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organic bones - Ann001 - 03-30-2019
I want to start making bone broth, but need an organic bone source, if there is such a thing. Anybody know of one?
RE: organic bones - DonJuane - 03-31-2019
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Best GTO question this year award!
....... I'd go with what the butcher shop sells you and tell everyone on the guest list the soup was from organically fed vegan cattle. In the process maybe you'll instantly create a new social trend, "secondary vegan". Beef soup and avocado toast. Sounds fab! What time is the party?
RE: organic bones - Ann001 - 03-31-2019
You crack me up DonJuane--thanks for the award! I am the only person on the guest list, however, and I really need organic. Don't want the antibiotics and hormones (I'm sure I'm getting enough of those already)
RE: organic bones - datgnat - 03-31-2019
Don't know if this response (full of induction based on opinion) is much help, but we went to drop off our housekeeper one evening and got a tour of her family's place outside of town. They keep cattle (I saw probably 30 head or so), and when a need comes up (a fiesta on the schedule, or the need for extra pesos), they sell one or more off to slaughter. The cattle eat grass in the rainy season, and dry grass supplemented with hay in the dry season. There're no grain subsidies (as far as I know) here as there are in the states, so your local rancher isn't going to spend his few pesos on grain mash for cattle. And, if you go down to the local carniceria and look at the cuts there, you won't see nearly as much marbling on the beef cuts as you'd see in the US. Most of the meat there is fresh (that is, neither dry nor wet aged, like you'd see north of the border), and with much leaner muscle than you're used to. I think this might also account in part for the way folks here like to shave every part of the beef into thin sheets. Meat is very dear for most, but tough meat is much easier to bear sliced thin and seared is a bit easier to chew than a thicker chunk (it's also cheaper to cook!). Likewise, as the cattle aren't crowded into a lot to be 'finished', there's no need for expensive antibiotics to deal with diseases that are common to over-crowded livestock, and I doubt anybody on the local level is spending money for hormones. Thus I believe if you go to the local butcher (and maybe just ask where he gets his res from), you might find that the beef here is just what you're looking for, minus the extra cost of a large commercial ranch's (possibly dubious) certification. I invite anyone here who's looked into this to further enlighten me--like I said, I'm kind of punching in the dark based on what I've seen so far...
RE: organic bones - doncoulter - 03-31-2019
If Ann001's post deserves the "Best GTO question this year award" (and I wouldn't disagree), then datgnat's response surely deserves the Best GTO Answer award. What an intelligent and thoughtful post! As near as I can tell, datgnat's information seems correct, and his (or her?) reasoning strikes me as sound. Like datgnat, I can't be sure that his/her conclusion is 100% valid, but you can count me persuaded.
In a similar organic vein, my wife has always contended that the fruits and vegetables available at the local mercados are likely to be organic or nearly so. Her reasoning is similar to datgnat's: the local harvesters of fruit and veg are small-time operations, unlikely to be spending many pesos on fertilizers and pesticides and so on. (This may or may not apply to the produce one finds at the big supermarkets.) If she's correct, which would be my bet, then the recent influx of high-rolling, gentrifying gabachos who trek once a week to the fancy organic shops in San Miguel are wasting their money.
RE: organic bones - jesm - 03-31-2019
Yes indeed. Datgnat exhibits deep understanding and timeless wisdom about the economic reality and choices made everyday by citizens here. Sometimes it looks like corners get cut or other sacrifices are made, but in this instance it works for the good. Thank you for the time and thought.
Post of the Year!
RE: organic bones - DonJuane - 04-01-2019
Funny everyone's perspective on things. If you go out and have a look at a few real farms (better have a smell of them too) you'll see and sniff that a lot is rotten in Denmark. I've occasionally driven down a few dirt roads in Guatemala and had a look-see but the smell was enough to curl my hair. Not sure what type of fresh raw feces had been spread over the area of well tended commercial vegetable gardens and not too many days before my visit, all organic mind you but they had left enough of an impression that I now know there is not that much more going on at the organic section that I can't give up by visiting a little further back on the isle. :-)
And in the mountains of Zunil, Guatemala where Indigenous folks supplement a major part of this hemisphere's vegetable diet, the vegetables are grown with an unlimited pure water supply and in rich volcanic soil; the only thing that has changed over the years is today they now wear masks as they walk the fields with their vintage back-pack insecticide sprayers. If you haven't seen it yet, check on Netflix to see if you can find a movie called "Food Inc". It's all about the money. And I now note that Latino's did not fall off the turnip wagon when it comes to making a fast buck. Maybe not as unscrupulous as Gringos but give them a little time.
Otherwise outside of my previous joke, my Dad (who poisoned cotton most of his life with DDT and never wore a mask) drove a tractor with no shirt or sun screen, he lived to 94 and only passed away because he cracked his head open after falling over a slab of concrete. (And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with DDT, just that while it does minor things like wiping out our entire insect population, somehow my dad survived.) My mom is 90, still drives a lawn tractor and cooks a damn good Thanksgiving dinner. So I think it's in the genes most of the experts say but still it doesn't hurt to strive for immorality. I do want to live forever but check back with me when I get to be around 80 or 90 and I may have very well changed my mind.
And I grew up with those same type of cows described here. We killed one each year, processed and froze it for the winter and mostly all we were able to do with the beef is grind it into hamburger and hack the steak with a dented hammer until we could beat it into a chicken fried steak.
Once very, very much later in life I tasted a marbled prime cut of cap-steak from Costco and nothing else will ever taste the same again. In fact if I croak while eating one of these - maybe I just had it coming. Still over the years I've changed from eating meat once a day to once every couple of weeks and saving back the experience for some of those high quality cuts.
Still the charade of life goes on while leaving our hopes, needs and dreams all quite laughable. Do we as Canadians continue to search for organic cows that have spent a lifetime drinking from streams that our Mexico-invading mining companies have polluted with heavy metals or do we as Texans enthusiastically give up our once pure beef supply for that marveled and delicious wonderment, poisoned with fat and antibiotics? Decisions, decisions!
I don't know but maybe you just can't get there from here ..... Regardless, Bon Appétit !
RE: organic bones - datgnat - 04-01-2019
Stop it; you'll give me a swole up head, lol. I don't know much about anything here yet, so I just whir the hamster wheel behind my eye sockets, which can be useless if my postulates are wrong. I'm mostly with Don Juane here; especially as I'm a firm believer in "I don't know what I don't know." I like to know how the sausage is made, and I can still usually stomach the sausage (har). The whole subject is interesting to me because I've been leaning towards a carnivore diet recently, and I only wish my Spanish was better so I could gather better local information (and find someone who can cut me off a ribeye cap--DJ's right again: it's the best part of a cow!). I'm in class twice a week, and I can say with confidence that I've gone from sounding like a very bright one year old, to sounding like a two year old with a probable learning disability. If anybody has a favorite carnicero, or wants to go with me sometime as interpreter/fellow student and searcher after cortes finos, hit me up! You can be part of barbecue experience.
Oh, and my name is Scott Lyman; the datgnat moniker is a remnant from BBS days ("Damn, All The Good Names Are Taken"), and I'm often out walking around town. Pale guy in a tourist hat, sometimes with a backpack. That should narrow it down. If you see me, feel free to say, 'hi!' If it's not me, they may look at you funny.
RE: organic bones - DonJuane - 04-01-2019
I just go for the ones with the least amount of flies or that keep at least part of the stock in some type of refrigerated facility. Also go for the marbling but I have to admit a majority of the time that is gristle. Still you have the best solution - to not ask any questions.
Nothing says I want to be a vegan like heading out toward Jaliisco to beef country and trying to have a picnic in the area where you'll get the idea for an Alfred Hiithcock movie altering the title from "The Birds" to "The Flies". An overnight at the Kikapu Balneario if the wind is wrong will have you vacating the premises due to burning eyes from the meat processing plants nearby. Then there's this: https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/beef-processing-plant-is-worlds-largest/ or if you are a park bench sitter like me you watch the daily bloody carcasses arriving by pickup truck and wheel barrowed into the butcher, that's a sight to remember. Still if you decide to go vegan, you have to realize you are probably eating the excrement from all these animals used to nourish the product that is now making up your meals. And I know that mother nature provides for a lot of magic but just exactly how much of that stuff is absorbed into these plants? I might personally lean toward anhydrous ammonia over the scrapings from a pig lot.
I'll go with what you suggest, it's better not to know.
RE: organic bones - DonJuane - 04-01-2019
Otherwise I recommend learning to make sausage as a hobby, especially in Mexico. I know some people in the US who do it because where in the US it may not be as much of a "mystery meat" as in Mexico, it is mostly flavorless or too full of fat. The butcher in the Hidalgo market called El Torro or simply Torro has some specialty sausage they sell and it's the only kind I personally find edible. Some people rave about the charizo but I have never found any that I would buy a second time around and I always have to bring the alka-seltzer out. In fact, charizo is one of the few things that I often eat to "join in and be part of the local culture" to which I finally had to give up and say to myself, who are you trying to fool. You can try Torro or maybe someone has discovered a secret place that has better beef or sausage. Otherwise you may know it already or not if you are new but grab the Metropolatano bus toward Leon and get off at the Sirloin Stockade and SAMS club stop, walk across to Costco and get the non-organic USDA stuff since you say you and I are alike in that vice.
**** Worth noting that sometimes the sausage named Argentino is fairly good. It's a whiter color and to me is more flavorful and less greasy and it passes my world-wide test for spicy food and that's during the night if there is no heart-burn and your stomach doesn't feel like you swallowed cement, then I always call it a go and worthy of a repeat.