Minneapolis/St. Paul Nesties
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Where do you buy your meat if not from the grocery store?
I just finished watching Food, Inc. and am very disgusted and will not buy meat from the grocery store again, just not sure where to buy it from. Farmers? How do you find where to get it from? What to look for?
Thanks!
Re: Where do you buy your meat if not from the grocery store?
We have started getting a lot of ours at the St Paul Farmers Market (there are other farmers markets around) or from Mississipi Market (they source their food locally from farmers)
Some great resources:
www.eatwild.com (will help you locate farmers markets, etc)
www.eatwellguide.com
www.michaelpollan.com (lots of links under resources)
If you are interested in learning more about your "food" I also HIGHLY recommend reading any and all of the Michael Pollan books. You'll learn a lot about your "food" and will start to look more critically at products. Especially if Food, Inc got you thinking about your food...
As far as meat is concerned, you want to find meat labeled "Pastured", "Grass Finished" or "100% Grass Fed" - regardless of Organic stature. All beef starts out grass fed, but is grain finished in the industrial lots. Grain finsihed is not beef that you want to eat. A local farmer may not be "certified" organic, but if their animals are fed this way (pastured, grass fed, etc), they are likely using sustainable practices and pretty much are organic anyway. I've started seeing farmers call them selves "Beyond Organic".
For eggs and poultry, you want to look for the "Pastured" designation. Cage free and free range are not enough. Poultry raised that was is still fed in CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feed Lots) and can still be grain fed. Its just that they aren't given antibiotics and are often fed "organic" grain. Which kind of defeats the purpose, if you don't want to eat grain fed meat/dairy....
I've started getting milk, cheese, eggs and everything from pastured and/or grass fed animals. And OMG, its so much better. It costs more, to be sure, but its phenomenal as compared to the other stuff in the regular grocery stores. Its amazing!
IF you go the Farmers Market Route, there are a lot of great vendors there! (I go to the St. Paul one) You can get eggs, chicken, beef, pork, fish, even buffalo. Get to know the vendors and they will treat you right. My Dad likes the Berkshire Pork from Prairie Pride Farms http://www.prairiepridepork.com/ and if you know ahead of time what cuts you'd like, you can email them and they'll bring them for you. I know quite a few folks who rave about Bar 5 Meat and Poultry (also at the market).
If you had some folks to go in with you and some good freezer space, you could buy and process a whole animal too. DH and I basically bought a quarter cow a few years ago from his Uncle's farm. We knew where it was raised and how it was treated. It was relatively inexpensive for us to do it because he wasn't looking to make money on us - just recoup his costs. I'm sure that there are folks out there who do that sort of thing too!
St Paul farmers market or Mississippi Market. The cops are having a farm visit day next month where you can see the farms in action.
ETA: I posted from my phone. That should be the co-ops are having a farm visit day.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
We like bison meat, so whenever we go to my parents' house we stop at the Silver Bison Ranch (they only live a few miles away). The owners are really nice and the meat is really good. We just bring a cooler and fill it up. Prices are better than bison at the grocery store too. Check them out at www.silverbison.com
They sell a lot of their product to restaurants too - I know Bryant Lake Bowl and Hell's Kitchen are 2 of their clients.
i may not eat meat but i definitely give this post 2 enthusiastic
s up.
if you're going to eat it, be educated and make sure the animals are treated right.
i'm so glad you want to learn more and love all the nesties that have invested their time and money into learning more and eating better! : )
Thanks Ladies for all of the information!
We are headed to the farmers market tomorrow!