The Ten Dollar Chicken

There is an amazing amount of food that barely tastes like food in this country.

It's something I've been vaguely aware of growing up, because my mother always had a backyard garden and anyone who's eaten a homegrown tomato knows that it's a night and day difference from the tomato-shaped but flavorless objects sold in grocery stores. I think we're generally aware that there's a sharp difference between food grown for mass production and long transit and that grown closer to home, but that the same applies to meat and animal products is more likely to fly under the radar - at least, if my experience is any indication.

Tart and I had been taking an environmental biology class this winter, and with an increased interest in eating locally came an increased interest in doing the same for meat and eggs. This also came at a time when the prices for these products spiked in all grocery stores as feed prices went up. Local, grass-fed meat is expensive, don't get me wrong, but when the artificial price depression weakens on mass-produced meat, the difference doesn't seem quite as shocking. And so began my family's adventures in trying out local meat.

Grass-fed beef was where we started first. To get around restrictions placed by the FDA, most local ranchers need to sell a minimum of a quarter of an animal at a time, but we managed to find one more distant that sold in smaller units so we could give it a try without ending up with forty pounds of meat. We began with a sort of "sampler" that included beef shanks, sections of long bones, several pounds of ground beef, and braising cuts. The beef bones went into making broth - those of you who have read my previous entry on root vegetable stew will know the soup I made from it, which is absolutely incredible when using homemade beef broth - and some of the braising cuts went into stews, where I have to admit I didn't notice much difference. But the difference between ground grass-fed hamburger and conventional hamburger is like that between a backyard tomato and a store-bought tomato. The flavor is intense; not different really, but far stronger. The meat doesn't need to be drained because it's not swimming in fat. Possibly as a side effect of this, the meat also seems more filling in smaller amounts than a typical hamburger - although it costs more per unit, it also seems to go much farther, evening out the difference somewhat. To someone that knows how to make meat stretch it's an incredible change, and I think if there is one thing I will push for grass-fed on whenever possible, it will be hamburger.

At about the same time we also bought a stewing chicken from one of the organic egg farms near us, basically a laying chicken that had stopped laying. Because it's not one of the modern meat breeds, it's dramatically smaller than what we're used to, and came with feet and head attached (my Mom's a bit squeamish about this part, so Mark and I took off the head and feet for her. I offered to use the feet to make broth but her response was OMG NO). Mom says it looked a lot more like the chickens she used to see her mother preparing as a child than anything we'd seen in years, and the chicken soup it made was like the beef broth and the hamburger; light and with little fat, yet stronger than anything I'd had before it, making everything else seem like lightly-flavored water in comparison. The meat had the most intense chicken flavor I'd ever had. And this was a breed that was developed for eggs rather than eating!

More recently Tart and I went to a new farmer's market over in Mountain View because we normally have classes on Friday (our local farmer's market day) and this was the one we could make. There we were lucky enough to find a stand that also carries pasture-fed pork, goat and lamb as well as several stands for beef and a stand that sold pastured eggs. We picked up a pound of ground pork and a dozen pastured eggs to test, and I used them in a kimchi fried rice recipe using local-made kimchi and vegetables from the farmer's market (recipe to follow). The pork was harder to distinguish under the strong flavors of the kimchi and sesame oil, but in cooking it was much lighter than I'm used to, with very little fat released as it browned. The eggs - damn, I sound like a broken record but it's just so intensely flavored that standard eggs, even the cage-free ones, fall flat.

Add in the factor that all of these types of meats and eggs are far healthier for you than the conventional form, from animals crammed in small spaces and fed on corn, and it seems like a no-brainer, right?

Well, sort of.

The pound of ground pork, one of the cheapest forms we could buy to try, came to about eight dollars. The dozen eggs were six dollars. That one stewing chicken cost ten, and grass-fed beef costs tend to vary by cut but begin at about the same prices as the pork, maybe seven dollars a pound for ground. This stuff ain't cheap. You definitely aren't going to be making dinners for the week with a roast chicken one night and meatloaf the next unless you have a whole lot of money to spend. We're getting around it by the fact that I know how to make a whole lot of meals on very little meat (the ground pork, for example, could last for three or four meals and plenty of leftovers depending on how I use it and it will probably last three), but even so, I'm well aware of the fact that the only reason I can experiment like this at all is because Tart and I live in my parents' house.

When we lived on our own and had to cover bills, rent and food all on the same small paycheck, food typically came last, to the point that some months we scraped by with very little food at the end of the month to ensure that we'd have enough gas to drive to work. Then we reloaded with food as soon as the next paycheck came in. It's an old, vicious cycle that's terrible for human health and that a lot of people live with every day, and while I can truthfully say that as a society we pay far less for food than any previous generation, the fact is that other costs such as housing and gas have inflated concurrently to fill the gap. If food prices go up these other costs aren't going to drop to make up for it; the most vulnerable among us will just continue to go hungry. And it's an issue that I honestly don't know how we would solve. For while food lies at the heart of a lot of social justice, there are a whole lot of other issues tangled up in them that I don't even know where one would begin with. While I can eat real food that's raised far more humanely than anything else in this country and is also much more healthy for me, I can do so because I'm in a uniquely privileged position that most people don't share. But the same methods used to produce this food don't translate well to the economies of scale that allow us to sell it at prices that a lot of people can afford.

Real food should be available to everyone. But it's not an issue that has a single, "magic bullet" cure. It's tied up in issues of cultural identity, social status and wealth in ways that most people aren't aware of, and that's without even going into the unexamined backgrounds of our cultural approach towards food in general and good food in particular. I don't actually know if there's even anyone that knows yet all the pieces that need to change - culturally, economically, and socially - for such a thing to happen.

There's a saying I've heard a lot, that fish don't notice the water (much as you and I don't normally pay much attention to the air). And for most of us, I guess it's a good metaphor for how we approach the food that's most ubiquitous around us. You wouldn't know that food is supposed to have a smell or much of a flavor all by itself if you just went by what you find in the grocery store. But just as the water comes from somewhere, so must the food; and it is that source and our approach to it that I think we, as a culture, seriously need to review.

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Kimchi Fried Rice (Gimchi Bokkeum Bap)

This recipe was modified from one in Quick & Easy Korean Cooking by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, which was meant as more of a side dish for two people. The addition of vegetables and a bit more rice (mostly because I wanted to use all we had in the fridge) turns it into a full meal on its own for a lot more people.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok over high heat. Add the onion and pork and cook until the onion and meat are browned, 5-7 minutes. Lower the heat to medium, add the butter and sesame oil, and heat until the butter melts. Add the rice and cook, stirring, over medium heat until the grains are no longer hard, 6-8 minutes. Add the green onions and vegetables and cook until the greens are going limp but still retain their color, about 5-7 minutes. Add the kimchi and its liquid and stir until the pink is well-distributed through the rice and the kimchi is heated through, perhaps 2-3 minutes. Add salt to taste and serve immediately with a fried egg on top of each serving.

Servings:4-6
Cuisine: Korean
Notes: Spinach leaves, sliced bok choy, sliced napa cabbage, or chard would all work well here. If using spinach that doesn't come in a bag, separate the leaves from the stems and slice the stems into smaller pieces before adding.