Monday, June 18, 2012

Beef heart jerky is yummy!

Recently I made beef jerky from beef heart. Wow, is it good! It's the best jerky I've ever had. I marinate it in red wine vinegar with cayenne pepper, cumin, salt and pepper. I dehydrate it in my crappy Ronco dehydrator that works great despite being the most low-budge, low-tech dehydrator you can buy. Jerky isn't cooked. The heart is raw when I place it on the dehydrator racks. Mmm mmm good!

Here's the recipe:
marinate 3lbs heart as slices in:
- 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon cumin
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 teaspoons black pepper for at least twelve hours
Then dehydrate!

Recently, on recommendation from a random man I was talking to at Whole Foods, I went to Santa Cruz Market. Santa Cruz Market has been there as long as I can remember. I remember it from way back as a little girl. They still have the G & H Blue Chip Stamps sign on the side of the store. Do you remember blue chip stamps? That was a looong time ago. You got stamps with every purchase to put into a book. Once you had enough stamps, you could order something from a catalog. The more stamps the better the thing you could order.

Santa Cruz Market is now an ethnic grocery. Many of the items are in Spanish or bilingual, including the meats. I asked the butcher if they had heart. He didn't know what that was so I pointed to my own heart. Oh yeah, we have that! He sold me "Corazon de res" for $2.59 a pound. I pay $8 a pound when I buy the grass fed stuff on the Internet. I can't even find it anywhere else.

They had all kinds of meat there. Pork belly, pork liver, even goat. They probably had beef brains, but I didn't see any. I think Santa Cruz has become my meat market now. I know grassfed is better for you, but I can get organ meat and specialty meat. Grassfed meat is only available as chuck roast, ribeye and NY strips and ground, which I imagine is just the chuck, ribeye and NY steaks they couldn't sell, and it's minimum $7 a pound and up to $25 a pound. You have to buy CAFO meat if you want organs and any thing else.

Saturday, June 02, 2012

I'm tiny and I've completed the PCT

Look how tiny I am.


This is me on top of Mt. Baden-Powell. I hiked 89 miles on the PCT Memorial Day weekend. Within those 89 miles were 20 miles I hadn't hiked before. With those 20 miles complete, I have officially walked every step of the trail.