chickensense

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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