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I’m crying for you, Argentina

Posted on June 20, 2013 by mrfreddy| Leave a comment

I went to Buenos Aires once. It was back around 1980 or 81. I was still in college and was visting my parents who were living in Brazil at that time. Even though I was a useless whiney brat laboring on his 7th year of college, the “rents” were nice enough to take me along on a trip they took to the “Paris of South America.”

Its funny what you remember about a place like that, years later. I remember not liking the place much. Lots of buildings. LOTS of buildings. Most of them not very attractive.

Insane drivers. Par for the course for South America, but my god, these drivers were nutsos. I remember a multi lane highway through the heart of city that was full of cars all cutting and weaving and just barely missing each other over and over again. I remember one harrowing taxi ride where the driver blasted full bore towards a gap that didn’t actually exist yet between two cars ahead of us. They must have seen us coming because that gap suddenly appeared, saving us all from fiery deaths and one-way tickets to hell.

I remember seeing several dozen cars at a stoplight, and every single one of them was trying to run that stoplight. They were sort of playing chicken with the traffic coming at them (you know, the folks who had the green light…). Imagine a bunch of cars all inching into a busy intersection, and one or two of them actually blasting through, scaring the daylights out of those scurilous souls who dared to proceed under that apparently meaningless green light. This happened just about every two or three seconds.

I remember that, for some odd reason, the original Battlestar Gallatica TV show was appearing in movie form in the local theaters.

And I remember eating a lot of steak.

Yeah baby, I did eat a lot of steak. I was too young to really appreciate that it was grass fed steak I was enjoying, but not too young to enjoy it. And I hope to get back there again some day and enjoy it some more.

And now I read this, in the NY times, that steak consumption is going down in Argentina. No, no, noooo.. say it ain’t so!

Acccording to the article, the reasons for this decline are complicated. Some of this trend is blame on the silly notion that it’s not healthy to eat steak. (Head bang on desk!). Lordy. There’s also economic and political reasons.

The article goes on to talk about the spread of vegetarianism. Arrrghhhhh! It’s apparently spreading because so many people have been duped into beliving that meat is actually bad for you (it’s not!) and that eating only vegetarian diet is healtier (it’s not!).

Ai, dios mio.

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This photo must have been taken at 5 in the morning. Traffic on this street NEVER looks this organized.

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Endless buildings.

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You can’t tell from this picture, but these guys are probably all driving about 90, and they all want to die and go to hell. And they want to take you with them. If you get in a cab here, you ARE almost certainly going to die and go to hell. If you insist on taking a cab, you just need to ask yourself, “do I mind if I die and go to hell today? Do I mind if that happens? Do I feel lucky?”

Well, do ya, punk? Do you feel lucky?

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If you are lucky and somehow survive the cab ride and you don’t die and go to hell, here’s your reward! A perfectly charred slice of grass-fed heaven on earth. Yeah baby. Just go easy on the fries.

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Take the Beef and Whiskey MeatWeek MeatPledge!

Posted on April 25, 2013 by mrfreddy| Leave a comment

With 52 weeks in a year, why not make one of those weeks vegetable-free? Join thousands of people-including celebrities, elected officials, foreign people, that nice little old lady down the street, Oprah (not really), that guy in the next cubicle you never talk to, obscure bloggers, your paleolithic ancestors, the Masai tribesmen-and take the Beef and Whiskey 7-day MeatWeek Meat Pledge! And don’t worry about the calendar, you can start your MeatWeek MeatPledge any time you want!

Already a big meat eater? Then pledge to go pure carnivore!

 

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Testimonials! We Got Testimonials!

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See what last year’s participants said about their 7-Day MeatWeek MeatPledge.

“Thank you so much for the support during MeatWeek. Your information has opened my eyes and helped me in the decision to start eating meat again. I feel so much better and I look forward to learning more.”
- Michelle McBeefland

“Through the different events in my area and all of the great information provided, I plan continue a full vegetable free, purely carnivorous diet. Thanks Beef and Whiskey MeatWeek!”
- Amanda Splatz

“Thanks to products like US Wellness Meats and blogs like yours, going carnivore for a whole week was much easier than I expected and I even got my family on board. I’m definitely looking for more opportunities to eat meat and eat more compassionately. I’m so glad I took the challenge!”
- Erica Gorging

“I am a carnivore, but my girlfriend is a really annoying vegan. She just wouldn’t shut up! China Study this, Eat to Live that, blah blah blah! I was actually planning to dump her. Then one day I cooked some bacon, and she caved! After that, we did MeatWeek together and shared a lot of meaty meaty meals. It was fun and brought us closer together again. She said she had no problem giving up vegetables and eating meat for a week, so we’ll probably be doing even more meat eating together. Thanks!”
- Hey Abbot

“Thanks for the encouragement and tips along the way. It sure felt wonderful to eat just meat. I’ll be adding back some things like broccoli and mushrooms, but I’ll definitely continue to try minimize starch and sugar in my diet and my family’s.”
- Madona LeMonde

“I love small animals and insects and, knowing now about the effects of agriculture on their habitats, I refuse to have vegetables on my plate anymore. Thank you for the opportunity to take part in something that I plan to continue all my life.”
- Belinda McFarlane

“This exercise has greatly reduced my dependence on starch and on a misguided monocrop agriculture as the source of my nutrition. Thanks for the experience!”
- Rebecca Fallon

“As I was already a meat eater, I thought MeatWeek was the perfect opportunity to finally make the pledge to go to a purely carnivorous diet!”
- George Vanderlay

“I started eating mosty meat 11 years ago. I still eat plenty of low starch vegetables and some fruit tho. One of the most amazing things, in addition to all the weight I’ve kept off, is that I almost never get sick. During that whole perod, I only came down with a cold two or three times, at most. And they were nothing like the colds people all around me were experiencing, you know, two or three week long affairs. Maybe I’d be down for a day or two, and that was it. Nobody will ever convince me to change my meat eating ways!”
-Mike Gordon

Now, now, there’s no need to make that face!

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Just dig into something like this!

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The Simple Things: Butcher’s Pepper

Posted on April 5, 2013 by mrfreddy| 3 Comments

Sometimes it’s a simple thing that make the difference.

While I was picking up a few ribeyes from my local butcher shop in Hoboken, the chatty beef wench behind the counter asked me:

“Have you ever used butcher’s pepper?”

“Butcher’s what?”

“Pepper.”

“What?”

“PEPPER!”

Sorry, she had a really heavy local accent. I’ve lived here for years but once in a while I still run into someone whose Jersey jabber is too thick for my poor old southern ears to decipher. Maybe I had a hangover that day. Or maybe I’m just dense.

The conversation continued:

“Oh, pepper. Butcher’s pepper. No, no I haven’t heard of it. What is it?”

“It’s just pepper with a coarser grind. Mash it up with some garlic, it makes a great steak rub. Gives you a nice crust when you grill your steaks.”

“That sounds good! Where do I get that?”

“Any butcher shop. Here, I’ll give you some.”

She gave me a nice sized sample from a big plastic jug she had back there behind the counter.

I thought that was really sweet of her, and I used it all up in pretty short order. Luckily I found a new supply at my local supermarket, they sell something labeled “Coarse Pepper.” I’m not sure if its’ the same thing but it’s close enough.

(Sadly that butcher shop folded up recently. They’d been there a long, long time –at least two decades, that I know of. They were real old school. Simple décor. Very simple décor. Maybe that was the problem, it didn’t have much yuppie appeal. Maybe they could have redesigned the place, and maybe sold some designer meats or something…)

Here’s how I put some of that pepper to use. I found a nice thick grass-fed ribeye at whole paycheck foods. Mashed together some salt, garlic, and the pepper and spread it on the steak.

Added some grass-fed butter, bagged it, and cooked it in the Sous Vide Supreme for about 24 hours, at 132 degrees.

Fired up the mini bge (big green egg), undercover of the night! And in the cold too, it was thirty something degrees out that night.

Once the grill was at full blaze, the steak went straight from the sous vide machine to the grill. Two minutes per side.

Here it is, ready to eat!

Here’s what it looked like, a few bites in.

I gotta say, the texture and flavor of this steak was perfect. Not too mushy, and not at all tough or chewey. One of the best steaks I’ve had in a while. I’ve said it before, but a properly cooked grass fed steak beats a conventional grain fed steak any day. In fact, I cooked some “normal” steaks in the same manner a few days after this. They tasted pretty bland compared to this one.

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