About organic chicken

Since I have started this blog people have found it a lot of different ways.

1. I read a lot of other blogs and comment there and then people check out my blog.

2. People search for a picture of Genesis on Google - I linked to a Genesis picture in my blog post "Prove Yourself" - how exactly that works, that I get about 3-6 hits a day through this picture, I do not know but if I ever start a blog for my professional photography stuff, I might have to link to that picture on there too.

4. People put me on their blog roll on their own blogs (thank you!)

3. People Google something and find my blog. Those can be all kinds of stuff like:

"How to become a nanny in Italy" (Sorry, no info about this here but I can help you if you ever want to become a nanny in Chicago!)

"Cup of coffee" (I do write about that!)

or weird ones like "bad boy anal beads" (seriously - I don't know how somebody found my blog googling that but the fact that I just wrote this down will probably bring more people googling that term to my website)

But one search term that leads a lot of people to my blog is "Organic chicken" or "Pasture chicken in Chicago" and so I thought it might be a good idea to give you more info on the subject. I have become a lot more knowledgeable since my last post on the subject, so if you are still looking for an organic, pasture chicken (who are allowed to run freely, outside, eat grass and bugs instead of seeds) - here are a few tips:

*Go to farmers markets - they are the easiest way to find pasture chicken - ask the people who sell the meat - they are usually also the people who raise the chicken. If you don't get straight answers, it's probably shifty and not what you are looking for. If they seem like they don't know what "pasture" means, find somebody else to buy your chicken from. If they can show you pictures of how their animals are living or if you have a chance to look up their farm online and you see that the animals are running around freely - you have a winner.

*Go to www.eatwild.com - this is a website that will show you which farmers in your area sell organic and/or pasture meat, eggs and diary. It will also tell you when the farmer is where, so you can track them down.

*Once you find an organic farmer but you don't live right next to them - find out when and where you can find them, where they have drop-offs - and then stock up. We have a tiny freezer but I could easily fit two whole, big (5 pound) chicken and a pork shoulder in there. And that didn't even fill up half my freezer. If I buy a big thing of bacon, I freeze it in bags of three or four strips which I then defrost when needed.

*If you have a chance - go to local food fairs. I went to one about a month ago and I got a ton of information. I even bought some stuff there (there were about 4 meat vendors).

*Consider joining a CSA - you essentially buy your way into a farm and you get part of whatever they reap - veggies, fruit and often also meat. Just make sure it's a good farm and you can afford it in the long run.

*Be careful and consider what exactly you are looking for. What is important to you? That your family doesn't eat food that contains antibiotics or that the animals you are eating had a good life? For me - both are important and thus I make sure I know both are covered. But if you are mostly concerned about what goes into your body, buying amish chicken or normal organic chicken from the butcher or grocery store will do. Make sure that it says "Has never been fed antibiotics". As I have said before - Amish chicken is NOT pasture chicken! If you buy a chicken in a grocery store and it doesn't say "pasture" or "grass fed" on it - it is not "pasture" or "grass fed" because you can be sure they would want you to know about that and have you pay extra for it if it was. Also - I have never actually seen a pasture chicken in a store in Chicago.

Now - eating pasture diary, eggs and chicken is a lot more expensive than eating normal chicken - I won't lie. But it's a decision you have to make for yourself. I went years saying "Yeah, I am all for animal rights if it wasn't so expensive to eat organic". And then I read Michael Pollans "In Defense of Food" and I thought to myself, I keep on talking about it, why don't I do it? At the same time I was sick of eating the same food and feeling like crap and not knowing what is going into my body, so I changed everything.

You can do it too if you want to. It costs more but it will also make you less wasteful. I use every part of the chicken. I even use the intestines that come with it (I bake them and then put them in with the carcass when I make chicken stock). I get about 8 servings of chicken out of one bird, plus about 8 cups of condensed chicken stock which is better than any store bought stock. I cook big amounts and then freeze for the days that I don't have time to cook. I cook vegetarian a lot. I plan out meals for the week, including lunch and breakfast. In the end, I am not sure it costs us that much more because we waste a lot less. I used to throw tons of stuff away all the time because it went bad and I hardly ever do that anymore.

So if you want to do what I (and a lot of other people) decided to do - give it a go. You can always ask me if you have any questions about it!

Now I am going to go and try to find out more about objects to put up your behind, so I am prepared for any upcoming questions.

My five favorite blogs

I have around 100 blogs on my Google Reader, so it's safe to say that I spend a lot of time reading them. A lot of them are more "visual" blogs - fashion, interior, design, cooking blogs. What can I say - I like to look at pretty things.

But there are a handful of blogs on my Google Reader which get me all giddy when I see that they have been updated. Here is a list - maybe you'll find a new favorite blog there too:

- Post Secret

Post Secret is an ongoing art project in which people send in their secrets on a post card. I have been reading this blog for about six years now and I support it by buying post secret books for friends and family as gifts. It sounds like a silly blog but it does so much - showing people that they are not alone.

- Jezebel

I only started reading Jezebel a few months ago but it's already one of my favorites. It is a feminist website which discusses everything from politics to celebrities and fashion. The discussions remind me of the discussions I used to have with my friends out in Amsterdam. The comments are moderated and to be a commenter you have to "prove yourself" by delivering a few funny, interesting, smart comments. If the moderators like your style (which doesn't have to mean that they agree with your opinion), your comments will be approved and you can become a commenter. This is one of the few politically minded websites where I actually read the comments.

- Polish or Perish

Ok, here is a little secret - I am a nail polish fanatic. And there are lots of us out there. There are even blogs where people take pictures of their nails (I might have been known to do that myself sometimes ...) and post them on their blogs. In fact, there are very many blogs like that. And I have a lot of them on my Google Reader. With most of the blogs, I just look at the pictures. If I really like a color, I will read what people wrote about it. But I almost always read the blog posts on Polish or Perish - a blog written by seven PHD/Masters students who are all nail obsessed like me. They write about nail polish but also about how their studies are going and their personal lives. My favorite is "Kittytokaren" - her name is a Cake reference and at least in the beginning a lot of her blog posts had Cake references in them. And Cake happens to be one of my very favorite bands.

- The Kitchn

I read a lot of cooking blogs - especially since I started cutting out processed foods and eating organic/locally/seasonally. There is just something comforting about reading cooking blogs. There are never any nasty comments on their posts. The pictures look beautiful. And to see what people cook is like getting a peak into their personal life. The Kitchn is a bit different. It is part of Apartment Therapy (which I read long before I discovered The Kitchn). It's written by several people. It is not a very personal blog. Recipes are only a small part of the posts on The Kitchn. There are posts and video tutorials about how to properly cut onions, how to take a whole chicken apart, how to re-finish cast iron skillets, ... I also love the posts where readers ask a question and the commenters answer - I have learned more about cooking from the comments on The Kitchn (which I have only been reading for about two months) than I learned in my 4 years of home ed classes in high school.

- The Kim Challenge

Kimberly Miller is a smart, cute, young actress/writer from New York who posts pictures of everything she eats. That is pretty much it in a nutshell but she also writes about her personal life, her life in New York, her fitness challenges, ... I first started reading her when she was one of the writers of "Elastic Waist" - a blog that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore (if it would, it would be on this list). When Elastic Waist folded (they were sponsored by Self magazine and I guess the magazine was making cuts), all the writers posted their personal websites and that's how I came to read The Kim Challenge. Not only is it interesting to see what other people (who have similar food principles to myself) eat every day but I have also come to really like Kim personally. Yes kids, this is 2010 and now we read peoples blogs and feel like they are our friends even though they might know that we exist.

I know the people who read my blog are not really avid commenters but if you'd like to come out of the lurking status, please let me know what your favorite blogs are! Because my Google Reader is always open for new additions!

The life of Special K

I still remember meeting my friend Ketil for the first time. I was sitting in Vondelpark in Amsterdam with my friend A who had just gotten me a job in a call center where she was working as well. It was my first real job. It was a sunny day. I felt excited and happy. Ketil worked at the same company I was about to work for. He was walking his bike through Vondelpark, a friend by his side. He stopped and said "hi" to my friend A who was really good friends with Ketils best friend. I thought: Wow, that man is beautiful. But not in a sexual attraction way - I somehow knew immediately that K was into men, even though he was not the kind of man with who you could just "tell". He was nice and had a British accent even though he was Norwegian (I later found out that he had lived in London and that's how he picked up his nearly perfect British English).

Three months passed and my company had a Christmas party. It was at this design-y place that had areas set up like different rooms in an open space. I immediately noticed the "Scandinavian corner" on the black sofas - everybody was wearing black, everybody was smoking and everybody looked incredibly cool. I wanted to be one of them. Of course, Ketil was one of them.

At the end of the night, before I left, K came to me and said "I heard from A that you are really into photography. I am too! Maybe we should take pictures together sometimes!".

And that was the beginning of a really special friendship.

We spent nearly every weekend together - either in the darkroom printing photos, out taking pictures or at a bar or coffee shop, Saturday or Sunday afternoon, drinking beer and smoking. The summers we'd be sitting at the canals and drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers or in Vondelpark, with some of our other friends. Through Ketil I learned that cheese, crackers, wine, tapenade and pate make the perfect meal. He taught me that all you need to be happy is a blanket, sunshine and good company.

A few years after we first started hanging out, we created a little photography club with two other friends. We'd be meeting up every few weeks in the evening to seriously discuss photography but we just ended up drinking a lot and smoking pot and telling each other how incredibly talented we are.

K always knew how to make me feel great. He was the first man who ever made me feel beautiful. He would compliment me constantly. One time he just looked at me and said "Wow, you look JUST like that girl from Lost in Translation" (he meant Scarlett Johansson - I don't look like her but I used to have long, blond hair and I have blue eyes, so it was at least a little bit believable). And whatever he said, it didn't sound phony. It sounded really genuine.

In all those years that we spent so much time together we never once had an argument.

I hadn't seen Ketil in a few years. He left the Netherlands to move to Spain. I missed him so much and even though we tried to meet up a few times in Spain and the Netherlands, something always came up that prevented us from seeing each other.

When I heard that he had died, I was surprised how much I am grieving and how I just can't stop thinking about him.

I haven't really lost a friend before K. So I am not sure how this is supposed to work. Like tonight I am supposed to go out to two parties. Part of me is afraid that I am going to get drunk and won't be able to stop talking about my friend. Another part of me thinks I really need distraction.

All of a sudden it feels like I can remember ever single conversation I had with Ketil. And I am realizing how often I think about him - even before I learned about his untimely death, I'd think about him every time I say "cool" - because he would never say cool - always "coolio" which was funny because he was not the kind of guy who would ever use slang or say something pretentious. Or every time I go to the dentist I think about when I met up with him right after he had had a root canal and he told me that whenever he goes to the dentist he feels a little bit like he had been "raped in the mouth".

I also remember one evening we spent talking about death and dying and how we think we are going to end up dying. And this is not how he was supposed to die. And when.

Losing a friend is like losing a part of yourself

Rest in peace Ketil.

You were one of the most beautiful people I knew. Inside and out.

You always made me feel like a million bucks. You were smart and funny and creative and inspired people in so many ways.

I will miss you more than words can express.

Woman vs. Chicken

I hate making roast chicken. It just really grosses me out. But I started making my own chicken stock about a year ago and once you have made and used your own chicken stock you can never go back to using bouillon cubes.

So about every three month, I buckle down and make a roast chicken, use the meat for tasty risottos and stews and curries and use the carcass to make stock which I then freeze in one cup portions.

Sure, there are other ways to make chicken stock, some people say better ways. There is Ina Gartens famous chicken stock recipe which is supposed to be fantastic. Or The Amateur Gourmets chicken stock recipe. But wasting that much chicken and not even getting to eat it, I morally just cannot get myself to do.

On top of that I found a new recipe - Jamie Olivers "Chicken in milk" which I have been wanting to make since I first laid eyes on it and since we also just got ourselves a brand new Lodge Dutch Oven (the poor man's Le Creuset) that I had been dying to try - I knew it was time to face the chicken.

Since starting to follow Michael Pollans food principles I found that when it comes to meat - it is relatively easy to find grass fed beef in most grocery stores (I guess it has become somewhat of a foodie staple) but it is nearly impossible to get pastured chicken in Chicago, in the winter. In the summer, a lot of local farmers can be found at the farmers markets but there are only one or two weekly farmers markets which brave the winter. Through the Eat Wild website I found out that there is Farmers Market which sells pastured chicken but that's not happening for another 10 days.

So I made my way down to Chicagos biggest Wholefoods which apparently is the 3rd biggest Wholefoods in the world. There were three different kinds of whole chicken: Amish, "natural" (Wholefoods own brand) and Kosher. I checked all the labels and none of them said "pastured". A Wholefoods employee asked me if I needed help, so I asked him if Wholefoods sold any pastured chicken. His answer:

"Erm, we have the Amish, which are Amish raised and the natural and then we have the Kosher. And erm, yeah, all our chickens are, you know, organic and all pastured and all that stuff."

Clearly he didn't understand what pastured meant because I am pretty sure that if the chicken were pastured it would say so. A lot of people who buy their food at Wholefoods would spend extra to get a pastured chicken, I am sure.

His response reminded me of the response I got from a Trader Joes employee after asking him if any of the beef they were selling was grass-fed. He had to go ask. When he came back he said:

"Yeah, all of our beef is organic which means it is grass-fed." - Again - if the cows were grass-fed, I am pretty sure it would say. In fact, I had seen beef at a bigger Trader Joes that said in big letters "Grass-fed only beef".

Anyway, I ended up grabbing one of the Amish chicken, hoping that this would be the best choice of the three.

When I got home and I checked the recipe, I noticed that it asked for a 3 1/2 pound, organic chicken. I noticed that the chicken I had bought was 4 1/2 pounds. According to Michael Pollan pastured chicken are usually smaller, since they are outside and have to find bugs and grass to eat.

Had I, after all my extensive research, chosen an obese chicken?

After doing some research now, I found out that Amish chicken are

NOT free-range, they are antibiotic free though, at least.

The thing I hate most about preparing a whole chicken is sticking my hand up its behind to get out the insides. In most cases the insides are in a bag but I have had cases where they were just thrown in there loosely.

In the case of this Amish chicken - this is what was inside:

I am not sure if it is visible from the picture but this bag is chicken-head shaped. Now, a headless chicken is disturbing enough for me to look at but the head? I know - it's most likely just the neck which people like to throw in the pot when they are making chicken stock but let's just say I was not brave enough to open the bag. It is in my freezer right now. I don't think I could have eaten the chicken if I would have seen its face.

The headless chicken itself looked like a headless baby. For me - roasting chickens always kind of look like headless babies but this chubby chicken even more so:

I actually ended up apologizing to the chicken and thanking it for giving us its meat. I realize that probably sound somewhat nuts but I mean - look at it:

And this ladies and gentlemen is why I eat mostly vegetarian these days.

(The "Chicken in Milk" was very tasty though and I can highly recommend it - especially if you like lemon - but make sure to read the comments under the recipe, since they give some good tips)

Life changing

I'll be honest. I sometimes wonder if I wasted a year of my life in 2009. Part of me believes I needed it to recover, to get strength and so on but then, I really didn't get anywhere last year. I spent a year mourning losses - the loss of my friends in the Netherlands, the loss of my career (even though I didn't like my career but at least it was something to be proud of), the loss of my independence (since I am not making enough money to be self-sufficient which is something that I am not entirely comfortable with, despite fully trusting my husband), the loss of my social life, ...

I don't know how but with the end of 2009 I could finally stop mourning and start living my new life. I made a few "new years resolutions" but they are really much more than new years resolutions - they are what I need to do to get back on track and to get a life started that I feel is worth living.

I already talked about one of the resolutions - to respect myself. And to give you guys an update on this - it's going great and it has probably been one of the best changes I have ever made in my life.

Respecting myself means a lot more than to stop telling myself I am worthless (even though - just doing that already was a huge improvement to my life). It means respecting my body as much as respecting my mind.

Deciding to eat organically, to only eat animals and animal products like eggs and diary from animals who I know were treated with dignity and got to eat grass, like they were supposed to made a HUGE impact on my life. Seriously guys - if you have never had eggs from a farm where the pastured chickens are allowed to run around freely, eat grass and bugs instead of kernels, you are missing out!

My breakfast most days of the week:

A green smoothie

How to make it:

1 cup of almond milk (or soy or rice or hemp or regular milk but my favorite is unsweetened, vanilla almond milk)

1 banana

frozen fruit of your choice: I either make a "berry" one with frozen cherries, strawberries and blueberries or a "tropical" one with frozen mango, guava and pineapple. Sometimes I add peaches to either

one or two cups of dark green, leafy vegetables like spinach or kale

protein powder of your choice

- put everything in a blender. Blend. Ready. The taste of the greens takes a little bit of getting used to and you can leave it out if you really don't like it but it's so packed full of nutrients that for me it's really worth to add it. I found that chocolate protein powder masks the bitter taste of the greens better than vanilla.

One of the best things I read was "Cheap food might be cheap right now but it is too expensive in the long run" - meaning the effects that cheap, mass-produced food have on the planet and on your body in the long run are just not worth it.

And even though I spend a lot of money on food now, I waste a lot less. Our fridge is only half as full as it was before and I really try to use every morsel of food I buy. This involves a lot more planning but I don't mind. I also freeze a lot of food.

And completely unrelated - we booked our flights to Europe and we'll be in the Netherlands and Austria in less than 10 weeks. I can't wait! But more about that another time!

Tales of Mere Existence

I couldn't have said it better myself: