Beef

*Sorry Mom!*
I don't eat meat, as you all know. But my dad got a cow, or part of a cow, or someone in his family got a cow, anyway, I now have a freezer FULL of dead animal. This cow came from the Stark County Fair, which bothers me because we walked through the beef cattle last year and it brought tears to my eyes. But that's not really where I'm going with this. My mother was watching my youngest the other day. When I got home I realized I needed to get my stew in the crock pot for dinner, I was in a rush...anyway she was kind to help me get my dinner ready. Her job was to cut this massive roast into chunks. She asked where I got it, and I told her it was from a cow at the fair. "Ewwww!" was her response. Which kind of startled me. I asked her why and she said it's because you don't know where it came from, which surprised me even more! I know (or could easily find out) not only where that cow came from, but who it's parents were, see where and how it lived, and talk to the farmer (or kid in 4-h) that raised it. I found it strange that she would think it was gross to eat THIS cow, but a cut of meat from Acme is fine. Which made me remember a "fun" statistic I heard/read somewhere about ground beef. So I Googled "How Many Cows go into 1 lb of ground beef?" And I found this:

In just 4 ounces, a typical burger patty is packed with the meat and fat of 50 to 100 cattle from multiple states and two to four countries.

Eat two hamburgers a week — as the average American does — and in a year's time the consumer samples a stampede: 5,200 to 10,400 cattle.

THAT is gross to me! The sad thing is that these cows don't live on a farm, like my Fair Cow did. They live in a factory farm, packed in with hundreds of other cows, knee deep in their own manure, being fed a diet of corn (probably GMO), which isn't a natural diet for a ruminant (animal that chew cud).

I kind of feel like this is getting a little preachy, so I'm going to just sum up here that generally speaking, locally raised beef is better than what you're buying in the grocery. If you live in the Canton area, and are interested in locally raised beef or poultry, I just got an email from Simon Certified Organic Farms about their October Harvest Days. Also, if you have any good pot roast recipes I have a few roasts I need to use...