Horse Meat

After reading on Serious Eats that a number of other vendors (Including Burger King and Ikea) have recalled their beef (including those delicious little meatballs!) after being found containing high percentages of horse meat. Here's the link which includes two other food-policy related highlights.

The article goes to state that they traced this meat back to a plant in Ireland. And I've decided, I don't want to eat meat that has to be "traced." I've been feeling removed from my food, and perhaps that is what has mostly sparked this desire to change what I'm eating. In my home, food is how we bond and care for one another. Its something personal and deeply engrained in tradition, and often times, you're only as good as the last meal you cooked. But the traditions we have are rooted in a time when we took care of our food and knew exactly where it came from. My grandmother in Croatia still tends her own chickens and grows her own potatoes and asparagus. When its time to you, you slaughter the hen and dig in the yard. Food didn't have a connecting flight with a 3 hour layover to get to your table; it was in your backyard.

Now I don't intend by any means to turn my tiny Manhattan apartment into a chicken coop, but I want to start relationships with the farmers. I met a man who raises cattle upstate, and he looked so proud as he spoke about his cows and the different cuts of meat he had brought with him to the farmer's market. There was no horse meat in his cooler.