Anna Friedman Herlihy

Been away from the discussion for a couple days, so here's some thoughts related to several different posts: 1) More beef porn! LOL! In response, I just asked hubby to pull a few stills off of the video he shot of me cutting up a side of beef a couple months ago. I imagine that would qualify. Hopefully he will follow through so I can post... 2) Beef sommelier--fab title. Hubby keeps joking that if I go any further with my butchering hobby, I might not go into teaching history full-time once I finish my dissertation, but should open up a super high-end butcher shop. 3) Butcher shops for the elite vs. the poor: I'm actually not so sure that the main survival of butcher shops is only in richer areas. I think it is more of an urban phenomenon among two very different groups--the privileged gourmet and the ethnic consumer (often the low-income ethnic consumer). I've lived in several lower-income, mainly ethnic neighborhoods here in Chicago (Polish, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and African-American)--I like having a lot of space but not spending a lot of money for it. The neighborhood butcher has been a prominent feature of all those neighborhoods. I've shopped at all of them, and have to say that the quality was, in most cases, somewhat better than the supermarkets (certainly fresher), although you do find some products not available in the supermarkets (e.g. great sausages at the Polish butcher, freshly rendered lard at all of them), and the butchers have always been excited when I asked them to order particular things for me. In our current neighborhood (mainly African-American with a range from very low income to middle income), just try getting in the door of the butcher on a Friday afternoon (payday for many). I think this particular butcher has the best quality of all the neighborhood ones that I've tried (maybe a 25 percent increase in quality over the supermarket). Before I started getting my meat direct from the farmers, if I didn't have time to make the long drive to Costco, I would often stop by this butcher (literally around the corner from us) for a pork shoulder for the smoker or some ribs or a couple of hand-cut porterhouses, and several times got to marvel at the crush of bodies packed into an area in front of the counter the size of a large bathroom (and got to answer lots of curious questions about how I found out about the butcher, since I stood out as the only white customer). I'm sure even now that I am getting the meat from the farmers, I will still stop in occasionally for certain things (a pig, or cow, or lamb only has so many of each part, after all, and specific recipe cravings do happen despite what might be lurking in the freezer). As for people preferring low price and convenience over quality: I would say our current neighborhood butcher is slightly more expensive than the supermarket, and on busy days the wait can be very long, so I don't think people care about convenience--more like tradition, a chance to chat with neighbors, etc. I've had a lot of fun and met some great people huddled in the horde before the counter--reason enough to visit this butcher occasionally, even though I'm now getting most of my meat farm-direct!

I supposedly *only* grow my zucchini for the flowers But, of course, every year I get busy, don't pick them for a few days, get some rain, and then all of a sudden have giant zukes on every plant! (This happened recently--forgot to collect flowers during and after the busy 4th of July--also forgot to collect the okra when it was small, and now have much giant unuseable okra). So with six gargantuans collected in the past week, I've made: simple sauteed (but I slice it into sticks, not rounds which I think gives it a better texture with a contrast between pieces of skin and pieces of just flesh); zucchini bread (but baked in muffin tins for easier freezing/single servings) topped with a goat cheese icing (allergic to cow's milk, so I use goat cheese instead of cream cheese); and best of all grilled zucchini with mushrooms and onions (I halve the mushrooms and quarter small onions and cut the zukes into big chunks, marinate everything in olive oil, s/p, and whatever herbs tempt me from the garden--marinate the onions/mushrooms separately from the zukes--then toss the veggies in one of those bbq baskets over a direct fire--mushrooms and onions first for about an extra 5 minutes, then about 15 more minutes total once you add the zukes--toss or stir every few minutes so you don't get burned pieces on the bottom--when it comes off toss with a bit of vinegar of your preference, and serve). I think I'm going to have the leftover grilled zucchini salad cold tonight with the addition of some crumbled feta and bacon. At this point there is only one left in the fridge! For now... Barbara Kafka's veggie book has a nice zucchini custard recipe that I've made (substituting goat/sheep products for the cow). I also find surplus zukes good for green gazpachos. Also very good spiced up with curry (Indian or Thai) in a saute (also I've been thinking of making that zuke custard recipe with coconut cream and curry).

Re: cattle breeds--I'm not a big fan of Angus. At the very rare state that I like my steaks, despite the hype, I find it to be tough, unless really properly aged (which you are certainly not going to find at the supermarket). When I did buy supermarket meat on occasion, I actually preferred the non-specific steaks (for what was available at my local supermarket and Costco). The farmers that I buy meat from, who raise Angus along with their Dexters, prefer the Dexter (but most consumers want/recognize Angus, so they must raise some to satisfy the market). There's a different heirloom breed that another farmer I was talking to at this year's Family Farmed expo in Chicago similarly prefers over Angus (this farmer was from Wisconsin). I wish I could remember the name, but it is also about 2/3 the size of a regular cow and furry, and he also thought it was far superior to Angus for fully grass fed beef. BTW--while I was trying to find out what this mystery breed of cattle is, I found this interesting article on slate that gives an overview of the Angus explosion (perhaps mainly due to the fact that they fatten up quickly), exposes the myth of the well-marbled steak, and compares various steaks bought from various sources, and determines that the best tasting one was grass-fed and the least marbled: http://www.slate.com/id/2152674/ Thanks again David, for starting an interesting topic for discussion! Edited to add: I think the other breed was Scottish Highland. There's also a Highland/Dexter crossbreed out there called High-Dex.

Lately, I've become hyper-aware of where my seafood has come from, to the point of not ordering it at a restaurant (with the exception of a few sushi places that I trust implicitly) unless the restaurant is sure of it's origins. I'm particularly concerned with imported fish and farmed fish as well as the giant fish that may have mercury issues, since we're thinking of trying to have a rugrat in the near future (I rarely eat any sort of tuna anymore). I do still eat raw seafood, but I don't think you could pay me to eat at the types of "all you can eat" sushi places that I used to favor in college! I'm trying to buy only fish that's somewhat local, or at the very least has not been shipped from halfway across the world. I also tend to buy whole fish, because I feel like I can check the freshness better (if it's a big fish, I will vacuum seal and freeze the extra, and then you have excellent bones and heads for stock too). Given that I'm in Chicago, there are not a lot of options for locally caught fish, so for variety's sake, I have to buy shipped product more than I'm happy with (or order it in a restaurant). I think I do eat fish and seafood less than I used to. However, I tend to gorge myself on seafood when I'm traveling in places along the ocean, especially those types of places along the shore where you pick your fish (or whatever) and then they prepare it for you. Also keep in mind that seafood can be problematic not just because of disease but the whole issue of the carbon footprint with "fresh" fish air freighted in from distant points. I do think that fish farming has lots of possibilities for the future in terms of protecting wild fish stocks, but so far there have been enough problems that I am wary (especially with farmed fish from places like China). Of course, the best fish is one you catch yourself! Just the thought of some panfish cooking over a campfire is making me want to drag out the tent and head up to Wisconsin! Of course who's to say that one lake is any cleaner than another--no good way to tell. So I guess extreme anxiety about fish if I don't know it's origins, but little anxiety if I trust the restaurant, fishmonger, particular body of water or geographical region, etc.

This is what I am so hopeful about! I think we are approaching a new seed change in the agriculture business, that will bring greater health back to our population and environment. I think there is no mystery behind the coincidence between the rise of heavily commercialized, huge-scale farming/the increased chemicalization of food and the obesity epidemic, increase in diseases like cancer, early onset of puberty, etc. in America and some other Western nations. The beef I get now from my farmers tastes like the beef I remember from my very earliest years (in the early 70s, when we still had family farms in suburban Boston where I grew up--they are gone and replaced with tract homes now, so sad). I would gnaw every bit of tasty meat off of the bones, reveling in the beefiness! I had completely lost this habit until just a couple months ago with the first steaks we cooked from the half a cow we purchased from the farmers (Dexter, by the way--an heirloom breed well-suited to being exclusively grass-fed--I think it is far superior to the usually seen Angus). Needless to say the dogs are not as happy with their bones anymore because we pick them so clean before handing them over!

One other thing to remember about grass-fed beef is that it is leaner than grain-fed beef. So if you are looking for the perfectly marbled steak, you are probably not going to find it with grass-fed, grass-finished beef (you will if the grass-fed beef is grain-finished, which a lot of farmers offer, but you don't get the same health benefits in the meat). I prefer the fully grass-fed (both for taste and for health issues), but it does require some adjustments in cooking. Mainly careful attention to cooking temperature depending on the cut, and be very careful of overcooking steaks. Treat grass-fed beef as you would venison or bison, as it dries out and overcooks similarly to both of those meats. I don't think grass-fed steaks would be good for someone who likes their meat medium or above (however slow-cooked, braised cuts would be fine). For some of the leaner roasts (like top round), I often lie slices of salt pork on top of the roast as it cooks so it doesn't dry out (I also do this with venison roasts). You can also lard the cuts if you have a larding needle. Marinating overnight or using a wet rub for many of the cuts also helps retain moisture. And sous-vide cooking works awesome for grass-fed beef (remember you can slightly undercook and then sear for a nice brown crust after the sous-vide process).

One of the most reasonable ways to buy lamb is to buy whole animals and butcher them yourself (you will need to invest in a bone saw if you want loin chops--but not a very expensive tool, unless you get fancy and buy an electric band saw). I get organically-raised lambs for $2 a pound live weight (I'm a careful butcher and get about 90 pounds of useable meat out of a 150 pound animal). Of course you can always have the lamb butchered to your specifications and wrapped for freezer meat for a nominal charge. If you don't want organic, it's even cheaper to buy a whole lamb from a packing house or ethnic butcher (one down the street from us has them for $1.39 a pound). Then I just vacuum-seal and freeze the cuts (and bags of scraps for making sausage). The one thing to be careful about with lamb (as with goat, venison, and a number of other meats) is to trim off as much fat as possible before freezing. Lamb fat goes rancid very quickly, even in the freezer. So use any fatty cuts like the ribs within a couple months. So as to the previous comments about lamb fat--I too love it when it's fresh! But old fat is probably the reason for the difference in taste between the one poster's two batches of ground. If you want to make merguez or other lamb sausage/patties/etc. from lamb, I highly recommend adding pork fat, unless the meat is very, very fresh (and you don't plan on freezing extra product). And as for the higher cost of lamb, compared to other meats: Well, any baby animal costs more. Lamb is to mutton as veal is to beef as baby goat is to old goat as suckling pig is to regular pork. In a baby animal the ratio of pounds of yield as compared to amount of labor caring for the animal results in the higher price. And finally, every single person I've fed lamb to (or for that matter, goat, which I like even better than lamb) has loved it. Even those who attested to a hate of lamb. It just needs to be cooked properly and be fresh! Case in point, at our 4th of July bbq this year we roasted a whole goat and a whole pig (for 120 people). Guess what was completely eaten and guess what we had leftovers of? The goat was gone within an hour, and I ended up freezing some of the leftover pig! (Granted the pig was twice the size of the goat.)

I recently switched to buying most of our meat directly from farmers. Although they are not certified organic, their farming practices are humane (lots of pasture space) and old-school (feeding animals what they're supposed to eat, like grass for beef), they only medicate when absolutely necessary (animals do get sick sometimes), and they try to use organic products as much as they can. We have been very happy with the product, and I love that my money is going directly to them and their kids! We are getting lamb, beef, chicken, and pork from them (we did have an unusual issue with the pork--see my spotted pork topic in the cooking forum--but it was resolved in a most appropriate manner). As for the cost, it ends up being a lot cheaper than supermarket meat. The one downside for most people (an upside to me) to buying whole or half animals is that you end up with a lot of cuts that you might not normally buy. So your menu planning is a bit less-flexible (because it depends on what's in the freezer), but encourages much more creativity! Plus you need to leave time for defrosting (I find most cuts will defrost within four hours in a sink full of cold water--a bit longer for giant roasts, although if you want to refreeze the final product, you should always thaw in the fridge). At this point we have not one, but two upright freezers in the basement. My husband also hunts, so we usually have venison in the freezers as well. I do take on the task of doing most of the butchering myself, although I could get the animals fully butchered to my specifications if I wanted to (all of their other customers do this--I'm the exception, and it does take having a very open schedule to be able to pick the carcass up fresh when it's ready). I carefully vacuum seal all cuts, and then freeze them in a way so that they freeze quickly (lots of air circulation around each piece). I'm actually thinking of trying to find a used flash freezer, so they can freeze even more quickly (the quicker the cuts freeze, the less damage to the meat). I have found little difference between the cuts when they're fresh and the cuts after having been frozen. I think most people's experience with frozen meat is meat they stuffed into an already full freezer (so it froze slowly without proper air circulation) or frozen products from the supermarket (which often get partially thawed and then refrozen, and thus somewhat freezer-burned, with the freezer doors opening and closing all the time, customers leaving them open, things coming off the truck and sitting in the loading dock for too long before being put in the freezer, the time in the shopping cart and car on the way home, etc.). If you do purchase farm-raised meat already frozen, be sure that it's getting transported to you in a cooler, and bring a cooler to transport it from your pickup location to your home to ensure that it stays fully frozen the whole time. Also, when you get home, I would recommend unwrapping it from the butcher paper, and repackaging via a vacuum sealer. But in response to your original question, I do think there *can* be a huge difference between supermarket meat and that from a butcher, but not all local butchers are getting meat much different from the supermarkets, and some supermarkets actually have fairly decent meat (before my switch to the farmers, I was fairly happy with the meat at Costco, for example). The *enormous*l difference is between meat raised by large corporations and that raised by family farmers. So support your local farmers and either buy direct from them or buy from a butcher that gets whole animals from small, local sources! Try eatwild.com to find a farmer near you. Basically my long rant about buying direct from farmers is to encourage those who want better quality meat, but who might not be able to afford the high-end grocers or butchers who carry the stuff, to know that with space for an extra freezer or two, a vacuum sealer, and some extra time for packaging and planning, you can get spectacular meat for a reasonable price (but it does take some getting used to shelling out, for example $600 for half a cow or $500 for a whole pig). And also that properly frozen, there should not be much of a difference between fresh and frozen meat.

So a pork butt is the shoulder but a beef butt is from the sirloin (basically 2/3 of the way down the animal from the shoulder)? Wow, could the powers that be try to confuse people any more than they already do with multiple names for the same cuts of meat!!! Sorry for my hazarding a wrong guess based on thinking pork butt would be equivalent to beef butt. Yikes!

The butt part of an animal is the shoulder, on a cow the shoulder is usually called the chuck rather than butt. I would hazard a guess it's another name for a top shoulder blade roast (which you usually find as steaks rather than a whole roast). Cuts from the top shoulder can be marinated well then grilled or broiled (if not too thick), or as with any part of the chuck you can braise it. I personally would not dry roast it, unless you marinated it overnight, because of the risk of toughness with that part of the animal.

Bacon and bananas is an awesome combo. One of my fave sandwiches is some nice whole grain bread with peanut butter, honey, sliced bananas, and crumbled bacon. You could make tiny party-sandwich versions of these. You could also wrap large-ish pieces of banana in bacon (probably a half piece) and roast on the grill. I'd imagine that as long as temp was high enough to get the bacon nice and crispy before the bananas turned to mush, it would taste okay at room temp.

Oh and PS, I'm extremely guilty of the sink-full-of-dishes-while-I'm-cooking faux pas. If only I could train hubby to be my kitchen cleaner (he bows out of all dish duty citing childhood trauma caused by his mother--a bit too convenient, if you ask me). Usually I'm lucky during a dinner party and someone asks to help. What task do I put them on? It's almost always filling up the dishwasher and handwashing what can't be put in it!

My mother refuses to touch raw food with her bare hands, so she uses grungy dishwashing gloves, without scrubbing them first! It's so gross. I should probably buy her a box of disposable gloves. But then again, she would probably just reuse those too out of a sense of frugality. Another disgusting kitchen thing she does is save half-used paper towels and napkins and then uses them to wipe up spills on the counter and floor. Using them for the floor wouldn't be so bad if she didn't tuck them into just about every drawer in the kitchen to save them for future use. Ugh. Gotta appreciate the recycling sentiment though!

Hi there, Two great places to get fresh fish in the Chicago area (I don't know of any super close to Naperville): Mitsuwa Marketplace in Arlington Heights (awesome for sushi-grade fish with usually very good prices--bring a cooler to transport it home, plus they have a giant sushi food court) and L. Isaacson and Stein Fish Company on Lake Street at Halsted in downtown Chicago (again bring a cooler--but I usually only buy whole fish here as they do sometime try to trick the unknowing into buying things that aren't perfectly fresh by mixing in the past day's inventory with the current--so check the gills and the eyes). But you should also check or post on the LTH forum, which is Chicagoland specific. I think I remember a thread about fish stores in the area. (Sorry if it's blasphemy to talk about other food forums on egullet.) As for done-ness, I also usually just eyeball it, based on how thick the piece is. Very thin fillets really only need a minute or two per side. I vaguely remember that there is some sort of rule of thumb for doneness (like so many minutes per inch of thickness), but what it is, I couldn't tell you. For a whole fish, if it's not obvious, I usually stick a fork in the thickest part and see if it starts to flake. You could always do this for any fish, as long as you don't care what it looks like, but keep in mind that a lot of fishes are best served rare to medium rare (like tuna).

Excellent. The spleen! A new variety meat for me. Thanks Chef Crash! I was looking through the Whole Beast and there also happens to be a pig spleen recipe that sounds good--sure I could convert it to this one on a smaller scale. Or perhaps I will keep it more simple as you suggest.

Thanks for the hints about the spleen possibility. I'm also assuming that whatever it is, it is edible. So it's vacuum-sealed in the freezer now, but I figure I'll cook it up someday to try it. Any other thoughts on what it is will be appreciated! As for the culinary experiments, I present the first--Deviled Kidneys à la Fergus Henderson's lamb kidneys recipe. The presentation would have been a bit improved by some chopped herbs from the garden, but I was too hungry and too lazy to go out and get them (not to mention the 90 degree inferno outside right now). Accompanied by some leftover potato salad from the 4th. I have to say, very good! I've only done the recipe before with pork kidneys, but the goat kidneys were definitely more delicate. I did soak them in acidulated water, because I can't handle the thought of a bite tasting like piss. Here's the pic: Probably will be a bit before any more experiments--everything else is in the freezer, and I've not got much time in the next couple weeks (plus I've had my fill of variety meats lately with sautéed pork liver and kidneys, and the pork liver, kidney, and heart paté I made for our 4th party). Oh yes, and it was a young goat. Not quite a baby at 48 pounds (so maybe a live weight of 60 or so?), but still young. It came out very tender and excellent on the bbq! (Although they gave me a bigger animal than I had wanted, so I had to cut it up into the primals to get it to fit on the grill). And I wish more folks appreciated goat too! I love it, maybe even better than lamb. Luckily in Chicago we have plenty of ethnic groups who like goat (Greek and Mexican especially) and several places to get it on a regular basis.

As promised, some pictures! Not for the faint of heart. It came with the liver, kidneys, heart, and a mystery organ that hopefully someone can help me identify (unfortunately no lungs or stomach, so no goat haggis). The head with neck still attached: The head, no neck (frozen for stew). Look at that tongue! Note that they carefully sawed off the top of the skull to access the brain, leaving the eyeballs intact: Please help me identify the bottom organ! The kidney on the top is for size reference. I have no idea what it is (gallbladder?): And just 'cuz I took 'em, behold the brain after being popped out of the skull (the spoon method worked beautifully): And the tongue (quite difficult to cut out, I might add--I'd love to know any tricks for removing one): So please, help me identify the mystery organ, and I'll be sure to post my culinary adventures with the variety meats of the goat!

Hello all, When I picked up our whole goat today for our 4th of July bbq (yes we're doing a pig and a goat--120 people!), I was pleasantly surprised to find out it came with all the offal, and even had the top of the head cut off for easy access to the brain. I don't really have time to do much with these parts for the 4th party or in the next couple weeks, so I'm going to freeze the ones that I know I can freeze (liver, heart, tongue), but I'd love some ideas on what to do with them. I'm assuming they are similar to lamb offal? Also, it is possible to freeze the brain and kidneys? I've never heard of these parts being frozen. If not, I will try to eat the kidneys and brain on the 5th (I know you're supposed to use them right away, but I just won't be able to get to them--I just let pork kidneys sit in the fridge for 4 days before eating half of one of them for breakfast today, and it tasted excellent, although I did change out the acidulated soaking water several times--the rest went into a paté). And also, the goat had what I think is the gall bladder, from what I can tell (my butchering book says they look like a small liver, but I've never had a carcass until now that had something that fit that description). I've heard these are not edible. Does anyone know? One thing I was thinking of doing was a sort of headcheese from the head, once I take the brain out (which I've never done before--I assume you sort of pop it out with a spoon or something?). PS--I did see the beautiful roasted goat head topic! But I think having a split open head on the bbq would be a bit much for some of the folks at our party (the intact pig head is more than enough). Thanks much for any thoughts. I'll try to snap a pic of the split open head and what I think is the gall bladder tomorrow am, when I take it out of the cooler. The head is pretty neat looking in a sort of gruesome way.

I have to say, the heart braised simply in a bottle of white wine with some thyme, bay leaves, salt, and pepper came out fabulous on it's own. I couldn't keep myself from snacking on it until it was folded into the paté!

That's a great question, and I am looking forward to hearing from someone who really knows what they are talking about. I've heard everything from brining (draws the blood out) to "that's not fit to eat" to "just cook it up" It would be interesting to find out what the effects of curing will have on the ham. ← Well, being an adventurous eater, and figuring it's just blood, I did fry up a sample to see. The blood spots taste like, well, blood (kind of livery, but not in the good way of liver or blood sausage). Not particularly palatable. I'm actually guessing that there's probably no harm in eating them (in fact both the processor and one website I looked at noted that if the splashing is minor, it's okay to eat). The bigger issue is the looks--the spots turn quite black when cooked, and I can't imagine many consumers being comfortable serving meat that looked that way. I do have a picture, but if the others caused cringes, this one surely would, so I will just use the link again, and not embed: http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11834507...4817_543619.jpg Right now everything's frozen solid, so I can't answer the accelerating spoilage question. But, being an experimenter, I'm going to try some experiments! Brining the spotted chops, curing the ham. Why not? (PS--I LOVE that charcuterie topic.) I'll be sure to post results.

Hello again, So it was indeed "blood splashing". I guess it happens in a certain percentage of hogs/pigs, and because I got mine minimally processed (just gutted, cleaned, and cut down the backbone) so I could butcher it myself, there was no way to tell. But all the non-spotted parts are fine. The rest can go to the dogs (got some cooking up for them right now). And so I guess I'll be making a lot of sausage from the spotted areas (although with the loin, I can cut the non-spotted parts into chunks for kabobs on the grill, or probably grind for lean pork meatballs or something). It will make me be more creative with what I do with the meat, so I guess that's the silver lining to the cloud. The farmers had kept a hog and a half for themselves out of this batch (although they had it completely butchered by the processor and frozen), and they're going to give me an extra half a hog (one of the 400 pounders--mine was 290 pounds) as compensation for the parts I can't use (which seems to be maybe a quarter to a third of my pig). So it all works out. I won't have my giant ham to cure as I wanted (they had the hams cut up into smaller hams), but I'll certainly be getting lots more practice making sausage (I just recently bought a new wine fridge that I'm turning into a curing box for dry-curing meat). Or maybe I'll just try curing the ham anyway, and see when I slice into it, what parts are affected. I doubt the blood taste would carry through the whole piece. And if anyone else has this problem in the future, hopefully they'll search on egullet and this will help them!

Thanks! I checked the liver this morning, very good--not too strong, but then again I'm a big liver lover! Braising the heart in wine is a great idea. I will use that instead of water for sure.

Update--I emailed the farmers the pictures (I know they're going to be really disappointed, so I figured that was the easy way to break the news--these folks really care a lot about their product, and the beef, lamb, and chickens I've gotten from them have been excellent). So I'll be sure to post what the verdict is. I did some intense internet research, and I think what happened to this pig is something called blood splashing. This is usually caused by the animal not being bled soon enough after being stunned, but can also result from the use of electric prodders or other stress on the animal pre-slaugher. If it is this blood splashing, the non-spotted parts are fine, and the spotted parts are fine for animal feed (so the dogs will be eating well for a while). So let's hope that's what it was, and I can still use the meat in some way without having to just throw it away.

Hello, We're cooking a whole pig for the 4th of July (not the same pig as in my last post ), and I wanted to make an offal-erific pate or terrine as an appetizer. I've got my hands on 4 pig livers, two kidneys, and a heart. I was planning on using the Pate Grandmere recipe from Ruhlman/Polcyn, and adding in the kidneys and heart as garnish. I've been reading that the kidneys can be strong, and one source suggested blanching them while changing the water several times (this in addition to soaking). Should I do this before dicing and adding them to the mix? Heart is tough, so I'm thinking I should simmer it for a while to soften it up, then dice. Does this seem reasonable? Or would the baking in the oven be sufficient to cook it? Any thoughts (or recipes) appreciated. Anna

Make your own boil-in-a-bag meals by vacuum sealing things that take well to reheating. Just freeze mushy things first before vacuum sealing (e.g. chili). You can then just heat them up in a pot of simmering water on the camp stove. Plus the frozen packets act as ice in your cooler and gradually defrost, so they keep for several days. Nothing's better on a really active camping trip than to come back to camp, exhausted, and have some tasty, homemade food ready to go with just a pot of water and a few minutes. Of course, if it's a laid-back trip with plenty of time for food prep and cooking, nothing's better than cooking over an open fire! My fave on camping trips is bacon and eggs in a cast iron pan over the fire. It's the only time I allow myself the luxury of frying the eggs in the bacon grease!