Musings on the dairy farm

This is going to be a bit of a ramble.  Sorry, I don't have any real recipes to post at the moment. 

I've started working a few days a week at the farm that hosts our cowshare. (In case you're unfamiliar with it, a cowshare is shared ownership of one or more cows.  This is mostly to get around the fact that it's illegal to buy or sell raw milk in Canada.  You may, however, drink the milk straight from your own cow - so if you want raw milk, you have to own a cow.  Since cows tend to produce far more milk than one family needs, it makes sense to share cows among a few families.  Thus, we own a few bits of 3 cows, and we share them with 20 or so other families.  We get a gallon of milk a week.  As we're not heavy milk drinkers, that's plenty for tea, kefir and the odd warm milk and honey before bed.)

I really like the farm work.  I love the cows, of course - they have interesting personalities and are gentle and peaceable creatures.  But more than that, I love the rhythm of the days.  Wake up, have a nibble and start work right away, work for a few hours and take a break for socializing, coffee and a bite to eat.  Go back to work then stop for a communal lunch.  Post-lunch is for resting, puttering work, personal projects, time with the kiddo.  Then it's time for dinner.  After dinner, more work! Cows need milking twice a day, at more or less twelve hour intervals.  Then a bit of reading to wind down, then bed.  Days at the farm are full but not hectic - there's a measured pace to everything (you can't rush a cow, or heat milk too quickly for cheese or yogurt), an order to everything, and constant seasonal change amid a structure of reassuring sameness. 

Ginger and Nell, the two purebred Jerseys.

While we were out this week, the second cow had her calf.  The calving was uncomplicated and smooth, and happened right after the morning milking.  Rowan, my daughter, got to see the new calf still all slimy, before it even managed to stand up.  We all watched as the new calf took her first wobbly steps and found her mama's teats.  It was lovely.

Canela with her new calf

The next day, the calf was to be separated from her mother.  As a mother, my heart hurts for both the cow and calf.  But as someone who has been around these cows for years and who has read a great deal about dairying and talked to many people involved in it, I understand the necessity.  Calves grow quickly and will consume more milk than they need - dairy cows being bred to produce far more than is "natural".  This particular cow, Canela, is half Hereford (beef cattle) and half Jersey.  She carries the genes for producing vast quantities of rich milk, and the genes for fast, heavy growth.  The herd administrators kept her first calf with her, hoping she'd be able to foster the other calves as well.  No such luck - she pushed them off and wouldn't let them suckle.  HER calf, on the other hand, grew so fast and so big that there was concern for her health.  Canela's teats fared poorly, with the calf favouring one side, the other became infected. She's still a bit lopsided from the ordeal.

It's risky, keeping a dairy cow (or even a cow with dairy genes) and her calf together, so they're separated for good reasons - not only because of too-fast growth for the calf, but if you're trying to milk as well, the machine, hand AND calf mouth all together are really hard on the teats.  But cows are mammals, like us, and they have instincts and feelings about their offspring.  Canela is probably extremely sad, pissed off, and angry right now.  She will get over it quickly, within a few days, but the emotions and stress are indisputably there.  Most people don't think about this, when they drink milk.  It's considered food appropriate for most vegetarians (vegans aside) as it's produced without loss of life.  Except that's not strictly true, either.  Cows need to calve in order to produce milk, but the calf is essentially a by-product. Canela's calf will live until November, when the grass stops growing, and then she will be slaughtered and butchered and eaten with gratitude.  Calves in commercial dairying operations are not so lucky.  Some are slaughtered as veal, some are raised for beef.  Few will have the luxury of as much pasture as they want, individual care and attention, and even a name as the calves born at our farm will.

For me, I have no reservations about keeping dairy cows the way we do, breeding them, taking away their babies and drinking their milk.  It sounds heinous, to be sure.  But we're responsible for these beings, and in the form in which they exist, this is what is best for them.  They aren't a product of nature or God - they're a product of human ingenuity and an unspoken pact our progenitors made with theirs.  We give them protection, food, freedom from disease and - in the case of our cows - a long, healthy, frankly pampered life.  We also ensure that some of their genes survive, by keeping the best of their offspring.  In return, we ask for their milk and their less-perfect offspring.  From a cow's perspective, it's probably a fair deal.  Left to their own devices, dairy cows as a subspecies wouldn't survive.  Our ancestors, probably out of necessity, bred creatures who simply produce too much milk.  It's up to us to treat those creatures as well as we can, make them comfortable, wanted and useful, and be grateful for them.  The same is true for nearly all our domestic animals, it's just the details of their keeping that differ.

I can understand not wanting to partake of dairy products once you comprehend exactly what goes into their production.  Indeed, large commercial dairies are far crueler and less healthy for the cows.  I'm not condoning them.  But I would hate to see a world in which a partnership like we have with dairy cows had vanished.  It's not an easy relationship, and it certainly raises some ethical questions.  It's that unease that makes the relationship worthwhile, I think.  The ability to shape our environment - all of it, plants, landscape, animals - and turn almost anything into a tool, is what makes us human.  It's what we are.  Using dairy cows is only slightly different than using vast tracts of land for a single crop, using a net to catch lots of fish at once, subverting entire ecosystems to grow rice, or any other activity of food production.  There are no humans anywhere who don't alter and pervert natural processes, simply to live. The first human to choose which wolf pup to keep and the first human to pull out one plant to give another more room to grow, put us on this path. The right and wrong of that isn't as important as simply being conscious and aware of it, and to keep our part of the bargain in mind. (I'm not sure commercial dairying operations do that. Those cows don't exactly have long lives free of disease.)

Being part of a small-scale dairying operation forces me to face head-on some of the ramifications of being human, and for that I am gratefully uncomfortable.  It's a discomfort I can live with.  I don't think I could say the same if I were working at a large-scale commercial dairy... or, for that matter, a large-scale technology firm that used resources without any sense of a compact or agreement with their sources, and was only obliged to make more money every year than the year before it... but that's a whole 'nother article.

Actually very tasty grain-free cookies

I had lunch with a friend the other day and she mentioned that she'd started making vegetable cookies for her kids.  I think my response was along the lines of "And they eat them?" but when she described them I realized that they were actually a really good idea - largely sweet potato, with some non-grain starch, a small amount of sweetener, spices, and a binder.  I had some sweet potatoes lurking in my cupboard so I gave it a whirl.  (This friend is somewhat like me - "There's no recipe, it's more of a method...")

The first batch was... well, let's use the term "experimental" rather than "failure".  My child actually liked them though, so I set about improving them and I think I've hit on a grain-free treat that's worth eating.  (Unlike, for example, the gluten-free hamburger buns that have surfaced at some of the burger bars in town.  Those are vile, and I'd rather skip the bun entirely or just take the grain bloat for the day.)

Here, then, are cookies that are not terribly unhealthy.  They won't make you thin, and they're probably not super-awesome for you if you're diabetic, but they won't do your kids any harm unless they eat them right before dinner and spoil their appetites.

3 small-med sweet potatoes or yams, cooked, peeled and mashed.  (Bake or microwave, don't steam or boil)
1 3/4 cups almond meal
1/2 cup potato starch
1/3 cup honey (you could use less)
1/2 cup butter
1 large egg
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or more if it's been in your cupboard for a while - don't skimp on it)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
dash vanilla extract
pinch salt

Cream butter & honey together.  Add egg, vanilla, spice and salt and mix thoroughly.  Add almond meal, potato starch and baking powder & soda and mix well.  Add sweet potatoes and mix until combined.  Refrigerate for 20 minutes, then drop in spoonfuls onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper and bake for about 25 minutes at 350F (or until browned a bit and obviously done.)  Makes somewhere between 1 and 2 dozen cookies depending on how big they are.

Haggis: ach, aye laddie!

I am not Scottish, nor do I have any but extremely distant ancestors who were remotely Scottish.  However, I somehow felt obligated to buy a haggis for Robbie Burns day.  I've had haggis before - in Scotland, no less - as part of a "full Scottish breakfast" at a B&B.  I recalled liking it, but I couldn't exactly remember what it was like.

So, I picked up a haggis from the Oak Bay Butcher (and no, you don't get a discount for ordering with a Scottish accent and I don't think Mike really appreciated being called "laddie") and prepared it as wee Mike advised, by steaming it for about 45 minutes.  The sheep stomach part of it bailed out of the whole deal and I was left with a vaguely stomach-shaped ball of meaty goo that smelled like someone's moldy old sofa.

Despite the unappetizing appearance, I'd already prepared the neeps & tatties so onto the plate it all went.  And you know what? It was delicious.  The texture was reminiscent of cotechino - that faintly gluey texture that's oddly satisfying.  I could totally see how if you were out on the moors all day, chasing sheep around in the rain, and you came home to a steaming plate of haggis, you would think it was the best stuff in the world (and not just for the revenge-on-the-sheep facet of it, either.) 

My tummy wasn't too happy with me afterwards - the significant oatmeal component of the haggis not being very Sarah-friendly - but haggis is a once-a-year food and dammit, I'm going to enjoy it.  I'm gonna slice me some leftover bits on Saturday and have a full Scottish breakfast, aye.

Goals, plus fun fridge finds

This week has been really busy, so this post won't be as in-depth as maybe it should be.

I'm leaning more towards basic Paleo eating rather than consciously low-rewarding it at the moment, because as the new year approached and I started thinking "what do I want to improve in my life" I realized I wanted to feel more competent and confident in my physical capabilities.  And while I've lifted weights for years and have more strength than many women, even some larger than me, I'm still not that physically capable, objectively speaking.  Let's face it - I'm barely five feet tall. While *I* might think a 140 lb deadlift is pretty freakin' awesome, realistically, that's not going to help much in, say, an emergency situation where human bodies need to be moved or something.  Or if I finally get my shit together and get my FAC and my hunting license and go get some large deer or (preferably) elk or bear.  Also, while my ability to run is nowhere near as absent as I was led to believe as a child (I now think that my sucky running skills when I was 10 were more due to crappy footwear than ability), I still have a hard time running a 5K in less than about 35-40 minutes.  My completely arbitrary feeling on this is that most people between the ages of 12 and 50 ought to be able to run 10 kilometers more or less comfortably (ie, not be dying at the end) and in about an hour. 

So my goals, therefore, are to be able to lift something useful (I'm picking Stirling here, because it's not a stretch to envision a "worst-case" scenario in which during an earthquake, he gets clobbered by flying debris in the kitchen and loses consciousness) and carry it up to the third floor of our house.  Stirling currently weighs somewhere in the neighbourhood of 180 lbs, I think.  I also want to be able to run 10K in less than an hour, without incurring any of the usual runner's ailments while training, such as shin splints, wonky knees, foot problems, etc. - which means lots of long, slow slow jogs, and sprints, rather than just bashing 10K over the head until it submits. Because I'm pretty sure I'd submit first.

Given all that - and I've already ramped up the strength training to a heavier-load, lower-reps, more sets kinda deal - dropping my food intake a lot seems a bit stupid.  Realistically, my weight is not currently problematic, health-wise.  Weight is now a cosmetic issue, and while I don't think that's unimportant, I'm making a conscious choice to focus on ability rather than appearance.




(For the record, for people interested in that sort of thing, I weigh about 135 lbs.  Actually, probably a bit more right now, but I haven't been able to locate the scale since I rearranged stuff in the room in which it was located so that'll have to do for now.  My BMI is in that range that people quote as being "overweight" but which actual statistics show results in longer lifespan and fewer health problems - for women. I look a bit chunky, but healthy.  I'm ok with that, although the fashion-conscious side of me would like me to be able to wear a wider range of clothing styles.)

I've still been eating my stew-o-blandness, although now that the batch I made is finished, I think I'll go back to eating with the family for dinners for a bit because I have more (paid) work than usual at the moment and it's just easier.  The fish-and-greens salads are actually really nice for lunch, but as I generally need to eat early and have not been so diligent about actually eating breakfast, I have needed afternoon snacks, and these have been mostly liverwurst on veggies.  There is a great charcuterie in town that makes lovely liverwurst and I want him to keep on making lovely liverwurst so I feel obligated to buy it.  You should too, it's delightful.  And it's liver!

I also found - as the title of this post indicates - treats in the back of my fridge.  Fermented green beans!  No, fermented in a GOOD way.  You know, lactofermented, like kosher pickles.  I have been cutting them up and putting them in my salads, and they're just like capers only they taste good and go really well with sardines.  I will be sad when they are gone.  Experience has shown me that fermented vegetables only work really, really well when the veggies are super-fresh - and the green beans available "fresh" now are just not.  I could do some carrots, I suppose - I just picked up a few bunches from Madrona and they are very crisp, sweet and yummy.   Anyway the date on these pickled beans (aren't I smart, labeling things? I wish I did that more) is from mid-July.  Gotta love lactofermentation!

The New Challenge

Ok, holidays are over, houseguests are gone, and there are no disruptions in the foreseeable future.  It's time to get back to normal.  Ah, normal, I missed you so much...

I'm sure everyone is curious how my vacation from my food vacation went.  Well, it was pretty crap-tastic, in all senses of the word.  I was fine for two or three weeks, enjoying grilled meat and a wee bit of sweet stuff, and lifting better at the gym again, and then I got sick.  One of the nastiest colds ever.  And of course since it was Christmas and I had piles of stuff to do, I couldn't afford my usual cold "cure" which consists of pho, hot baths, lying around the house doing nothing for 2 days, and sleep.  Oh no, I was making presents, running errands, getting stuff together, working (for the client who gave me the virus in the first place, so I didn't even have an excuse to get out of that) decorating the house, baking, etc.  So of course my cold lasted longer than it should have, and somehow involved so much snot that I felt nauseous all the time because of it running down into my stomach.  The only way I could feel halfway decent was to eat rather a lot of starch.  Which somehow turned into bread.  And then I felt gross in a different, more bloaty way.  Anyway, I'm better now, and eating better, and this week I've been back at the gym and have a new workout routine that I am thoroughly amused by.  Of course I have some bloat, and some actual flab, to lose.  But what fun is the new year without a bit of extra challenge?

I'm definitely going back to a low-food-reward diet, but with a few modifications.  The first is more vegetables - after watching this video I'm very inspired and could definitely have more veg in my life.  I'm not as big as that woman so I'm thinking 9 cups a day is excessive for me.  I think any more than 6 cups a day would jeopardize my overall caloric intake, so I figure that's a good amount to shoot for.  Say one cup in the morning, either in vegetable omelette form or in a smoothie, 2-3 cups in a salad at lunch (simple olive oil & lemon juice or apple cider vinegar dressing), a cup raw for snacks in the afternoon and 2 cups with dinner, either gently sauteed, steamed, or in stew.  I like the amount of offal I was eating before so I'm going to keep up with that, but I think I need some extra omega-3's so I'm going to up the seafood by shifting my basic lunch from stew to salad topped with canned fish (salmon, mackerel, tuna or sardines).  The trick is finding those without soy oil!  So that's going to be my basic diet - omelette, smoothie, salad, raw veggie sticks, stew.

Not so hard, right? But wait! Because extra-extra challenge is even MORE fun, we have the husband (let's call him Stirling) wanting to get HIS diet better too, but he doesn't want to make his food less tasty.  For the record, he wants to be basically lower-carb Primal.  So that's fine, but we also have a child (let's call her Rowan) who has an entirely different set of dietary needs - she's six, and while I have no concerns about her health or her food intake at the moment, if she started eating less, we could start to see some growth problems.  She has approximately 0% body fat, muscle tone that most people would kill for, and burns a lot of energy doing things like this.  So she needs food that's nourishing, healthy, AND super-tasty, so she'll actually eat it.  I'm also trying to cut back her wheat intake, just on the grounds that I don't think it's the best way to grow little bodies, given the gut-health issues associated with it.  I don't, however, want to reduce her overall carbohydrate or starch intake, since those are excellent delivery vehicles for the fat and protein she needs and provide her with a lot of readily accessible energy for her bouncings.

My challenge, therefore, is to devise weekly meal plans that deliver what each person wants and needs, without me spending hours in the kitchen each day. (To be clear, if we won the lottery, I would spend hours in the kitchen by choice and hire someone else to do laundry, cleaning, driving, errands and so on - but the reality is, I have other things I need to do besides cook.)  I'm not exactly sure how possible this is.

For this week, my plan is to prep (today, after I get finished procrastinating by blogging) a bunch of veggies.  I'm going to pre-cook what I think I'll need for 3-4 breakfasts for me and Stirling (he can have veggie omelettes too, they're nice and Primal) so I can just scoop them out of a container in the fridge onto a partially cooked omelette and stuff it under the broiler.  I'll have one container of seasoned veg and one of plain.  I'll cut up all the raw-snacky vegetables for snacks for all of us, and have dips for Rowan and Stirling.  I'll probably also cut up a mixture of veg for preparing in a variety of ways (steaming, roasting, in soup or stew) to use throughout the week, since veggie-chopping is what takes most of the time in meal prep.

I also need to make some jerky for Stirling and Rowan.  I'm going to make myself a nice big tub of Stew-o-Blandness and figure out ways to make dinners in which I can partake so the Stew-o-Blandness goes further.  This week is all about the experiments, so I'll post back with what works and what doesn't.  Even if you don't have divergent dietary needs going on in your house, I might find stuff that makes healthy meals a bit more streamlined generally.

Gotta go chop now, but coming up is a post on my actual goals for the new year.  Unsurprisingly, they involve some physical activity.

Nothing says Christmas like Darth Vader

Christmas Eve.  I'm baking cookies for gifts (no, not paleo cookies) and Miss Rowan has an idea for the perfect gift for Uncle Ashley: gingerbread.  Darth Vader gingerbread.  Well sure, why not?

Luuuuuke...I am your Christmas snacks....

How about the fact that it's Christmas Eve and there's no way I'm going within 100 meters of a retail store?  And I don't have any Star Wars cookie cutters.  But before I extinguished her visions of awesome giftage, I pondered... maybe, I could repurpose something...

A search through the drawer of kitchen gadgetry revealed that I did have a Darth Vader cookie cutter.  It just didn't know it yet.  It thought it was a gingerbread girl, albeit one who could use a chiropractic adjustment.  I can see how it would make that mistake:

A few tweaks with a pair of pliers, however, set it right.

The next challenge was black icing.  The internet thought that it was terribly hard to make and I should just buy it.  Screw you, internet, I'm not going out today.  Some parts of the internet said you could get closer using cocoa powder.  So I started with that, and then put in a lot of almost every food colouring I own.  And whaddya know, black icing - or close enough for government work, anyhow.

I think Darth turned out pretty well.  He's tasty, too.

how to make awesome hash browns

And now for something completely different!

I thought I would post this as a useful public service.  So often I find - especially in restaurants - hash browns that are soggy, greasy, overcooked or undercooked, and generally lacking in the delectable crisp-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside yumminess that one expects from hash browns.  Here, then, is the definitive recipe for how to make hash browns good, not greasy.

First, you need some grease.  Ha!  No, really.  You need fat to make good hash browns.  About a tablespoon per small-medium potato.  And, of course, you need potatoes.  A medium-starch potato like a Yukon Gold works best.

So you have your fat (and please, for the love of your insides, use real fat, not some crappy canola oil or worse, "vegetable oil".  It's not made from vegetables, it's made from industrial corn and soy, and it has no flavour at all - use leftover bacon grease, duck fat, or lard), and you have your potatoes. Now, before your potatoes meet your fat, you want them to be softened up and ready to love the fat.  Hard potatoes take a long time to accept their fatty fate, and you don't want to wait up to an hour for your hash browns.  So dice your potatoes, put them in your vegetable steamer, and steam them for about 10-15 minutes, depending on how big you diced them.  Five minutes if you diced them super-small.  You want a knife to go in them, but with a bit of resistance.

While your potato chunks are steaming, heat up your fat in a non-stick pan on medium heat.  A well-seasoned cast iron pan will also work well.  As soon as your potatoes are steamed enough, shake the steamer over the sink to dry them a bit and then dump them in the frying pan in an even layer.  Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over (sprinkle more if you didn't use bacon fat).  Sizzling should ensue.   If they cover the bottom of the pan and form more than one layer, you've used too small a pan and your hash browns will be sub-optimal, but probably still edible.  Live and learn.

Don't over-stir them, particularly right out of the steamer.  Let them get nice and golden on one side before you start moving them around.  It'll take about 20 minutes to cook them properly.  Taste them when they're close to done and add more salt if necessary.  Then serve hot and enjoy.

(Note that I am not claiming that these are healthy or something you ought to eat every day.  But if you're going to eat them, they ought to be good.)