Tag Archives: pasture raised

  1. Instant Pot Carnitas w/ Slow Cooker Option {Paleo, Whole30, Keto}

    These Instant Pot Carnitas have become a bit of a favorite around here. Especially when we’re hosting guests but also just for meal prep for busy weeks. I love that this recipe is naturally gluten-free, paleo, Whole30, keto and AIP-friendly and yet still simple and tasty-enough to serve to anyone – no matter their preferences! You can serve your Instant Pot Carnitas in lettuce cups or your favorite tortillas, over a big veggie-loaded salad or cauliflower rice and go burrito bowl-style.

    Instant Pot Carnitas {Paleo, Whole30, Keto}

    Instant Pot Carnitas {Paleo, Whole30, Keto}

    I truly love recipes like this that are not only fuss-free while still being super impressive, but that also allow me to eat how I prefer while still serving my guests without any dietary restrictions, so they’ll never feel like I am pushing my “health-food” onto them. I don’t want my closest friends to decline dinner invites for fear of being served liver and sprouts! haha. It’s important to me to enjoy amazing meals with my family and friends, no matter how differently we all eat, I never want anyone to feel like like I am preachy or pushing my agenda on them. I just cook them the food that I know to be healthful and hopefully they see how simple it can be. A focus on real whole foods is truly just a solid baseline / foundation that would do everyone some good.

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  2. Paleo Breakfast Sausage Patties {Whole30 friendly}

    Paleo Breakfast Sausage Patties are simple to make at home. Just about 15 minutes of work and you’ve got ready made breakfast options for the week. With a pre-made hard or soft boiled egg (or any eggs really) and a side of greens or other veggies, you’re starting your day with quality protein, fat, greens and fiber, without any of the sketchy ingredients found in many store-bought sausages and you have a well rounded breakfast for the busy mornings, ready in just minutes.

    Paleo Breakfast Sausage Patties

    Paleo Breakfast Sausage Patties

    I find one of the best ways to feeling more in control of your meals and let’s be honest, your life, is to plan ahead. With cooking, while I don’t fully subscribe personally to meal prep or even very rigid, planned out batch cooking, I am always looking for ways to cook in abundance so I can cook once and enjoy multiple times over.

    These Paleo Breakfast Sausage are a perfect example of that. Often I will make a double batch so we have plenty on hand for the week, for simple breakfasts without the fuss.

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  3. Caramelized Onion and Bacon Liver Pâté

    Rich in both flavor and nutrients, this Caramelized Onion and Bacon Liver Pâté makes a wonderful appetizer or sandwich spread and would both be the perfect addition to any holiday spread or even just an every day weekday treat.

    Caramelized Onion Bacon Liver Pâté

    Caramelized Onion Bacon Liver Pâté

    Well, well, well. The time has come. Liver has made it’s way to the Tasty Yummies recipe archives. Who am I, even? Honestly, though, there is a version of me from 5 years ago that would truly never believe it possible. Yet, here we are. Just a girl in her 30s that has a mild love affair with good liver and how good that it makes her feel.

    A good pâté at a restaurant, this was the first time I was able to eat liver. If you’ve never had it, pâté is a smooth mousse that is deliciously served up in small portions traditionally on crostini or crackers, garnishing pricy charcuterie boards. Liver is usually quite inexpensive to purchase from your local farmer, or a trusted market, sometimes as inexpensive as a few dollars a pound.

    Liver is a highly-prized, often overlooked superfood. I find it’s a really great way to get my vitally important vitamin A, a fabulous source of B vitamins and iron, along with many crucial minerals and it even contains a not-yet-identified anti-fatigue factor. Guys, legit I have massive amounts more energy when I am eating liver, regularly.  You can read more about the many, many nutritional benefits of nature’s most potent superfood here.

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  4. Why to Choose Grass-Fed Meat vs Grain-Fed

    Much like some of the other basic nutrition topics we’ve been covering recently, I know for many of you, this information on Why to Choose Grass-fed Meat, it may be old news. Feel free to skip on by and wait for the next post, but if this information is new to you or you want a refresher or to learn more, I got you. As you have heard me say, time and time again, every day, every single day, I encounter people outside my little sheltered food/nutrition bubble, who haven’t yet received this information and knowledge that many of us take for granted, being deeply rooted in our daily food choices for some time. Rather than assuming that everyone already knows this stuff, I would rather create simple posts that are easily accessible to them/you to share, inform and empower you with the knowledge to make better decisions for you and your health. 

    Why to Choose Grass-Fed Meat vs Grain-Fed

    Nutrition

    Not all meat is created equal. But, I am sure most of you know that at this point. As you also know from recents posts here on Tasty Yummies, fat can absolutely be an incredibly nutrient rich part of your diet, but this same macronutrient when of the wrong variety, can also cause numerous diseases, inflammation, digestive issues and more. The diet of the animals we eat, can greatly change the fat in it’s tissues (and consequently the meat that we eat), among other nutritional differences. According to a study 1http://www.csuchico.edu/grassfedbeef/research/Review%20Grassfed%20Beef%202010.pdf conducted by California State University’s College of Agriculture, grass-fed beef nutrition includes significantly more omega-3 fatty acids (2 to 4 times more yhan grain-fed)  and more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than grain-fed beef. The ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 in grain-fed meat is much worse than grass-fed and it’s not because the omega-6 content of beef fat skyrockets with grain feeding; it is however because the omega-3 content is basically nonexistent in the grain-fed animals. Due to the modern, standard American diet (SAD), many people are highly omega-3 deficient and therefore the ratio to bad omega-6 fats is severely imbalanced due to it’s prevalence in a SAD, which can lead to a chronic exacerbated inflammatory response, a general state of systemic inflammation, and the development of the various diseases with an inflammatory root.

    Conjugated Linoleic Acid of CLA is a strong polyunsaturated fatty acid that must be obtained from our diets. CLA has been shown to discourage weight gain and build muscle, as well as support metabolic and cellular health by helping to transport fatty acids into the mitochondria and boost immune health. It has even been shown to lower the risk of cancer. 2https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15941017 High-quality grass-fed beef and butter from healthy, grass-fed cows or other animals are the top sources of CLA.

    Grass-fed beef, is also one of the best protein foods around, is also higher in precursors for vitamin A and E and cancer and heart disease-fighting antioxidants compared to grain-fed beef. It is also higher in B vitamins, vitamin K and trace minerals like magnesium, calcium, and selenium. Grass-finished beef has higher proportions of cholesterol neutral stearic fatty acids and less cholesterol-elevating short chain fatty acids, such as myristic and palmitic acid. Grass-fed meat truly shines in the micronutrient profile for one major reason: Grass-fed cows get more nutritious food.

    Why Grass-fed Meat is Healthier

    Ideally these animals are grass-fed for their whole life. Only exclusively grass-fed cows live out their entire lives on grassland. The rest may start their lives on open pasture and are then eventually moved to a feedlot. Often meat being sold as “grass-fed” is an animal that was fed grass for a short time, early in it’s life, but finished with grain, to increase weight gain, to fatten them up and reduce costs and increase profitablity. Just 80 days of grain feeding was enough to destroy the omega-3 content of the beef. CLA content plummeted in the same amount of time. The longer the animals were fed grains, the lower the quality of the meat. This is one of the many reasons that 100% grass-fed or grass-fed and grass-finished should be sought out.

    Read more about the cost of grass-fed meat and how the labeling of grass-fed animals can be downright deceitful.  While the FDA no longer governs this label claim, you should still look for it and additionally look for seals such as American Grassfed or PCO Certified 100% GrassFed for assurance that the claim was verified and means the animals were 100% grass fed and raised on pasture. You can also look for The Certified Grassfed by AGW seal. 3http://greenerchoices.org/2016/12/30/grassfed-general-claim/ Even more reasons to get to know your farmer or rancher and ask the important questions directly to the person that actually knows. As Michael Pollan says “shake the hand that feeds you“!

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    References   [ + ]

    1. http://www.csuchico.edu/grassfedbeef/research/Review%20Grassfed%20Beef%202010.pdf
    2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15941017
    3. http://greenerchoices.org/2016/12/30/grassfed-general-claim/
  5. What You Need to Know About Eggs – Pasture Raised vs Cage-Free vs Free-Range, etc

    Selecting eggs these days can be a bit overwhelming. There’s Free-Range, Organic, Caged, Cage-free, Pasture-Raised. There are brown eggs and white eggs,  Omega-3 enriched eggs. Not only are there significant differences in the animal care with these various types of eggs, but in addition, depending on what the hens themselves ate and their access to sunlight, the end result in the eggs we eat, also show drastic nutritional differences, as well. Read on for What You Need to Know About Eggs. Let’s get right to it:

    What You Need to Know About Eggs - Pasture Raised vs Cage-Free vs Free-Range, etc

    Look at the difference in the color of the yolks from a conventional egg (left), to a pasture-raised egg (right).

    What You Need to Know About Eggs - Pasture Raised vs Cage-Free vs Free-Range, etc

    The Various Labels – What Do They Mean

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  6. The Benefits of Collagen

    The Benefits of Collagen

    By now you have probably heard from myself and other bloggers about collagen and gelatin and of course, the fanfare around bone broth, etc. Some of you may already know the many benefits of collagen, but even I didn’t know it’s full potential until earlier this year. Collagen is vital for our body and is the basic building block of skin, hair, nails, bones and joints and it plays a very important role in gut healing protocols.

    Our ancestors utilized sustainable whole animal nutrition, which provided an abundant amount of collagen.  Over the past century however, modern food processing has removed this natural and healthy protein from our diets.

    This superfood supplement has provided much healing for me over this last year as it has become part of my daily gut healing protocol, so I am excited to share with you some of the research surrounding it. Beyond finding healing for my gut, the marked benefits in my skin, hair and nails have been the wonderful icing on the cake!

    The Benefits of Collagen

    What is Collagen?

    Collagen is an important structural protein that makes up one third of the protein in the body and up to 70% of the protein that makes up skin. Collagen is the basic matrix of the connective tissues, skin, cartilage and bone where it comes together to form scaffolding to provide strength and structure.

    As a protein, collagen contains significant amounts of amino acids proline and glycine, which are harder to find in other protein sources and serve as a protector of your gut.

    The Benefits of Collagen

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  7. Greek Lamb Meatballs

    Greek Lamb Meatballs

    For me, scent is a huge memory trigger. The aroma of something can waft my way and instantly I am transported back to another time. I always think of the old cartoons where the steamy aroma of a fresh baked pie, suddenly morphs into a hand, quite literally coaxing and lifting up the characters and carrying them right to the goodies. Think Mickey Mouse being tempted by the vapor hand from the scent of a Minnie’s freshly baked cake, right to her kitchen window. This is likely seconds before she slams the window down and says “ah ah ah”. For me rather than being taken to someone’s window, I find myself reliving memories, remembering people I love and those times gone by. It’s one of my most favorite things about cooking, especially since moving away from my family.

    Greek Lamb Meatballs

    Being Greek, growing up I was constantly surrounded by all the delicious, home cooked meals. There are still smells to this day that remind me of my family and most specifically my late, Great Yia Yia and my Yia Yia. The smell of potatoes roasting with garlic, cinnamon and honey will always make me think of baklava syrup simmering away on the stove top, cinnamon in a savory tomato sauce will trigger my nose to think of moussaka or pastitsio and a big pot of homemade chicken stock will always make me want avgolemono soup. Of course, chocolate melting will also get me, since my Great Yia Yia had a full-blown candy making set up in the basement, from her days of owning the ice cream and soda shop. They made some delicious chocolates!

    Greek Lamb Meatballs

    Lamb was another food served quite often, whether, roasted, grilled or used in dolmades (stuffed grape leaves). Though not a food I make quite often, whenever I do prepare it, I think of all my family back home in NY, so I have certainly found myself making it more since we’ve moved out to California. It makes me miss our summer picnics with the huge Greek family, out at the lake, a big leg of lamb slowly grilling over an open fire, all day. Or my Yia Yia’s homemade Greek lamb meatballs, which my parent’s seemed to perfect quite well and made often when we were growing up.

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  8. Chicken Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup)

    Chicken Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup)

    Despite the 80 degree whether we have had this past week, with the onset of November and the clock’s changing back, I start to crave comfort food something crazy this time of year. Soups, stews, crock pot meals, all of it! This homemade Chicken Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup) is something I find myself craving very often, this time of year. Even with several authentic vietnamese restaurants in the area, I find my homemade pho has been perfected to where it is the best I can find! (Horn tooted)

    Chicken Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup)

    I make a mean Beef pho, which tends to be a bit more traditional, but I also really love making it with chicken, especially when we get one of the beautiful whole pasture-raised chickens from our farmer. Besides being hot and comforting, like any bowl of chicken noodle soup should be, the incredible warming spices in traditional pho not only warms the body, but I truly believe they have some sort of magical powers to warm the soul. To me, this is as close as you’ll ever be to getting a hug from your food.

    Chicken Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup)

    Though it seems like there are many steps to homemade pho, it really is quite easy and once you’ve done the prep work, you can let the soup simmer all day and by the time dinner rolls around, it is done, ready and waiting for you to enjoy it!

    Chicken Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup)

    The best thing about a traditional dish like pho are the subtle nuances to the recipe, that bring the most incredible unique flavors. Charring the onions and ginger is just one of them. A simple and quick step that provides a depth of flavor so vital to this dish! Plus, it leaves the kitchen has the most beautifully pungent aroma, too!

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