Beef-Chub Shepherd's Pie

I first learned to make Shepherd's Pie from my fire-fighter stepfather (he called it "Sheepherder's Pie"), and it wasn't exactly a formal process. I have modified the recipe each time I have made it, which hasn't been often, because, with a family of six, you need a big honkin' vessel in which to cook it, and I didn't really have anything perfectly suitable. That has now changed, as I am now the proud owner of a 5.5-quart enameled Dutch Oven, and the second day I had it, I thought, "There's the solution to my Shepherd's Pie problem." Here is what I did, together with some commentary on things here and there.

First, you will need something about 5.5 or 6 quarts in capacity that will withstand an oven temperature of 325 degrees. You will want to preheat the oven before starting to brown the beef.

Now, takest thou thy 3-pound beef chub--I generally have some frozen beef chubs from ALDI on hand. They are labeled 73 percent lean, 27 percent fat, and they have been consistently good, and at a good price--and let it thaw. The smart way to do this is to put it in the fridge the night before, but you can do it quicker by putting it in the sink and letting a thin stream of cool water run over it for a while. Then brown it. I did it over medium heat--and use a colander to drain off the fat. It is not that I am afraid of dietary fat, not at all, but I object to having so much of it in a finished dish that the rest of the food is swimming in it. You will want to add 1 teaspoon of kosher salt and 1 teaspoon of liquid smoke per pound--that is, three teaspoons each, total.

About liquid smoke. You may be wondering just what the heck liquid smoke is. Well, it's not something cooked up in a lab. It's very simple. Have you ever seen people smoking a hookah, or a water pipe? Experienced pipe smokers--I used to be one--know that the purpose of the water is to cool off the smoke, and the pipe does indeed deliver very cool smoke to the smoker. However, much of the flavor is lost, trapped in the water as the smoke bubbles through it. Liquid smoke is made much the same way: hickory smoke is bubbled through water, which traps much of the flavor, and the water is then reduced to a concentration suitable for home cooking. It is real smoke flavor, in teaspoon form. I use Wright's: the only flavor, as far as I know, is hickory, but there is nothing else in it, no artificial colors or anything like that. Other brands I have
looked at have other stuff in them.

Now, as the meat is browning, you will also want to have about three pounds or so of sliced potatoes boiling. The experts tell me that russet potatoes are best for mashing, but my family, for whatever reason, has a definite preference for the flavor of red potatoes, so that's what I use, skins and all. When the potatoes are done cooking, throw in a stick of butter and whip 'em up with your mixer. No hay problemo.

Once the meat's brown, drain the fat, like I said, and toss in--well, I don't actually have a hard-and-fast rule. When my stepfather first taught me how to make this, he always threw in "vegetable beef" soup, but mi esposa has a hard time with the peas that come in that, so over the years, I have tried different things. This time, I threw in about 3/4 pound of string beans, a can of creamed corn, and three 10 3/4 oz cans of Campbell's "Golden Mushroom" soup. I am sure that you could use beef stock, reconstituted dried mushrooms, perhaps a dash of soy sauce or worcestershire, or red wine, perhaps some sauteed onions or bell peppers--whatever floats your boat.

Then spread the mashed potatoes out over the top of the beef mixture, and throw--in this case--a 3/4-pound bag of shredded cheddar on top, the sharper, the better. Then put the lid on your dutch oven (It will be almost full by this time) and put it in your pre-heated oven for 25 minutes.

Dinner is served. We polished off almost the whole thing in one sitting.

More About Interpreting Food Labels

Okay, as another object lesson, here's the ingredients for another drink, one very popular, at least 'round here, where--amazingly, to my mind--moms often buy it for their kids under the mistaken impression that it's like buying their kids "juice." Remember, by law, ingredients are listed in descending order. Whatever is listed first is what there is the most of, okay?

Water

Corn syrup

2% or less of each of the following: concentrated juices (orange, tangerine, apple, lime, grapefruit)

citric acid

malic acid

ascorbic acid (vitamin C)

thiamin hydrochloride (vitamine B1)

Natural flavors

modified cornstarch

canola oil

sodium citrate

cellulose gum

sucralose

sodium hexametaphosphate

potassium sorbate to protect flavor

yellow #5

Yellow #6

Mmmm, mmmm, MMMMMMM!!!!!! Doesn't that sound yummy? Well, maybe to the uninitiated. Let's talk. First of all, let's see if we can't put everything--the amount of everything--in perspective. Look at that third line. Isn't that telling you that except for water and corn syrup--to which we'll get back in a minute--none of the ingredients make up more than two percent of the drink? Sure looks that way to me. So, being very generous, let's assume that there's two percent of everything, which would be ludicrous, nobody's going to make a drink that's 2 percent vitamin B1, right?

Still...there are fifteen ingredients after water and corn syrup, so that's a maximum of thirty percent, meaning that, at minimum, this tasty beverage is seventy percent water and corn syrup. The reality is that hardly any of those fifteen ingredients is likely to amount to even one percent of the total volume of liquid, so it's really much more likely that this stuff is 85 or ninety percent water and corn syrup, and that's being generous. It might be 95 percent or even more.

Now, that's bad, right off the bat. The water's not bad, of course, but corn syrup...

Corn syrup deserves a special circle in culinary Hell. It is a sweetener, obviously made from corn, and it is cheap, partly because the growing of corn is federally subsidized. It is a nutritional nightmare. If you deliberately wanted to make yourself fatter than--well, fat--and wreak havoc with your insulin mechanism, this is one of the means by which you would choose to do it. It is vicious, nasty stuff, not something you want to put in your body if you can reasonably avoid it.

So, right off the bat, just after the first two ingredients, you can tell you're basically drinking sugar water. Yummy.

Concentrated fruit juices? Okay. That might not be so bad. You just have no clue how much you're getting here. Remember, it's two percent or less. Could be next to nothing.

Citric acid and malic acid? Added to give the drink that citrus-y tartness.

Vitamin C? Very cheap to make. Putting it in the drink allows them to put "Vitamin C!" on the label, which makes the ignorant feel like they're buying their kids something healthy. Same thing with the B1.

Natural flavors? What the heck is that?

Cornstarch. Anyone who's done a reasonable amount of cooking knows what the cornstarch is there for. It's a thickener, so that this concoction pours out of the bottle more like juice and less like water. It's also starch, that is, it'll fatten you.

Canola oil? There are some scare stories circulating about canola oil. As far as I'm concerned, it's just oil, probably added here to improve texture.

Sodium citrate? More tartness.

Cellulose gum? Added to improve texture. Remember, they want this stuff to look like juice.

Sucralose? Basically chlorinated table sugar. It's an artificial sweetener. Like having a bucketload of corn syrup in it didn't make it sweet enough already.

Sodium hexametaphosphate: in all honesty, I have no idea why this is in here. It has a variety of uses, one of which is apparently as a water softener!

Potassium sorbate: a preservative.

Yellow #5 and Yellow #6: artificial colors, fairly obviously added to make this sugar water look more "orange-y."

And there you have it. The bulk of the story is told in the first three lines. It's basically sugar water with a few cheaply-made vitamins and flavorings and some gunk to make it pour more like juice. Practically guaranteed to make you and your kids fatter than you ever wanted to think about, at least if you drink it on a regular basis. Drink this stuff regularly, and you can pretty much bet on fighting obesity, and maybe someday, heart disease and diabetes, too!

The pitiful part is that you can buy this stuff for about 2.75/gallon, and you can get Wal-Mart reconstituted orange juice for about 3.25/gallon. You'd put up with crap like this to save fifty cents?

Let's Learn How to Interpret a Dang Ingredients Label, Shall We?

Of course we shall. I have repeatedly been struck by the number of people that think they're eating or drinking something good for them, but are actually consuming utter garbage, and I am convinced that often it's because they either have not looked at the label or have no idea what it means. So let's take a look, at, say, the label for a certain popular, allegedly healthy drink, which shall remain nameless except that I've got a family member that thinks it's the bomb. I have to admit that I don't have a bottle of the stuff in front of me, but I did read the ingredients label last time we had some in the house, so I swiped the following from a website elsewhere once I recognized it. I'd link, but that would involve identifying the drink, and I'm more interested in learnin' ya somethin'.

Filtered water
Concentrated Fruit juices (pineapple and mango)
Malic Acid
Concentrated Purple Carrot Juice (Color)
Natural Flavor
Acesulfame-Potassium
Sucralose

There is also a separate part of the label that shows "medicinal ingredients":

41mcg Chromium Polynicotinate
137mg Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)
450mg Garcinia Cambogia Rind Extract

Okay, the first thing you need to know is that by federal law, an ingredients label lists ingredients in descending order, that is, whatever's listed first is what it has the most of, and so forth.

What's listed first on this "healthy" drink?

Oh, that would be "water." More water than anything else.

Then "concentrated fruit juices." How much? You don't know, do you? But I would suggest to you that anything that pours out of the bottle with the consistency of water, as this drink and so many like it do, doesn't actually have a boatload of fruit juice in it. I mean, you've seen fruit juice pour out of a bottle, haven't you? Looks a little bit thicker than water, doesn't it? This stuff ain't like that. It's very thin. Probably not much fruit juice in there.

Then there's "Malic Acid." It does occur naturally, but bank on it, when it's added to food, it's being done so that it has a tartness to it. How do I know? Simple. Googled it.

Then there's a little bit of color. How much does it take to color a bottle of what is almost certainly mostly water? Probably not much.

Then there's "natural flavor." What the heck does that mean? No one knows!

Then there's Acesulfame-Potassium. You thought it was some sort of vitamin or mineral additive, didn't you? 'Cause it said "potassium?" Got ya. This is a sweetener. It is abundantly sweeter than regular sugar, but apparently there hasn't been all that much testing done on it. Again, how do I know? Googled it.

Then there's sucralose. What the heck is that? Mmmmm--basically chlorinated table sugar.

Okay, so far, we've figured out that this stuff is basically heavily diluted fruit juice with some "natural flavor" and artifiical sweeteners. Remember, they're marketing this stuff as somehow being healthy. What makes it healthy? The diluted fruit juice? The coloring? The tartness? The "natural flavor?" The artificial sweeteners?

Probably not. Maybe it's the "medicinal ingredients?"

What the heck is the chromium polynicotinate doing in there? Well, apparently chromium is supposed to play a role in carbohydrate and fat metabolism, and some people think it might help you lose weight. The science is inconclusive, to say the least, and if you're trying to lose weight, I'd suggest that you focus heavily on what this guy has to say instead of trying to do it by adding more chromium to your diet than your body is likely to be able to use.

Now: vitamin c, or ascorbic acid. 137 mg of the stuff. Well, vitamin c is good, isn't it? True dat. It's also cheap, which makes it popular with people trying to make their products sound healthy. 137 mg is also about what you would get eating two cups of cantaloupe. Now, let me ask you: do you really think that God designed your body to need the amount of vitamin C you get in two cups of cantaloupe every time you drink a bottled beverage? Probably not? I would certainly suggest not. And since what vitamin C your body doesn't absorb exits your body pretty quickly, this is, frankly, pretty much a waste of space. The only reason it's there is to sucker you into thinking you're drinking a vitamin pill.

Okay, what the heck is the last thing, garcinia cambogia rind extract? An alleged appetite suppressant, that's what it is. Saying that appetite suppressants are probably not the best way to lose weight is understating the matter considerably.

And you're paying a buck and a half per bottle for this stuff at the convenience store? In the name of health?

Cheez louise. Develop some curiousity and learn how to read a label. Consider this an introductory lesson.

Sadly, I Suspect This is True

Mark Hyman says:

We complain of not having enough time to cook, but Americans spend more time watching cooking on the Food Network, than actually preparing their own meals. In his series Food Revolution, Jamie Oliver showed us how we have raised a generation of Americans who can’t recognize a single vegetable or fruit, and don’t know how to cook

I hate to say it, but that really is how it's beginning to look to me.

Hat tip: Carla.

But the Assertion is Utter Crap..

I'm not linking here, as I don't wish to hold the individual up to what may be perceived as ridicule, but I just ran across--at the time of writing, that is, by the time you see it, this post will have been in the pipeline for several days--a perfect example of how people can have the weirdest mixed bag of ideas, how they can be so smart on some subjects and so easily mislead on others.

It was one of the food bloggers, talking about why food prices are rising. Now, although I may be mistaken, I would say, overall, that this writer has what I might easily term a conservative temperament. I think she's a Christian, though that isn't the focus of her blogging. Certainly, as regards food and eating and agriculture, she's inclined to seek out and preserve the Old Ways. That may be partly why she seems to have accepted the idea that oil--petroleum--is scarce and getting scarcer in this world, and that hence, agriculture that relies on fossil fuels is partly to blame for food prices. That is an assertion that I typically associate with leftist environmentalists, but there it is in a person whose overall temperament seems quite conservative.

Now, I neither doubt nor disparage for an instant the idea that backyard gardening and local agriculture are great ideas and a tremendous help to a healthy, ecologically-sound table. So, in practical terms, I suppose that the following caveat would make no difference to either of us in terms of what we actually do. It's more a difference in why.

The reality is that Paul Erlich thought we would be out of oil by now, but the proven resources of oil have grown, not shrunk. There is enough oil available within the United States to power the country for a very long time. It is true that some of it is harder to get to than we would like, but it is by no means undoable, or even unaffordable, not in a world where oil prices routinely top eighty dollars a barrel. There is no reason to blame rising food prices on a scarcity of oil per se, but plenty of reason to blame a scarcity of available oil--and hence, rising food prices--on unreasonable energy and environmental policies. It may seem a subtle distinction, but it is important.

I probably sound like I'm rambling, and if so, I apologize. I don't offer up this example to kvetch, but to illustrate how difficult it is to pigeonhole people's thinking. Yes, it is true that it is possible to paint in broad strokes, to talk about liberals and conservatives in general, but when it comes to individuals, you have to be more careful. Most people simply aren't that easy to categorize.

You Had Me at "Bacon Wrapped"

Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf. Okay, this, I gotta try. Via Susan at Food Blogga.

Farmageddon?

You need to watch this. If you have any interest in genuine capitalism, genuine free-market economics, real food, liberty, and so forth, you need to watch this trailer.

Farmageddon Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Via Cheeseslave

What? You Haven't Seen Food, Inc?

That's what I wanted to ask the folks over at the-blog-that-shall-not-be-named when they excoriated Senator Coburn for holding up an alleged "food safety" bill. If they'd take the trouble to watch Food, Inc, they might learn a couple of things, like that some of our biggest food safety problems are exacerbated by government involvement (quick example: we have a few too many scares with e coli, right? E Coli grows well in the digestive systems of cows that are
fed corn. We, of course, finish off, or fatten up, our cows on corn. Not that corn's their natural diet or anything [That would be grass, for you non-rural folk]. We fatten them up on corn in large part because corn is cheap. Corn is cheap because the government subsidizes it. The government subsidizes it because of lobbying from certain giant corporations...) and that large corporations have a nasty habit of squeezing out competition by means of government muscle (Just google "monsanto + soybeans." Just google it. That's all I'm sayin'.)

I didn't have time to go into detail, though, and just left them to wallow in what they incorrectly perceived to be the moral high ground. However, what Stanislav, a Russian blogger, posted today reminded me of the whole thing. I haven't looked in detail at the bill, and don't know whether Stanislav is correct in the details, but...well, go ahead and read this:

In America, the House has already passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act S.510 bill and only the Senate is left to pass their version and commingle them into a unified monstrosity. The bill is designed to destroy the small farmer in America, the very caste of people who is the most likely opposition to the control of the moneyed elites.

Though the American small farmer is a dieing breed, with hundreds of thousands of families throwing in the towel over the past decade, he is not dieing out fast enough.

[snip]

The paperwork restrictions on farmers, the amount of effort to put in perfectly filled out copies or to face $500,000 fines on the first infraction, will guarantee that only the large agro giants are left standing in rather short order. On top of this the FDA will have full authority to dictate each and every detail of how food should be grown and under what conditions to the American farmer.

This is one of the ways it's done, folks, that is, this is one of the ways large corporations get rid of the small fry. For more details on this sort of thing, you can read Crunchy Cons; Mr. Dreher has a fairly lengthy discussion of this stuff.

Used to be, people in this country had enough sense to laugh when someone said that the most frightening sentence in the English language was, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."

---

You haven't seen Food, Inc, have you? You went out and spent your movie money on something with explosions, or to see Bella snog that dimwit vampire, didn't you?

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Okinawan Soba and the Newest Addition to the Blogroll

I was googling for recipes for Okinawan soba--a kind of noodle soup that is apparently much-beloved by certain members of the RyuTe Renmei--and found a very detailed post by one "Sharon," of Westchester, New York. It is excellent, and if anyone is even remotely interested in finding out about the subject, I recommend it highly.

Sharon's blog, The Good Life, is also the first food-related blog to make my blogroll. It's very well done overall, and you can find the link in the "Hard to Categorize" section of the blogroll.

Government, Food, and Libel

Mrs. MOTW brought home Food, Inc from the library. Now, actually, I've wanted to see that film for some little time. I am not unaware of how the food business has changed over the decades. Dreher talked about it quite a bit in Crunchy Cons (highly recommended reading, see my review here).

Mostly, I didn't see too much different from what I expected to see, having read about many of these issues before. I will say that I was mildly aggravated by the persistent tone that so many of the people in the film had, an undercurrent of "these companies will do anything, including make you sick, for a profit." I, of course, am:

A) Goin' "DUH! Read Genesis, people are fallen!" Real conservatives are never surprised at crappy human behavior, including their own.

B) Wondering how the fact that it is government interference in the marketplace that makes this stuff possible could have had so little impact on so many of the people being interviewed. People being interviewed for the film repeatedly noted that the food market is skewed because of government subsidies--government subsidies which have been lobbied for by people in the fast-food business, agribusiness, and so forth. It was government distortion of the marketplace, albeit brought on by powerful, moneyed interests, that caused the problem, but everybody seemed to be concerned with how they could get government to fix the problem.

Get the government the heck out of the way, anyone? As the film's director was quoted as saying in the Wikipedia article, emphasis mine:

...the whole system is made possible by government subsidies to a few huge crops like corn. It's a form of socialism that's making us sick.

Now, just how you gonna get government out of the way? An educated population, that's how.

Pity we ain't got one o' those.

But that's not what I started out to write about. The film made a few references to "veggie libel laws." Having never heard of such a thing, I went and googled it. I will be monkey's fershlugginer uncle, there is such a thing. 13 states (including Oklahoma), apparently, have special laws that make it much easier to sue people who make disparaging comments about an agricultural product. Apparently, if you've got a negative opinion about certain foods, unless you have the Oprah's deep pockets, you had better keep it to yourself.

Amazing.

Go watch the film. Your time won't be wasted.

What Really Makes Us Fat?

'Tis as I suspected: there will be people reading this blog who feel the need to make a few, ah, shall we say, "lifestyle changes." I will publish more and more stuff dealing with certain of these over the next several months. Not that I pretend to be an expert, God knows, but I have a few peculiar advantages over some folks due to the hideous mistakes and boneheaded errors I've made over the years sheer grace of God that has been exhibited in my life.

For starters, for those who are interested, read this. You will not regret spending the time, I promise.

From Scott Gold's The Shameless Carnivore

This is from the prologue. Emphasis is mine:

I love meat. I always have. You could plunk me down on the therapy couch and have the shrewdest analyst drill into my memories like a deranged Texas oilman, and I doubt he'd uncover a single time in my life when I haven't delighted at the thought of a perfectly grilled filet, a slab of ribs, or even just a good old-fashioned hot dog. For years, I've harbored this passion like some sort of dirty secret. It didn't keep me from enjoying the occasional half-pound hamburger or barbeque brisket platter, but these days, if you're looking to make a good impression, you'd be safer ordering a salad than a fourteen-ounce T-bone. Sadly, I can count on one hand my friends who regularly patronize a butcher shop. (Can you name the butcher shop nearest your home?) And no, the meat section at your local McGroceryStore doesn't count. I'm talking about an honest-to-God butcher shop, the kind of place that proudly displays slaughtered animal carcasses in the front window, where you can ask for hearts and blood and entrails and they'll answer you, straight-faced, with "What kind and how much?"

I don't get it: where at one point in American history a vegetarian would have been branded as a godless communist and advised to return forthwith to the CCCP, abstaining from the consumption of animal flesh these days is largely viewed as an enlightened life decision, even though it's not what most of us do. And to make things worse, we have to deal with the admonishments of anemic, skeletal celebrities who try to pass off the notion that it's perfectly okay to subsist on a diet of cigarettes, croutons, and energy drinks while pumping botulism toxin into their faces, so long as we don't eat the defenseless animals. I'm loath to criticize anyone for limiting their diet because of sincere religious convictions--I'm Jewish, after all, though my love for pork products, cheeseburgers, and shellfish will forever trump my fidelity to the laws of kashrut--but it must be said:

The defenseless animals taste really, really good.

Amen, and Amen...