Guest Post: Hunting My Own Meat

While New York gets back on its feet and prepares to return to the normalcy of going back to work, my sister Lisa is here to share a guest post from Oregon about fulfilling her lifelong dream to learn to hunt (which I never knew she had).

A long, long time ago, when I was a child on a goat farm, I became a vegetarian. My reasons: it was environmentally irresponsible, wasteful, and often cruel to animals. My parents weren’t into it, but they stopped trying to feed me meat after a month or so. I never thought it was wrong to kill animals -- I knew as a human that it was a natural activity. Hunting was a controversial and extremely cultural issue in southern New York. Deer are overpopulated because they no longer have any natural predators besides humans. And I only knew of one person in the whole town (of 30,000 people) who hunted. Hunting was portrayed as something that hillbillies do, it was uncivilized and gross. I never prescribed to that shitty bias. I remember taking a poll in high school once where I asked people two questions: 1) Do you think hunting is wrong or cruel? and 2) Are you a vegetarian. 0% of my 40 person study group were vegetarians but about 50% said they were against hunting. Interesting results!

So, basically, I could not wait until the day that I actually was able to learn to hunt my food, to kill it and prepare it myself, to have the most cruelty-free and sustainable meat.

After graduate school in New York City, I moved to the high desert of Eastern Oregon, and have slowly begun to ease my way into the activities that are so common and normal here: hunting and fishing.

Last June I caught my first trout. I went on my first deer hunt a few weeks ago, with my boyfriend and his family who are very experienced and intelligent hunters. I learned gun safety, hunting strategy, and the excitement and beauty of a hunting trip. We hunted in the northeastern corner of Oregon where the red sunrises and sunsets flowed through the geometry of 400 foot deep canyons. And I shot a deer through the heart with one shot (I guess the hand-eye coordination from softball pitching lessons really paid off, mom!). No suffering, instant predation. Gutting the deer felt felt much more natural than I thought it would. It was like dissecting an animal in biology class, except with the proud knowledge that we were all going to share several great meals afterward.

Duck hunting is trickier than I thought. I hunted for ducks in a wildlife area in a basin lake from 7-11am, and then again from 1-4pm, my whole body covered with varying layers of camouflage except for my eyes (ducks can see color and understand what a face is). It was very cold, then it was very hot, and we only saw about two ducks flying the whole day.

My boyfriend's family and I are going duck hunting Thanksgiving morning, to bring home some fresh duck, and maybe geese, to cook as our Thanksgiving meal. I'm glad that I get to participate in such a thankful and sustainable tradition.

The only thing left is to get Julia to hunt with me when she comes out to Oregon at some point (which is totally going to happen).

Hmmm, I don't know about that. While I support the act of hunting your own meat for the same reasons that Lisa does, I'm personally not interested in taking part in it, at least for now. Although, I do think it would be a useful survival skill if we see apocalyptic environmental and economic changes during our lifetime. What about you - would you ever go hunting?

Guest post: From NYC to cowboy country

A guest post from my sister Lisa. Last summer, she wrote in from Costa Rica, and now she writes from Oregon, where she is a botanist for the Bureau of Land Management and spends her days looking and identifying plants: finding "special status species," assessing recovery following wildfires, determining the sustainability of livestock grazing activities, and collecting seeds for restoration projects. I'll get to see some of this in person, since I'm planning a trip to Oregon next month!

Just a typical workday landscape!

Cattle drive on the way to Bend

After two and a half years in NYC, I got a job in the high desert ecosystems of central-south Oregon, in a town of 2,000 people. In a little over two months, I’ve had more sunny days, more adventures, more fun and more excitement then I did in those two and a half years. (Sorry NYC! Maybe I’m just the right type of person for this landscape, where there are only about 4 million people in the whole state, while Julia is the right type for the place with 8+ million people right next door.)

Drake Park in Bend

At first, driving 1.5 hours to my field site every day past endless mountains, plains and mesas of sagebrush was unsettling and uncomfortable, strange and not really very exciting. Some switch went off about a month in, and the fullness of my love for this new place ignited. Cowboys, horses, cows, eagles, badgers, antelope, bighorn sheep, hawks, sandhill cranes, burros (the list goes on) are commonplace. There is so much quiet here. So many stars. The first day I got into town, I went to the grocery store, and people I didn’t know said hello to me.

Live Blues out in the sunshine behind Deschutes Brewpub

The places I work have epic names and for epic reasons: Crack-in-the-Ground (facilitated by an earthquake), The Lost Forest (a mysterious ponderosa pine forest in the middle of the desert). I spend hours every day listening to wind through trees and birds talking to each other, examining the intricacies and diversity in this seemingly homogenous set of ecosystems.

Crater Lake (12 feet of snow in mid June!)

Along the way, I’ve also fallen in love with Oregon in its entirety. Trips to Crater Lake, Bend, Eugene, and most recently a trip (yesterday) where I ran a 10k up the Steens Mountains from an elevation of 7,800 to 9,700 feet (my favorite activity by far) have breathed so much excitement and relaxation into my life simultaneously. Whereas the awkwardness and clamour of NYC filled me with a lot of anxiety that I thought would never go away, I feel like I become progressively less anxious-prone every day here. Plus, local craft beer costs less than Corona (about $6 a six-pack). In sum: beer, friends, friendly people, dogs and horses, eagles and quails, sky and ground, love and life.

At the top of the Black Cap Butte (6500 feet) overlooking Lakeview

Steens Mts east rim at the race finish

Chocolate from Scratch

And now for a more exotic story about taking advantage of local food resources, my sister has written in to share her experience in Costa Rica making homemade chocolate. She’s staying at Finca Luna Nueva this summer in northwest Costa Rica to do research for her masters in conservation biology, looking at the types of plants that grow in old ginger fields.



There’s a relic of a cacao orchard on the property from 30 or 40 years before the current owners bought the farm, and most of the trees are bare, the fruits having been eaten by squirrels or overtaken by mold. But another farm intern joined me to scout out a bunch of ripe cacao fruits, which are football-sized and bright yellow, and we decided to take on a little side project: making chocolate from scratch. The cacao pods are dark red or green when unripe, and they grow right from the trunk and branches, a characteristic somewhat common in the tropics, called cauliflory.



The first thing you do with a ripe pod is smash it on a rock to split it in half - that’s the technical protocol. The outside of the pod is about 3/4 of an inch thick, but should be easily breakable via this method when they’re ripe. On the inside is a mass of about 50 one inch long oblong seeds covered in a copious amount of white goo. This white goo is 1) the actual fruit of the cacao 2) a little bit sour and a little bit sweet 3) unlike any other fruit 4) amazingly delicious 5) kind of really disgusting looking, especially when you zoom in on it.



Take all the seeds out and lay them intact on a plate to let them ferment in the sun for 7 days, making sure to bring under some sort of shelter if it rains (this part became quite a saga for us considering that we’re in the rainforest, running up and down the stairs several times a day to protect our precious little cacao experiment!). Once the seeds are fully fermented, they white goo will turn a dark reddish brown and become sticky.



Then you’re ready for the most tedious but enjoyable work - peeling the seeds. At this point, they smell pretty damn amazing (like some dank dark chocolate cake), but it took us about two hours for the both of us to shell 60 seeds. The seeds begin as a dark purple color when the fruit is ripe, and after fermentation and drying become a deep, dark (what else) chocolate color.



After this is done, all you need to do is finely grind the beans in a coffee or spice grinder to get pure cacao powder.



This is a quintessential local Costa Rican food experience that I was pretty thrilled about, since it’s something that I’ve always wanted to learn but never had access to in the United States. Plus, (I’m not gonna lie) it was almost more satisfying than my academic research project. I’ll be bringing some of the cacao powder back for my sister, so she can make me something really delicious without the guilt of using an incredibly non-local product. Hooray!

Ok I better start thinking about what to make! Fudge, brownies, chocolate ice cream...?

Bobolink

During our stay upstate we also made a visit to Bobolink Dairy. My sister Lisa is a sometimes employee of Bobolink depending on her ever fluctuating schedule, but even though the farm is only 10 minutes from my parents' house I'd never been to see her there before. A small dairy operation offering grass-fed Jersey cows milk cheese and artisan bread, Bobolink has an onsite store open to visitors and brings their goods to farmers markets in New York City and the surrounding area. I bought some cheese and veal (which I left in my parents freezer, doh!), poked my head into their bakery, and we said hi to the pigs.

I <3 supporting small sustainable farms. When I heard from Lisa and her friend about getting to spend the day kneading and baking bread covered in flour, and about the delicious communal feasts featuring the farm's own meat, and about living in an old farmhouse surrounded by grassy fields... it momentarily made me want to be an intern. Until I remembered I wouldn't like waking up early or manual labor or getting up close and personal with large animals. Have you ever wanted to work on a farm?

The Jackpot: Underground Meat! plus Muffins!

And now, while I slave away toward the Thanksgiving feast, a not very explanatory guest post from my sister Lisa


Out of a refrigerator in a nondescript office space downtown, flowed forth local beef, pork, raw cheese, raw milk, local pickles, salsa, bread...

Plus some butternut squash, turnips, onions, turnip greens, and raw cheddar.


From that came the meal of burgers and mashed turnips above[ed note: at least that's what it looks like]


And for desert!!: butternut squash maple muffins with homemade oat flour

2 cups oat flour [rolled oats ground in a food processor until fine]
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 banana
1/4 cup applesauce
1 cup mashed butternut squash [roasted, cooled, and mashed]
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine ingredients, spoon into greased muffin tins, and crumble brown sugar on top. [I'm guessing you can bake these at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.]

hott!!

thanks Lisa, that was very interesting...

Kids in Our Hearts

Lisa is really picking up the slack for my lazy posting. Here's another post from her, reflecting on her past, and future, living with goats.


My two sisters and I grew up on a small hobby goat farm in upstate NY, drinking the milk, eating my mom's simple homeade goat cheese, and milking, birthing, and playing with a bunch of does and kids (mothers and babies). Each was named by my mother or one of us from a list of our favorite flowers: there was Petunia, Iris, Daisy, Edelweiss, Magnolia, Lilac, and then Sparky when I got to name one. As we all got older, the goats somehow phased out of our lives. Pictured above is the lone remaining goat, Aurora, who is just a pet who looks pretty by the barn, and isn't milked.


Yesterday, while searching webrings for local cow and goat farms, sentimentality hit me hard, and I realized how much I missed that life and how jealous I felt every time I'd arrive at the next website of a cute, small goat farm somewhere in Florida.

For some ineffable reason, I've been feeling incredibly driven to this sort of farming - I've thought about working at produce farms and worked at a cow dairy farm, but never really felt any strong feelings for them. So this is the plan for my life: that I will someday in the future have a goat farm (although definitely not in Florida), give them all flower names (unless it's my mischeivous daughter's turn) and (probably illegally) sell the small amount of milk and cheese just to my friends and family and to Julia if she owns a bar in Brooklyn or upstate somewhere someday. Working towards this today, I hope to spend get back to Brazil (where I studied abroad in college) for some time WWOOFing on a goat dairy in Brazil during my upcoming grad school years.


Additional commentary from Julia
Hmm, I'm not sure I can sell "illegal" goat cheese at a bar. I think that might violate health codes somehow. And yes, one of my dreams to open a bar. More on that another day.

Triumph in the Quest for Local Meat

And another guest post from my sister Lisa in Florida, where finding locally sourced food is much more difficult than the Greenmarket-haven that is New York City.


After asking around at the Sarasota farmer's market about local beef, and only hearing of one farm (that sells only wholesale and incidentally, the restaurant I manage is strictly vegetarian), I asked the guys behind the meat counter at Whole Foods if they knew of any farms in the area. The older, wiser-looking fellow told me sort of discreetly about a buffalo farm in Bradenton. After much google searching, I found the phone number and gave them (Gap Creek Buffalo) an inquiring call.

Yesterday I undertook the trafficy 25 minute drive north to their house where they sell just from two small coolers. The variety was impressive for the size of the operation. 4 or 5 different cuts of steak, ground, burger patties, ground sausage, link sausage, and of course - a cooler full of hearts, lungs, tongues and other delicacies. After buying almost $50 of meat (wanted to stock up because I hate driving in Florida!), I asked them if they knew of any other farms that sell small-scale like they do, and they just told me plain and simple - Nope. There really aren't any. Unless they're only selling by word of mouth and to very few people.


All this was disconcerting, but my mood was quickly elevated back to a state of meaty bliss after grilling the buffalo burgers with some beer and friends over a charcoal grill. I only seasoned them with a little salt, pepper and garlic and found the flavor slightly milder than beef but distinctive and delicious. The extremely low fat content makes them cook faster than beef burgers so there was less waiting, which I appreciated after preparing the patties and the grill and getting my house ready for guests.

Overall, I (and we) loved it... so even though there may not be any local beef, chicken or eggs on the local horizon, at least we can still cook buffalo over the fire any time we want. Next time I'll remember marshmallows.

Guest post: Finding local meat in Florida

Another guest post from my sister Lisa, who's currently living in Sarasota, Florida, and managing a college campus cafe. The other night she made this delicious looking whole wheat pasta with chicken sausage, and local garlic, onion and arugula. Here's her story:



Celebrating the first week of Worden Farm (the only local, organic farm that sells at the Sarasota farmer's market), I had a Saturday night feast of sauteed garlic, onions and arugula that had the perfect balanced peppery, but mild, taste. Add some non-local chicken sausage from Whole Foods (the quest for local meat in the Sarasota area is still ongoing) and the result was spicy garlic and sausage, sweet vidalia onions and tomato sauce, and filling whole wheat al dente pasta. This was miles better than the pasta dishes I grew up on, which were usually bland and unsatisfying.

Today I will be going to pick up some buffalo meat from a small local farmer, so there may be a new, even more delicous Floridian post awaiting on the horizon.

Veal Chops to Die For

Guest post from my sister Lisa, who worked at Bobolink farm this summer selling bread and cheese, and is in Brooklyn for the week. Dinner last night:
Veal chops with caremelized onion, baby garlic, currants and sage and wine
Salad of baby greens, spearmint and basil
Mashed New Potatoes

Last night I finally got the chance to cook the two veal chops I had fatefully acquired (without paying $40!) from Bobolink Farms where I work. They had been sitting in my freezer for 3 weeks begging me to cook them. But who was I to share them with? There were but two chops.
Long story short, last night there was a gourmet meal, Luke and Lisa style, featuring the chops. I can't even describe how amazing they were. My tongue was at a loss for words. A lot of that is probably owed to Luke's repeated recomendation of "mo' buttaaa!" And the fact that this was one of the happiest little calves in the history of veal, roaming free on the land of Bobolink farm for all its short life. While working at the farmers market in Warwick this past Sunday I was also the joyous recipient of a whole load of vegetables to incorporate. And then my mom's garden in Warwick supplied the rest. So basically this meal was as free as it could get!
Veal Chops with Reduced Wine, Onion, and Sage Sauce
3 small white onions
a bunch of small cloves of garlic
lots of sage!
2 veal chops
some white wine (we used vinho verde - $4 at trader joes)
butter
olive oil

1) sautee onions, garlic, sage, salt, pepper in 1 tbsp each butter and olive oil until caremelized
2) take out of pan
3) add 1 more tbsp each of butter and olive oil
4) cook the chops 5 minutes medium heat on both sides (sprinkle on salt and pepper generously in the first few minutes)
5) remove from pan
6) pour 1/3 cup white wine into pan and scrape around
7) add onion mixture back in and let reduce until thick and delicous looking
8) pour this over the chops
9 ) eat!!
10) ready to die yet? I am