mmmmm....... tastes grassy

Mmmm grass. Pasture, in fact. Yummy.

I bet you've forgotten what steak tastes like. Real steak. Real pasture raised, grass fed and finished beef. Youknow, like the way things used to be before corporate farming pushed the overproduction of corn and corn by-products, and then corn-fed everything down our gullets. (That damn Michael Pollan has ruined my life. Well, he didn't actually ruin my life. He just brought some sharp focus to what we all already know about how we are, as he puts it, the real "Children of the Corn." I'm talking, of course, about his book "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Read it.)

For those of us who've actually spent time on an "old time" farm where pigs and chickens run free and clean up the left-overs in the field after harvest, we remember that cows are actually ruminants... i.e. they are not designed to eat corn. But eat corn is exactly what we force them to do in our industrial feed lots as we prepare them for slaughter. Well, Marin Sun Farms doesn't, and I'm lucky enough to live in the Bay Area where I have access to such beautiful things as fresh pasture raised chickens and humanely treated cows.

And before any of you start a hollerin' bout' bein a veggie......... well, I'm not going there in this post.
This post is about the most beefy, most real tastin' beef since them cowpokes drove 'em cross the ranges on horseback. Marin Sun Farms believes in sustainable farming. They produce the most egg-like eggs, the most beef-like beef. Well, here. Take a look.


A deep ruby red, even after cooked to medium-rare, a little brandy cream sauce, some fresh peas (we shelled them ourselves), potatoes and shiitake mushrooms sauted in duck fat, and a bottle of Sean Thackrey's exceptional Pinot Noir called "Andromeda," and it was a meal that was simple and as satisfing as any you're likely to have in this lifetime. If you don't have a bountiful supply of pasture raised products, well, you should. We all should. You should bitch and moan and not shop at any mega-mart that doesn't. And I don't mean just an "organic" label. In that case your cow was still probably trucked to a feed lot and force fed huge amounts of corn. Organic, yes, but corn none the less. Look for the words pasture raised, or pasture fed to ensure that you're getting real beef. Hey, you could even support one of them real family farms, as practically nobody but small family producers are even attempting to raise real beef.