The ultimate put-down of the anti-meat scammers

 

Watts Up With That? links to this tweet.  Click the image below for a larger view on X.com.

That's a beautifully simple explanation - and every word of it is true.  You'll never hear vegetarian and vegan activists admit to that, though.  If they did, they'd expose their scam operation for what it is.  They rely on scaring people into taking them seriously - and this tweet demonstrates that they're anything but serious.  Their loud screams about the permanent climate damage caused by eating meat and breeding cows are nothing more than "sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Pass it on.  The more people who understand this, the better.

Peter

A vaccine in a beer?

 

Apparently that's more than just a theoretical idea.

Chris Buck stands barefoot in his kitchen holding a glass bottle of unfiltered Lithuanian farmhouse ale. He swirls the bottle gently to stir up a fingerbreadth blanket of yeast and pours the turbulent beer into a glass mug.

Buck raises the mug and sips. “Cloudy beer. Delightful!”

He has just consumed what may be the world’s first vaccine delivered in a beer. It could be the first small sip toward making vaccines more palatable and accessible to people around the world. Or it could fuel concerns about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Or the idea may go nowhere. No matter the outcome, the story of Buck’s unconventional approach illustrates the legal, ethical, moral, scientific and social challenges involved in developing potentially lifesaving vaccines.

There's much more at the link - too much to summarize here.  I highly recommend clicking over there and reading the article for yourself.

This is both exciting and worrying.  It's exciting, in that it may offer a way to distribute important vaccines in a timely and palatable way without needing medical facilities or personnel to do so.  On the other hand, it's worrying in that a vaccine that's more politically correct than medically necessary (for example, the infamous COVID MRNA vaccines) could be foisted upon us without any warning or opportunity to avoid ingesting it.  The consequences might be disastrous, but we wouldn't know about that until it was too late to avoid them.

This isn't the first attempt to devise ways to distribute vaccines through our food supply.  Remember the vaccine-loaded salads issue a few years ago?  That posed exactly the same conundrum.  One wonders what's next - and whether or not we'll be told about it before it's used, so that we can make our own choices about what we want in our bodies.  If the bureaucrats have their way, I daresay we won't.

Peter

Need meat for long-term storage? Here's a very useful option

 

A few readers have contacted me asking what sort of meat they should buy for long-term storage and emergency use.  All the usual answers are well-known, particularly a freezer filled with the meat you normally eat:  but in a long-term emergency situation, you may not have power to run your freezer.  That's where dried and/or canned meat comes in.  (Jerky is basically dried meat, of course, although often over-seasoned.)  I also keep a stock of pemmican, as I wrote a few weeks ago.  What else do I recommend?

Some time ago, author and friend Mike Williamson introduced me to Grabill Country Meats in Indiana.  They're an Amish-run company, producing cans of beef, port, turkey and chicken preserved the Amish way, boiled in the can with water and nothing else at all.  The meat tastes delicious and lasts a very long time, so much so that they don't put a "best by" date on the can.  Last Monday I opened a can of pork chunks that I bought from them twelve years ago, and it looked, smelled and tasted just as good as one bought last year.  Delicious!

They sell 13oz. and 27oz. cans in boxes of twelve only.  I make sure we always have some in our long-term storage, simply because I've never found better-tasting, easier-to-use canned meat.  Their cans may seem expensive, but if you work it out on a cost-per-pound basis (particularly considering the quality of their meat), it's not bad.  The larger cans work out considerably cheaper per pound than the smaller ones, of course.  Shipping costs are a bear, but anything heavy has that problem.

So, if you want to keep a few (or more than a few) cans of "emergency meat" around to feed yourself and your family, Grabill Country Meats has my strong recommendation.  Being canned chunks, it can't be roasted or fried, but it makes great stews and soups.  In emergency, it can be eaten cold out of the can with a spoon.  Good stuff.

Peter

A pretty serious food recall

 

We've all read innumerable recalls of various products for different reasons.  Some are just ho-hum, same old, same old, and all that.  However, a recall of shredded cheese sold in 31 states is potentially much more dangerous:  so much so that I thought it deserved mentioning it here.

Shredded cheese sold at major retailers, including Target, Walmart, and Aldi, has been recalled in 31 states and Puerto Rico, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The cheese, produced by Great Lakes Cheese Co. Inc., was initially recalled on Oct. 3 for containing metal fragments, which pose the risk of internal injury if consumed. On Dec. 2, the FDA updated the risk level to Class II, the second-highest, meaning the chances of serious health consequences are "remote," but there is a possibility of temporary or reversible effects.

There's a full list of affected products and brands at the link.  I highly recommend checking your groceries against that list, and getting rid of any that match.  Ingesting metal fragments is anything but funny - particularly if your kids are affected!

Peter

OK, I have to try making this!

 

I've never thought of "Thanksgiving" and "pizza" in the same breath . . . but after reading this news report, that's changed.

Pino’s Pizza of Deer Park has something savory to be thankful for this Turkey Day — their viral Thanksgiving pizza pie, which is served with sliced roasted turkey breast, gravy, sausage and apple cornbread stuffing and topped off with cranberry sauce.

Barbieri has since expanded his Thanksgiving-themed offerings to include calzones, stromboli and empanadas — all stuffed with the same ingredients.

There's more at the link.

Here's a video report on the gastronomic monstrosity.

I'm hungry just looking at that thing!  It seems Americans will put anything on a pizza . . . and in this case, it looks like a winner.

What strange or alternative pizzas have you made and/or eaten, dear readers?  Surprise us with your stories and recipes in Comments.

Peter

An unforeseen danger in a sleep supplement

 

I've used a melatonin supplement as a sleep aid for over a year.  I take one tablet at night before going to bed, and have found it helps me sleep more regularly, with less waking up in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, I may have to stop that.  A new report says melatonin can be a two-edged sword.

New research has linked long-term melatonin use with a significantly increased risk of heart failure, hospitalization and death.

An observational study from the American Heart Association (AHA) examined five years of health records of 130,828 adults with insomnia, half of whom used melatonin for at least one year. The other half did not take the supplement.

People who were prescribed other sleep medications or already had confirmed heart failure were excluded from the analysis.

The researchers found that long-term melatonin use in those with chronic insomnia was linked to a 90% increased chance of incident heart failure compared to non-users.

Additionally, participants who filled at least two melatonin prescriptions at least 90 days apart had an 82% higher risk of developing heart failure compared with those who did not use melatonin, according to the observational study.

A secondary analysis revealed that participants who took melatonin were nearly 3.5 times as likely to be hospitalized for heart failure and twice as likely to die.

There's more at the link.

What I found particularly depressing was that this study deliberately excluded people who "already had confirmed heart failure".  That would include me, after two heart attacks.  If melatonin increased cardiac risks to the extent reported in people with healthy hearts, what about folks like me with unhealthy ones?

I know a number of people who use melatonin as I do - some of them recommended it to me.  It does work as a sleep aid, in my experience.  However, no matter how effective it may be in the latter capacity, if it's going to add to the stress on my heart, I'm going to have to stop using it.

Have any readers had experiences that might bear out this report?  If so, please tell us about them in Comments.

Peter

Talk about entitlement!

 

Courtesy of Midwest Chick, here's a social media post highlighting just how entitled to free handouts many people think they are in this benighted country.

There's a brief video clip at the link, showing his feelings - no, his absolute conviction - of entitlement.  I urge you to click over there and watch it for yourself.

EBT funds - i.e. the so-called "food stamp" program - are due to run out in November, thanks to the current government shutdown preventing Congress from reauthorizing that expenditure.  There are millions of Americans who are angry, upset, even panic-stricken at the thought of losing them.

My first reaction is that the bloated mess that such food assistance has become is long overdue to be cut back to essentials only - no sodas, no pizza, no lobster tails, no chips-and-dip, just basic supplies of regular, nutritious food that will provide an adequate daily diet for a typical family.  If that gores the ox of the suppliers of soda and sweets, so be it.  Why should my taxpayer dollars support such waste?

My second reaction is that food stamps were intended (back when they were first thought of) to be a temporary means of assistance to families who found themselves suddenly without sufficient income to make it on their own.  They were never intended to become a multi-year freebie handout to people who would never work hard enough to restore their family finances sufficiently to get off food stamps!  Sadly, that's what they've become in all too many cases.  I called an acquaintance yesterday who works in the social services department of a major municipality, and asked her what proportion of EBT recipients there had been getting those benefits for longer than a year.  She reckoned that more than half of the cases in her city had been getting those benefits for longer than five years.  So much for temporary assistance!

I'm not heartless or uncharitable, but it seems to me that requiring 20-odd hours of work per week to qualify for EBT/food stamps is hardly unreasonable.  Any reasonably able-bodied adult should be able to contribute that to his/her support.  To the man refusing to do so - sucks to be your kids, I guess, because they're going to go hungry thanks to your fecklessness and laziness (not to mention your amazing sense of entitlement and superiority).  Buddy, this taxpayer does not work for you, and isn't willing to tolerate your attitude any longer.

I'm sure my readers can cite examples of their own where they've seen this sort of entitled attitude in action.  Let us know about them in Comments.

Peter

Do they call the Coast Gourd if they get in trouble?

 

Looks like the annual Pumpkin Regatta in Oregon last weekend lived up to its reputation.

I wonder what they do with all the pumpkin "flesh" they cut out of the gourds in order to make room for a paddler?  Do they cook and eat it, or throw it away, or what?  I suspect there'd be enough seeds removed to be able to plant half the state with pumpkins!

Peter

A thoughtful gesture, but...

 

I had to laugh at this report.

Animal rescuers in California shared security camera stills capturing the moment a foster kitten spiced up her human family's dinner with a special ingredient: a dead mouse.

. . .

"Wendy is a foster failure that was caught on the kitchen cam -- or kitten cam -- adding 'spice' to her mom's dinner," the post said. "We should all be as thoughtful as Miss Wendy!"

Wendy's foster owner said she was out feeding her dogs when the kitchen camera recorded the cat's attempt at cooking. She said the feline's suspicious behavior when she returned to the kitchen led her to check the camera footage and discover the surprise Wendy had left in the pot.

"As you can guess, it was takeout for dinner that night," Wendy's foster mom told KMPH-TV.

There's more at the link.

Our two cats don't try to feed us.  Instead, they're on a lifelong mission to persuade us that human food is really precisely what a cat needs.  Furthermore, there are some foods so cat-worthy that they deserve extra feline attention.  Just drop a small flat tin of tuna on the metal surface of our prep table, and seventeen-odd pounds of black Maine Coon will arrive at near-supersonic speeds, followed closely (and more arthritically) by an older, creakier lady.  Don't bother with seasonings, mayonnaise or anything else - just drain the tuna into cat-size bowls and put it down on the floor.  Kitty nirvana!

Peter

Yay pemmican!

 

A few years ago I mentioned Steadfast Provisions and their pemmican products.  Earlier this year I boosted their fundraiser, aimed at building a brand-new, much-updated commercial kitchen to produce much larger quantities of pemmican and other products.  I'm very glad to report that the new kitchen is up and running, and their pemmican is better than ever.  If this article sounds like I'm shilling for them, well, I guess I am, because I really like to see small businessmen come up with a good idea and make a living out of it - and I just plain like pemmican anyway!

(In case you didn't know much about pemmican, there's a very informative article about it at their Web site.  Recommended reading.)

The new product is similar to the old, but more finely ground, producing a powdery rather than a granular substance when crushed or folded into other foods.  I find the flavor much improved, too.  Last time I ordered the salted-only pemmican, without seasoning.  It was fine, but very bland, designed more to be added to other foods (e.g. soup or stew), or supplemented with flavorings if eaten alone.  In this way it would taste more like the main dish, but provide added protein.

This time I ordered the seasoned version, and find it's much more palatable to eat on its own, even without adding anything else.  The texture appears much closer to Plains Indian descriptions of it, where it was eaten by the pinch out of a parfleche rawhide bag.  I tried some yesterday flavored as the Indians did, with honey dripped over it - delicious!  One can also add dried or fresh berries for a fruitier, sweeter flavor.

I plan to keep several bricks of this stuff in stock as an emergency supply.  One could exist by eating only pemmican, if one had to, but that would get boring fairly quickly!  I regard it as an excellent "bug-out" food, energy-rich and nutritious, easy to get to while walking or driving.  The new version tastes good enough that I'll probably be eating some as a snack on a regular basis, too.  I don't think one could possibly get foods that are more "keto" than pemmican, so I'll take advantage of that.

I prefer to buy the "brick" package of pemmican, containing 2.2 pounds of concentrated beef.

It may seem expensive, with a price tag of $97 for 2.2 pounds of pemmican, but bear in mind how greatly the "raw" weight of meat has been reduced in the production process.  One of those bricks contains over 10 pounds of raw beef, and given the price of good-quality beef today, that's a bargain in anyone's language.  If you'd like to try something smaller and lower-cost, the company also makes a pemmican bar for $17.  Expect them to be hard to find for a few months as the word spreads about the company's new production and new flavors.

To all my readers who contributed to Steadfast Provisions' fundraiser, thank you very much.  IMHO, it's been worth the wait to get their new premises into production.

Peter

Condiment recommendation

 

While browsing through Amazon looking for a couple of items, I came across their White Wine Jalapeno Mustard.  The combination looked interesting, so I ordered some to try it.

I was amazed.  The flavor combination of this mustard is outstanding, perhaps the best of its kind I've ever tasted.  The jalapeno gives it a burn, but not excessively so, and the white wine helps tame the burn and adds significant flavor of its own.  It tastes a bit like a horseradish mustard, but there's no horseradish in it, and its own flavor adds body and a mellow finish.

So far I've tried it on cold roast beef (in a sandwich), German bratwurst, and cubed goat in a stew.  It's worked with all of them.  If you like mustard, particularly with a strong flavor but not overpoweringly hot, I highly recommend this stuff.

Peter

Well, excuse ME!!!

 

I had to laugh at this photograph, found on Gab:

I'd love to hear a translation of the thoughts of the hummingbird on the bottom...

Peter

What type of buffet eater are you?

 

I had to laugh at the types of buffet eater identified in this article - particularly when I resembled more than one of them!

The heels are high, the tie knots Windsor, the conversation genteel and nobody has yet started to worry about the babysitter. The wedding reception is going smoothly. But there’s a beast behind the nearby sneeze guards. And, when it’s set loose, the atmosphere changes.

It’s the same at golf-club socials, corporate away-days and resort hotels – because when you put Britons and a buffet in the same room, human behaviour turns from pristine to primitive before you can say “cocktail sausage”.

We’re different from many European countries when it comes to communal feeding. Picture the aperitivo spread in a Milan bar: exquisitely made snacks – arancini, tramezzini, bruschetta – to place, one by one, beside your cocktail glass. This could never work in Britain: too many of us would sweep an armful of goodies into a carrier bag and leg it.

Here, it’s less “eat as much as you like” and more “eat as much as you can before gout kicks in”. So what do our dining habits say about us?

There's more at the link.

The article identifies seven types of buffet eater.  The descriptions are often funny, but also a bit uncomfortable when one looks at oneself through their lens and realizes that at least some of their traits can be identified in our own behavior.  Humbling, as well as amusing.

Peter

More than meats the eye?

 

This news may be hard to digest...

For three years, a butcher in Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland, deceived his Muslim customers by selling them pork falsely presented as calf.

The butcher has reportedly sold 3.1 tons of pork making his customers believe that the meat is Halal, according to the Swiss version of 20Minutes, which revealed this scandal.

. . .

The manager of the butchery was sentenced to 6 months in jail and a fine 18,000 Swiss francs (about $18,680) “for fraud and misrepresentation.”

. . .

The butcher was deceiving his customers double fold. On the one hand, Muslims who were buying meat at his shop did not know it was pork, which is forbidden according to the teachings of Islam. On the other hand, he made substantial profits, since pork is much cheaper than the calf on the meat market.

There's more at the link.

Now that the calf substitution has been re-veal-ed, I'm sure his customers aren't happy with him.  This will probably call for religious re-meat-iation . . .

Peter

Not your average training device!

 

I was amused to read about training ranchers and cowhands for calving season.

It’s a life-size steel-reinforced cow made of epoxy and fiberglass with a 70-pound unborn rubber calf inside.

Veterinarian Kelly Schaefer said that not only can the simulator help ranchers and their kids keep more calves alive while birthing, it was the most fun she’d had in a while.

Look at the expression on the boy's face!

“That was the first time we've ever used it, and it's an amazing tool,” Schaefer told Cowboy State Daily. “It’ll never be 100% accurate, but it lets people practice calving scenarios before an emergency happens. It was a huge hit.”

There's more at the link - some of it a bit technical for this non-rancher reader, but entertaining and interesting.

I must admit, I'd never thought about the financial aspect of momma cow health, but it's significant.  According to the article, a new-born calf already represents a value of about a thousand dollars, which puts a whole new perspective on keeping them alive and healthy.

Here's a video clip showing the momma cow simulator in action.

I'm sure the real deal, in the rain and mud and wind and cold, would be a whole lot less sanitary - but under those conditions, it's too late to learn everything at first hand.  You lose calves that way.

Peter

How about this for your kids on Easter Sunday?

 

I shudder to think of the calorie content of this monster.

I'm wondering how long (and how many stomach upsets, bowel overloads, cholesterol spikes and heart attacks) it would take to eat that whole thing.  I think I'll pass!

Peter

An important warning about some canned foods

I note that certain brands of canned tuna are being withdrawn due to contamination.

A voluntary recall has been issued for some canned tuna products — sold across the country at Trader Joe's, Walmart, Costco and other stores — because of a pull tab defect that could lead to potentially fatal botulism food poisoning.

Tri-Union Seafoods issued a voluntary recall for selected lots of canned tuna products that are sold under brand names like Genova, Van Camp’s, Trader Joe’s and H-E-B, the company and the Food and Drug Administration announced in a news release Friday. 

The recall was issued “out of an abundance of caution” after, the supplier said, there was a manufacturing defect on the tuna can’s “easy open” pull lid on limited products that could compromise “the integrity of the product seal,” the release said.  

The defective lid could cause the product to leak or be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum — described as “a potentially fatal form of food poisoning.” 

There's more at the link.

The problem is, more and more cans of food are using the "pull-tab" method of removing the lids, shown below.

These lids do not seal as tightly (hermetically) to the can as the older-fashioned lids that require a can-opener to remove them.  Potentially, any can using a pull-tab lid may be more easily contaminated with bacteria, and/or the food inside may go bad quicker, than if it uses a conventional lid.

This is a very important consideration for those of us building up a stash of canned food as part of our emergency preparations.  The last thing we want is to give ourselves and our families food poisoning when the availability of medical treatment may be less than optimal!  I try to make sure that my stored food supplies use only "conventional" cans, not pull-tab lids, for precisely that reason.

Food (literally) for thought . . .

Peter

A tasty, healthy fundraiser I'd like to see succeed

 

Readers may remember that in 2023, I wrote about an outfit called Steadfast Provisions, which produces some of the best-quality pemmican I've ever had the pleasure of eating.  I said at the time:

I've been so impressed by pemmican's effect on my own health that I wanted to share some of the results in advance, as it were.  For two weeks, excluding the weekend between, I ate no other solid food at all besides minimal quantities of pemmican.  I found I didn't need much of it at all to satisfy me, along with liquids such as water, black coffee and tea, bouillon, and occasionally some bone broth.  I've used it as part of an intensive weight-loss fasting diet, and the pemmican more than made up (nutritionally speaking) for the "regular" foods that I was no longer eating.  (Yes, I'm checking that through blood tests, which are an integral part of such a strenuous diet for obvious health and safety reasons.)

Steadfast Provisions makes pemmican in one-meal-size 750-calorie bars (in seasoned, unseasoned and "simply salted" flavors) and bricks containing enough nutrition for one person for three days or more (in seasoned and "simply salted" flavors).  I bought the latter, simply salted, because it was the only item available in their online store at the time (they sell out their production runs very quickly, to a dedicated customer base).  As noted above, it appears expensive at $97 per brick;  but when one works out the amount of fresh meat involved, the price is far more justifiable.  At over two pounds in weight, one brick of pemmican contains over ten pounds of lean fresh meat;  then there's the cost and time involved in drying, crushing, preparing and packaging it.  On a pound-per-dollar basis, that's a very reasonable price, IMHO.

On its own, the "simply salted" version of pemmican doesn't taste particularly appetizing, in my opinion (although it's not at all unpleasant - just bland;  the seasoned version might add more flavor).  However, if one cuts a slice and then spreads a little honey on it, or even a fruit preserve, it becomes far more palatable.  (I note that Native American tribes used to eat pemmican with wild honey.). Also, when combined with beef bouillon or bone broth, pemmican adds a huge dose of protein to the drink.  That's mainly how I've been using it.  As part of my liquid fasting diet, I've occasionally used Campbell's Beef Consommé, which has minimal calories and/or carbohydrates but a lot of flavor.  Chopping a small amount of pemmican into it is a great way to increase its food value.

There's more at the link, including the usefulness of pemmican in an emergency or travel situation.  It's amazingly useful stuff, and lasts a long time.  (We've just opened a pemmican brick that's sat in a storage cupboard for two years.  Tastes and looks just fine.)

I recently tried to re-order some pemmican, only to learn that Steadfast Provisions is busy setting up a brand-new commercial kitchen with all the necessary hardware to expand their production.  They're running a KickStarter to fund the new building, and are offering some significant discounts (up to 20%) on their products for those sponsoring it.  They're already well along with the project, and will resume production in their new premises within a couple of months.

I'd love to see them succeed with their fund-raiser.  This is a small company in a remote part of the country, producing a food that's almost unique (at least when done properly, as they do), that offers measurable health benefits and many uses.  (I'm here to tell you from my own experience, it really helps with keto and carnivore diets, and weight loss.)  If you, like me, are trying to follow such diets, and/or would like to help a small business that (IMHO) deserves to succeed, please click over to the KickStarter and contribute what you can.  I've already made my pledge there.

Thanks in advance.

Peter

It's hard to argue with that!

 

In a comment on yesterday's blog post about getting the economic fundamentals right, an anonymous reader provided the link to this comedy clip from the late John Pinette.  In the light of all those Christmas leftovers, he may have a point!

I'm sure many of us will be enjoying our gluten-ous leftovers for a few days yet.

Peter

Say it ain't so!!!

 

I was amused to read that Britain's love for tea may be "cooling off".

Last week, one of Britain’s oldest tea firms, Typhoo Tea, collapsed after a drop in sales.

. . .

Tea sales volumes have fallen by 4.3% compared with two years ago, according to analysts at NielsenIQ.

And a recent survey by Mintel suggested less than half the nation, 48%, now drink tea at least once a day.

. . .

Polina Jones from NielsenIQ says while people "are not falling out of love with tea per se", the landscape is changing with huge offerings from bubble tea, herbal teas, kombuchas and energy drinks attracting the younger generation.

. . .

In 1974, the average family purchased 68g - about 30 tea bags - of tea per person, per week. By 2023, that had gone down to 19g - about 10 tea bags – per person, according to government figures.

There's more at the link.

I have to laugh at the weekly purchase rate of teabags per person in the UK.  My wife and I are both tea addicts, and order our supplies in bulk (we prefer Ahmad Tea, which has many blends that suit our tastes).  The last order I made, in April this year, was for eight hundred tea bags, and I'm about to put in another because we're down to only a couple of hundred on hand!  We usually order from them once a year, and enjoy the arrival of a large box filled with tea scents and goodness.  (Our daily tipple is their English Tea No. 1;  I have a mug of it next to me as I write these words.  We also enjoy their decaf, Darjeeling and some herbal teas.)

I've never been able to get used to iced tea.  I know that in the USA, probably more iced tea is consumed than hot tea, particularly in the south;  but I grew up with hot tea, even in the hottest climates in Africa, and I'm afraid I'm set in my tea ways.  My wife, on the other hand, while enjoying hot tea, also drinks lots of the cold variety.

Oh, well.  Time to put in my next order with Ahmad, and restore balance to the tea-drinking universe!

Peter