Chicken and Superbugs

In case you have just wandered onto this blog on a whim or random Google link, let me be clear about my food choices. I NEVER buy meats from the grocery stores, and not much produce except in winter when there’s no local hoophouse stuff available. I do as much home-grown and/or organic as possible.

My health is not good (stemming from years of work-related causes) but I'd probably be dead already if not for my food choices over the last few years. 

When I say I buy no commercial “no meats” I really mean it, but especially NOT any chicken. Here’s one reason why:

Half Of Supermarket ChickenHarbors Superbugs, Consumer Reports Finds

Tyson chicken houses are everywhere in Virginia, but thankfully none are very near me. They are now making biochar from the Tyson waste and I won’t even buy that for my garden. Yuck. Instead I use the charred bits from my wood stove on my garden.

I buy local organic grass-fed meats despite the higher cost, and I believe (in addition to being tasty) it benefits my health, plus cuts down my health-care costs. I cure my own bacon from domestic hogs that roam our wooded mountain slopes, and make my own butter from local cream that's not ultra-pasteurized. I also make a lot of my own cheese. Occasionally when I get off the mountain to a large city, I look for wild shrimp and fish but those gets harder to find every year. 

If you've tread much about native american and early settler life, you know they ate the organs of meat animals long before they'd eat the muscle meats. That's because the organs contain so much more nutrition that the muscles. We Americans choose less nutritious steak instead of organ meats, sacrificing nutrition for popular belief.

I admit I balk at eating brains, although my dad loved them scrambled with eggs. I eat liver, kidneys, heart, and sweetbreads. Some of the tougher cuts like hearts and kidneys sometimes get ground and used in a mixed country paté loaf. Do NOT even mention chitlins or tripe because I'm not going there!