Category Archives: Food

Food Dilemma

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Today I am in search of a new source for grass-fed, hormone and antibiotic free meats. Our old source –straight from the farm– is still in business, but last night when I was opened the order form to put together this week’s order, the prices had increased to a level that left me incapable of sending in an order. As tasty as the meat fresh from the farm is, and as much as I want my meat hormone and antibiotic free and raised sustainably and ethically, I don’t have an endless supply of money. There is something of a budget to keep in mind.

After years of eating really good meat product, there is no way I can go back to just buying whatever is at the corner grocery store though. Seriously, I can’t throw away all these years of ethical and healthy eating and just grab the nearest pack of cheap ground beef and press on. I wish I could! Unfortunately, I know too much to be able to eat it without thinking about it, and thinking about it leads to not wanting to eat it. So now it’s time for some soul-searching and some research. If we are to be priced out of being able to eat the ethically raised and healthy animals we have grown accustomed to eating, what animals are we going to eat?

It’s quite a dilemma, and it’s possible that for a week or so, we may be eating a lot of chicken, since I can still afford to get free range happy chickens for my stew pot. I’ve done some research this morning, and the fact is, our current source of happy cow and pig meats is still likely the cheapest I will find, and … it’s not at all cheap. Never really was cheap, but it was still within the realm of being justified. A dollar or so more a pound is one thing. Twice as much or more a pound is another entirely. It feels a little like highway robbery. Not that I think the farmers we have been buying from these years are intentionally trying to screw us on the price of their product, but I don’t doubt they will raise their prices to whatever the market will bear, and with more and more of the wealthier among us wanting free range, grass fed, antibiotic/hormone free meats, the market will actually bear quite a lot. Some of us are just going to get priced out of having the good stuff.

But now with my research done, I am going out into the world of grocery stores and butcher’s shops to see what I can find. First stop is the butcher shop just around the corner. I’ve been meaning to stop in there for some time now and ask a few questions … and see what the prices are like. If I don’t find what I need there, it’ll be on to Whole Foods and Sun Harvest. Last stop will be to get chicken. I already anticipate the only meat I will be coming home with will be the chicken, but one can hope that somewhere out there I will find a pound of ground beef that isn’t full of nastiness and artificially red and costs less than a new car. LOL!

I really need to get out the door and get going on this –it’s quite an expedition– but I do want to warn everyone else who enjoys eating ethically raised grass fed hormone and antibiotic free beef that not all beef and pork that is marked as such is quite what you would expect it to be. As with everything, companies weasel around with words and definitions. For example, cows that have been given hormones and antibiotics up until the last 140 days of their lives can apparently be labeled as hormone and antibiotic free. That’s just one example. I have others. At a future date, it’s likely I will share that information in more detail. Just know that labels lie and DO RESEARCH, if this kind of thing matters to you.

Now … off to talk to a man (or maybe two) about beef.

Valentine’s Day Report

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Had a really pleasant Valentine’s Day. Nothing really went as planned, because nothing ever really does. I’ve learned to adapt to reality on that matter. But a nice dinner got made, and a bottle of champagne was consumed, and there was a giant chocolate chip cookie and chocolate-dipped strawberries … and Lin and I watched silly things on TV together. So yes, it was a really pleasant Valentine’s Day. Yeah!

Valentine's Dinner

And there has been knitting, knitting, and more knitting. I’m having a little crisis with the knitting, and I will now have to figure out how to solve that little crisis, but I’m almost done with the tree sweater. My plan is to be done with it by Thursday morning and to drop it off at the museum that afternoon. Then … I want to not knit for a few days. I’m getting a little tired of the knitting, though I do want to finish that hat I started before my head gets shaved and I need it. It’s going to be a very comfy and cute hat. I can’t wait to see it finished, but the tree sweater has really knocked the desire to knit right out of me. Trees require really big sweaters. LOL!

Speaking of knitting … it’s time I get to doing some today. I’ve been a big, huge bum. Slept in, did some reading, and then ambled around the craft store far longer than I should have. Now it’s already almost 2 pm, and I still haven’t done a single stitch. Never going to get it finished this way! I’m off to knit!

TAD Day Four: Not What I Planned

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I’d planned to sew myself a new curtain for my home office today, but Austin got snow last night, which means today was a snow day and the husband stayed home from work and kept me busy with other non-crafty things like making breakfast, lunch, snacks, and warm beverages (he eats/drinks way more during the day than I do, apparently). I want to make a really cute curtain, and that takes little longer than could be squeezed in between all the cooking and coffee-making. LOL!

Instead, I worked on test swatches and charting a stripe pattern for a yarn bombing project I am involved with at a local art museum and baked some bread.

Knitting Test Swatches

Tasty Bread

My Thing-a-Day at Posterous!

First Lettuce 2011

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Last night’s dinner wasn’t any kind of fancy gourmet meal, just some whole wheat spaghetti, sauteed mushrooms and ground beef, and Alfredo sauce (from a jar – eek) … and a side salad. Nothing terribly exciting, except all the lettuce and radishes came from the garden, which is quite exciting to me! LOL!

First Lettuce 2011

Last night before I tucked the lettuce in under their freeze-protecting blankets, I decided to quickly thin the little plants out a bit. There’s still a lot to be thinned out in order to give the largest of them the best conditions for growing perfectly, but I didn’t want to waste any, so I only picked what we needed for last night’s salad. If I do that a few more times this week, everything should be spaced out well enough.

I’m quite thrilled with this winter’s lettuce. The Black Seeded Simpson (a leaf lettuce) is behaving in a weedy manner (which I like) and looking and tasting great. The few head lettuce seeds I planted on a lark (really not winter hardy at all) are already getting large enough to start pulling together into little heads too. I think this is the earliest we’ve had lettuce on our plates from seeds planted at the beginning of winter. Last year, we did have some during winter, but all of that was from summer plants I babied like crazy to keep going through a few freezes. Old lettuce plants may provide good nutrition, but after a while, it just doesn’t taste as sweet as the leaves of new plants.

The thing I am most thrilled about concerning the lettuce is that while I have been covering most of the seedlings during freezes, some of the self-planted ones were just outside the range of my blanket, and I couldn’t be bothered to cover them … and they haven’t died. In fact, some of them look really, really healthy. What will be interesting to see, as the season progresses, is whether or not they are not only freeze hardy but also don’t go to seed at the first sign of a warm spring day. Either way, I’ll be saving seed from these plants, because they will be the ones to plant at the start of next winter planting season, but if they also show themselves to be tolerant of warm and sunny weather, I may have my perfect lettuce seeds at last. Something that can be grown and enjoyed through winter and into early summer. That would be great!

In other garden news, I really need to get out there and do some weeding and prep work for spring planting. I’ve done better at keeping up with it this winter (and certainly better than I did this last summer), but it’s either sunny but too cold or warm enough but too wet to be outside puttering. It’s not especially overgrown, but still, weeds are weeds and they have to go. I also need to plant more radishes and carrots, as well as tear out the total failure of arugula (it just isn’t going to grow in my garden) and plant some more head lettuce.

It’s also time to start my indoor seedlings and maybe order some seeds of some kind to try some new things this summer. And “we” need to get out the tiller and till massive areas of the yard. I want to do a grain crop this year, plus I need to buy some potato starts to begin the potato experiment anew. OMG, there is so much gardening stuff I need to be doing and I am so busy with other projects! Maybe I should take a day off from the artwork and spend some time planning and working on the garden projects. I yet again have hope that this year will be THE YEAR my garden is totally awesome. Yes, hope does spring eternal in the gardener’s heart. LOL!

On the Topic of Food (Part I)

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Lately, I’ve been exploring restaurants, bars, diners, and the like in the Austin area. Like most people, we get into the rut of going to the same few places we really like without checking out other places we might like as well which have different things to offer. The Austin Metro Area is full of all manner of places to eat, drink, and be merry, and it seems a shame not to try more than the handful we visit regularly. As seldom as we eat out or get takeout/delivery, it’s not even a handful of places!

So … I’ve been trying to find new places to check out for some variety, and I’m finding it harder than I expected to find places that a) serve reasonable food and b) aren’t ridiculously expensive. I don’t care how organic, local, and fresh your foodstuffs are, there will never come a day when I pay $7.95 for an order of chili cheese fries.

This brings me to the reason for this post:

No matter how organic, local, and fresh your foodstuffs are, chili cheese fries are inherently unhealthy. Sure, the organic/local/chili cheese fries may (or may not) taste a little better than the $2.95 ones at the fast food place, but they are both steaming piles of artery-clogging salty greasiness containing far more calories than necessary for very little nutritional return. Additionally, the expensive chili cheese fries tend to be found at trendy locations that are further away and more crowded, which means not only would I be spending more money for the same nutrients (or lack thereof), I’d be spending time.

My time (and my husband’s time) is worth quite a lot these days, and we’re both mindful of how standing in lines or driving across town just to get one thing we want –food or otherwise– adds to the cost of said thing.† Once all is said and done, those $7.95 chili cheese fries might end up actually having a “cost” of $10, whereas a nearly identical (but less trendy) pile of chili cheese fries from the fast food place around the corner is only going to have an additional time/gas cost of a few cents. If I’m going to eat something that’s going to slowly kill me, I’m not really inclined to pay more than necessary, you know what I mean? LOL!

There’s a Part II already started, but my brain and body is moving slowly today, and I’ve sat at the computer just about as long as I can for right now. It’s cold. I ache. Time to go get comfy.

Footnotes
  1. † A perfect example of “time spent” adding to cost is my recent decision to order the yarn for that project online rather than even bother trying to find it locally. I could have gone out every day this week and driven all over the metro area getting the skeins of yarn, and I don’t doubt that with some diligence, I would have found them all by this weekend. But … I would have had to go out every day this week and drive all over the metro area spending time and gasoline, both of which aren’t free. Instead, I spent 15 minutes putting the yarn into my online shopping cart and “checking out” and paid the price of one gallon of gasoline to have it brought straight to my door. Even better? It should be here tomorrow or Saturday, which just so happens to be the earliest the store shelves will be restocked or a special order at the store would have arrived. Win, win! [↩]