mskerr

That sums it up perfectly! I was surprised to find out yesterday that the stuff is actually from Italy. It seems to go completely against the Italian simpler- is-better approach and instead goes right for the "keep throwing a bunch of stuff in no matter how confused it gets" approach which is, of course, considered absolute bullocks by serious cooks. Hmm, it would've never occurred to me to try it on toast. I'm with Mjx- I'll stick with vegemite and marmite. On another note- Does this remind you of other pastes/ seasonings/etc that suffer from this sort of "just throw a bunch of random sh*t together" approach to seasoning? And yes, gfweb and Pierogi, I am also starting to look into the whole MSG debate and am finding myself confused and intrigued! I'll have to search for other threads on the topic.

Thanks for all the input! I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel - using a variety of cheaper parts and saving carcasses sounds like the way to go for me. Also, I probably should make the shlep to Trader Joe's to get a better deal (it's 2-3 hours away, but we pass it on the way to visit friends or work out of town). A lot of the recipes I've been reading lately call for a whole chicken. How does stock made from a whole chicken compare to stock made from a variety of bones and cuts compare in your experiences? Over the last few months, I've come to really appreciate bones after realizing how much better my lamb soup is now that I make it with meaty bones instead of ground lamb. So much more body and flavor! Plus, there is something so satisfying about eating meat off a bone. I do make heaps and heaps of soup, so homemade stock is becoming more and more inevitable. As for using Better than Bouillion... It's a very imperfect compromise while I figure out a better way. I have a pretty haphazard approach to buying conventional/ free- range/ organic/ what- have- you. I am totally confused right now about how to balance ethics and economics. I'm only 26 and do not have regular employment or steady income. I have annoyingly persistent ethical pangs about food, but also appreciate all kinds of food, especially affordable or just plain tasty food. I used to try to only buy organic food, but it basically consumed my entire budget. And then I read in the news about how a lot of organic stuff isn't that flash anyway, and... It all just goes in circles! My favorite meal out is a burrito from the local roach coach, so I eat my fair share of cheap and questionable meat. I buy Better than Bouillion for now because (1) it is recommended in the Cooks Illustrated taste tests, and the supermarket chicken (Foster's) is not, and (2) it's economical. Yep, I realize now that it's made from cheap chickens, but alas, I still can't quite bring myself to buy a $5 whole chicken myself at the supermarket. I wish I could because supermarket chicken (and pork) is just unbelievably cheap. Dunno how much flavor it has though! Nickrey: I really like your suggestion of buying a whole chicken, setting aside the breasts and using the rest for stock. An organic chicken breast alone costs $10 at my supermarket, so a $12-13 chicken from Trader Joe's would basically give me stock for free. Mjx- I haven't noticed any chickens in the freezer yet, will look around. I have been keeping an eye out for kosher chickens but haven't noticed any yet. Any tips where to look? On another note - I read in Michael Symon's cookbook that soup can create its own stock as it cooks. He said something like 'What's in stock? Meat, bones, vegetables... What's in soup? Meat, bones, vegetables...'. Any ideas on how to use this approach? Once again, thank you for all the input!

From Dean & Deluca: "Rich, deep and intensely savory, umami exists in a number of foods, many of which are blended into this mouthwatering puree of tomato, garlic, anchovy paste, black olives, balsamic vinegar, porcini mushrooms, parmesan cheese, olive oil and just a touch of sugar and salt. Squeeze it into sauces, gravies and risottos to add remarkable depth of flavor. Add it to pastas, soups and stews. Smear it on fish, meat or vegetables. It's pure "deliciousness" in a tube." I saw this at the store and bought it on a whim. I was pretty skeptical, and figured any mash-up of ingredients promising to add that something special to just about anything (too good to be true!) would be at least a little dodgy and confused. I never tried it straight, but did add it to pasta sauce and bloody mary's and it seemed... dodgy and a bit confused. Weird. I threw it away. I would rather learn to build umami the tried- and - true way. Surprisingly, it either gets 4 or 5 star reviews online. Then again, anonymous Internet reviewers are usually not too reliable. One of the review titles was "Aphrodisiac?", and he went on to say that at a recent party his sister dabbed some behind her ear, and their cousin started remarking how good she smelled. So there you go. Any experiences here?

We considered raising chickens this summer, but didn't. For one thing, we would have to be here to feed them and lock them away every night, but we go out of town a lot. Second, with the cost of building a coop, the feed, etc, we wouldn't be saving any money. Third, there's all sorts of wildlife around, so it would've been a bit of a struggle raising chickens here. The coyotes would love to sink their teeth into those little buggers. I don't doubt that homemade chicken stock from a cheap chicken would taste way better than Better than Bouillion, but like I said, I'm just not interested in buying a whole chicken for $5. I prefer to go without a lot of meat/seafood rather than buy really cheap, low- quality, god- knows-how it-was-raised-or-what-it-ate stuff. My partner finds $5 chickens disgusting as well, so that settles that. Hmmm, then again, the Better than Bouillon is probably made from cheap chickens too. Damn. Anyone else think that eating decent food is getting way too complicated in some ways?

Hey all- I would love to make my own chicken stock, but I try to only buy free range and/ or organic chicken from the supermarket. I'm just not that interested in a whole chicken that only costs $5. Problem is, a whole organic chicken at my supermarket costs $18. I could probably use just legs, but even those are really expensive for any sort of quality, at least where I live. Better than bouillon costs $5 for a jar that makes almost 10 quarts. What to do? Every chef I read says making your own stock is essential for taking your cooking to the next level, but it's just not economically feasible for me - except maybe for a special occasion.

Wow, this is quite the list of pet peeves! It drives me nuts when the local bartender gal, the only front-of-house person, literally sits with her back to the whole bar/restaurant and plays card games on the computer for fifteen minutes, without turning around even once to check on anyone in the restaurant. Needless to say, at that point we carry on drinking at home where no one ever sits with an empty beer. The worst part is, its a very small town with only one half-way decent bar so we have to tip well, 'cuz we'll definitely be back. Other than that, I really don't care (or even notice) if the server asks "How is everything?" or "Are you still working on that?" or "How ya doin, hon?" etc. I don't care if they ask if its my first time there, or attempt a bit of humor, or try to guide me around the menu. Just not that fussy, I guess. I'm basically happy if the food arrives in a reasonable amount of time and I more or less always have a beer to drink, and the server is at least somewhat genuinely friendly. I give servers the benefit of the doubt a lot, because as anyone who's been a server (or bartender, or cook...) knows, quite often the staff are swamped and running their a**es off trying to do a hundred things at once while putting up with a fair share of snobby/ignorant customers/annoying kids etc... while trying to maintain composure and project calm. (By 'ignorant', for example, I mean customers who don't realize that they are totally monopolizing the server/wasting their time while other tables are waiting.) I also don't care if someone at the table (often me) asks for a recommendation, or an opinion between dish A and dish B. A savvy customer can read through the server's response to see whether the server is simply pushing the most expensive dish or the aging fish, or whether the server is trying to slip in an insider's tip without the boss hearing - AKA they've been told to push the mushy salmon but in the goodness of their heart they know you'd have a better meal going for the chicken. And as for the complaint that "the server doesn't know what I like so how can they give me a recommendation?"... this reminds me of something from An Economist Gets Lunch: if you're at a really good restaurant, order something you'd never usually order. The rationale is, everything on the menu should be good at a really good restaurant, or else why would they put in on the menu in place of something else? Perhaps a lot of servers deserve a bit of a break? I also give servers the benefit of the doubt, because quite often, they're just not trained up to the high standards many eGulleters expect - and that is the management's fault, not the server's. When I became a waitress, I wasn't trained to not say "are you working on that?" etc, or on how to handle wine, or how to mix martinis or any other cocktail (part of the job), or to take orders by seating position, or to only clear tables after everyone was done... and on and on. And this was a restaurant where the average check for 2 was $100+. If I wanted to try anything from the menu, or any of the wines, I had to PAY FOR IT MYSELF! So, it was a bit hard to recommend which wine to have with a particular fish or steak dish based on experience. I pretty much just had to bluff. I myself would be more endeared to a server who is honest enough to admit they haven't tried something rather than lie blatantly and say "oh yes, it's very good!" and then when asked what's in the dish, read the description off the menu to you. A couple minor pet peeves though: 1. Hipster bartenders or servers.... ok, all hipsters! Especially ones who think they have superior taste because they drink obscure cocktails with chamomile and incense instead of pleb drinks. I would like my bartender to bring me a drink, not make me feel low-brow or un-hip or whatever. 2. Similarly... walking around Portland for ages on a hot day, trying to find a place where I can get some decent food AND a low-brow beer. (I'm sure they exist, but when I visited I was not having any luck finding them!) After a few too many pitchers of fancy-pants beer at the microbrewery the night before, sometimes you just want a good old Corona with your burger, not another apricot ale or whatever. 3. Speaking of Portland and too many craft beers the night before... I went out for a bloody mary around noon. First one was great. I was starting to come right. I ordered another, and no kidding, the bartender put 5-6 shots of vodka in it. Now, I'm a young chick on my own in an unknown city walking around tanked at noon, and it took me the next two days to recover from my hangover helper. I think he just made my drink that strong because I was hanging out with the regulars, a bunch of strange dudes, and they wanted to see what would happened if I got boozed. A bit cheeky for a bartender, I reckon!

YES.

Just wondering: what is the difference between manky and janky? Or are they the same thing?

I don't know exactly what the traditional variations are, but I see lots of recipes involving simmering a Parm rind in the soup, then removing it, which is how the cooks illustrated recipe I use does it. definitely adds a nice savory flavor. I also thought I'd seen somewhere, perhaps on Bourdain, that in Italy, they stir the soup around the hollowed out center of a parm wheel to incorporate the cheese... Maybe this was another dish? Can't remember!

Are there any good ports for, say, under $20? I've been drinking some cheapos from Trader Joes. I don't have a refined palette at all, and am usually pretty happy drinking cheap booze, but a little step up in quality would be nice. Cheers!

Resurrecting a dead thread... I love the Tj's puff pastry for savory baking! I mix up tuna, cheddar, and both raw and sliced boiled eggs, some salt and pepper and sometimes pepporincinis, and roll it up into a log... Served with tapatio, guys love it! Good for when we have guests and I don't want to make individual breakfasts, or for an afternoon holdover snack. Also, new Zealand style meat pies! Great stuff. Glad it's still around, and I think $4 for two sheets in CA.

Cooks illustrated has a good recipe! Actually, the official name is " Really Good Pasta Fazool." It's a soup version. Some crushed red pepper flakes and lots of fresh parsley at the end make it! The only thing I struggle with is that the grated parm I add at the end gets really gummy. Any suggestions?

Too right!

Like I said, I quite enjoy both of those shows from time to time, but they both seem quite heavy on " the salty bite , combined with the slight crunch, and a little bit of sweet".... Plus the obvious schmoozing! But hey, they're certainly descriptive and well intentioned!

I enjoy both Bizarre Foods and Man vs Food casually - with that said, does anyone else think they're the same guy, with a toupee and without??

Apparently there are not many good local/non-chain restaurants in Grand Forks. I guess this is meant to "excuse" North Dakotans for their "naivety"/apparent sin of enjoying Olive Garden. But in any town or city, no matter what size, or how many fresh/ethnic/great places there are to eat, the fast food places are always doing thriving business. I lived in Santa Cruz, CA, a town where you can get a lot of great food of all sorts, especially Mexican, for under $10, and there is a ton of consciousness about local/organic/etc, and yet - a lot of my friends and housemates just love their Taco Bell fix. So why do small-town heartlanders get flack for patronizing and yes, enjoying, chain food, when it seems to be just about the most universally popular thing in the whole States? I agree with lots of the aforementioned comments - at home I have my favorite little local spots, but after a couple days on the road, I can get pretty excited about a Subway. Even Jane and Michael Stern acknowledge that out of 12 roadfood meals, on average only 2 or 3 are even decent, and even fewer are really good. A meal at a local spot on the interstate can quite easily consist of microwaved frozen mozzarella sticks and a leathery piece of old lettuce. For great roadfood meals, you usually have to know where to look, which can be a bit of a challenge. North Dakotans sound like a great bunch of people! Flash food isn't everything.

Come to the next Heartland Gathering if tino27 will be there -- like this one in 2010. (Actually, come to the next one anyway.) Wow, Heartland Gatherting sounds like a great time. Will keep an eye out for updates on the next. I have passed through the heartland quite a few times, but I don't think my road food experiences so far have done the slightest bit of justice to the region. I can't wait to try some proper regional specialties! Todd, cheers for such an in-depth account of the classes! I am occasionally in Chicago, and am also very keen to travel whenever I can afford it, especially when it's justified by some sort of food education. I think a good knife skills class is definitely in order. Thanks!

Yep, Margaret, I agree - to me the bones are just about the best part, especially the little marrow chunks. We're not exactly fussy people either, so we have no problem picking out bone chunks or catriligious bits from our dinner. Snadra, pasties are a great idea! I reckon I'll give it a go. I had my first attempt at making them recently and want to make many, many more. Meat pies/ meat in pastry is pretty much my favorite thing to eat. And since pasties are often made with leftover roast beef, braise/pulled lamb should work just fine! Please, keep the ideas coming! They all sound great, and we horde the lamb packs every time we see them, since there appears to only be one a day, and if nothing else, we can throw some in the crock pot to add to the dogs' kibble. They're usually somewhere between 1-2.5 lbs.

Heidi, all those ideas sound great! The lamb is quite fatty, which I usually love, though recently I read that its indigestble? I do actually have jarred grape leaves in the pantry too. Never made dolmas before, but want to at some stage! Or maybe pulled lamb with some mint sauce, yogurt, and Harissa in a flatbread.. Or for that matter, maybe it'd be good on a turkish-style pizza/pide? Lots of ideas starting to brew... Chris, I've got more of a lo-fi setup, preferring my Dutch oven for everything, but the sous vide idea sounds damn good. Cheers for the ideas!

My local supermarket has a great deal on lamb stew meat packs. As far as I can tell its Niman Ranch lamb, but all random sized pieces, a lot of them with bones. (Not Cooks Illustrated/ gourmet- approved!) It's only $1.25/lb., which is awesome for cash-strapped lamb lovers (uh that sounds a bit weird, sorry) like me and my partner during a recession. I've made a bunch of soups (pasta e fagioli, white bean and kale, green chile stew...) with this stuff, and they've been great. The bones add so much to the soup. But I'm itching to make something new with it. I'd like to make a pie, or something Turkish-spiced (stuffed pitas?), maybe even tacos? The makeup of the pack means that whatever I make, I'll have to pick out the bones, cartilage, etc, at some stage after the meat's been braised, then season it more and work it into whatever I make. Sort of like pulled lamb? (Ugh, another weird turn of phrase for any kiwis/Aussies out there!) Any ideas? Cheers!

I wouldn't say those beliefs are all that popular in this particular forum, at least not that I've noticed. Some of us may aspire to eat less meat overall or more sustainable/responsible/organic meat overall, but egulleters are hardly a band of militant vegans. Who and where are these poor lost souls you feel the need to enlighten? As I stated at the very beginning, this is a repost of something that was originally a response to a vegan experiment on Serious Eats. Reading the other comments on that page, there are definitely people saying things like "we harm ourselves by eating animal products" and such. Like I said, I reposted my comments here just to spark some discussion with anyone who's interested. Sh@ts and giggles! It's something that interests me and I thought the whole point of these forums was to discuss food? Call me silly. And yes, I would say that I encounter way more vegetarians and vegans and such now than I did when i was one of the lone vegetarians in my area 15 years ago. Needless to say, there were not vegan cupcake trucks in new jersey back in the 90s. So, pastry girl, in response to your question, "Who and where are these poor lost souls you feel the need to enlighten?". Short answer: colleges all across the country, cities, especially new York, Portland, San Francisco, little hippie towns... Ever been to Santa Cruz, California? Lots of places. Too bad Serious Eats already snagged their name, it would've been a perfect name for these forums. Serious Eats is actually quite fun in comparison!

Good point! I should've qualified what I said about game meat being free. It definitely can be, say if there's deer, rabbits, wild turkeys, etc walking around right in front of you and you're somewhere where you can shoot them. Otherwise, yep there's costs associated with hunting like gas etc, which can range from dirt cheap if you're driving a little truck somewhere relatively nearby, to really expensive if you're driving a big ole v8 truck a couple states away. It's also cheaper if you're processing your own meat, vs paying someone to do it. Five freezers! I want to go to dinner at your mate's house! Is he in Alaska or something? Might be cheaper to move somewhere where it's freezing outside! So, yeah, game meat can be free if you're lucky, or it may cost a bit, and then there's the folks who pay upwards of $10,000 to fly to places like new Zealand and hire a guide and get all dolled up in fancy gear and get helicoptered into some remote place where they have trophy animals penned up so you're guaranteed a kill. Sometimes people just like to spend money on hunting because it's their hobby. Like fly-fishers too. You can go catch a fish for free, but gung-ho fishers can spend thousands of dollars on gadgets and gear, cuz they love their hobby so much. It's not like the fish they catch cost them thousands of bucks, it's the hobby part of it. Sort of like I have more dutch ovens than I need, but i just love 'em. After going to Cabela's headquarters in Nebraska, I can see how it would be a cinch to spend thousands of thousands of dollars on outdoor gear, but then again, my husband, being a lo-fi kiwi with a mcguyver-like way with a paper clip and an old button, can pretty much just grab a gun or a knife, and the dogs if it's boar hunting, and go get dinner without any fuss, and skin it and butcher it himself. So, there's a hundred ways to skin a cat, or however the saying goes.

Ooh, nice jab there at the end! Haha, all good fun! Let me clarify a couple things... What I'm trying to say is more complicated than "forget Veganism, eat wild game" but titles have to be short, so that's a big oversimplification. This isn't some bs about "saving the world" or "solving the world's problems" or even solving my own town's problems or anything like that. That would be a massive delusion. I'm simply responding to views I have seen and heard espoused, generally by American urbanites and suburbanites, in regards to the personal decisions they make about their diets and the health, environmental, or political reasonings behind them. I'm only directly talking about the US, with a nod to new Zealand, since those are the only places I've lived. Even so, I'm not trying to solve America's problems. That would be the last job in the world I'd want, aside from new products tester at the tofurky factory. I'm responding to the increasingly popular beliefs that meat is, by nature, unhealthy, bad for the environment, unsustainable, murder, etc. I'm not saying meat is automatically healthy and sustainable and ethical either. Everything is more complex than black or white. I totally agree that many people consume way more meat than is necessary or sustainable- 72 oz steaks are a bit much for lunch, right? This brings up another alternative to going veg, and I think it's pretty popular these days - the semi- or occasional veg. That's how I eat myself - lots of vegetables and beans and such, with a smaller amount of meat incorporated. And I love it, it works for me. A little bit of meat can go a long way, and indeed that's how a lot of people ate in this country until the last few decades - lots of beans with a little bit of salt pork, for example. From what I've heard or read, much of the world population eats exactly this way. a lot of noodles and veg, with a bit of meat, for example. Good stuff. I'm saying there's a huge range of options for people out there, that there are many different ways to and procure and eat meat, if they want to. Some people don't want to. That's totally cool. Many people deprive themselves of food they do genuinely want to eat though, because of health or environmental or political concerns (I was one), and many of these people would be stoked to know that there way more options out there than the obvious ones. I'm saying that quite often, a false dichotomy pops up, of eating meat and collaborating in the destruction of the environment and torture of animals and fattening of america, vs. not eating meat at all or else shelling out big bucks for the organic or free-range stuff at the store. When I spent the first 20 years of my life growing up in the jersey suburbs in a pretty typical American family, we got everything from the supermarket. When I read as a youngster how most meat is produced and how the animals were treated, as well as some of PETA's questionable health propaganda, it sickened me and I stopped eating meat altogether. I wish I'd known that there is tons and tons of meat out there that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the meat at our supermarket. In short: I wish I'd known how many options there are, rather than depriving myself of so much healthful, pleasurable food due to the misconception that there was no way to eat meat in a humane and environmentally sustainable and healthy way - and I don't mean it's some miracle way of sustainably feeding the whole world. I mean that it was a way that I could enjoy foods that I loved (bacon, cheese, etc) that reconcile with my own personal beliefs (like caring about the environment). So: how is it impractical to suggest that, if people enjoy meat but do not eat it because of concerns about how industrial meat is raised, that they consider hitting up a local farmer on craigslist or hitting up a mate or mate of a mate who hunts and probably has more meat in their freezer than they know what to do with? How is it impractical to point out that, if you don't have money for groceries and are hungry, or can't afford the free-range meat at your market and don't want to buy factory farmed meat, that there are literally tons of ( free-range, antibiotic- free, hormone-free, sustainable, etc) meat out there for the taking, much of which ends up as roadkill anyway? To encourage those with environmental concerns to consider eating destructive invasive species? Is it impractical to suggest that, in a world with lots of food shortages and lots of insecurity about the future food supply, that it can be really useful to expand the range of foods, especially meat, you eat, if you're into it? I don't think so. I'm not saying that anyone should do anything in particular. I'm saying there are tons of options out there. Vegetarian diets can be healthy or unhealthy as can omnivorous or pescatarian diets or any other kind of diet. I consider my veg diet to have been very healthy, all beans and whole grains and vegetables and fruit and olive oil with no refined sugar or flour, with the occasional indulgence of soy ice cream, and you know what? I still was pretty lethargic and was never satiated. My body clearly needed some good old animal protein. So while "studies" (of which there are a million contradictory ones, most funded in some way by some sort of vested financial interest) might "prove" that most people can live happily on a veg diet, I tried it for 13 years and never felt as good or satisfied as I do now. So, for me, it didn't work. Most people I know fall off the bandwagon eventually as well. It's true that game is an acquired taste for many Americans. Many of them also have never been exposed to it. It doesn't exactly dominate the meat counter. Apparently, lamb is growing in popularity in America, so, hey, things are changing all the time. I think a lot of Americans are becoming more adventurous culinarily. Garlic and avocados were also acquired tastes for many americans half a century ago. Garlic was for smelly immigrants and avocados were just considered weird or something. Exposure, marketing campaigns, and inviting new presentations changed that though- look at 'em now! Also, I would have to say from experience that tempeh, textured vegetable protein, and vegan soy cheese are not exactly something humans seem to intuitively crave... They are acquired tastes par excellence! And, as food shortages have been brought up, you know what they say - "hunger is a great sauce." Sure, squirrel isn't exactly my preferred meat, but you know what? When the cupboards are empty, it tastes pretty damn good. Good cooking skills never hurt, of course! I think there's a good trend towards lots of different, reasonable veg, semi-veg, and omnivorous positions these days, so I'm not sure if there are still people on the "meat is murder" trip, but from a wee bit of a historical understanding of what humans ate pre-1940s or 50s or so, I reckon meat deserves a helluva lot of respect for the role that it has played in human's survival throughout the ages, and especially before most Americans lived in cities with everything they could ever want on the shelves of a store within a stone's throwing distance from their home. I'm sure it save plenty of a$$es again in the future, indeed it is all the time.

Hi all, I was reading Serious Eats this morning. One of the writers is going vegan for a month as an experiment, just seeing what it's all about, presumably coming to some sort of opinion, and meanwhile sparking lots of discussion. As an ex-vegan who is now totally anti-vegan, I have some strong views on the subject. My comment turned into possibly the longest single comment ever in the history of serious eats. I figured I might as well post it here too... These sort of topics always seem to provoke a lot of discussion! ---------------- I was vegetarian for eight years and vegan for five. What a mistake! I totally regret it. I was always hungry, annoyingly self-righteous, and dreaming of the foods I was depriving myself of. And for what? Now I am a happy, guilt-free omnivore. I lost 30 lbs after ditching the soy ice cream and constant grazing, actually felt satisfied for the first time in years, got more energy, and am now a happier person who enjoys life much more. And no, contrary to PETA, I did not turn into an acne-ridden, flatulent blob of colon cancer after taking up meat and dairy again. In contrast, it blows my mind that I ever thought myself healthy while eating a diet of ultra-processed veg substitutes which bear no resemblance to anything in nature. I am a total greenie, love the environment, love animals, love plants, and hate to waste anything. Many vegetarians, vegans, and activist groups like PETA paint a black-and-white picture: either you are an evil person who doesn't care about the suffering of animals (and, according to PETA, you will be punished by dying a terrible premature death) or you are a kinder, gentler animal-lover who is saving the environment by buying soy versions of everything. Luckily, this is not the case at all. I think this misunderstanding is due in large part to the fact that for many Americans, everything comes from the store. In many stores, your only meat options are eggs from diseased caged chickens or beef from cows that lived in horrible confinement, were pumped full of antibiotics and hormones, and were fed a totally unnatural diet of the corn scraps left over from the high fructose corn syrup factory. Luckily, there are many ways to enjoy the wonder that is meat and dairy while benefitting your health, the animals, and the environment all at the same time, including eating humanely-raised meat or, best of all, wild game, raising your own chickens if you've got a bit of space, fermenting dairy, etc. It may not be the instant gratification of going to the market and buying everything immediately. It may take a bit of time to source things or make connections or go hunting, but hey, good things sometimes take a bit longer, and it's usually worth it. A couple cases in point: -Wild boar were introduced by explorers to countries all over the world. In many places, they are totally destructive to native habitats. Think Hawaii and New Zealand, for example. Wild boar are terribly destructive in these delicate environments. Wild boar are also delicious, and free of hormones and antibiotics. They are also absolutely free to shoot. So, hundreds of pounds of delicious, free-range, wild, hormone-free, antibiotic-free meat, including everyone's favorite, bacon, that doesn't cost a cent? I'll take that over soy grown on a massive industrial farm in the Midwest, processed god-knows-how into a weird meat lookalike, flavored with artificial bacon flavor from some factory off the New Jersey Turnpike, then sold to many well-intentioned but misinformed vegetarians by some "healthy" company that is actually owned by Philip Morris. -Deer/delicious wild venison. With the bear, mountain lion, and wolf populations in decline in North America, deer have fewer natural predators. It is not going to harm the deer population for a couple or a family to kill one or two males (not females) a year, which will provide heaps and heaps of, again, delicious, wild, free-range, antibiotic-free, hormone-free meat. The deer lived great lives out in the wild, and were killed humanely. Unlike the hundreds or thousands of deer that die every year as roadkill, any deer shot by a hunter worth his salt is not going to go to waste. Generally speaking, when people shoot animals themselves, they appreciate the animal and do not want to waste any of it. Indeed, hunters arguably appreciate animals far more than many so-called "animal lovers" living detached from the natural world in the city, buying everything from a store, because they have an immediate and realistic understanding of how animals and humans relate to each other in the great scheme of things and in the web of life. And should you still worry that killing one deer a year for meat will harm the population, you can always counteract your impact by say, helping provide some habitat or shelter for the animals that will increase their chances of surviving winter, natural predators, etc. Also, eating/killing animals should be evaluated in the context of a concrete place, not some moral fantasy world. In New Zealand, for example, deer are a positive nuisance! They were introduced into a country that had no native mammals, whose environment was therefore chock-full of delicate plant and bird populations. They wreak havoc on the environment there, so much so the government for decades paid cullers to shoot as many of them as possible. And all that free-range meat surely would have been a bonus! - And there's always squirrels, rabbits, frogs... All sorts of meat there for the taking! It doesn't hurt to be able to braise! -A helluva lot of the land in the world is simply not suitable for growing vegetables or grains. It's suiting for grazing (ex: sheep) but not much else. It's not a black and white scenario, where you could either get 5 lbs of meat versus 1000 lbs of cabbage. It's grazers or nothing, baby. Unless you want to cut out the sheep and eat the grass yourself? -Quail, pheasants, dove, etc. On our property, we have been actively encouraging the bird populations by feeding them and building shelters from their natural predators (mountain lions, for example.) Next year, the population will be larger, and then we can selectively kill a few to eat - something that is especially useful when you live in the country/mountains where you can very easily get snowed in and cut off from town for long periods of time, not to mention during lean times when there's very little money for groceries from the market - or when you just need a good animal protein dose. And I can guarantee you we will not waste what we kill, because we will appreciate it, and anyway, the quail are our mates around the property! We love having them around and appreciate that at some stage in the near future, we might need them for survival. As for health, humans lived for thousands of years eating fruit, foraged plants, vegetables, wild game meat, nuts, fish, fermented and preserved foods including fermented (and therefore more digestible) dairy, etc. Doesn't it make sense that our bodies are attuned to this sort of eating? Humans gorged themselves on animal fat when it was available, for health and survival, and I'm quite sure they enjoyed it as well. And they were presumably quite hearty (or else they died) and weren't getting diabetes at age 13. Hmm, is it possible that the health epidemics in this country could have something to do with the ultra-processed, over-sweetened, preservative-laced crap that crowds the supermarket shelves? Look at what's on the shelves: sodas and juices and sweet drinks by the gallon, "energy drinks" that turn your pee bright orange, cereals that are largely nothing more than sugar with a few vitamins added, every possible kind of instant, frozen, microwaveable meal possible, cheetos, beef from cows confined in terrible lots and fed an unnatural diet, beef-flavored instant noodles with msg (oh but they do taste so good!), diseased factory-farmed chicken and eggs, every kind of cookie and candy and cake you could dream of, instant dehydrated mashed potatoes and instant cheese-flavor powder and instant gravy mix and instant peanut butter pie mix, spam and something called "meat product" in a can, soy substitutes with ingredient lists longer than the phone book, "healthy" margarines that beg the question: where's the oil in a vegetable? (remember the Oleo "health" fad?), etc, etc, etc. The body needs fat and cholesterol to survive. Our brains are pretty fatty, as anyone who has eaten animal brains would know. Our cells need cholesterol to maintain their structure. Fat and cholesterol have been demonized over the last few decades - and we don't seem to be getting healthier. Is it silly to recommend trying to eat more in line with the thousands of years of human history before 150 pound seven-year-olds and juvenile diabetes and people dying of heart attacks at age 23? There is a great book, "Nourishing Traditions" which counters much of the politically correct "nutritional" advice which has basically become dogma over the last decades, and points out how - shocker - lobbyists and industry might have something to do with the results from health "studies" that they themselves fund? On the funnier side, there's the documentary "Fathead" which follows a man who loses more weight eating fast food for a month than Morgan Spurlock did during quite a few months on his girlfriend's "healthy" vegan diet. I can appreciate that many veg activists are well-intentioned when they hassle meat and dairy eaters about food choices. They don't want to support the meat industry, and I am certainly sympathetic to that. However, the state of the entire food industry in America is the problem, aided by our massive portion sizes, and general inactivity. Meat and dairy in themselves are not a problem. Humans would've been extinct long ago without them. The pioneers would've died long before they ever hit the west coast. Settlers would never have made it through a rough winter without going out and shooting some game meat. Read Little House on the Prairie if you have any doubts about how absolutely critical animal products were to survival in a pre-Whole Foods world. Animal fat and protein are awesome! One thing I know, there's no way my husband could spend a week chopping firewood for the winter and working twelve-hour construction shifts on a vegan diet. Dreaming! If you are inclined towards activism, rather than attack meat- and dairy- eaters, attack the lobbyists and companies that are directing this drastic change in our diet and how animals are raised. Most of the "kinder, gentler" so-called health food companies are owned by corporations like Philip Morris and Coca-Cola! Not exactly the sort of companies I'd trust to keep my health interests in mind. They're getting rich on soy-Franken-foods and crap disguised as health food, while their well-intentioned customers are bankrupting themselves trying to buy ethically and do their small part to help the environment etc. If you really want to change the system or whatever, cut out these companies altogether! Eat game meat! Befriend hunters! They always have goodies in their freezer and are usually quite happy to barter or give it away, and hunters are everywhere - cities, little hippie towns, you name it. And surely most people have an uncle or cousin-in-law or friend of a friend who hunts? You can get a share in a co-op from someone who raises free-range chickens for eggs in a nearby town, then delivers them to the city. It doesn't matter whether you live in the city, or how much money you have. Great dairy and meat can all be pretty cheap or even free - unless you buy everything at the NYC Whole Foods. You can pay a farmer in a nearby small town to raise one pig a year for you, then slaughter it yourself or pay them to do it, and you'll have a freezer full of all the humane pork you could possibly eat. You can go onto craigslist and post a want ad asking local farmers what they can do for you or describing what you're looking for. If you're short on hunting skills or mates who hunt, but got the bucks, you can order game meat online from all sorts of places. You don't need a very big yard to keep a couple of ducks.There's a thousand different ways to get your hands on some awesome dairy and meat without supporting any companies with dodgy practices, no matter where you are. Mmm, time for a wild elk steak yet?

How funny Emilyr, I was just in Columbia, Missouri, then on a scenic drive through the NE corner last week. I had no idea there were so many food trucks in the area! I will have to check them out next time I pass through. Although food trucks can be hard to work into a travel schedule, cuz if we're trying to make good driving time, driving around new towns trying to track down trucks can be pretty time-consuming. (Another reason to love the food trailer parks/pods...) Cheers for the tip!