Challenge 8: Fats for High Heat--I haven't done this yet but I'll make some clarified butter and order some coconut oil. We don't do very much high heat cooking and use olive oil and butter for moderate heat. We'll have to eliminate these when we have clarified butter and coconut oil.
Challenge 9: Fight Against GMOs--got the shopping list and read the blog
Challenge 10: Fats to Eat Raw--I make salad dressing regularly either with walnut oil or olive oil. I can switch to coconut oil and ghee for sauteing.
Challenge 11: Sourdough Bread--I didn't make any bread as I have just started making the starter. I'll try in a week.
Challenge 12: Finding Real Milk--We found some at two groceries but hope to find a farm-direct source.
Challenge 13: Get Good Bacteria--We eat yogurt everyday as well as cultured butter.
Challenge 14: Evaluate
What we've found most difficult so far is the thought of the amount of money we will need to spend to eat pastured poultry, beef and to buy raw dairy. One of the articles at the Weston A. Price Foundation web site addresses budget concerns and we found that helpful.
I've researched and found several farms where we can buy pastured poultry, fresh eggs, pastured lamb, beef and pork. I know of two groceries where we can get raw milk but will contact the closest Weston A. Price Foundation group leader to see if there's a farm-direct source we can use. I think that we'll probably not buy all raw milk as it may be cost-prohibitive but as a compromise we can buy raw milk for our drinking needs and buy single-pasteurized milk for yogurt. So far we've bought two half-gallons of raw milk as two different stores, pasteurized cream (no raw to be found), pasteurized non-homogenized milk and vat-pasteurized homogenized milk. We buy UHT cream at Costco and make butter with it. There isn't any non-UHT cream around that isn't really pricey. Phil wonders if culturing the butter helps offset the fact that the cream used is UHT. Anyone know?
What has been fairly easy is incorporating fermented food into our diets. We were already eating yogurt and fermenting oats for breakfast proved successful. We soaked some ww pastry flour in buttermilk for pancakes this morning and the kids loved them. I plan to try to make gingered carrots this week.
We're both really enjoying reading and learning what's shared in Fallon and Enig's Nourishing Traditions book and I've been spending an inordinate amount of time on the computer reading articles on the Weston A. Price Foundation web site and finding real food bloggers.
We're enjoying all the foods we've added since starting the challenge--raw milk and fermented grains as well as sprouted grain bread. I've started some sourdough starter and have a batch of almonds soaking for crispy almonds for snacking this week. We are eating organic eggs now and I'm incorporating a lot more raw vegetables and fruit into our meals--offering them with cheese in addition to our normal lunch and dinner rather than just as snacking food. The kids haven't noticed anything different about raw milk, maybe because we've always given them full fat dairy. We feel better about giving them raw rather than pasteurized milk though. We're having our first try at pasture-fed beef for our main dish tonight--a sirloin tip roast.
The challenge has been fun and it's inspiring to find all the folks out there already successfully eating this way or working to get there.
I empathize on your concern about the cost of pastured meats. Our meals have been 60%-80% pastured. I have noticed that I get filled up faster. My portion sizes have gone down. It makes sense because the nutrition is there. I'm buying more cheap roasts, ground beef and stew meat because those are the least expensive. Liver is very affordable but my kids have a low tolerance of it. Another switch is about eating chicken. Since the low-fat craze, skinless boneless chicken breasts became a staple in our culture. My mother grew up on a farm. She said they didn't eat chicken all that often. Her mother would slaughter a hen if she thought it wasn't laying. That hen was 1 meal for 8 people! I just bought a pastured chicken from my farmers. It was $18! Our family of 5 will eat the roasted bird and then soup. That will be it. I save all the bones for soup. My son hates soup, but it is economical, super nutrition.
ReplyDeleteThe cost of pastured meat can be a tough pill to swallow. We live in a ranching community, so the cost of pastured and grass-fed meats is quite reasonable here at $4 - 5/lb compare to other areas. But that's still a lot when you can get a chicken for $0.79/lb at the store and ground beef for $1.99, you know? In the end, we choose smaller portions of higher quality meats.
ReplyDeleteOn UHT cream and butter, I'd discourage you from purchasing UHT cream - even if you culture it for butter. For UHT milk products, it's more than the loss of beneficial bacteria, food enzymes and natural vitamins that's a problem. You see the high heat denatures the proteins (and causes other negative outcomes that are too exhaustive to analyse here) - this is why UHT milk is unsuitable for a variety of purposes (it makes poor yogurt and cannot be used at all in cheesemaking). So while culturing UHT cream to make butter will increase the beneficial bacteria and enzymes, it does nothing to mitigate the effects of denatured proteins. IMHO, you'd be better off if you stopped making butter with UHT cream and purchased a good grass-fed butter like Organic Valley Pasture Butter or Kerrygold butter.