Nose to tail eating

I have another couple of farmers lined up and hope to get out to see them in the next few weeks in the meantime I want to discuss other ways that can help make meat consumption more sustainable and affordable.

Apart from sourcing CICO meat what else can we do to help the environment and our impact on it?

I assert that the pinnacle of healthy eating includes meat in the diet. Being an animal lover I am tempted to be vegetarian but I also have a preference for a natural state of being and naturally humans are designed to eat meat.

However the modern western diet has gone too far and due to factory farming technology and practice the ready supply of meat has increased our consumption to unhealthy proportions. I would wager that a vegetarian diet despite having certain deficiencies is often healthier than the average Australian diet.

However I digress, the objective is to eat meat that is healthy for me and ease my conscience that the animal I am eating has not suffered unduly in it's lifetime.

If we eat smaller portions of meat then we keep the cost down or offset the increased cost of CICO meat, reduce our intake to a healthier level and slaughter less animals.

We can also use more of the whole animal, it's called nose to tail eating.

All the farmers I have spoken to so far have mentioned their desire for consumers to realise that farming is not sustainable if everyone wants to only eat the most choice cut of meat.

If you only want to eat the eye fillet or the porterhouse what happens to the rest of the animal? Currently a lot of animals are slaughtered for the popular cuts of meat and the rest if pulped for dog food or livestock feed. This is why farmers like Dan and the others whom I will soon feature prefer to sell packs of meat that include a bit of everything from eye fillet to sausages. This way less animals need to be killed to feed us and the overall price can come down.

As I have now ordered from Gippsland Lean Beef and will receive several packs of sausages I have been researching recipes. With winter rapidly bearing down upon us I am delighted in my findings.

• French Cassoulet - bean and sausage stew
• Bangers and Mash with Guinness sauce
• Rustic Italian style pasta with sausage, chilli and rocket
• Lasagne with added sausage
• Rice and sausage stuffed vegetables

Offal was never something that I readily accepted from a taste and texture point of view. However recent time in France and with my mother in law in England who is an amazing European style cook I discovered just how delicious it can be. I still haven't taken to brains but liver, hearts and kidney when cooked skillfully I find divine, high in iron and also very cheap.

Pate` is very easy to make and is one of the best ways to disguise liver. Recipe here. There are lots of wonderful seasonings that you can add to pate`, Google for more adventurous recipes. For instance this wonderful Julia Child recipe.

Chicken hearts barbecued on a skewer Brazilian style is surprisingly lovely, see pic above. Recipe here.

I love to cook any offal in this way:

Saute` onion in clarified butter, add fresh chopped rosemary and chopped bacon rashers and cook til' opaque, add chicken hearts or chopped liver and cook until just pink inside. Do not overcook or it will become rubbery. serve with crisp salad with some radicchio leaves is particularly nice.

I also once had an amazing dish of rabbit hearts in a delightful sherry cream sauce at Bar Lourinha in the city in Melbourne. I notice that they are currently serving pork neck, calf liver and oxtail and I guarantee you they all taste delicious.

Let's not forget the steak and kidney pie

We live in such a wasteful society and I find it incredibly sad that we 'waste' an animal's life often before and after death. It's not so hard to limit our wastefulness. Is it?