Bountiful Africa

2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Winner, Operation Hope. Allan Savory and Holistic Management Africa have shown the world that poverty and hunger are aided by empowering people with the knowledge and skills to produce their own food on their own land. Watch the video below to see how ruminants on land, managed properly, produce not only healthy food systems, but sustainable economies and vibrant biodiversity. Then, compare that to the devastation of big agribusiness.

"Allan Savory's project, titled "Operation Hope," is an ongoing effort to reverse the desertification that is spreading across the world's savannas and grasslands like a disease. It is rapidly changing farmland into deserts.

What makes the effort unusual for Savory, a biologist, is his use of what he called "the most universally condemned tool in the world" -- livestock. Farming is perhaps the oldest means by which humans have affected the world's climate.

The destruction of healthy soil by compaction, overgrazing and toxic levels of manure that poison the earth and emit climate-warming methane are some of the reasons raising livestock has traditionally been discouraged as an environmentally conscious farming technique.

But Savory was not impressed by environmentalists' arguments, nor by the efforts of commercial seed companies to engineer genetically modified crops to be drought-resistant. "Any scientist can grow green plants with technology," he said. What was unsustainable was "to be growing more green plants on soil that is failing us."

The technique Savory devised does not simply rotate the herds from one nearby plot of land to another but couples their migration with military precision."  NY Times, read the full article here

I Will Be a Hummingbird

Spotted at The Royal Ontario Museum: Eat Grass-fed Beef

We gathered up the kiddos and hitched up our wagon to go on a little adventure into the big city. We hit up the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and polished the day off with dinner at The Drake. The ROM had an exhibition on water. It was really amazing to see those tubes of water filling up, showing the consumption of usage per household in different countries around the world. I especially liked watching people's reactions when they read about how grains were playing a part in destroying the land. A lot of them were totally taken off guard and looked at each other with bewildered expressions. Huh, tofu isn't saving the planet?

Sorry about the quality, these were all taken with my iPhone. 

A single, grain-fed steer eats more than 2870 lbs of corn, soy and other grains in its lifetime (which is about one, miserable year)! Evidence of a completely broken food system. The steer in my freezer ate 0 lbs of grain. In fact, he feasted on glorious pasture, which builds topsoil and increases viability in mixed ecosystems. And, my steer had a good life and a humane death. I know because I know the farmer that raised him and I've walked the land that he lived on.

I was feeling a little defensive when I got to the farming and agriculture section of the exhibition. I, wrongly, assumed it would be the same old crap about eating a vegetarian diet and laying off beef. In fact, there were displays discussing the environmental destruction of the environment from factory raised beef that suggested, as a sustainable option,  consuming grass-fed beef. I was pretty impressed.

In addition, there were models displaying root structure differences between native prairie grasslands and annual crops like wheat.  It's the native grasslands that offer any promise of maintaining our topsoil, that precious resource that is blowing away with the wind. Those grasses, our quickly depleting resource that is being destroyed by our intensive agriculture practices. Without topsoil, there is no food. If we want to save our environment, putting ruminants back on grasslands would be one helluva' start.

Please ignore the glare from the placard. Poor picture, but too important not to post. On the left, you can see a sidecut of native grasslands, on the right, a swath of wheat. A good demonstration of the grasses ability to reach deep into the soil, nourishing it with beneficial bacteria and holding that topsoil firmly in place. Grains are responsible for soil erosion and the destruction of the fertility in our soil.

The alternative: happy Dexters on beautiful Alberta grasslands.

Hungry Girl Eats

Gargantuan venison meatballs, leftover from a big batch made the day before. Bacon fat roasted asparagus, tossed with my latest obsession, mixed sea vegetables. 

Ghee Makes Everything Better

If you haven't tried ghee you are seriously missing out on one of life's greatest culinary delights. I love ghee. My kids love ghee. My man loves ghee. When I cook for other people, they marvel at how I can make even the lowly carrot taste so glorious. My secret? Roast it with ghee.

Have you seen that video, "Put a Bird On It"? Well, my lazy girl kitchen motto is 'put some ghee on it'. I don't think I can think of anything that doesn't taste better with ghee. A thick, plump, grass-fed rib-eye seared in ghee and sea salt is your ticket to taste-bud heaven, my friend.

I've tried purchased ghee and it was so different from what is made in my kitchen. It was bland, lacking that deep, rich flavour I've so come to love. Ghee, from grass-fed cows, is loaded with Omega-3 fat, vitamins A, D, and K2. It's also packing some CLA and wonderful unknown health promoting stuff that we don't even know how to label or breakdown. In Ayurveda, ghee is considered to be "sattvic", meaning that it has the essence of the grass and plants the cow munched on.

Ghee has a high smoke point making it ideal to cook with. Nothing tastes as delicious as some pastured eggs cooked in ghee or roasted veggies glistening with ghee and some coarse sea salt. It's my favourite way to cook veggies, any veggies, and it's always delicious. The flavour of the foods cooked in ghee is enhanced. There is something grounding about this food, a richness and a bounty in its qualities that evoke a sense of gratitude for being able to experience something so damn delicious.

I add some organic, virgin coconut oil to my ghee for a couple of reasons: it stretches the ghee (which can be pretty pricey if you're buying raw, grass-fed butter), coconut oil is also great for cooking with, it adds some MCTs and other goodies to the mix, and the taste remains true to the ghee if you just use a few tablespoons of the coconut oil.

Without further ado, here's what I do:

Start with some raw, grass-fed butter. If you can't find that, get some grass-fed butter. If you can't find that... that sucks, but you can use some organic, local butter. 

Put butter in a heavy cast iron, non-reactive pot. Put pot on medium high, when butter has melted and starts bubbling, bring temperature down to lowest setting.

As the butter melts, a film will form on the surface. Skim away this substance, which is the milk solids separating from the fat. Take care not to mix the butter when you do this, just skim along the top.

When the butter has formed a hard crust on the top and you can see some browning bits on the bottom, the ghee is ready. It should smell nutty and deep. Take care not to burn the butter, it should be golden, not dark brown. You want to cook all of the solids out, but you don't want to burn it.

I pour the ghee directly into a large, pourable glass container. From there, I have better control as I slowly pour the ghee for filtering. Line a sieve with cheesecloth, folded multiple times. Hang the sieve over a large, glass bowl and slowly pour the ghee through the cheesecloth. Be careful, it is so hot (says the girl with the sock saturated in hot ghee, sizzling away on her poor,  innocent toes). Allow the sieve to drip for a few minutes after you finish pouring. You can wash the cheesecloth after you're done and reuse it.

Doesn't that look glorious! So much good stuff in one little bowl! Once the ghee has cooled for a couple of minutes, I stir in some coconut oil. You don't have to do this part if you don't want to. From here, you just ladle the ghee into small glass jars. It will keep for months on end, especially in the fridge, although it will last for a long time without refrigeration as well.  That's all there is to it!

Hungry Girl Eats

Grass-fed beef burger made with some curry paste, green onion, cilantro and other Thai tasting stuff with shallots sauteed in bison tallow, guacamole with mega lime and cilantro, some sun cured olives, mixed seaweed, and cultured pickles. That was lunch. I ate every last morsel. I also made more than I needed and put the exact same thing in the kids' lunches.

Go, Mommy, Go!

I was so proud of my Mama when I got these pictures in my email yesterday. Look at her, eating all this good stuff! My mom has always been a good eater, aware of the power of solid nutrition. She has always believed that food has an effect on our health, even when the doctors told her that was "ridiculous".

That's Jen, my MaBelle. Isn't she purdy? I seriously wish I could tell you how old she is so you could all marvel at what good eating gets you when your... ahem.. a bit older, but she is so darn sensitive about her top secret age and if I mentioned it here, she would disown me. Still, I could tell you my age and let you guess? I'm almost 40 and not shy about it at all. Pretty hawt, right?

She was one of the rare birds, back in the day, hauling my sister and I to the small, dark food coops she went to in search of nutritious food. Then, people eating real butter were considered fringe, and anyone not feeding their kids sugar were considered odd. Thanks Mom, for feeding us butter, even when the people around you were lining up to buy tickets for the margarine train to hell.

For Christmas this year, our family and my sister's family split the cost of buying my mom a load of meat, good meat. We found a farm in B.C. that raised their animals on organic, lush pastures and used low stress handling. We picked out a whack of meat and had it delivered. Are we cool or what?

A little 'danka' to my Slovak Mama who always fed us real food in spite of what anyone said. You showed us what it felt like to live in healthy bodies and you used your hard-earned money to buy good food even when you didn't have much of it to spend. Moreover, thank you for teaching us to question 'conventional wisdom'. You taught us to think for ourselves and to disregard nonsensical rhetoric, regardless of its source.

To Jen: For all the times I thought my friends had it good with their Cap'n Crunch cereal and their white bread sandwiches, I come to you now, ego in back pocket and say "you were right Mom".  Wow, I am such a good daughter. Way better than my little sister. For sure.

Here's a couple dishes mom has come up with. Makes me hungry just looking at them.

Homemade broth with veggies and pastured, heritage pork.

Pastured, heritage pork, broccoli, and squash with coconut oil.

Pastured eggs, bacon, butter and homemade coconut flour muffin.

Grass fed New York strip steak and organic kale salad.