Epicurious stops publishing red meat recipes.

[Poivrot Farci]

As if shipping lemons, asparagus and grains from the other side of planet has few environmental consequences for the planet.  Not all meat is raised equally and Epicurious would better serve their readership by advocating consumption of less beef and promoting beef that is not raised in CAFO's.

If the top brass at Epicurious can not see the daylight between feedlot and pastured beef, they are just as worthless as a fashion editor who lauds the comfort of shoes made by slave labor.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/27/991247520/epicurious-ditches-beef-in-a-move-it-calls-pro-planet

[DonRocks]

9 hours ago, Poivrot Farci said:

As if shipping lemons, asparagus and grains from the other side of planet has few environmental consequences for the planet.  Not all meat is raised equally and Epicurious would better serve their readership by advocating consumption of less beef and promoting beef that is not raised in CAFO's.

If the top brass at Epicurious can not see the daylight between feedlot and pastured beef, they are just as worthless as a fashion editor who lauds the comfort of shoes made by slave labor.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/27/991247520/epicurious-ditches-beef-in-a-move-it-calls-pro-planet

As much respect as I have for vegetarians and vegans (both of which I consider to be more fully evolved than I am), I'm completely with Poivrot Farci on this one. Instead of weeding the garden, they've decided to carpet-bomb it.

This is as good a place as any to write this: Try the "Isa Essor" Pintades Fermières at Joyce Farms - $39.99 for 2 birds, and you'll never again want a supermarket chicken - the legs are huge and the breasts are small, which is as it should be. I can also vouch for the "Gloucesterchire Old Spot" Pork Chops, the Whole Rabbit, and the Ground Beef (all of which I liked enough to order a second time).

[zgast]

14 hours ago, DonRocks said:

As much respect as I have for vegetarians and vegans (both of which I consider to be more fully evolved than I am), I'm completely with Poivrot Farci on this one. Instead of weeding the garden, they've decided to carpet-bomb it.

This is as good a place as any to write this: Try the "Isa Essor" Pintades Fermières at Joyce Farms - $39.99 for 2 birds, and you'll never again want a supermarket chicken - the legs are huge and the breasts are small, which is as it should be. I can also vouch for the "Gloucesterchire Old Spot" Pork Chops, the Whole Rabbit, and the Ground Beef (all of which I liked enough to order a second time).

Piping in from over the pond, the chickens over here look like completely different animals from those in the States.  We'd actually stopped buying chicken breasts from the supermarket completely - there was just something wrong with them, no matter how you cooked them.  The difference over here is huge.  Supermarket chicken is far better, but we're doing most of our purchases at the local farmers markets and the difference there is stark.  I'm not sure we've bought much beef, but the lamb is plentiful and great.

[saf]

On 5/11/2021 at 7:53 AM, zgast said:

Piping in from over the pond, the chickens over here look like completely different animals from those in the States.  We'd actually stopped buying chicken breasts from the supermarket completely - there was just something wrong with them, no matter how you cooked them.  The difference over here is huge.  Supermarket chicken is far better, but we're doing most of our purchases at the local farmers markets and the difference there is stark.  I'm not sure we've bought much beef, but the lamb is plentiful and great.

Where are you?

I can't bring myself to buy supermarket meat of any sort any more. I get it all at the farm market. Much better, and I can confirm for myself that it isn't factory farmed. OK, except when I break down and have to have a hot dog. Then I just ignore the cognitive dissonance for the duration of dinner.

Meat-wise, we eat mostly chicken, pork, and the occasional beef. So no comments on lamb.

[zgast]

13 hours ago, saf said:

Where are you?

I can't bring myself to buy supermarket meat of any sort any more. I get it all at the farm market. Much better, and I can confirm for myself that it isn't factory farmed. OK, except when I break down and have to have a hot dog. Then I just ignore the cognitive dissonance for the duration of dinner.

Meat-wise, we eat mostly chicken, pork, and the occasional beef. So no comments on lamb.

I moved to London at the end of September.  My son, who claims to only eat fish and chicken, misses Jimmy Dean sausage with Grands Biscuits the most, so cognitive dissonance is a-ok in our household.  He gets leftovers or frozen foods on lamb night, which he actually loves.  Basically a junk food night for him.

[Ericandblueboy]

Isn’t lamb worse than beef for the environment?

[zgast]

3 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

Isn’t lamb worse than beef for the environment?

 

Who knew our food blog would devolve into a robust discussion of flatulence across various animal groups?  Short answer is (from what I've read), it's generally not seen as being as bad.  I'd say that while I recognize that lamb or even beef might be more environmentally harmful than say tempeh, I'm going to switch to grazed meat sources and consume less (which I do anyway) rather than eliminate them.

And for your viewing pleasure, a discussion of the treatment of methane in greenhouse gas emissions relative to carbon dioxide.  Who knew chocolate was this bad for the environment?

[saf]

14 hours ago, zgast said:

I moved to London at the end of September.  My son, who claims to only eat fish and chicken, misses Jimmy Dean sausage with Grands Biscuits the most, so cognitive dissonance is a-ok in our household.  He gets leftovers or frozen foods on lamb night, which he actually loves.  Basically a junk food night for him.

Ah, when we went to England, I could NOT eat the chicken. All tasted like fish to me. I was told they fed chickens on fish meal. I could eat the chicken in Ireland, although it was still weird tasting.

[reedm]

I was stationed in England for several years, and I can attest the chicken did indeed taste fishy. I was also told that was because the chickens were fed fish meal.

[zgast]

I've got nothing here.  Fishy flavor?  Everything is free range (doesn't mean they're not fed fish meal necessarily), but I've never picked up a fish flavor from the chickens.  Only nine months in, though.  We've got time.

[DonRocks]

On 5/13/2021 at 8:35 AM, Ericandblueboy said:

Isn’t lamb worse than beef for the environment?

The best source would probably be something official, but this isn’t bad (note that this includes dairy cows):

“Do Cows Pollute as much as Cars?” by Jacob Silverman on animals.howstuffworks.com

Note also, this has to do with the sheer number of cows; anyone who has seen (inevitably) horrific video of a single, exploding, beached whale can see this (warning: You can’t unsee this).

This one is a little more humorous, a bit less nauseating:

[Poivrot Farci]

On 5/10/2021 at 5:42 PM, DonRocks said:

As much respect as I have for vegetarians and vegans (both of which I consider to be more fully evolved than I am), I'm completely with Poivrot Farci on this one. Instead of weeding the garden, they've decided to carpet-bomb it.

This is as good a place as any to write this: Try the "Isa Essor" Pintades Fermières at Joyce Farms - $39.99 for 2 birds, and you'll never again want a supermarket chicken - the legs are huge and the breasts are small, which is as it should be. I can also vouch for the "Gloucesterchire Old Spot" Pork Chops, the Whole Rabbit, and the Ground Beef (all of which I liked enough to order a second time).

Forgive me, but Joyce Farms has taken some liberties.  For a while they claimed that "poulet rouge" was famed French breed of chicken, but as far as I couled tell, after much digging, none exists by that name and when the farm I work at called the red broilers (Freedom Ranger) "poulet rouge", we got a cease & desist letter.  I wrote to Joyce Farms and told them that I was unable to find any record or resource naming "poulet rouge" as a bonafide French chicken breed.  I got a perfunctory reply and when I went back to the website a few month later, they scraped the feel-good story and instead trademarked Poulet Rouge.  As best I know, you can't trademark a breed from another country that has allegedly existed for decades.

I got what was sold as grass-fed beef from Joyce Farms 6 years ago and wrote to the company, again, because I was surprised, startled even, by how big the top sirloins were from what was billed as a 100% grass-fed steer younger than 30 months.  They just don't get that big on 100% grass in just over 2 years.  One of their nutritionists was alerted and replied that they have an intense grazing program, and that they feed their steers corn, but only really young corn, when it is still a grass.  I am not a bovine nutritionist, but the email reeked of bullshit.

As for Gloucesterchire Old Spot (GOS), those are the wrong breed for the wrong time.  

There is a dearth of integrity in large scale food operations.

On 5/13/2021 at 8:35 AM, Ericandblueboy said:

Isn’t lamb worse than beef for the environment?

It depends on how intensely they are raised and what they are fed.  There are many variables to lamb, beef, tomatoes, broccoli...anything and everything that is grown/raised.