Meat From a Local Farmer and My Learning Curve in the Kitchen {Cure Tooth Decay}

This is what our freezer looks like! That, my friends, is a good chunk of our hard earned money in the form of grass fed meat from a local farmer. Lovely hubby drove almost an hour one way to pick it up. So I might have mentioned we were going to buy 1/4 of a cow. Haha. Let me tell you that story...

We had a clue it would not fit in our freezer, but we placed a deposit for 1/4 of a cow anyway. We thought we would just buy a chest freezer on Craigslist and stuff it into our already crowded, tiny kitchen. Then a good friend of mine sent me an article about buying meat from a farmer, with some useful details (thank you Luda!). Uhm, yeah, turns out we thought we were paying $4.95 per pound of meat we were getting, it was actual $4.95 per pound of actual 1/4 cow hanging weight before it is butchered, so it would end up way out of our price range. 

What we did is talk to the farmer about using our $75 deposit to get some ready cut meat at the farm and he agreed. We explained we didn't know what we were getting into and the pricing wasn't very clear - the way it was worded surely wasn't for newbies like us!

So we were pretty excited to get some meat, organs, soup bones, etc. I'm sure you're dying to know what the pricing is like on these! The organ meat were $2.50 per pound, packed with vitamins, minerals, and all kinds of goodness. We're not new to liver, tongue, heart, kidneys, where we come from the whole animal was used for food - but it has been a while since we have eaten such nutrient dense stuff. Soup bones were also $2.50 a pound and we've already made soup once from those and let me tell you - wow, it doesn't even compare to soup from store bought bones. Such rich taste, it was the best soup I've had in a while! 

The grass fed ground beef at $4.60 per pound isn't exactly cheap, but I can prepare beef cutlets/patties/burgers mixed with some veggies and millet and have enough for at least 2 days, or even 3 for the 4 of us. Hubby also got a roast at $7 per pound, which ends up being super expensive - it is something we would save for special guests and it is so much meat that we would be eating left overs for several days most likely. Cage free pastured eggs at the same farm are $3.50/dozen - not bad at all considering grain fed organic eggs from the store are $3.99! In that case it is cheaper at the farm. 

Before you think "Wow, they must be rich buying meat at such prices!", let me clarify. We live on 1.5 incomes, with very substantial expenses and trying to pay off debt. We are used to buying chicken drumsticks for $1.29 per pound. Will I never again eat plain non-antibiotic chicken from a store? Uhm no, we can't go through the whole meat stash from the farm in two months, we need to stretch it out. So yes, we'll be supplementing with some organic grain fed chicken from the store because our finances can only stretch so far. We already have most luxuries cut out, like cable, clothes shopping, second car, overseas travel, dining out, etc. So there isn't much else we can cut. But because we don't consider all those things important, we are able to buy wholesome foods to nourish our family. Maybe, someday, I'll be able to have that cute new shirt and my grass fed beef liver, but until then - I'm fine with quality food and an outdated wardrobe.

In the Kitchen

If I used to spend about 2 hours a day in the kitchen before, it's about 3 to 4 hours now. Why? Because preparing wholesome foods that don't rely on bread, pasta, rice, etc., is just a little more time consuming. At least initially, while I'm learning new things. I feel like by the time I'm done making and eating breakfast, I'm already making lunch and dinner (hubby leaves for work in the afternoon). Not only that, I am making several new recipes every week while we get into the swing of things. I need to figure out what we like, what we absolutely will not eat, what we can afford (that's a tough one).

Add to that about half an hour a day of recipe searching and tweaking. I am making up a lot of my own recipes as we go so that I can use what we have and not go out to buy some missing ingredients. After we try many recipes and find our favorites, I will make a spreadsheet of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for us to pick and choose from on a regular basis. It's an alternative to meal planning because I am pretty spontaneous and don't like planning meals, it never worked for us.

Baking experimentation has taken off after buying several different flours to try. I am baking with coconut flour, sourghum, millet, and tapioca. There is something I learned this week and that's if we want to stick with this 'reversing tooth decay' diet, I cannot completely cut out baked goods because my family (and myself) will cry "I want to go back to how we were eating before!" We must have baked goods in the house. Otherwise what happens is we eat all kinds of junk when we are not home (hubby at work and my kids at grandparents'). If we eat healthy, wheat free, very low sugar (honey) baked goods at home, we're not as likely to gorge on the junk when we are out.

We're still in the process of deciding on which cod liver oil to take regularly, unfortunately the best one is out of our price range by a long shot. Meanwhile we're taking some that are recommended as 'second best' by the WAPF. We'll be taking pictures of Baby E's teeth again soon. I am seeing slight improvement just by observation, they don't feel as crumbly as they did and a little bit of the discoloration is gone. But not anything you would probably notice. It's a gradual transition and I have no idea if it is even possible to help her teeth that are there now, but I sure hope to give her new adult teeth a good start in the future!

What's going on in your kitchen?

PS: Written while sipping some delicious raw milk from another farm, more on that later!

Past Posts from This Series:

On Sugar and Grain Addiction

Crumbling Baby Teeth

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