chickensense

It was a little embarrassing at Whole Foods Market the other day because it seemed that everyone there spoke a different language. I decided to bone up before I went shopping again. Perhaps you’d like to follow along…

Balsamic Vinegar

According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, balsamic means “of, relating to, yielding, or containing balsam.”  Containing balsam?

Again, according to Merriam Webster, balsam means “an aromatic and usually oily and resinous substance flowing from various plants; especially: any of several resinous substances containing benzoic or cinnamic acid and used especially in medicine. Also a preparation containing resinous substances and having a balsamic odor.”  That does not sound too tasty.

Finally, Balsamic vinegar is “an aged Italian vinegar made from the must of white grapes.” Ah ha! Simple–as long as you know that must is “the expressed juice of fruit and especially grapes before and during fermentation; also: the pulp and skins of the crushed grapes.”

Vinegar with oily, aromatic, and resinous grape juice.  If you say so.

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I’m having a few problems as I try to stay away from processed foods with chemicals and additives. The biggest is that I don’t always have time to cook. I haven’t figured out things to have around that are easy to grab and go. On the 3 days that I had to work last week all I had for lunch was pretzels, an apple and a banana. Breakfast was toast with fruit spread and a banana. I’m happy that these were healthy, safe foods, but I got really hungry by late afternoon. (Being short of funds makes this worse since I can’t buy too much food yet.) On the plus side, I magically lost 10 pounds in the week since I changed my food. <Doing the Snoopy happy dance>

I don’t expect to have to leave home to work next week, and Friday will be pay day so things should get easier soon. But I still have to figure out what to buy. It’s a whole new world.

I’ve been advised to purchase fresh fruit and veggies at the farmer’s market instead of Whole Foods Market, it is supposed to be much cheaper. We’ll be going to the farmer’s market at the Ag Center in Memphis for the first time on Saturday, if it doesn’t rain. There is a fairly new farmer’s market in mid-town Memphis on Saturdays too. It is supposed to be very nice, so we’ll try to swing by there on Saturday also.

Tonight for supper, we started with a simple salad with Newman’s Oil & Vinegar dressing. I didn’t like the dressing–it had a bitter aftertaste to me. Then we had organic chicken drumsticks and thighs oven-baked with home-made “shake-n-bake.” (The recipe is below.)  It was incredibly good. I don’t know if it was the organic/free-range chicken, or the “shake-n-bake” recipe, but it was the best chicken I’ve had in a very long time. Along with the chicken, we had organic potatoes with a little butter, wrapped in foil and baked along with the chicken. Even the potatoes were incredibly good, probably from using real butter instead of poison-chemical spread–I mean margarine.

Easy Shake and Bake Chicken

Recipe From http://allrecipes.com/
Serving Size: 6

-= Ingredients =-

• 3 pounds chicken ; cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon sage
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup butter

-= Instructions =-
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).

1. Mix flour, salt, paprika, sage and pepper together in a bag. (I used poultry seasoning instead of the salt, paprika, sage, and pepper.)
2. Add chicken parts in a bag and shake until well coated.
3. Melt butter/margarine in a 9×13 inch baking dish in the preheated oven.
4. Place chicken in the baking dish skin side down and bake for 30 minutes.
5. Turn pieces and bake another 30 minutes until tender and juices run clear.

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Email from Shawn Dady - the Nashville WAPF Chapter leader. She has worked tirelessly to promote raw milk legalization in TN. Read on for her exciting news…
==============================================
Hi friends,

Well this is an historic day. Rep. Frank Nicely called me this morning to let me know that the Raw Milk Cow-Share bill has passed both the TN state house and the senate, and has gone to the governor. It is on his desk, and Rep. Nicely explained to me that if he just lets it lay there, and doesn’t sign it, it will become law. If he does sign it, it will become law sooner than 10 days of course, but the only way it can not become law is if he vetoes it. Since it passed unanimously in the House Ag. Committee as well as unanimously on the house floor, and has the support of the Farm Bureau and the Ag. Department of TN, it will likely become law in 10 days or sooner. The Governor has no reason to veto it.

Here is it’s simple and small, yet extremely powerful language below. Notice that it says PARTIAL owner, and ANY hoofed mammal. What this does is declare cow-shares, goat-shares, sheep-shares, ALL shares of animals, completely legal. They were legal to begin with based on contract law in our Constitution, but this absolutely declares it and puts it out there–it re-establishes it. Wow. Seriously this is huge. All farmers should keep a copy of this bill in their barn displayed on the wall to show anyone who questions them.

This doesn’t mean that everyone can now go out and buy raw milk in retail stores or restaurants. But what it does mean is that farmers can now start up cow-shares, goat-shares, with no worries of legal hassle. It is completely above-board, and as long as we are in a cow-share program, a contract with a farmer, we can obtain our own raw milk, and other dairy products. We are the second state in the union to declare cow-shares legal, following the state of Colorado. Truly historic.

It’s a good day.
Shawn Dady
www.tennesseansforr awmilk.com

Agriculture Committee 1
Amendment No. 1 to HB0720

Bone
Signature of Sponsor

AMEND
Senate Bill No. 1114 House Bill No. 720*

by deleting all language of the printed bill after the enacting clause and by substituting instead
the following:

SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 53, Chapter 3, Part 1, is
amended by adding the following language as a new, appropriately designated section:
§ 53-3-119.

Nothing in this part or any other provision of law shall be construed as
prohibiting the independent or partial owner of any hoofed mammal from using
the milk from such animal for the owner’s personal consumption or other
personal use.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect upon becoming a law, the public welfare
requiring it.

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Sorry all, due to work, and due to major drama yesterday (our babysitter was beat up by her boyfriend in front of my 10-yr-old) we just had grilled cheese again. I also forgot that I skipped buying the swordfish until payday. I did buy a beautiful organic chuck steak which I’m cooking today in a electric skillet, since I don’t have to work.  I make a goood pot roast.   :)    (I did go to the library after work and got several cookbooks that may help.)

Just FYI: I don’t like most vegetables–never have. This makes finding recipes that I’ll eat much more of a challenge, especially since most people seem to think that if you avoid meat you must love vegetables, and they go out of their way to add vegetables to the dish. Also, I am not even close to being a chef.  I just follow the instructions in a recipe, omitting veggies, or substituting ones that I like, or at least tolerate.

This is going to make our journey to healthful eating even more difficult.

Chickensense Pot Roast

1. Add 2 tablespoons oil to an electric skillet and turn the temperature pretty high (I use 400 degrees).
2. Sear the roast on all sides. Don’t use a fork or pierce the roast as it lets the juices escape, use tongs to turn the meat.
3. Turn the temperature down to 250 or 300 and add 1/2 a cup of water. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste.
4. Cover and let cook for 2 to 3 hours depending on the size of the roast. Add water as needed.
5. Add some sliced carrots, and some potatoes chopped into 1 to 2 inch chunks, about an hour before the roast is done.

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Yesterday we visited Wild Oats/Whole Foods Market in Memphis, in our new quest for safe, natural, cruelty-free food, after we were scared out of our wits by the tales in the book, Fast Food Nation.

It was a whole new world that we never knew existed. We took our time going up and down all the isles, reading labels and asking questions of everyone we saw. We found organic and local produce; additive free ketchup, breads, salad dressings, and peanut butter; natural cheeses, and even pure maple syrup. It took us almost 2 hours to get through the store!

The meat department guy had read Fast Food Nation so he understood what we were looking for. He took us in hand and explained that they have their own fish packing plants one right on the Atlantic, and one on the Pacific ocean. He also explained their relationship with their meat and poultry suppliers, how they buy directly from the farmers and ranchers so they can be certain of the treatment of the animals and the cleanliness and purity of the products. He helped us choose the type of fish to try first, and even the best cheeses to get.

We still have no idea of what to buy or how to cook it, so, in addition to the fish, we got a couple of items that we were sure we could cook and that we’d like: chuck steak (from organic, grass-fed cattle), and organic chicken. We plan to eat a lot less  meat and a lot more fish, but we felt we should just dip our toe in the water, before diving in headlong.

So we’re going to cook sword fish, with organic salad and balsamic vinagrette (spelling?), and organic potatoes with real butter.  Sword fish wasn’t what the guy recommended for beginning fish eaters, he recommended some of the less strongly flavored fish, such as halibut, but Jesse (10 years old) was intrigued by the idea of eating sword fish so we went for it.

We’ll have the sword fish tonight (though I haven’t found a recipe for it yet)…

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We began reading Fast Food Nation a few days ago. We were totally sickened at what is in our food! We couldn’t even bring ourselves to finish up the food we already had–we boxed up everything with "natural" and/or "artificial" flavors or colors, and anything that had chemical additives, plus all the meat, and gave it to friends. (They did not want us to tell them what we had read and why we didn’t want the food. They just accepted the 3 large boxes happily.)

That left us with precious little to eat at home. We have never been healthy eaters, so we had no idea how to proceed. We started looking on the internet for types of food and recipes to try, but we don’t even know what to call the type of food we are looking for. It isn’t vegetarian, since we don’t mind eating meat as long as the animals are treated kindly and with respect, are not pumped with hormones or antibiotics–also no feed lots or large packing plants. We don’t have problems with gluten, don’t have wheat allergies, and we are not giving up our dairy food.

Sunday afternoon we visited The Fresh Market, in nearby Germantown. We thought it would be a good place to get natural, organic, additive-free food, but we were so disappointed. All the produce was "conventional" except bagged carrots, bananas, and one kind of leaf lettuce. All the produce was also from California, or another country. Hardly anything else was organic, mostly just smaller (and more expensive!) packages of national brands. We bought a few things, because the cupboards really were bare at home: some bread that only had dough conditioner added;  some organic cheddar cheese; fresh fruit and veggies, peanut butter, real butter, etc.

When we arrived home the real fun began. What do we do with this stuff? We took the easy way that night since we were pooped: grilled cheese sandwiches made with real butter, and delicious, organic cheddar; plus fresh fruit. They were the best we had ever tasted! We were amazed, flabbergasted really, at how good real butter tastes. We’ve had butter once in a while, at someone’s house on bread or something, but it was always just too expensive to justify buying ourselves.

It’s getting late so we’ll have to continue the story of our safe food search tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Fast Food Nation

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Found on Tim and Victor’s Totally Joyous Recipes

Store Wars: The Organic Rebellion Store Wars Store Wars is the latest outreach effort of OTA to educate consumers about the many benefits of organic products. By spoofing a pop culture phenomenon like Star Wars, OTA hopes to attract a new generation of organic consumers, especially “Gen Xers” who grew up loving Luke, Leia and Han, and are now increasingly concerned about making healthy food choices for their families.

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