offal

Yuck! – I Made a Spreadsheet

Jun 12, 2014 by MAS

In December 2012, I received the book Yuck! The Things People Eat. At the time I said:

This is more than a book. It is an eating challenge wish list.

Yuck! The Things People Eat by Neil Setchfield

I’ve been meaning to convert the book into a spreadsheet. One that I can track my progress and one that others can download for themselves. It is ready.

http://tinyurl.com/yuck-spreadsheet

Although some foods will be more of a challenge than others, I think I could eat them all with one exception. There is no way I could eat dog. Rat sure. Snakes – maybe a small bite. But no way would I eat a dog. Even looking at the photo is disturbing.

I think I’ve had blood sausage and monkfish roe, but I can’t say for certain, so I won’t count them. And I’ve had sheep and ox testicles, but not goat, so I left that unchecked as well.

So I’ve consumed 20 foods out of 123 Yuck! foods (or 16.23%). How about you?

UPDATE: Recalled the post where I ate an octopus. Up to 20.

Beef Heart Stew Rebooted (Slow Cooker Recipe)

Feb 20, 2013 by MAS

Two years ago I posted a recipe for Beef Heart Stew. Although it was better than my beef heart curry attempt, it was just “offal good“, not “awfully good“. So I revisited this recipe and came up with something far better. This time I added some potatoes and red wine. I also removed the Thai peppers, added cumin and extended the cooking time.

Summary: A rich stew made from beef heart using a slow cooker.

beef-heart-stew

Ingredients

One beef heart cut into smaller bite sized pieces
2-3 carrots
1 onion
2-3 small red potatoes (or substitute)
3 garlic cloves
1-1.5 quarts of beef stock or broth
1 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
2 teaspoons thyme
1 Tablespoon of ground cumin
1/2 cup red wine

Instructions

Cut up the onion and caramelize in pan with your favorite fat. I used tallow. Add to slow cooker.
Cut up carrots and potatoes and put into slow cooker.
Dice garlic and add to slow cooker.
Cut up beef heart and add to slow cooker. Details here.
Add spices.
Top off with beef stock and red wine.
Cook on low for 8 hours. I like to cook the first hour on high.

Because of the 8 hour cooking time, start this one early. I no longer believe 5 hours is enough time.

Beef Sweetbread Recipe

Oct 9, 2012 by MAS

When I go to the Farmers Market, I walk past all the produce and head for the meat vendors. When I get to the meat vendors, I go straight to the cooler with the nasty bits. Nasty bits is a term used to describe offal or organ meat and other less popular cuts of meat. This is where nutritional density is the highest. They also are the cheapest cuts of meat. Win win.

Recently I opened the Olsen Farms cooler and found something I had never seen before. A package of beef sweetbread I had never heard of this animal part. Of course I had to buy it. Turns out my sweetbread was the throat and thyroid area. Before cooking it I decided to eat a small piece of it raw. This is something I do with liver and kidney. Eating a small piece raw gives me clues on how long it needs cooking and what flavors might compliment it. Note that whenever I eat raw meat, I make sure that it has been frozen for at least 2 weeks first. Then I thaw and taste it no more than a day away.

Sweetbread actually did taste sweeter than kidney or liver. Similar texture too.

beef-sweetbread

My kind of bread. And gluten-free too! 🙂

beef-sweetbread-2

Raw beef sweetbread.

My recipe is pretty straightforward. Mix chopped up garlic, ginger and sweetbread over a warm pan of melted butter. Cook for around 5-10 minutes. Hit it with some salt if you like.

beef-sweetbread-cooked

Beef sweetbread with garlic, ginger and lots of butter.

I liked this dish and will having it again. Tastes a little better than liver or kidney and I enjoy those dishes.

Pig Uterus – Still an Offal Idea

Oct 9, 2012 by MAS

Back in January I posted Pig Uterus Recipe: An Offal Idea.

When I went to Ranch 99, I knew wanted a new kitchen challenge. Something that I never had before. Something exotic. When I saw the package of pork uterus, I hesitated for a moment and then threw it in the cart.

The rest of the post was how I attempted to make a curry using the pig uterus. The result was that I over cooked the uterus slightly and it had a rubbery taste. Still it didn’t taste bad enough to prevent me from finishing the dish. In the comments, I got feedback that I needed to do a fast cook. I put off trying this dish until last night.

Things didn’t go well.

I did the fast cook and it tasted awful. It smelled bad too. I can usually power through most dishes, but this one went into the trash. When it comes to cooking pig uterus, I’m going to surrender on this dish. If I see it at a restaurant I would try it just to know if it is possible to make this dish taste good. I’m skeptical.

pig-uterus

Onions, garlic, ginger, mushrooms and oyster sauce couldn’t save this dish.

A Juicing Skeptic

Jul 30, 2012 by MAS

I’m often asked if I juice. Not steroids, but with fruits and vegetables. The answer is I don’t. I remain unconvinced that juicing offers the health benefits its fans claim. Before I get attacked in the comments, I’ll explain why I am a juicing skeptic. I could be wrong.

Whenever I run into a fan of juicing, the story is almost the same.

Their health wasn’t great.
They stop eating crap and start juicing.
Their health improves and they credit juicing.

My opinion is the most dramatic health benefits come from removing the crap, not from the juicing. My crap foods were gluten, vegetable oils and unfermented soy. Even though I added more nutrient dense foods, it was removing the toxins that allowed my body to heal.

Another reason I am a juicing skeptic is that it doesn’t seem natural to buy a massive amount of fruits and vegetables, pulverize them into a shake and then throw out all the vegetable fiber. The juice consumer then slams their body with a concentration of vitamins never found in nature at that level. The expectation is the body will be able to absorb and thrive by overloading nutrients. I understand the argument that in order to get that much nutrition, juicing solves a problem that cooking doesn’t. When you cook the vegetables, you can eat more at one sitting, but you end up losing some of the nutrients.

There are two other solutions that have been available to mankind for many thousands of years. Neither requires buying massive quantities of fresh vegetables or purchasing a kick ass juicer. When it comes to nutrient density in a real food form that our ancestors thrived on, but modern man mostly ignores, we have offal and fermentation.

Back in the old days, we didn’t have planes flying fresh aspargus from Peru to our air conditioned grocery store. We also didn’t have the technology to them turn those fresh vegetables into liquid for our morning smoothie. We didn’t even have refrigeration. How did we survive and get the nutrients provided by vegetables, especially outside harvest time? One method was eating animals, particularly their organ meat. FreeTheAnimal did a post showing that 1/4 pound of beef liver has as much nutrition as 5 pounds of fruit. You see Mother Nature has a plan for us that doesn’t involve 7 easy payments. But wait there’s more!

Mankind also figured out that fermentation not only preserved vegetables beyond harvest, but they became softer to eat and they had higher nutrient levels than fresh vegetables. Yes, fermented vegetables can have 2 to 3 times the vitamin levels of fresh vegetables. I can also eat a bowl of sauerkraut or kimchi a lot easier than raw cabbage. Plus they have healthy probiotics that you do not get from juicing.

3-jars-kimchi

3 jars of kimchi

I also want to briefly touch on a topic that I’ll explore more in a future post. It is about nutritional arrogance. Regardless of if you’re Paleo, vegetarian or even a Dr. Oz follower, we discuss nutritional properties of food as if it is settled science. It might be settled science, but I don’t believe so. In the entire history of world, it has only been 99 years since we discovered Vitamin A. Folic Acid wasn’t discovered until 1941. Our understanding of Omega 3 ratios was primitive until the 1990s. Hell, in the last few years we’ve seen major breaks in our understanding dietary inflammation, gluten and gut flora. There are over 3,000 derivatives of Vitamin D3 and we’ve only have published biochemical data on 1,000 of them.

This tells me that there is a good chance that there is A LOT MORE we have yet to learn about food. We may still be in the Stone Age when it comes to nutrition. When I eat beef liver or sauerkraut, I’m eating in harmony with the way my ancestors did. With juicing, I don’t know how my body will respond to the nutrient overloading or what good things are being thrown away. Traditional eating doesn’t require nutritional science for validation. Our existence is proof it works.

Would I ever juice? If I were sick, had removed all the toxins from diet, was consuming offal and fermented foods and was still nutrient deficient then I might. I’d likely work with a nutritionist and get blood work done also. Most people do not fall into this camp. They want the damage from their cupcakes to be washed away by slugging a glass of blended produce. And liver is too yucky for them.

Deep Nutrition, Perfect Health Diet and The End of Overeating

Jun 26, 2012 by MAS

I’m way behind on my nutrition book summaries. In this post, I’ll cover three excellent books that approach nutrition from different viewpoints that compliment each other nicely.

Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

Many of the readers of this site know about Weston A. Price. He was a dentist that traveled the world in the 1920s and 1930s studying the effects of how modern food was impacting traditional cultures. He published Nutrition and Physical Degeneration in 1939, which detailed the excellent health people had from different parts of the world before they became exposed to processed foods. As great as Price’s book is, most will not find the 500+ pages accessible. Plus we know a lot more about nutritional science today. That is where Deep Nutrition comes in. It beautifully connects the wisdom of traditional food preparation with modern nutrition.

Deep Nutrition does an outstanding job covering the dangerous of vegetable oils. It also has a great section called The Four Pillars of World Cuisine. These are the nutritionally dense foods used by traditional cultures long before we even knew what vitamins or omega ratios were. Those pillars include Meat on the Bone, Organ Meat, Fermented / Sprouted Veggies and Raw Foods. That sounds like my diet of the past few years. I may not be able to defend the science, but like my ancestors, I know those foods are working great for me.

Deep Nutrition is the best nutrition book I’ve seen directed at mothers. There is a section on what the mother should be consuming during pregnancy and why waiting three years between children is a wise idea. If you are looking for a book that connects the knowledge of ancestors with modern nutrition, this is a great book to own.

Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Catherine Shanahan

Perfect Health Diet: Four Steps to Renewed Health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life

If you like numbers and getting under the hood on nutrition, you will love The Perfect Health Diet. Like Deep Nutrition it covers which foods are most nutritious and which are the most toxic. Some things you will learn in PHD:

Why saturated fats are the safest fat.
Strategies for healing and preventing disease.
What are safe starches.
Why non-starchy veggies should be counted as fats, not carbs.
A no hunger method of Intermittent Fasting, which I have tested successfully many times.
Which supplements are the most useful and which to avoid.

Perfect Health Diet like Deep Nutrition falls under the Paleo umbrella. I think it is an excellent reference.

Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat by Paul Jaminet

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

An emerging theory of obesity is based upon food palatability and food reward. I first posted about this last August in the post Flavor Signaling and The Shangri-La Diet. The End of Overeating explores how food scientists are engineering food that override our natural appetite. When we get foods that provide an excess stimulus, we become addicted to those foods and over consume them. This is good for profits, but not for our health.

Before I read The End of Overeating, I knew processed foods like breakfast cereals and candy bars were designed to get us to over consume. What I didn’t know was just how pervasive food engineering has become. Many sit down restaurants with visible kitchens aren’t actually cooking the meal on site. They are receiving the food that was assembled and pre-cooked at a different location. This is done not only to drive down costs, but to stimulate more addictive behavior in their customer base. From page 72:

Before the chicken is shipped from the manufacturating plant, it’s battered, breaded, predusted, and frozen. This creates a salty coating that become crispy when fried in fat. “All this stuff absorbs fat, dries out the batter and breading, and replaces water with oil. So now you’ve got batter and breading that is probably 40 percent fat,” according to the food consultant.

All this processing makes the food softer and easier to consume. From page 69:

By eliminating the need to chew, modern food processing techniques allow us to eat faster. “When you’re eating these things, you’ve had 500, 600, 800, 900 calories before you know it,” said the consultant. “Literally before you know it.: Refined food simply melts in the mouth.”

To make matters worse, the fat restaurants typically use is the very cheap and inflammatory soybean oil. Not good. By layering sugar on fat on sugar on fat, food scientists have figured how to get you consume past satiety. If this book doesn’t make you want to start cooking your own food, then nothing will. I’ve read a few posts where smart people have critiqued this theory of obesity. Although it may not end up being complete, after I ran my own Food Reward Test: Almonds vs Almond Butter, I became a believer. The more you chew you food, the less calories you need to reach satiety.

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler

Main navigation