whole foods and grass-fed beef

the whisnant's of rain crow ranch, an all grass-fed and pasture raised cattle farm.

i think a lot of us enjoy retaining information. it's why the history channel and the travel channel and animal planet and every other odd and random niche of a network are on our tv listings, right? and now, we have social media. we have things called news feeds on facebook and streams on twitter. every minute of every day these feeds are updated with pictures and links and snippets of stories being told by someone, somewhere that we're not at that exact moment. while there are definite downfalls to this, there's also a tremendous upside. i'm retaining more random news and info than i ever have before!

which is why i was so excited to find a whole foods post in my news feed announcing a nation wide sale on grass-fed ground beef at every single one of their stores this coming friday, september 3. grass-fed ground beef. $3.99 per pound. just in time for labor day. are you kidding me?

cheeseburger time via whole foods.

but i was also skeptical. how in the world can whole foods pulls this off? how can the farmers afford it? and whose beef is this? who are those farmers? well, luckily, whole foods wasn't shy to share just exactly where the beef would be coming from for every single store in their repertoire. so i now know that the beef i'm buying this friday is coming from a 10,000 black angus cattle farm in missouri called rain crow ranch. it's a family farm run by a husband and wife (she has a doctorate and her husband studied in both agriculture and marketing) and their six kids. that's the kind of story i want to hear—and the kind of producer i want to buy from. read the list of farmers to find out where whole foods will be getting your beef from.

people have issues with whole foods ranging from things like cost to political opinions to issues with a lack of local product in their stores, i understand this. but if you're going to cook out this weekend, and you're buying ground beef anyway, then why in the world would you not take whole foods up on this?

and why grass-fed beef? hear it from the doctor (and mom) of the whisnant family:

"grassfed products have enormous health benefits. higher in omega-3 fatty acids, higher in cla, higher in vitamin e, higher in beta-carotene, lower in calories grass fed beef is one of the healthiest protein sources on the planet. though these health benefits can be measured by science they alone do not represent the true product. grass fed is as much a process as it is a product. it is a sustainable management philosophy that benefits not only the product but also the animal, the producer and the environment. grass fed beef as a product is the tip of an underlying mountain of strength and integrity rooted in family farms that put their hearts and hands into what they produce. each farm has its own unique story and history; i would like to share part of ours with you."

for more on rain crow ranch, and to really understand what goes into an operation like this—why it's important for the cattle to be fed on grass and raised in fully sustainable and organic pastures—i implore you to watch this video. this is the kind of food education we all should've gotten when in school, as kids. the kind of education our own kids are still not getting. and it's right here at your fingertips! and there's no processing or butchering at all, it's clean!

you learn a thing or two, from time to time

an elephant in the room via law h8r's photostream.

there's an elephant in the room. it's in the corner when i sleep and sitting next to me on the train when i head to the city. i see it drinking a beer at the bar and it joins us at dinner in our dining room when we eat at home. i even see it now from my desk. it's across the street, trying to climb the tree where the squirrels are. but it can't. it's too fat.

and no one else can see this elephant but me. or so i've come to realize.

losing my grandmother this summer, and watching my family suffer with that loss, has had a tremendous impact on me. which is to be expected, right? but the thing of it is, i'm ashamed of what's become of this. i've stopped eating well. i haven't been to the gym in months. we rarely cook dinner at home. our fridge is bare—and when we do go to the market, the stuff sits and rots before we ever think to eat it. to be totally candid, our produce drawers are full of mustard greens, arugula, and escolar that i bought the week we moved in to our new place. that was a month ago. and yet, when i do open the fridge, and the smell of something stale so blatantly hits my nose, i ignore it. i leave the spoiled foods where they've been untouched for weeks now in those drawers. and i'm not sure why.

fair haven, ny. where my grandmother left us and we
discovered the magic and simplicity of family and summer.

there was a point this summer when i wanted to just walk away from the business i'd started, feeling the pressure of running a one-man operation, that it was just too stupid of an idea to ever start to begin with. i'd imagine most people would come to that point when facing the loss of a family member, the excitement of an engagement, and the weight and pressure of the wedding planning that follows. which is why i didn't walk away from my business and instead am restructuring the way my business operates. if working alone is too tough, then hire somebody, right? if wedding planning is overwhelming, then take a step back and think about why you're even getting married to begin with—i keep on thinking over and over about the moment i bent on my knee. her face was beet red and she was laughing and crying and while i lost the ability to speak, i was so damn nervous, she kept asking what are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing. over and over. and it just might be the happiest moment of my life. so planning a wedding? it's about remembering that moment, isn't it?

but the problem i'm having is that through all of this, the elephant is still there. i weigh more than fifteen pounds than i did before alicia and i left for california in june, when we got engaged. i'm at my highest weight of my life. i look awful. i've looked awful for a while now. and yet, i haven't found the courage to do anything about it. it's not that i'm sitting in a room with the lights off every night drowning in my sorrows—i've been there before. i know that feeling. this is different. most days, i'm numb to my emotions. after my grandmother's second service, which was in california, my grandfather's health started to deteriorate, too. he hasn't been able to eat much, and like her, he's been fighting cancer, too. but when she was alive, they had each other. how does one keep fighting after a loss like that? cancer doesn't let up. if you let your guard down just for a moment, it sneaks right in and doesn't relent. unfortunately, that's what he is now facing. so when i'm hungry or tired or overworked? when i'm vulnerable to my emotions and lose that numbness i carry with me every day? that's when i stop caring about what i'm eating or where it's from or how it was cooked. that's when i just eat. that's when things feel good.

and that's the total opposite of everything i've ever written about in this blog.

so there's this elephant, and i'm just not sure what to do about it. the answer is obvious. i know how to shake it. but that produce drawer is still stinking up our fridge, and i'm still sitting here ignoring it. maybe now that i've called the elephant out i'll step into the ring and take the thing on. but if it's that easy, then why'd it take me so long? why didn't i kick the elephant's butt before this?

though really, when it comes down to it, i'm getting married next summer. whether i like it or not, that elephant will grow wings before my bride to be allows any ol' elephant to sleep in our room at night. and that's maybe the sign of courage i need. like my grandparents were for each other, i've met that someone who won't let me back down.

hello, again

this was our backyard for one night. deetjen's, big sur.

it's been a while. a long while. since i last wrote, i proposed to my girlfriend; bunked for a night under a redwood along a creek in a cabin on a big sur canyon; lost my grandmother to cancer; failed to add any new clients to the business; stephanie opened her restaurant; started reading the town that food saved—a remarkable story of agriculture and community set in a vermont town called hardwick; finished reading anthony bourdain's newish book; moved; my parents moved, too; and so did my brother mikey; got deathly ill off oysters in san francisco—in the middle of the night, when i was going to propose the next day; the hearty boys received a flawless review in the tribune—and are now packed nightly; my brother tommy graduated from the 8th grade; found what might very well be the venue for the wedding; went to a wedding in north carolina; and michigan; but failed to eat my first chick-fil-a; but not my first epic burger; and, oysters and sickness and all, somehow the girlfriend said yes.

and yesterday morning i found myself sitting next to a husband and wife farmer, discussing a future project that's very much raw and in the early stages of development—but just might have the right combination of timing, public and political interest, influence, and just a desperate, desperate need by a small minority (family farmers) that'll evolve into something really, really big. something i've been waiting and waiting to not only see, but have a hand in.

but it was sitting next to the farmers, hearing first hand what it's like to be small farmers in a country whose government is making money hand-over-fist with its interests in big food commodities, when i noticed the dirt and filth caked to the nails of the farmer sitting next to me, that i realized how far i'd come in my journey from little woodland hills, california.

this farmer wore the dirt on his hands as though he'd been born that way. that my small, unblemished, dainty little fingers separated my hands from his like his bald head was different from my flowing head of hair. like blue eyes are different from green. the farmer wore his filthy and weathered hands like he had no choice. something like genetics.

i was sitting next to, and having a responsible and mature conversation with, real life farmers. to me—i could've been sitting next to magic johnson or vin scully—big deal, man.

and when i woke up this morning, i couldn't stop thinking about finding a way to re-immerse myself yet again within the issues i'd been writing and researching about late last year. family farmers are struggling. corporate farms are thriving. and in all this time that i've started my business, thousands of people across the country have continued to write and work and better the state of our food systems. well, i'm looking forward to rejoining the cause.

that, and run a business. and plan a wedding.