dressed with a vinaigrette starring Vermont maple syrup.

- Turkey roulade with crimini mushroom cranberry buffalo sausage stuffing, and extra stuffing…

This one might need some tasting and tweaking between now and Thursday as I have never attempted many aspectsof the dish. I have never cooked a turkey roulade, and I plan to make my own cranberry buffalo sausage. The extra stuffing will be necessary. My brother will be able to polish off the stuffing in the roulade himself I imagine.

- Sweet potato mash/puree (sweet potato, fromage blanc, balsamic, molasses, nutmeg)

Sweet potatoes remind me so much of fall, and I love a good sweet potato puree.

- Braised cabbage, carrot, and leeks with cider, cumin, clove, ginger, thyme

This was actually the first dish that I tested, mostly because I wanted to eat it last week. It was the first time I had made it, and it turned out very well. I used a local hard cider with local cabbage, carrots, and leeks. I may look to tweek it a little, but I am also not sure if it needs it. Here it is…

- Golden beets prepared agrodolce w/thyme

I love beets, and I think that some pre-cooked golden beets couldbe finished off well in the pan with a sweet and sour praparation.

- Pumpkin soufflé with graham cracker crumble and marshmallow whipped cream

For dessert, I want to finish things on a light note. I think a pumpkin soufflé will achieve this perfectly. This is also a fun twist on a pumpkin pie. The graham cracker crumble will take the place of the crust, and I hope that a cool marshmellow whipped cream (or maybe a homemade ice cream) might add some richness to make it feel like a complete dessert.

So that is what I’ve got so far. It is by no means written in stone. I think I am finally ready and excited enough to get through a few days of holiday cooking. I also hope to keep good records of the process with pictures. Hopefully I can get everything done and nothing major goes wrong in the kitchen…

Emptying the Fridge with Friends

This past weekend, I invited a couple friends from college to make the 45 minute trip from Middlebury to Burlington for dinner at my house. They said that Wednesday worked great, but that they would have to find a car. They asked around, and come Wednesday afternoon, I hadn’t heard anything final. So I didn’t end up making a trip to the grocery store. At about 5 o’clock I got the final word that three of them were coming up after going for a short run. They would arrive around 7:00. I thought for a second that I might be in trouble, until I looked in the fridge. Working with a butcher leaves me with an abundance of meat products, so the proteins would not be a problem. I had two NY Strip steaks, three and a half chicken breasts, two house made veal and apple bratwursts, a half pound of shrimp, and two very fresh-looking whole mackerel.

The easy solution to me seemed to be the grill. I readied the meats for the grill, seasoning the steaks with salt and pepper, and the chicken with a dry rub consisting of salt, cayenne, garlic powder, cumin, coriander, and paprika. I cleaned up the shrimp, gutted the mackerel, and seasoned them with salt and pepper as well. Everything was ready for the grill, but I was still unsure about what else we would be eating. I looked around and found the kitchen staples: onions, garlic, and carrots. I also had bought a couple of fairly large leaks earlier that day.

So I started with chopping up a few strips of local applewood smoked bacon. I rendered the fat out of these in the pan, and removed the crispy bacon pieces. I diced up the onions and garlic. I sliced the carrots into thin rounds, and chopped up the leaks pretty finely so that they would become tender relatively quickly. I started sweating the onions, garlic, and carrots in the bacon fat and a bit of extra virgin olive oil. Shortly after, the leaks entered the pan as well along with a couple tablespoons of chopped fresh thyme. I seasoned as I went along, and threw some fettuccine in a pot of boiling water because I knew a group of cross country runners would need it…

The pasta was cooking and before I knew it, the sautee of the vegetables had turned into a braise (through the addition of about 2/3 of a bottle of a local Oktoberfest) with aspirations of turning into a hearty “condimento” for the pasta. While the alcohol cooked off, the pasta finished cooking. Well, I drained it just shy of being done as I wanted it to finish cooking in the sauce. The vegetables were now nice and tender, and the alcohol had cooked out of the beer. I added a tablespoon or two of honey, a handful of grated parmegiano reggiano, some salt and pepper, then added the fettuccine. I turned the pasta around in the pan, covering each strand with the beer, honey, cheese, and vegetables. After a minute, I removed everything to a large bowl, drizzled a few tablespoons of olive oil over the top, and the dish was finished.

My friends, realizing I had not used a recipe, decided they would fittingly name the dish "beer noodles"

While all of this was happening, I had filled the grill with a variety of meats. The chicken came off just cooked through and juicy. One steak I took off at medium rare, and the second I let cook a bit longer than i would have par the request of a guest. The bratwurst had started to release some of its juices into the grill, causing some excellent flare-ups to occur. They came off with the smaller chicken breast and the medium rare steak.

First of three plates of meat to come off the grill

The meat was all charred and delicious. I served the chicken with a homemade barbecue sauce I had in the fridge. The mackerel was flaky and flavorful; full of bones, but I didn’t mind eating around them. The pasta was excellent, with the crispy bacon bits served in a bowl on the side. My friends slowly but surely made their way through the absurdly large bowl of past, and by the time my parents were home, it was gone. The “beer noodles” definitely held the malty flavor of the beer, and this was complimented well by the sweetness of the honey and the fruitiness of the olive oil. An equally successful dish may have evolved from a local hard cider braise (holding the honey might be necessary in this case).

At the end of the night, we had each eaten beyond our heart’s content. My mother, returning from a trip the New York City for work, was very grateful to see empty space in the fridge. I guess I need to find ways to get friends over to the house more for dinner. It certainly helps diminish the ever growing stock of meat that we have, thanks to my work with Frank the butcher at Healthy Living Market.

Seafood dinner

A couple pounds of fresh sardines from Portugal that I was lucky enough to take home from work

Tonight I was inspired by the seafood that I was given at work. When I got off yesterday afternoon, my boss sent me home with a package of fresh sardines from Portugal, and I also was able to take home about a pound and a half of Nantucket Bay scallops. My recently acquired job is paying off more than I could have imagined. The seafood I took home yesterday alone would have racked up a bill of $50-60 for the average customer.

With the sardines, I played it safe. I drizzled them with olive oil, put on some salt and fresh cracked pepper, then threw them on the grill for a couple minutes on each side. I juiced half a lemon on top when I took them off the grilled and drizzled a bitmore olive oil. These were some fine looking sardines, so this simple preparation paid off. A couple of the fish even had roe sacks that I found when we started eating this “appetizer.” These little pockets were even more flavorful than the rest of this fish. They had a slightly more oceany taste that I appreciated finding as an unexpected surprise.

Another reason for the simple preparation was the plan I had for the scallops. I went out on a limb, looking to make scallop dumplings. This would be my first shot at making seafood dumplings, or any dumpling for that matter. I hadn’t looked at any recipes, but believed that I would have fun experimenting with this. I had actually never done anything like it, so I also thought the chances of failure would be a little higher than usual… I started with some dried morels, blending them to a fine powder. I then added a few tablespoons of grated parmigiano reggiano and the bay scallops to a food processor with the morel powder, a clove of minced garlic, and a touch of salt. When this was completely smooth, I took it out and added a couple tablespoons of corn starch, mixing it in thoroughly. While doing this, I also whipped up three egg whites to a fairly stiff peak. I folded the egg whites into the wet scallop mixture, which lightened the whole thing significantly.

The finished scallop mixture before cooking

Before I started with the food processor, I poured some ponzu sauce, soy sauce, white wine, sake, and water into a small pot with some red pepper flakes and two bay leaves. When the batter was ready, this liquid was at a simmer, and I was ready to make the dumplings. I found a spoon that I believed to be the right size, then dolloped a spoonful of the mixture into the pot. I was happy to see that the wet batter stayed together, bobbing slightly up and down while floating atop the simmering liquid. After a minute or two, I flipped them over. The underside had picked up a light brown hue from the ponzu and soy.

Dumplings during the cooking process

I allowed the dumplings to cook for another couple minutes on this side, then removed them from the pot.

Removing the cooked dumplings

So I finished, moved the first three completed dumplings to a plate, and tasted them. The texture was beyond what I thought I would be able to achieve with this being my first attempt at the dish. They were, as Tyler Florence might say, “light as a cloud,” little pillows with the sweet flavor of the scallops, the earthiness of the morels, and the saltiness of the grated cheese and soy sauce. They were actually a little saltier than I was aiming for, and this was easily fixed. I added some more water to the pot, and let it come back up to a simmer.

A few dumplings pre-plating

Overall, my two friends and I finished all of the dumplings, just about 20 of them, the last 17 with the perfect balance of an oceanic sweetness, earthiness, and salt. High quality scallops led to great flavor, but the texture was the biggest surprise of all. Imagine something as light as a marshmallow, but less chewy.

Mid-meal my roommate actually called up a friend who was on his way home for the night to come help us out, as he knew he hadn’t had dinner and might appreciate a home cooked meal. The three of us sat haphazardly around the island in the middle of my kitchen. There was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, but we did not notice. Good company and good food were the only things on our minds. I was still riding the high of cooking something new and different. It was a night that I appreciated very much, and I now have a new cooking technique to use and refine in the future.

Thanksgiving is around the corner…

…And the idea of spending a couple days in the kitchen with a fifteen pound turkey and its companions does not have me too excited. Maybe it’s the long days at work combined with going to school, or maybe I just want to do something new. Either way, I think it would be much more enjoyable to take the expanded budget of a Thanksgiving dinner and do some culinary experimenting. My mom seemed a bit hesitant when I told her this, and my brother told me pretty bluntly, “Dude, we have to make turkey and stuffing. It’s Thanksgiving.” So I am stuck in the middle of my family’s appreciation for a certain tradition and my own desire to do something unique.

The first thing I brought up in a conversation with my mom was sushi and fresh fish that we could order to have delivered the day before the feast. This may have not been the best way to introduce my idea. My mom is not a fan of eating raw or barely cooked foods… Thoughts of what I could do with fresh uni, live spot prawns, abalone, tuna, or halibut danced through my head. Don’t get me wrong. I want my family to be behind the endeavor, so this may have to wait for another occasion. Perhaps my birthday might be more appropriate.

In the past couple of days, I have made more of an attempt to take a traditional Thanksgiving and put my own twist on it. Game birds are available in Vermont, right? I may have to put in an order at work for pheasant along with the turkey that my brother insists be a part of the meal. Maybe I don’t even need anything new. Does my brother need to eat a whole roasted bird? I know he needs stuffing or dressing, and last year he even strayed from his go-to Stove Top to try my homemade dressing. He liked it too. It was difficult to convince my mom to keep the bag of dried bread cubes and seasoning shut, but I managed to do it. My brother was still happy. Would he be as happy with some kind of turkey roulade? Would I be able to make a reinvented cheesecake desert? Cheesecake ice cream with a white chocolate and graham cracker ganache and blackberry whipped cream? That one may take some more thought and practice, but why can’t I have fun with tradition?

I guess the way I’m thinking about it is that Thanksgiving dinner just might not have to look the way it always has to satisfy tradition. Introducing new flavors or just presenting the old flavors in a new way might get the job done. Obviously this is how I have fun. I am almost certain that my family would be skeptical of anything different I do, but they are usually not disappointed. It will be a challenge to take a meal with so many courses and deliver on each one. In spite of this, I am more than willing to present one dish that is not entirely successful. This will be my attempt to get through the overwhelming feeling of redundancy that has taken over me. Sure, the meal is only made once a year, but I want to do something different, and I will definitely post about the experience, however positive or negative the result.

Rabbit: Another White Meat

Rabbit is well known in the culinary world, but it cannot come close to being called so in the home kitchen. Personally, I enjoy cooking with rabbit. It is as lean as can be and I enjoy the flavor of the meat. No, I don’t think it tastes like chicken. It has a nice gamey flavor when you get quality rabbit, and there is almost no animal out there more healthy to eat. That being said, I have very little experience cooking it. For the average home cook, it is not the easiest to find. For me, I come in contact with it everyday. So why don’t I cook with it regularly? I can’t afford it.

I find this unfortunate, because I would love to consistently have it in my kitchen. It is not the easiest to cook most parts of the rabbit, as they tend to dry out. I find this aspect fun. I welcome a challenge in the kitchen. Not too long ago, I made a rabbit stew. This was one way to help keep the rabbit moist. I cooked it in a red wine and tomato based braise with onions, carrots, and celery. I added herbs during the cooking process and had a comforting stew after a couple hours.

Right now, I am watching the end of an Iron Chef episode. The secret ingredient? Rabbit. With my little experience cooking rabbit and the way I saw it dealt with on the show, it is clear that rabbit is a vehicle for a tremendous variety of flavors. The challenger utilized many different flavors from all over Asia. He cooked the rabbit with Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Indian flavors. Each one complimented the rabbit in a different way, from Indian curry and tumeric flavors to the different miso flavors of Korean cooking.

The Iron Chef focused on his specialty, Mediterranean cooking, but made a point of using the whole animal. From the kidneys, to the hearts, to the loin, the entire rabbit was being utilized. This is something that I appreciate when working with any animal, and it is something that the meat department where I work also focuses on.

A couple weeks ago at work, we made a rabbit terrine. I learned how to break down a rabbit, removing the limbs, the tenderloins, and then removing the meat from the bones. We made a mousseline out all of the meat excluding the tenderloins, hearts, kidneys, and livers. The mousseline consisted of the ground rabbit and heavy cream. The tenderloins were seared whole, and the hearts, kidneys, and livers were sauteed with garlic and thyme. They were then roughly chopped and mixed in with the mousseline. We lined a loaf pan with bacon, put in half of the ground rabbit mixture, placed the seared tenderloins in the middle, then added the rest of the mixture on top. After cooking the whole thing at a low temperature in the oven and allowing it to cool and set overnight in the walk-in, the terrine was unmolded.

It looked like a nice paté with some slightly crispy bacon on the outside and two little surpises dotting the center. These pearly white circles were the tenderloins. In this form, It was difficult to tell you were eating rabbit. With the added fat of the cream, the flavor of the herbs, and the distracting layer of bacon surrounding the whole thing, the rabbit flavor was somewhat lost. Don’t get me wrong. It was a tasty paté.

So why isn’t rabbit cooked more often? Well, it isn’t as available. Farmers who raise rabbits do so at a higher cost, and the consumer is forced to pay the higher price per pound. And quite frankly, it may just not be worth it. The flavor is not quite unique enough and there are other healthy alternatives that come without the high price tag. It is unfortunate, and one might hope to see the price of rabbit go down while its availability increased, but that trend has yet to reach the horizon. I may cook with it again, and I hope that I do. It might have to wait for a somewhat special occasion, or a night when a visitor makes a request to try something new.

11/12/12009

Kombucha Anyone?

About this time last year, I had my first taste. A moment before that, I had my first whiff of the stuff. If you have had an encounter with Kombucha, there is a good chance that this is your first memory. The odor is not something that is inherently appetizing. It smells like someone added a bit of vinegar to a skunked beer/tea mixture. But after getting past the smell and what looks like floating mucus? Well, it tastes a bit like it smells. For some reason, this taste did not turn me away.

I began drinking it more consistently. After only liking certain flavors that masked the kombucha taste somewhat, I began to like the “original” flavor of Kombucha… I genuinely enjoyed having a bottle of it nearly everyday. This got to be expensive. I look to buy it on sale as much as I can. I also started making my own at home. This seems to be be the most cost effective strategy, although it is hard to keep up with a bottle a day when each batch takes two weeks to get ready.

It starts with a bottle of unflavored Kombucha and the brewing of a large pot of tea. I choose a green tea that my mom drinks sometimes at home. I filled a pasta pot, brought it to a boil, then steeped five bags of tea in it while it cooled to room temperature. Then, in a large glass jar (this is important as other material has the tendency to leach bad things into your tea), I put the cooled tea, a bottle of Kombucha, and half a cup of sugar. I did not use the jars top as you do not want an air tight seal when making your Kombucha. I took a kitchen towel and placed it over the opening, and sealed it with a rubber band. This allows the container to breathe while also keeping the fruit flies from getting into the fermenting liquid. For some reason, fruit flies love it. I kept it in a room temperature area of the kitchen, in a place where it was not exposed to direct sunlight. The process is not so complicated, but I did have to leave it alone for two weeks after that.

During this time, a mushroom, or SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Yeast and Bacteria), will develop on top of the liquid. In the end, it looks like a pancake made of JELLO. One thing that is important to note, if your Kombucha looks too cloudy, it usually means that something has gone wrong. It would be best to throw out what you’ve got at that point.

At the end of the two week experiment, I unveiled the final product. I removed the mushroom, saving it for the enxt batch, and I split the jar into two smaller containers. One of them I drank plain, while the other I flavored by leaving some slices of ginger and hibiscus leaves in it overnight. The original turned out better than I had thought it would. It tasted like Kombucha, which is something that I quite obviously enjoy… The ginger hibiscus was a good flavor, although I needed to use a bit less ginger. It was a little overpowering and had quite the ginger kick. Nonetheless, I enjoyed drinking this half of the batch as well.

Brewing Kombucha at home was a successful experiment. It turned out to be slightly less expensive and sacrificed nothing in quality. The only problem I find is that it is hard to keep enough of it around and to make it quickly enough. Also, you have to deal with having jars of a fermenting liquid taking up space in your house. With my experience, it is fun to make some of your own, and it is not a pain to have a jar or two of it in your basement or something. I also still look to my local co-ops for Kombucha on sale so that I can enjoy the beverage when the home brews are not quite ready.

11/11/2009

Website Dedicated to Food Deals

Right now,  weekends leave very little free time for me. Before I hop in bed to do it all again tomorrow, I thought I would throw a website out there that is dishing out some great deals. Right now, it is in LA,  but it is coming soon to New York.

http://blackboardeats.com/

The deals are good. The restaurants have great reputations. At this point in my life, deals like this really help. I don’t have the money in the bank to eat out too much, and last month, I decided I will live in New York City this coming summer. I love eating in New York, and it was great news to see that Blackboard Eats will be dishing out deals that may help. I might call it a hobby of mine to seek out cheap eats, and even if the deals don’t make the experience cheap, perhaps it might make some out-of-reach establishment affordable. If you are in LA, you do not need to wait. Enjoy it now.

How Easily a Day Off Turns Into a Lot of Work

Wednesdays are the only day of the week that I can truly consider a day off.  On every other day, I have either class or work. It becomes a long day when I have both.  Wednesdays are completely free, and what do I do with this free time? I cook a five-course meal for my family and two friends.

It started this morning with an idea to cook a little something new. Then I got going. I went to the store and came back with onions, shallot, herbs, carrots, chicken livers, two pork tenderloins, and some heavy cream. I have had a couple of different chicken liver mousse lately, and I wanted to put my own little spin on the dish. Not that I did anything too crazy, but I also thought that the mousse might be made a little more healthy than most. I generally like to try and eat a healthy diet, excluding occasions when I am around food that is new to me or something special. So in this puree, I wanted to try and include no cream, butter, or egg yolks. I also had to decide how I would cook the mousse. I could either puree the raw livers with other ingredients and cook them in the oven in a hot water bath, or I could cook everything and puree at that point.

I started by sauteeing shallots and garlic in olive oil, adding some thyme and the chicken liver, then deglazing with a good swirl of white wine when the livers were still a bit pink in the middle. Next I took and apple, the type is not too important, but I wanted one with a good bit of sweetness that was not too tart, and I sauteed half of it sliced in in a little olive oil. I added some garam masala, ground cardamom, a touch of ground clove, and some fresh nutmeg that I ground with a microplane. I let the apples get a little soft, then added a good bit of some port wine. I let this reduce some and let the alcohol cook off. I had two different mixtures, and they both were heading for the food processor. I pureed the mixture, adjusted for seasoning, and that was it. I was pretty surprised. The bit of sweetness from the apples, the flavor and acidity provided by the white wine and port, and the spices all complimented each other well. What was also important to me though, was that they complimented the flavor of the liver. They certainly did while also letting the flavor of the liver remain very much at the forefront. This was my first chicken liver mousse, and I know I will be making it again. My friends were a little skeptical, but both had more than one serving. My mom and step-dad were already fans of liver mousse and pate, and they were both pleasantly surprised. It was a good way to start the meal.

Next was a very simple yet flavorful carrot ginger soup. I wasn’t sure I was going to make this, but the carrots at the store looked great, and I knew I had some ginger at home. I started with some chopped onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil with grated ginger. I chopped and added the carrots and cooked then with the aromatics until a bit soft, then I added some chicken stock from the fridge. I let it all cook together for a while until the carrots had softened sufficiently, then pureed the whole thing with an immersion blender, and looked for some coconut milk. To my surprise, we had one can left. Even more surprising was the fact that when I opened the can, there was not milk but some kind of solid that I had to immediately throw away. So I added some whole milk and a couple squeezes of lime, and adjusted for seasoning. I have made the soup before, and it is fairly simple, but I knew that it would go well with the meal, and it went over very well at dinner.

In addition to this, we also had a simple salad of greens and some herbs. I put together a vinaigrette that went along with the other flavors of the meal. I minced some shallots and garlic, turned the garlic into a paste with some salt, and poured in some apple cider vinegar. I then streamed in some olive oil while whisking. I tasted, added salt and pepper, and tasted again. It was an okay dressing, but it needed something. So I walked to the pantry, looked around, came back with some honey, and the vinaigrette was much more complete. One of my friends ask for it for her birthday.

For the main course, I grilled some marinated pork tenderloin. The two pork tenderloins were marinated for a couple hours in shallots, garlic, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and mint. The next step was very simple. I turned on the grill, waited for it to heat up, and then put the tenderloins on the hottest part of the grill. I grilled them on all four sides until it was finished, a nice rosy pink in the center. I served this with an apple compote of some sort. I diced up a couple apples and threw them in with sauteed onions and garlic and put in a pinch of garam masala. I added a bit of honey and apple cider vinegar then let the apples cook down a bit. When it reached the consistency I wanted, some of the sugars had come out to bring it together, but I did not let the apples turn to mush. Overall, the pork with apple compote was what I was looking for, and it may have been even better when we added some of the vinaigrette to the equation.

For the last course, I made a vanilla custard that I had done before, but I added something that I knew at least one of my friends would love. For the custard, I whisked half a cup of sugar with six egg yolks until it became a light yellow and brought a quart of heavy cream to a boil with the seeds of a vanilla pod, also throwing the pod in to be removed a bit later. I added some sugar to the heavy cream, and when it came to a boil, I removed it from the heat. After it cooled for a few minutes, I slowly introduced the cream to the egg yolks and sugar as to not scramble the eggs. I then poured the mixture into a pan sitting in a hot water bath, and cooked it at 325 for 45 minutes. This was all done in the early afternoon, as I had to put this into the fridge to set for a couple hours. During these couple of hours, I took a can of sweetened condensed milk and boiled it in a pasta pot. After two and a half to three hours… dulce de leche. My friend’s Argentine grandmother would take cream and sugar and boil it down for a couple of hours, and he had great memories of eating it many different ways, so I wanted to do it for him in my own way. Boiling the can like I did is pretty much the equivalent of what my friend’s grandmother had done minus the cooking down of the liquid. In the can, it is already “condensed” and the sugar is added for you. So maybe some would consider it cheating, but I like to consider it a different means to achieve the same end. I had never done it before, but boiling a can in water was easy enough to do. When all of the other food was finished, I left the table for a minutes and opened the can. Inside was a dark, caramel colored syrup. I tasted it. It was sweet with a great caramel flavor, and I knew it would be perfect over the now completely set vanilla custard. I spooned out the dulce de leche and spread it on top of the custard. It was a big hit at the table, and I guess a new dessert that I will have to make in the future.

Overall, it was a long day, but a very successful and rewarding evening. When the end of the day came, I was tired, but I enjoyed the time spent with my friends. As always, it felt great making food for others. It’s fun to play around with new and old recipes, and seeing the fruits of your labor makes it all that much better.

What Does it Mean to be Vermont Raised?

As I have spent the last twelve years of my life growing up in Vermont, I have come to think of it as home.  Until I was eleven  years old, I lived in Los Angeles. I love to visit California whenever I can. I have an older brother who lives there, and in my mind, you can’t beat the weather. I will shamelessly purchase and devour a pound of soft-serve (not including toppings) at a self-serve frozen yogurt place.  I don’t enjoy the change of seasons. I do not ski or snowboard. I am however, undoubtedly a Vermonter.

Since I have lived here, I have tasted many Vermont made products. With the development of my interest in food, locally made and produced food has come to mean something special to me. Nobody produces maple syrup like Vermont. One of my earliest Vermont memories is a visit to my friend’s house in middle school collecting sap from the trees in his backyard. Vermont makes some good cheese, mostly cheddar, and the state has a surprising number of small breweries. Recently, I even tried something called mead, a honey wine made from fermented honey and water that soldiers at war used to drink. For such a small state, it seemed to me that Vermont had so many people doing things right.

With my new job working for a butcher at the local co-op, I began to further understand what phrases like pasture-raised and grass-fed meant. Most of the meat we carry is local, and we aim to provide the highest quality meat possible to our clientele. This has even included taking trips to local farms to witness the slaughtering of animals. To take a quote from our department’s web page, “Locally raised meat and poultry are the bedrock of this department. We have been working with local farmers for over 20 years and are honored to offer the finest meat products we’ve ever eaten! Vermont can be very, very proud of its farmers who’ve risen to the occasion to provide a steady stream of fantastic meat products.”

This recent experience of mine makes the news I heard today of the Grand Isle Slaughterhouse that much more upsetting. I saw a headline this morning on Twitter, and got a call from a customer asking if we carried meat from “the slaughterhouse with the inhumane treatment of calves.” My coworker and I were distraught to say the least. I immediately sent contributor DBR a message to post a link to the Burlington Free Press article.

When I got home from work, I read the whole article, and followed a link to the Humane Society website that included a detailed story as well as the video footage taken by someone working undercover at the slaughterhouse. The video shows young calves being repeatedly prodded, kicked, and knocked to the floor. In addition to this, there are scenes of cows being stunned for slaughter in large groups rather than being restrained individually. There is complete disregard for the proper treatment of the calves. Where the stun gun is placed is payed little attention, and when this is done in large groups, some calves return to consciousness before they are killed. On hsus.org you can read the facts, as well as see video footage. Many of these images are difficult to watch, and it made me very uncomfortable knowing that this was taking place locally.

I am grateful to be able to say that we are not selling this meat, and I did not have to pull it off the shelves this morning. However, it does speak to the likely fact that this is taking place elsewhere. There are regulations put in place, and there are people in charge of making sure that farms and processing plants follow them. This is very difficult to do. To this point, people going undercover has perhaps proven to be the most effective way to uncover treatment like this.

It is so easy to overlook the meat industry and just think of your dinner as going from the package to the plate. This is something that I have made a conscious effort not to do as I discover more and more about the food world. I want to know as much as possible about the food I consume. Local is something that is important to me, but this is true because it is easier to know what you are getting. Just last week, my boss watched firsthand the slaughter of a cow by one of our meat suppliers. This is something that is comforting to me—to know that the meat we provide to the community has been raised properly and slaughtered humanely. I look forward to when I may be able to witness this myself. This will likely be soon, and I am sure that it will be an unpleasant experience. I am not someone who believes that witnessing the slaughter of an animal makes it more okay to eat the animal, but I look to take away some comfort in knowing that things are being done right. I want to go to a Vermont farm, and I want to be proud of what I see. My ideas of what being “Vermont raised” means have been shaken a little bit today, but I think and hope that what was going on just 30 minutes north of my house is not the Vermont standard. There is much to be proud of in the world of Vermont local products, and I think that it may take some time and a little research before my faith is restored in our local slaughterhouses, as well as those throughout the country.

Grand Isle Slaughterhouse Shut Down

Yikes. Definitely of interest to anyone who eats animals: The Grand Isle Slaughterhouse, a big meat supplier for the Vermont area, has been shut down and a criminal investigation will begin shortly. The reason? Cruelty to calves.

Here’s the kicker:

A society member, working undercover as an employee of Bushway Packing, Inc., recorded footage of other workers shocking, kicking, slapping and inadequately stunning veal calves before slaughter, said the society’s chief operating officer, Michael Markarian.

Full article here, from The Burlington Free Press.

Check back with us soon for more on this story.