ingredients vs. ingredients

The kids and I were grocery shopping the other day and we were in the isle with all the coffees, teas, and milk additives when Andrew picked up a container of the product below and asked if I could buy this to have on hand for an occasional treat. After just having seen Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution episode with the cookie dough ice cream containing human hair, duck feathers and beetle secretions (which incidentally you need to see! And yes, that's really what was in there!) we were totally grossed out but came away with a valuable lesson which left a huge impact on the kids. The lesson being if you don't know what the ingredients are do not put them in your body! One I've been trying to teach and with success, but this made a lasting impression! I smiled and said "Sure! Why don't you flip over the container and see what the ingredients are." He did and promptly put it back on the shelf. I said, "Let's look and see what they are, sugar - shocking, artificial flavors -yum, (likely from corn) citric acid, (again likely from corn) red #40 (coal tar) more yumminess! salt and blue #1. Then they list the added vitamins and minerals. ::sigh:: Where are these 'vitamins and minerals manufactured and/or from what?! I'll be honest, he was disappointed, grossed out but disappointed. So I seized the moment to reinforce good and healthy eating habits albeit with flavored milk. In the 2 1/2 years we've been milking our goat and drinking it (gasp) raw, we've had strawberry milk once (the other day) and chocolate maybe 3 times? Other than that it's milk, whole and raw, the way it was intended to be consumed. So anyway, I told him I was proud of his choice and that we could still have strawberry milk but with actual strawberries. I took them to the frozen food isle and grabbed a package of strawberries; the ones I had frozen last year were gone, had him check the ingredients: strawberries, placed them in the cart and went on about the rest of the shopping.
Here are our ingredients: whole, raw, cold, goat's milk, frozen strawberries, (slightly frosty, it was humid that day and I had to blog about this so I needed a picture... ;-) ) and organic agave, and oh a blender it whip it together.
I placed the milk in the blender, tossed in the berries and sweetened slightly with the agave and blended for 30 seconds maybe? The kids loved it and said it was better than the other "junk," Ron really enjoyed it as well, tasted great and took about the same amount if time (or less) it would have taken to make the 'other' stuff. So I say this as a challenge to you, think outside the box, take baby steps, make it from scratch with ingredients you know and can pronounce and and maybe we can create national health care reform! If it to be it is up to us! Will you join me?

soapbox - ingredients vs. ingredients

You are aware that I raised some broilers this spring for my husband, well I decided to cook one for him the other night, and here's where the story begins....

Because I was curious and wanted his opinion I wanted to do a side be side comparison, not that I had any doubt that my pastured and organically raised chicken would come out on top, but I wanted to show him the difference, I don't eat meat, haven't in over 20 years, so I could not be the "guinea pig" but I'd heard that home grown meat was a bit tougher; not like shoe leather, just not limp like supermarket chicken. So I cooked one chicken breast from the supermarket and the homegrown broiler and had him try them. He said the home grown chicken was "GOOD!" But the real story and now my soapbox for the day is this. I placed the wrapper to the chicken in the trash upside down (don't worry, it was taken out shortly after) and walked away, back to the cooking chicken. A short while later I threw something else out in the trash and just happened to glance down at the trash and see the back side of the 'supermarket' chicken. I'd never actually looked at it, didn't ever cross my mind that there would be an ingredient list for a package of boneless skinless chicken breast!!!! I pulled it out of the trash to look at and it and read the ingredients for said boneless skinless chicken breast. At the bottom of the list it had a phone number to call with questions, I wonder if that phone number ever gets used, not once have I ever read an ingredient list for chicken but have never called about it either and I wondered if anybody ever had. I've got a good mind to do just that, but how does one tactfully ask "Why is there xanthan gum, carageenan, 'natural flavor', etc. in my chicken breast?" Better yet, how does one truthfully (yeah right from a huge food giant?!) answer that?! Then I was reading Joel Salatin's book, You Can Farm this morning; about raising pastured poultry in fact; and came across a section of the book that said, ..."when TIME magazine reports that roughly 10 percent of the weight of supermarket chicken is fecal soup."... (Guess the big food giant decided to leave that off the ingredient list, likely figuring it might turn people off to eating it huh?) So I decided to show the ingredients from my chicken vs, their chicken and do a side by side comparison for you too.


One organically raised pastured cornish rock cross. (This picture was taken a few weeks prior to harvest.)

Dressed and ready to go, rub down with olive oil, salt and pepper,

Add a sprig or two of rosemary, (grown in my garden of course!) under the skin and in the cavity,

place in rotisserie and cook for appropriate amount of time. Seriously, that's it, nothing else, nothing I cannot pronounce or know what it is, ie. 'natural flavor' if it's natural why is it added to the chicken? Isn't chicken flavor by itself natural and enough? Truth be told I would not be at all surprised if it were MSG.

'supermarket chicken' ingredients, yum!

So there you have it, the story I've been wanting to post for days now but with this ancient computer so near death it's been difficult to do anything with much less blog on and post pictures as well. UGH! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject, makes you want to run right out and buy some 'supermarket chicken' huh?