Posts Tagged ‘food waste’

Sunday Dinner

Posted on June 24th, 2012 by Tonia 14 Comments

{Alternate Title: One Chicken Down}

Dear Vegetarian and vegan readers, please proceed with caution…

The meat chickens are big enough to eat, and Sunday seemed like as good a time as any. We invited Jen and Trevor over to taste our first home-raised bird.

Mike did the honors.

He strung the bird up by the feet and waited for it to relax {the blood rushing to its head causes it to stop flapping around}, and cut its head off with one clean stroke. The heart pumped the blood out of the body through the neck, leaving a clean carcass. He then dipped the bird in a pot of boiling water and rinsed it in cold, to loosen the feathers before plucking. Once plucked, the bird looks just like a store-bought chicken. Except, this one had been walking around ten mins prior…

Mike gutted the bird and cut the feet off, and threw the discards to Jack. He had a smile on his face for days {chicken feet are a delicacy for dogs.}

Ready for cookin’! We brought it inside, rinsed and dried it off and seasoned it with salt and pepper. We don’t have a scale, but we estimated it was 6 lbs.

This chicken made three meals, plus three mason jars of chicken stock! We made French Potted Chicken {Cook’s Illustrated} the first night, BBQ pulled chicken sandwiches the second night, and chicken chili the third night. I used the bones and leftover scraps to make the stock.

It’s very simple: You place the chicken bones in a crock pot and add enough water to cover the bones. Cook on “low” overnight or for at least 6 hours. Skim any fat that rises to the surface if you wish. The next morning, add any chopped vegetables that you want {I had carrots, celery and onion in the house so that’s what I used} and salt/pepper to taste {I kept mine fairly bland, because I prefer to be able to season whatever it is I am cooking with the stock rather than have the stock already seasoned.} Cook for another few hours to infuse the flavors of the vegetables and then strain out the chunks and pour the liquid into jars. Freeze or can with a pressure canner {I froze these}.

Here’s the thing….it wasn’t easy for me to watch Mike kill the chicken. And it wasn’t easy for Mike to do it. But after I saw how every part of that animal went to use {nothing was wasted…unless you consider feeding your dog the intestines and feet a waste}, I felt better. That animal’s energy became our energy, and we’re using that energy to contribute to the world. We fed our friends and ourselves three meals. And- what makes me feel good about the whole thing above all else- that chicken had a very nice life right up until the moment she was hung upside down.

I forced myself to watch the whole thing because I wanted to feel and internalize what it really means to be a meat-eater. It’s so easy to just buy a frozen piece of meat at the grocery store and never have to think about what that animal’s life was like, or what is really involved from when that animal was born to when it sits on our table at dinner. And then it’s so easy to push our plates away and say “I’m full” and scrape our leftovers into the garbage without a second thought to the animal that gave up its life in order to provide us with the energy that we’re so frivolously throwing away.

There was no way I was going to let any part of that chicken be wasted because I had fed, watered and cleaned its home every day since it was two days old, and I had watched it die so that I could eat.

Phew. What an experience! I’m so grateful that we can go through this and try living this way. It feels right.  It feels like the way things should be. But I can’t even begin to think about killing my sweet turkeys. :(

Winter Gardening and a Seasonal Diet

Posted on March 9th, 2011 by Tonia No Comments

“You are what you eat.” -Unknown

Mike and I have had several great conversations over food about food recently. We go around and around trying to figure out how best to stay healthy while cutting back on the impact that our food consumption has on the environment. We’re extremely interested in the idea of a local diet. Exclusively local. Sounds great, especially when we live in a town with an organic family farm around every corner. But there are some real challenges with this lifestyle, like making sure we still get a diversity of food and nutrients in our diet.

Since moving here, we have already cut way back on buying food products that are processed and packaged. But we still buy a lot of things like nuts and fruits that were grown far, far away and then transported here.

How do we get away from that? We have come to the conclusion that there is not one solution/alternative to big agriculture for the whole country, let alone the world, or even a state. It comes down to a person’s region, and the type of foods that are abundant in that region. We need to eat more of what is native here.

In northern WI we have wild rice growing in abundance in our rivers and lakes. We have thick forestland and lakes where fish, deer, rabbits, ducks, and other game live. We have maple syrup. We have farmland.  We really have everything we need in order to feed a bunch of humans. What we don’t have is bananas…avocados…exotic fruit and veggies that need tropical or Mediterranean climates in order to survive.

If we’re going to do this eating local thing the right way, we would have to give up those things. But could they possibly be grown here? According to Eliot Coleman in his book The Winter Harvest Handbook, you can actually garden all winter long, even in cold climates. We’ve been reading his book and thinking hard about how we can put some of his ideas for winter growing into practice around here. Mr. Coleman’s main strategy is to build a greenhouse within a greenhouse- to really capitalize on the sun’s heat during the day and retain that heat all night long.

If these techniques work to grow regular veggies during the cold months, might they also work for growing exotic veggies and fruit during the warm months? We intend to find out. First on the list is peaches. We would love to grow fresh peaches here, but it’s just a tad too cold. If we can figure out a way to keep a peach tree alive and happy, we’ll move on to crazier things like olives and maybe even mangoes!

But there is another possible solution- a seasonal diet. Basically every animal on the planet has a season diet, besides modern-day humans. Deer eat bugs and birds and grass all summer long, but during the winter they eat the bark off of trees. Bear enjoy an enormously diverse diet all summer long, and eat very little of anything during the winter. Native Americans way back in the day had very seasonal diets.

Most people today have season cravings, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a seasonal diet. We crave apples and pumpkin in the fall, melons and strawberries in the summer, root veggies and hardy meat stews in the winter. Our cravings happen because our bodies know what foods are in season and therefore are the tastiest. But because modern technology and big agriculture make it possible, our society has grown accustomed to supplementing those seasonal goodies with so many other foods, imported from far away.

I am always shocked to see watermelon sitting in the produce section of the grocery store in mid-December. WHY? Does anyone even feel like eating a watermelon in December?? My guess is 75% of those melons end up going bad and being chucked out by the produce guy. Sad! Why even have them in the store at all, until June?

I challenge you all to be more sensitive to what is in season in your area and what is not. Find out what foods are native to your area, and increase those in your diet. Treat exotic foods as luxuries and cut way back on them if you can. Appreciate the technology that makes it possible for you to eat them. Maybe even make a family outing to a Native American reservation and shadow someone as they go out for the annual wild rice harvest in the fall, or collect and boil maple syrup in the spring. I bet they’d be happy to share and teach their traditions with those who are interested, and they are usually very skilled and knowledgeable in ways to use our area’s natural resources for survival.

One last thing, check out this great website for videos and recipes for local and seasonal eating.

No Waste Recipe: Polenta e Fagiano

Posted on October 21st, 2010 by Tonia 8 Comments

122 lbs [of food]. That’s how much enters the waste stream each month from the average American home (family of four). Ridiculous, sad, and incredible at the same time, isn’t it? A study conducted in 1995 estimated that 96.4 billion pounds of edible food was wasted each year — not to mention all of that probably went straight into the landfill.”

This quote is from this blog, which is where I also found this awesome/scary diagram of food waste in an average American home.

Food waste is an issue we all deal with approximately three times a day.  It’s especially troublesome for non-composting households.  I can’t count how many times I’ve cringed as I’ve scraped our leftovers into the garbage can, and I know firsthand that cooking for only two people is tricky…you either end up with more food than you can eat, or you air to the other side and then end up still hungry at the end of the meal!

I really appreciate it when I find a tasty recipe that makes enough food, yet creates little or no waste.  My Nonna {Italian name for grandmother} was the queen of no-waste-cooking.  She had a huge family and many mouths to feed, and she did so every day with a mystifyingly accurate eye for quantity/proportions.

There was rarely any leftovers after Nonna’s meals– not only because everyone was always licking every last delicious drop off their plates, but also because many of her well-loved recipes came straight from their small village in northern Italy, where people have limited resources.  When they cook, they use ALL of something in the process…nothing is wasted.

I am an itty-bit zealous about my Italian heritage, so I’m going to take this opportunity to say that Italy is awesome.  :)

The following recipe, straight from my Nonna’s cookbook, uses an entire chicken {the heart, the liver, everything}.  You will be delighted at how little you waste when making this meal!  Don’t be intimidated by the look of the recipe…if I can do it, trust me, you can do it.  It makes a lot of servings, so feel free to cut it in half if you’re cooking for less than about four people.

If it’s your first time dealing with a whole chicken, you might find this video helpful.  However, the chef in the video is using a chicken that has already had its heart and other organs removed.  For this recipe, you want all those organs for the sauce.  Simply reach inside the chicken’s chest cavity and scoop out the heart, liver, and gizzard before you begin cutting it up.

Pheasant or Chicken:

2-4 pheasants cleaned well and cut up, or 1 whole chicken

2-5 cloves minced garlic

large bunch of fresh Italian parsley {flat leaf}, finely chopped

2-3 onions, chopped

1/4 lb finely chopped chicken livers/heart/gizzard {basically any inside-parts you removed while cutting up your chicken}

1/4 stick butter

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tea. cinnamon

1 tea. fresh rosemary leaves, minced

3 bay leaves

1/4 lb porcini mushrooms {they usually come dried and chopped}

salt, to taste

fresh course ground black pepper, to taste

1 small {6 oz} can of Contadina brand tomato paste, dissolved in 2 cups water

Assemble and prepare all the above items before you begin to saute.

Melt butter and olive oil in a large sauce pan {even better, a deep Dutch oven, iron sauce pan, or heavy gauge pot.  You’ll need the extra space once you add the pheasants}.

Saute garlic, parsley and onions in oil and butter until parsley is bright green.

Add chicken livers, mushrooms, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper.  Continue to saute five more minutes.

Cook pheasant pieces in saute mixture until brown.

Add tomato paste mixed with water.  Lower heat and cook over medium flame in covered pot for one hour, then uncover and cook until sauce thickens {usually another hour}.

cooking the chicken sauce

Polenta:

4 cups cold water

4 cups course ground yellow corn meal

2 1/2 tea. salt

Mix 3 ingredients together, set aside.

Boil 11 cups water in deep kettle.

Slowly add cold mixture of corn meal to boiling water, stirring continuously.

Simmer for 1/2 hour with cover, then remove cover and continuously stir with wooden spoon for 15-20 min until done.  The goal is to avoid lumps.  The polenta should be a creamy, smooth texture {about the thickness of hot cereal} when done.

Stir in a slice of butter at the end, to enhance the creamy texture.

Pour into glass baking dish and set aside.

When the polenta is done, serve up with sauce and shredded pamigiano cheese and eat immediately.

parmesan

polenta y pollo

Salute!