The linchpin for kosher, grass fed beef

To start from the beginning of my quest for locally grown, kosher grass fed beef, click here.

The key to locally raised, kosher grass fed beef is a kosher slaughter. And we don't have a kosher slaughterer (schohet) or slaughterhouse here in the Bay Area.  And until we proven there's demand to sustain such an enterprise, we probably won't. But there is a schohet in Los Angeles who comes to the Bay Area frequently - and with minimal effort, he and I connected. Rabbi Kagan is educating me about kosher slaughter AND grass fed beef.  Turns out, he's a strong advocate for grass fed beef.

He comes to the bay area because his son lives in Walnut Creek with the Walnut Creek Chabad House and his nephew is moving there. Rabbi Kagan is very committed to grass fed beef – for health and ethical reasons. So much so that he has a Los Angeles supply available. 

I have a lot to learn from Rabbi Kagan – but most importantly, he is a large animal schohet (i.e. he doesn’t handle chickens) and he is working with a ranch up here as well.  Hopefully we can partner to bring quality kosher grass fed beef to the community.

Rabbi Kagan did emphasize that you have to cook this beef differently – it’s very lean.  That means marinating, slow cooking and paying attention on the grill or stove top.  This beef is 30% leaner than conventional beef. Adding some healthy fats is sometimes desired.

http://www.holdingranch.com/pages/beef.html

Rabbi Kagan is exploring a line of pre-cooked products – rare roast beef you can cut and serve, for example. That’s an interesting extension – although my first priority is getting kosher local, grass fed beef in the hands of the Peninsula community at a competitive price. Then we'll do the pre-cooked to make it even better.

Rabbi Kagan has a problem - he cannot sell all the meat from his cows because Jewish law prohibits certain cuts - the round roast, for example.  So he asks me do I have "goyim" - non-Jews - who would be interested?  And I'm pretty sure that we have plenty of non-Jews who would be interested in this quality product. 

Holding Ranch and Marin Sun Farms are both educating me on the combinations of cuts that our community would expect to get through this process. And we'll definitely get some kosher slaughtered, non-kosher grass fed meat - for those who want the product and don't care about the kashruth.

Are you interested?  Let me know!

Update on 2010-08-09 18:22 by Joelle - a Practical Parent

New Zealand is reconsidering it's ban on kosher slaughter. Rabbi Kagan and I spoke a bit about kosher and humane slaughter. In his opinion, and mine, a proper kosher slaughter is a very swift death with minimal pain. Dr. Temple Grandin, the leading authority on humane animal handling, also conveys this point of view. 

The issue for many people rightly concerned about humane handling is that a kosher slaughter does not stun the animal.  It does hold the animal comfortably upright in an ASPCA approved holding device. The schochet uses a razor sharp, large knife that severs the neck, jugular and trachea in one fast cut - otherwise it's not kosher. The animal bleeds out within 2-10 seconds.  This method was developed out a respect for life as a gift from G-d.

Stunning is the preferred option for humane slaughter - but consumers should know that the stunning is often done with electricity and may require multiple jolts to render the animal "stunned". You cannot use gas to stun the animal as it permeates the meat. 

I hope New Zealand permanently reverses it's ban and that consumers who value humane slaughter re-consider kosher.

The Quest for Kosher Grass Fed Beef, second in a series

Where to buy Kosher Beef on the Peninsula

Northern California is tough for a kosher Jew. There is one elegant kosher restaurant (Kitchen Table). There are two chains that stock some fresh and frozen kosher meat and poultry (Mollie Stones, Trader Joes). And there are some kosher butchers – in San Francisco and in Oakland – but neither of these are convenient for a working mom on the Peninsula. And NONE supply kosher grass fed beef. In fact, there is no information on how their beef is raised other than it’s healthy and kosher slaughtered.

About a year ago, a ranch in Colorado began marketing Glatt Kosher beef mail-order.  Having tried other mail order in order to get more variety than rib-eye, stew and ground beef (the Mollie Stones with variety is in Palo Alto – and you have to go when the shipment arrives because everyone knows they have the only variety in cuts), I knew the shipping could be egregious.  But Golden West Glatt deep freezers their cuts and ships 3-day ground.  Their products are delicious.  And the shipping is almost reasonable.

Learning about the feeding of my food

Naturally, the first email went to Golden West Glatt.  After getting through the form letter response, their customer service rep and I had a 6 email exchange.

“We are proud of the taste and quality of our product.”

“You should be.  It’s good.  Is it 100% grass fed?”

“The cattle are grass fed until the last 4-6 weeks before harvesting.”

Pause. I didn’t know the impact of 4-6 weeks of non-grass feed. I needed someone who did know.

So I reached out to Professor Cindy Daley of the University of California-Chico. And she responded within an hour – amazing.

The lipid profile of the beef changes within 30 days of changing the feed.  And she shared with me research she is publishing showing the lipid profiles of cattle with different feeds. Since this is not yet published, I won’t post here – but trust me, unless your cattle is being fed grass or rice bran/almond hulls, the beef is effectively ruined from a nutritional (specifically fats) perspective.

Back to Golden West.

“What’s the feed for those last 4-6 weeks?  I’d really like to buy your product.  By the way, here’s the impact of those last 4-6 weeks, by feed, from Professor Daley.”

“Working on it.”

And that’s where we stand with Golden West.  Here’s what Mark’s Daily Apple says about these feeds - http://www.marksdailyapple.com/concentrated-animal-feeding-operations/

Seeing as Golden West isn’t grass fed (yet, but I’m hoping), I needed to widen my search.

Tune in tomorrow for my round up of all the options so far to solve this dilemma.

RIP Marshmallow Test - full entry

The marshmallow test is wrong and I should have known it.  Now, my husband and I need to rethink some of our parenting priorities. The original news about the marshmallow test was that four year olds who were able to resist eating a marshmallow for 15 minutes in order to earn a second marshmallow scored disproportionately better in their SATs many years later. The parenting guidance was to help your child learn to delay gratification and to control their impulses. I wrote about this a few months ago.

There’s nothing wrong with either of those lessons, but they’re not actually what appears to have

happened with the marshmallow test.  First, the sample size of students who were tracked 15 years later was very small and not statistically significant.  According to Po Bronson’s research on the marshmallow test, it was actually only 35 kids who did the classic test—17 boys and 18 girls.  The marshmallow test is apparently a better predictor of children who would later be diagnosed with ADHD, but not of future success.

When I was in college, I took a statistics class with Prof. Ed Rothman (one of my thesis advisors) called The Art of Scientific Investigation.  One might call it “educated skepticism of pop-statistics”.   For example, he asked on the first day of class how many of us had read that 50% of US marriages end in divorce.  Everyone raised their hand. That statistic, like the analysis of the marshmallow test, is both right and wrong depending if you ask the right question.  50% of all marriages in the US apparently do end in divorce BUT people who marry multiple times count multiple times.  The insightful question is what percentage of FIRST marriages end in divorce.  As of the late 1980s, only about 20% of first marriages ended in divorce. I should have known to ask about the sample size of the marshmallow test. Sorry Prof. Rothman.

Regardless of the research, my husband and I believe that delayed gratification and self-control are good skills to learn. But when I heard Po Bronson speak recently about what skill really helps children succeed, it was a blinding insight of the obvious.  Creativity.  Make-believe. Problem solving.  All early forms of executive function. When I look around at my colleagues at work and my friends, it’s easy to recognize the most productive – they’re both creative and communicative.  Now the puzzle is thinking about how to encourage creativity. I know our school is focused on these capabilities as well.

At home, creativity often happens by accident (maybe most of the time).  My 8-year old was playing with Lego and happened to grab my camera.  Later that week, I uploaded images and discovered a filmed Lego battle that he had scripted and recorded while I worked in the room next door.  If I had asked him to make me a Lego movie, he would have been stumped, but leaving the Lego and camera near each other was enough to light a spark.  We celebrated his creativity by publishing the video on YouTube, Facebook and to the grandparents. 

What do you do to encourage and capture creativity?

This post was originally contributed to SVMoms.

Making Peace with Work

We are blessed with choices – and responsibility for the choices.  Just like we teach our children – make a choice and own the consequences.

When my eldest started kindergarten, he asked why I didn’t pick him up after school like the other

Moms.  I felt a pang of guilt – was I denying him and his sibling’s attention that they needed and deserved? Three years later, I’m confident that it was then and is now the right choice for me. In discussions, some women are fervent advocates for their choice being THE choice. Few talk about how working outside the home can benefit your family other than financially.

My choice has always been to work outside the home. I tried working from home with a baby for a month and decided I wasn't being a good mother or a good employee. My itch for accomplishment and recognition and compensation gets scratched at work. I love my children and am proud of them, but their accomplishments and recognition are all their own. It’s definitely a crazy life – captured in a new book by Kristin van Ogtrop called Just Let Me Lie Down: Necessary Terms for the Half-Insane Working Mom.

In a discussion with the author, a group of SV Mom bloggers talked about their feelings about their work decision – full-time outside the home, work from home, stay at home, and other combinations thereof.  Some people described ambivalence, obligation and guilt.  Then a photographer who works full-time from home and on the road said –

“Guilt is self-indulgent”.

She’s right. Guilt is our way of trying to make someone else say “it’s okay that you are not here” when you don’t intend to change your choices.  Guilt says “I’m so sorry we cannot afford that on one salary”.  You can add others.  We all have to own our choices.  I work because I like to work.  I work because my satisfaction at work makes me a better parent (and parenting makes me a better manager).  Some of the benefits I’ve noticed because I work are that my children are comfortable with a variety of caregivers, know how to advocate for themselves, feel responsible (most of the time) for their own homework and want to know how money is earned.  All of these lessons can be taught by parents who do not work outside the home as well AND just as my children know my husband and I love them and care about what is happening in their lives. 

There is no right choice, just the right choice for you. 

This post was originally contributed to SVMoms.