Most people seek out farmer’s markets for the heirloom tomatoes, Silver Queen corn, and unusual apple varieties. Me? I go for the meat.
Down the road there’s a tiny farmer’s market behind the Springtown Volunteer fire station on Wednesday afternoons from 3:00 to 6:00. A couple of the local produce farms have a stand. Sometimes the coffee roaster from Pipersville shows up. A nearby dairy sells yogurt and cheese, cow and goat. The township has a table with weekly Xeroxed fliers on neighborhood essentials like recycling, summer fairs, and mosquito control. I like that.
The first week I showed up there was a farm selling ethically raised beef. I figure anyone selling frozen steaks out of a picnic cooler has to be the real deal, so I happily surrendered $16 for a generous one-pound sirloin that I promptly spiced- rubbed and grilled. Rich, almost livery flavored, chewy but not tough, this steak reminded of the ones my Dad used to grill when I was a girl. It’s interesting—subtle shifts in breeding and production over forty years and I hadn’t really noticed I was literally eating a different animal.
The following week Happy Farms joined the group, selling pasture-raised chickens and their eggs. After picking up another steak, I headed over to their stand. For $32 I got a large chicken, a pound of Italian chicken sausage and a dozen eggs. Different animal, different week, same experience. Unlike the weak-boned, flabby chickens I’ve gotten used to over the years, this one was firm, taut, clean. Although more perishable with delicate yolks, the eggs looked and tasted bright.
It was raining this past Wednesday, but I was sure glad I went. Happy Farms had added lamb to its menu. Unlike beef and chicken, lamb’s not as easy to find. I would have bought shanks (you know David adores them) but I decided on ground lamb, which I turned into excellent Greek flavored meatballs.
Wanting to try the recipe once more (four days yet till the farmers set up their booths on Wednesday), I phoned the local grocery store. “Do you sell ground lamb?” I asked. “Nope,” the butcher replied. I broadened my search. “Do you ever sell ground lamb?” “Nope.” No apologies. None of the usual offers to try and get it. Just, “Nope.”
You know how it goes. Scarcity creates demand. What comes around once in a blue moon becomes precious. It’s funny—eating vegetarian two days a week has made me appreciate meat, want it. That and paying dearly for it. It’s good to yearn, hmm?
It’s like I tell you girls, charge what you’re worth.
Let’s just put it out there: 32 bucks for what amounts to about two pounds of meat is aggressively expensive. I’ve read The Jungle, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Fast Food Nation, and just about every Wednesday food column in the New York Times. I know about local eating, about the abysmal commercial farming practices that affect cows, pigs, chickens, and even fish, and I definitely know how I should be eating—better.
To put it bluntly, unless you’ve been blissfully residing under a rock for the past three years, you’re probably—at the very least—vaguely aware of the locavore movement. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s the best thing to happen to food since…I don’t even know what (don’t say “sliced bread”, since sliced bread is clearly inferior to the un-sliced loaf). But, it’s tough. Some days, I want so badly to live it, and some days I just want to eat without thinking. I have enough guilt about what I put in my mouth without sprinkling on the ethical gloom and doom.
But there is no denying that I am happiest in the kitchen when I’m working with fresh, local ingredients—it just feels good. Last night was a night like that.
I am house-sitting for my boss who has a sweet little garden full of vegetables and herbs. I came home from work, put on a pot of water, and went out back to grab every ruby-red tomato in sight and a greedy handful of basil. I boiled some pasta, sliced up a ball of creamy, fresh mozzarella, and tossed it all together with a little olive oil and a ton of salt and parm.
With raw materials like that, the result was (of course) simple, yet perfect. I was happy with what I’d made—but where did the parm come from? How was that fresh mozzarella made? Where do you draw the line?
I know how it feels to cook fresh and local, and I know how good it feels to eat ethically responsible food. But, I also know about my bank account. (Dare I mention last week’s unexpected overdraft situation?) I don’t ever want to stare into my skillet and think: “Wow, I am reasonably sure this chicken never saw the light of day.” But I also don’t want to blow my rent money on protein, and I really don’t want to calculate my carbon footprint every time I eat a steak.
Mostly my answer is just to skip the meat. I can’t afford the good stuff, so I mostly just stay away from it. And that works for me…for the most part. Ugh, I get overwhelmed just thinking about it. Help!
This year while I’ve been in grad school, we’ve been living on one salary (along with my meager earnings from the pub). Suffice to say, money has been tight. Nonetheless, this is the year we decided we had to start eating quality produce and meat. For the first couple years of our marriage we preferred to remain blissfully unaware, buying meat in non-descript, supermarket brand packaging which said nothing about how and where the meat had been raised. But we knew – for that price– it couldn’t be good.
But now, we’ve been well and truly converted. I could preach about the ethics of it, but I won’t (we all know that’s annoying). Frankly it just tastes better, and for us, that’s reason enough.
Today is our three year wedding anniversary. Andy bought me the most beautiful flowers, a wild-looking bouquet of sunflowers with violet and fuchsia accents. The bouquet I offered was edible. On special occasions I’ll cook Andy an English Breakfast before he goes to work. There are a few variations, but for Andy his ideal breakfast consists of bacon, fried eggs, grilled tomatoes, sausages, toast and beans. But I had forgotten the bacon. An egregious error on my part. All other parts of the breakfast could be quietly forgotten without his noticing, but for Andy, bacon is the key. We usually get our meat from the butchers every Saturday, but had run out. What to do? Our local shop only sells Danish bacon. Known for the poor conditions the pigs are kept in, Danish meat reflects this: it’s a brownish color, stringy and thin, not pink, healthy and thick. What choice had I? I couldn’t serve that to my English husband for his anniversary breakfast! I cycled two miles at 6:30 in the morning to our Co-Operative to get British bacon. All the way there I was thinking, “I’m doing this for love of Andy.” Over breakfast I was thinking, “Andy, yes—but this bacon is pretty amazing.”