Monthly Archives: February 2009

Local Raw Cheese Tour

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Today I took my daughter on a raw cheese tour of the local producers. Our first stop was The Village Cheese in Armstrong, BC. They have the cheese factory visible from the store. The Village Cheese has one raw cheddar which we sampled on site. It is a sharp, rich and full flavored cheese. I bought a five pound block for $64.15.

Our second stop was to Gord’s Gouda in Salmon Arm, BC. The farm was a little hard to find but well worth the effort. They have a store on the farm and samples are available for all their cheeses. All of Gort’s cheeses are made with milk coming from organic, pasture fed cows. This is as good as it gets when it comes to raw or pasteurized cheeses.

They have two types of raw cheese: gouda and maasdammer. I tried the old, medium and mild gouda. The flavor was mellow, rich and complex, with a spicy after flavor. I bought a ten pound round for $67.19 including a 10% bulk purchase discount.

While I was looking around the store, I saw some organic, pastured, non-homogenized whole milk in glass containers! I was informed Gort’s Gouda had just started producing milk in the last two months. Now, I love raw milk but it is unavailable for sale in Canada. (If you want to know why I love raw milk, read More About Raw Milk and find out.) An organic, pastured, non-homogenized milk is the best milk available for sale in Canada. Gort’s milk comes in 1.89L glass containers with a $2.00 refundable deposit and costs $4.95. It is presently being sold at the farm store.

Gort’s has a Bulgarian yogurt with a tangy, creamy texture. I was very happy to see 7% milk fat in the yoghurt. It costs $6.21 for 750gm. When I opened Gort’s pasteurized heavy cream, I almost cried. The cream has a thick, rich yellow hue, the sign of an exceptional product. This cream is the real thing and a steal at $5.43 for 750gm. I will see if I can arrange shipment to Kamloops and keep everyone posted.

March 24, 2009 Update: Heartland Foods is now carrying Gort’s milk, cream, quark and yoghurt. Please call ahead if you would like a weekly order.

What’s a Mother to Do?

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This morning CBC Sirius Radio had an interview with Richard Florida. I read one of his books a few years ago called: The Rise of the Creative Class. The interview was focused on how society needs to change to weather the economic situation facing Canada and the world. It was an interesting conversation, but I found it had little to offer the individual family facing hard times.

So, what can a mother do? Most household finances can tighten up, but one place that I do not recommend cutting corners is nutritious food. Having a healthy body and mind is the best defense against changing times. This is doubly true for children. Children’s bodies are growing. What your children eat in the first 15 years of their lives will definitely set the stage for a successful future. During these times of change, a mom can help by feeding her family the most nutritious food possible. Cut out the processed food and junk food and eat nutritious real food. Doing this one change, may save your family money by avoiding the cost of drugs and lost of income from sickness. The Weston A. Price Foundation has guidelines on what not to eat in Dietary Dangers.

Our children sometimes complain that we are not eating like everyone else. But I know the money I spend on seasonal local foods is well worth it. As I get to know more about the wonderful local food sources, I am able to feed my family the best quality food available at a reasonable price. As a result of eating local seasonal foods, my family does not get sick very often anymore and we have a happy family life. Making a habit of eating a nutritious breakfast and dinner together are now some of my happiest family times. If you would like more tips on how to bring more local seasonal foods into your family’s diet read: Getting the Goods: Top Ten Tips.

The Great Grease Bucket – Something from Nothing

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When I started eating traditional nourishing foods, the biggest change in my life was reintroducing fat from an animal source into my diet.

As a child, I remember the grease bucket that sat beside the kitchen stove and was used anytime frying was required. It was continually refilled with grease from bacon, sausage and drippings from roasted meat. We never used vegetable oils and I remember making delicious biscuits from the grease.

The grease bucket disappeared from my family’s kitchen when I was about eight years old. The grease was thrown into the garbage and we started buying vegetable oils and margarine. At the time, the Canadian government recommended limiting saturated fat because it caused heart disease and cancer. Unfortunately, the outcome of these recommendations over the last 30 years has not been a reduction in heart disease and cancer.

In my search to improve my health, I found there was great controversy about saturated fat even causing heart disease and cancer. Of course, I couldn’t believe that such a basic nutritional fact could be wrong. It took months before I could seriously consider that my dogmatic beliefs about saturated fat might be wrong.

The arguments are complex. It appears the basic error was traditional saturated fats became the villain in a complex misinterpretation of modern “new fangled” fats and industrial vegetable oils.

There is some great writing on this topic, and I believe it is best to go to the source of information and make your own informed choice. If you are Confused About Fats, the Weston A. Price Foundation has some excellent essays.

Dr. Mary Enig, a renowned lipid specialist, wrote a book called Know Your Fats which is a great primer for understanding fats. Thirty years ago, she was one of the first scientists to raise the alarm about trans fatty acids and advocated for labeling. Know Your Fats is available in the Kamloops Public Library.

Update August 4, 2009: I have had a number of people ask me about the title of this blog. I guess it was my attempt at a pun. “Something from Nothing” is what a frugal housewife would get when she went to the trouble to save drippings from roasted meats, sausages and bacon. “Something from Nothing” is what the Vegetable Oil Companies created when they convinced everyone that the grease bucket was unhealthy and would cause disease or possibly death.

Beautiful Bone Broth

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When I first learned about the Weston A Price Foundation, the first change I made in my household was making bone broth from scratch. I saved bones and scraps from meals and stored them in a bag in my freezer. When the bag was full, I dumped the bones into a large pot and filled the pot with cold water. I added about 3T of cider vinegar and let it sit for an hour. I simmered the pot for 6-24 hours at a very low temperature, then cooled and removed the fat.

Don’t throw the fat out. Save it for high temperature frying. (Fat from pastured animals is good for you.) The broth will be rich in gelatin, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. This broth will be a great addition to soups, stews and reduction sauces. If you want to make a lighter broth, repeat the process again. This second-run broth will not be as rich in gelatin.

Warning: If you make bone broth you will never be able to go back to store bought stock again. Sorry, about that.

If you are interested in traditional recipes like your great grandmother used to make, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon is a great source. It is available at the Kamloops Public Library. Here is an essay by Sally Fallon called Broth is Beautiful.

Updated June 8, 2010: I have found the bones, boiled for bone broth, make a wonderful soil additive. Normally, bones take a very long time to decompose in the garden. The waste bones from bone broth will completely disintegrate in the garden, within about a year.

2009 Goals for the Weston A. Price Kamloops Chapter

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  1. Maintain the most up-to-date listing of local foods available from organic, natural and conventional farms.
  2. Build a community of people interested in healthy, local food.
  3. Form a Buyer’s Group.
  4. Develop educational materials to help interested people achieve more independence from the industrial food system.
  5. Organize potluck dinners and discussions about local food issues.
  6. Support local ranchers and farmers through direct purchases or buyer’s groups.
  7. Mobilize our community to change laws that limit a citizen’s ability to produce or sell products on their own property.

Vision of an Urban Homestead

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I see a city where in every neighbourhood there is at least one person committed to knowing everything that is produced in the local area. That person would also be committed to teaching others how to produce a garden suitable for the local conditions and how to introduce animals and fowl into the urban landscapte safely and without conflict.

Groups of people would join together to change local bylaws to bring local, unsprayed food and free-range animals back into our individual control. This means overturning laws that criminalize people for producing food, trading or selling to neighbours.

Groups of neighbours would exchange the bounty of their yards with other neighbours. This community of interested people will be committed to safe, nutritious  and local food. There are some foods that cannot be produced in the city and the community would support the local ranchers and farmers.

There will be members of the community that would not be interested or able to grow a garden or raise livestock. These ranchers and farmers will produce their food. The food the city person buys will keep the farmers and ranchers in business, along with keeping their knowledge alive for another generation.

I would like to see this structure spread from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, city to city and across the country.