Five-Spice Brined Ribs and….

I’ve become a big fan of brining (soaking an animal protein in a mixture of salt, sugar, and water before cooking), and this recipe is the result of an experiment in that arena. (You can find an excellent in-depth discussion of the basics of brining in Cook’s Illustrated.) I have made this recipe with beef [...]

Pig trotters simmered in black vinegar

One of the major advantages of buying meat from a local farmer is that you usually get to choose the cuts and packaging you want: so many chops, cut so thick, so many to a package. Another advantage (?!?) is that you get cuts you would perhaps never buy in the grocery store. Take pig [...]

More on small-scale slaughterhouses, straight from the farmer’s mouth

This past Thursday, I attended the Food System Economic Partnership annual conference in Jackson, MI, where there was a lot of discussion about strengthening the local food system. While it was interesting to see and hear what various individuals and organizations are doing to grow the Southeast Michigan food system, it was disappointing to hear [...]

A chance to act

I’ve often extolled the virtues of locally rasied grass-fed meats (good for your body! good for the local economy! good for the environment!), and if you are in the habit of purchasing grass-fed, you should be aware of the most recent developments in the processing sector. There’s a quick summary about the issue on FoodRenegade, [...]

Broccoli Stem Stirfry

If you tend to have leftover broccoli stems, don’t toss them! We tend to use the crowns down to the main stem for a green vegetable with western meals, but that leaves us with quite a lot of long stems. These can be cut into “matchsticks” and stirfried into a delicious vegetable (or meat) dish. ingredients: [...]

Stirfried Ham & Tofu with Chinese Chives

We’ve gotten some lovely ham from our local meat supplier, Back Forty Acres, (looking forward to the bounty of the 1/2 hog that’s on its way this month!) and we’ve started to use it more and more for stirfrying. Chinese (or garlic) chives, jiucai in Mandarin, are available in Asian markets and at farmers’ markets that [...]

Five-spice Pork Tenderloin

I was happy to receive a sample of pomegranate juice in the mail from POM Wonderful (Thanks, Ryan!) and managed to keep some of it from being consumed directly from the bottle (our daughter is a huge fan!) Here is a fusion recipe I came up with that uses the juice both as a marinade [...]

Stirfried Pork with Bamboo Shoots & Broccoli Stems

I generally try to buy local, fresh ingredients, but once in a while we will buy something more exotic, such as bamboo shoots. If you live near an Asian market, look for the vacuum-sealed packages – the bamboo won’t carry the taste of the can with it. If you want to stick with local ingredients, [...]

Pork & Daikon Soup

This is a great winter comfort food that is quick to assemble but does need some time to cook. Of course, you could make this vegan by leaving out the pork and using a vegetable broth. I made a fun discovery about daikon by mistake (apparently I put the daikon too close to the cold air flow [...]

Oyster Sauce Beef with Broccoli

We’ve been enjoying the grassfed beef from Natural Local Food Express, particularly the flank steaks, which at approximately 1.5 lbs are plenty for 2 meals when used in a stirfry. If you can’t find flank steak or it’s too pricy, you can use another fairly large-grained cut of beef – because you cut it across [...]