What about all these food recalls? Lets talk meat

If you are like me you want things healthy and natural. It's getting harder to do. We need to go back to our local communities and insist on good food. Or grow it ourselves. More on that in another blog. Today is meat. If you don't eat it, you may be better off. If you do and you want it to be really good and safe I offer these ideas.

Go organic.

When I first found some Organic ground beef at Costco I was craving tacos. I hadn't bought ground beef in a couple of years. But I remembered it being my least favorite store food. My mother severed a lot of beef in the 50's. I remember liking hamburger foods until I was about 10. Then I noticed lots of "stuff" in the meat. I don't need to gore you with what it was but it's still in our ground meat, bits and pieces. I was thinking “why did I notice the meat change in the 60's”. Well that is about the time we no longer had our own cows. Yes, we started buying our meat at the store. That was the difference, we had different standards for our own beef. You say "what does that have to do with us, city dwellers?" If you have a freezer and there is any rural land in a reasonable driving distance, make friends with a farmer. Once a year is all it will take ususally. The best place to go is small butcher shops. They do the work for all those farmers, they can give you the scoop on who and how. This way you can ask for the meat to be processed the best way possible. The farmer usually likes to sell a whole beef so you can buy a BIG freezer or see about buying 1/2's and 1/4's. You can ask me more about this option if you are interested.

But now back to the store. I bought the Costco Organic ground beef and loved it! it had nothing in it, no bad little bits. It tasted as I remembered the taste of the 50's. It was good! I'll buy it again. Here is the web site. I am giving you the page with an explanation of organic, but do explore the rest of their information. They are a co-op of farmers. This happening more in the Northwest so I know about co-op farming. As the food growing farms become bigger and bigger the small farmer is banding with his fellow small farmers and growing specialty foods. Stuff we'd rather eat. More on this in another blog I promise. Food is a great subject for women.

It's a horrible thing to hear about a meat re-call that encompasses meat going to schools. If you don't like what's happening contact your Govt representatives. I'll post how to do that in the next blog. With e-mail we can find a tiny moment (that's all we really have isn't it?) and zip a note of concern for more inspectors, and higher standards to our leaders.

I can't finish this blog without offering the idea of less meat is better. Yes, a lot of health issues result from too much beef. Now go take a peek at the Organic farms idea for safer meat.

http://dakotaorganic.com/WhyOrganic/naturalvsorganic.php