Recipe: Duck Fat Fries

Last night I was feeling a little lazy so I decided to whip up some homemade BBQ sauce and throw it on a bunch of chicken wings we got from our farmer’s market. And what to go with the wings? Well, nothing goes better with chicken wings than a side of french fries.

How to cook the fries was the question. I know I didn’t want to go buy a bag of frozen fries (yuck) and I’ve tried baking cut up, fry-sized potatoes (they didn’t turn out very well). The only option left was to fry them. But what to fry them in?

The last thing you want to do is eat potatoes that were fried in vegetable oil. When potatoes are fried in things like vegetable oil, canola oil or even olive oil they tend to lean heavily on the unhealthy side. Even more unfortunate, pretty much all restaurants and fast food chains fry their french fries in some type of vegetable oil.

All vegetable oils are highly industrially processed, rancid, denatured oils and contain polyunsaturated Omega-6 fatty acids. These fatty acids are very unstable therefore very unsafe to use at high temperatures.

Side note: Olive oil is a very fragile oil so is not recommended to be used for high heat cooking. When used at high heat, the oil will oxidize and potentially release free radicals. Olive oil is best when made in homemade dressings or a light saute.

our yummy wings

When you fry something you want to use a healthy, stable fat that will not oxidize. Stable fats would include tallow, lard, coconut oil, and duck fat.  Some people may argue that using peanut oil is safe but because they contain very high amounts of Omega-6 fatty acids, it’s wise to only use peanut oil sparingly.

Starchy foods (i.e., potato chips, french fries) that are heated or processed at a high temperature can release a carcinogen called acrylamide. Note: Even if the chips are baked, the potato is still exposed to very high heats which releases the carcinogen. Please keep in mind that acrylamide can still be formed when frying in healthy oils like tallow, duck fat, lard and coconut oil.

This is why frying your own french fries is the best way because you can control the heat (generally want a medium to low heat) so you minimize your chance of overheating the potatoes. You can also control the quality of ingredients you use like having organic potatoes and high quality sea salt. Potatoes are grown in the ground therefore more exposed to all kinds of chemicals that may be present in the soil. Organic potatoes are highly recommended over conventional and the organic ones are known to have a way better flavor.

Unfortunately tallow can not be found in a supermarket but can be found from a local farmer. If you don’t have a local farmer you may need to find a trustworthy source online and mail-order it.

I decided to use duck fat because I read on numerous websites they made excellent fries and that duck fat is highly prized in Europe for frying potatoes. I actually ended up finding the duck fat at my local Whole Foods, believe it or not! I researched the farm it came from and although there were a few things I was finicky about, I knew it was the best alternative to vegetable oils. It also resulted in some delicious tasting fries.

I do want to state that fats like tallow, lard and duck fat are more expensive then your general bottle of vegetable oil. This one of the biggest reasons why so many restaurant and fast food chains use this oil to cook with. The benefits of the healthy fats outweigh the few extra dollars you may spend when buying them instead of the few dollars you may save when buying unhealthy vegetable oils.  So don’t be sticker shocked when you see the price of quality tallow, lard or duck fat!

Duck fat fries

Ingredients: (serves 2-3 people)

• 2-4 organic yukon gold potatoes
• sea salt
• duck fat or tallow

Directions:

1. Cut potatoes into favored thickness
2. Grab a small sauce pan and add some duck fat to it (duck fat and tallow are solid at room temperature so you’ll just want to take a spoon and dig out a chunk of fat)
3. Turn the stove on medium heat and let the fat melt. You want enough to cover the height of the potato
4. Add small amount of potatoes (enough to fill the bottom of the pan but not too much to crowd the potatoes)
5. The potatoes will sizzle and you’ll want to let them sit for 5-7 minutes or until golden brown
6. Take the golden fries out of the pan and set them on a dish. While hot, add sea salt 
7. Repeat steps until you’re done with all the potatoes

Voila! Delicious, sinless french fries.

Until next time,
Loriel – Healthy Roots, Happy Soul

Don’t know how to find grass-fed animals and raw milk? Click here!

Yesterday after writing my review on the movie Food Inc., a dear friend of ours commented saying he was looking into purchasing a 1/4 of a grass-fed cow and I was so ecstatic to hear it! It made me reflect back to the time when I was trying to source grass-fed animals and I quickly realized I needed to dedicate a post on two very important and helpful websites: EatWild.com and RealMilk.com

Eat Wild.com
This website is an amazing tool for the new real food eater because one of the biggest obstacles is sourcing a legitimate, sustainable farmer that produces happy, healthy animals. Finding pastured meat is also one of the most important aspects of eating the right way. According to eatwild.com, in 2009 a study was done jointly by the USDA and researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina comparing grain-fed (CAFO) beef to grass-fed beef. This is what they concluded-

Grass-fed beef is:

1. Lower in total fat
2. Higher in beta-carotene
3. Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
4. Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
5. Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium
6. Higher in total omega-3s
7. A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
8. Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
9. Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)
10. Lower in the “bad” saturated fat higher in the “good” unsaturated

When you decide to make your first purchase of a pastured animal you want to make sure the animal is “grass-finished.” Grass-finished means exactly how it reads… it’s finished on grass. Some farmer’s have their cows on pastures for most of the time but then at the end they put them on grain. Putting the cows on grain can significantly reduce the CLA which is a known cancer fighter. It’s also important to make sure the cows aren’t fed any GMO corn or soy. These are bad, bad, bad and you want to avoid them like the plague!

Real Milk.com
I love me some cold raw milk. Yesterday I opened a jug of new milk and it was one of the freshest milks I’ve ever tasted… in my life! I poured some milk to have with a Jovial cookie but the milk was so good I hesitated not eating the cookie because I wanted to savor the creamy, wholesome milk that I had in my mouth. Oh it was so good… *day dreaming* Most people can’t really tell the difference when I let them try the raw milk but I bet if I were to put a glass of pasteurized milk and raw milk in front of them, didn’t tell which one was which, asked which one was better, they’d pick the raw milk- hands down.

Sourcing raw milk varies from state to state. In California, raw milk is legal and I can go to my farmer’s market or a local health food store down the road to pick some up. In Florida, it is illegal to purchase raw milk for human consumption. When I first sourced raw milk while I was living in Florida we had to talk in code language. See, in Florida raw milk can be sold in stores only for pet consumption. The person I purchased the milk from told me she used to have cows of her own but they ended up having babies or something so she quit producing raw milk. She told me all her two-legged friends were upset and dependent on the milk so she sourced from a small farm a little north of where we lived. 

It can be a little time consuming, frustrating and overwhelming trying to find the right source when you start your real food journey but I guarantee with these two website it can help drastically. Keep in mind, people drives hundreds of miles to source their meat and dairy products so don’t be hesitant if you have to drive an hour away to get your food. It’s all worth it in the end and if you have children, make it a day and include them on the journey. When you get to the farm you can ask the farmer to show you and the kids around (you should do this any way before you purchase meat so you can make sure everything is up to your standards). I guarantee your children will enjoy seeing all the animals and it will make an everlasting impression on their lives.

Click here for grass-fed animals
Click here for grass-fed, raw dairy

Until next time,
Loriel – Healthy Roots, Happy Soul

photo credit

No excuses. Just a case of what your priority is.

How many hours a week do you spend watching TV? playing video games?

How many hours a week do you spend on Facebook?

How many hours a week do you spend on your phone?

How many new pairs of shoes do you buy in a month?

How much money do you spend on material things a month?

How many times do you go out to eat in a month?

If you spend a lot of time doing these things then you have no excuse to say that 1) you do not have time to eat healthy and 2)  you do not have the money.

When I was listening to Joel Salatin speak on the first day of the Real Food Summit he got asked if people could really afford to eat healthy.

He started by saying if he went into someones house he shouldn’t expect to see (if they couldn’t afford eating real food) a new TV, people magazine, numerous DVDs, snickers, frozen food, and he continues to name all these items making a valid point-


“People don’t bat an eye at taking the 6-year-old child 3 hours away to a hockey or soccer tournament. But, [they] have a terrible time thinking that they can actually spend an extra two bucks on dinner. And all I’m suggesting is that for most people, it’s just a matter of priority. If you really want to eat like this, you can.” – Joel Salatin in his interview

Which brings me to why I was inspired to write this post.

Last night I cooked a meal for 3 adults and a baby (who eats like an adult) and I was curious to how much this meal cost me. This meal fed us all generously and we still had a little left over mashed potatoes and veggies. Note: all these items are grown sustainably and are free of any type of pesticides, chemical fertilizers etc. So here is what we had and what I paid for them-

Grass-fed skirt steak- $15

Mashed potatoes- $2 for a 2lb bag of yukon gold potatoes

A medley of carrots, cauliflower & broccoli- $5 for all 3

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Grand total- $22.00

Spending $22 for this meal to feed 4 mouths was a pretty good cost. Don’t you think? Considering all the nutrient dense foods we had. Then, it made me think… What would a meal cost us if we all went to Mcdonalds instead?

Say we bought 3 burger meals (you know with the fries and drink) and a happy meal. Let’s just round the number and give the meals an average of $5 each.

3 burgers with fries and drinks- $5 x 3 = $15

Happy meal- $5

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Grand total- $20

Wow.. so the difference is clearly not that big. Even if you did want to save that extra $2, what would you really gain? 

Your health? Most definitely not… Mcdonald’s (along with other fast food chains) is probably one of the reasons why America has such an obesity epidemic. Plus, what about your health years from now? All the hospital bills you’ll end up paying because of all the chronic diseases you accumulate? Not to mention all those prescription drugs (because of your chronic diseases) you’ll be hooked on and paying for the rest of your life.


Your time (with family) since you don’t have to cook, find a farmer’s market or go to the grocery store? Not so fast. Maybe you do get more time, but what is the quality of it? What is your definition of family time? Eating in the car on the go? Eating in Mcdonald’s and letting the little ones play in the jungle gym? What about the special moments to be had at the dinner table? What about the lessons your kids could be learning by helping you cooking? Or learning how to choose what type of tomato is best?

There is nothing more liberating, peaceful, and gratifying then spending your Sunday morning with your family outdoors walking from farm-stand to farm-stand deciding what type of foods will be on the menu for the week and greeting the farmer’s that grew the food with a smile.

I constitue that right there as quality time spent with the family. Not only are you out moving around, you are absorbing the wonderful atmosphere, you are potentially teaching a lesson about real food, you are learning about real food and all of this will come in handy years from now when your child is on their own.

I mean, what do you really want your child to remember from his childhood? Days spent on the go, eating fast food, never enjoying a home cooked meal, playing video games inside all day? Or days spent learning, experiencing, meals cooked at home with love, the whole family sitting at the dinner table?

All I’m trying to get at is it is possible to eat real food and not spend a lot of money. It’s just deciding what number priority it is on your list? Does it come before the material things or after?

After all, the best things do happen at home.

Until next time,
Loriel – Healthy Roots, Happy Soul


photo credit

This post is part of: Fight Back Friday, Monday Mania, Real Food Wednesday

The Real Food Summit and What I’ve learned so far

Right now on the web there is something called The Real Food Summit that is being held from July 8-July 16. It is a FREE online event hosted by Sean Croxton from the Underground Wellness. This online conference has a collection of Twenty-nine farmers, nutritionists, and bloggers that will teach us how Just Eating Real Food is best for not only our health, but the health of the soil, the plants, the animals, and the future of our planet.

I’ve been listening for the past 3 days and it has been AMAZING. You can’t deny that there are so many different conflicting information about what is the healthiest, what type of foods we should eat, and what causes food allergies. With this fantastic lineup of speakers you can surely get some of the answers to the questions you’ve always had lingering in your mind.

I encourage you to sign up  for the conference because it is free and nowhere can you get such amazing, true information. Some of the world’s leading authorities on health, whole foods and sustainable agriculture are speaking and you most definitely don’t want to miss it.

Here is the full schedule:

Some of the things I’ve learned so far:

SUGAR, FRUITS-

• We are feeding our babies way too big of portions when it comes to fruits. For example, us eating one banana is equivalent to giving a 25lb baby 2-3 bananas. That’s insane when you really think of it!
• Fruits used to only be available for 6-12 weeks of the year and were picked right away when in season. Now because of hybridization and our sweet tooth, we have engineered fruit to be more sweeter, have longer seasons and withstand being able to be transported from one country to another.
• Agave nectar is NOT a good sweetener

 BEEF, CHICKEN, PIG-

• Grass-finished beef is what you should look for because a cow finished on grass has higher CLA
• There is a higher amount of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) found in grass finished beef 
• CLA is the number one anti-carcinogenic (meaning it fights cancer)
• CLA is depleted just after 14 days of grain feeding
• Vegetarian diets are inappropriate for chickens and pigs because they are omnivores
• Free-range in USDA terms means the animal can move all it’s limbs

 FISH, VITAMIN D, MERCURY-

• There is an exaggerated risk with mercury and consumption of fish because the role of selenium is ignored
• Selenium which is found is cold water fatty fish binds to potentially dangerous mercury and forms a new substance. When the mercury is bound to the selenium it is difficult to absorb and cannot bind to our tissues (which is why people say to not eat fish because of the mercury)
• In essence, the selenium prevents the oxidative brain damage that has been associated with mercury ingestion. So, eat your fish!
• Eating fish that have a higher level of mercury than selenium (tarpon, pilot whale meat, some sharks, marlin, swordfish) so the mercury may be a concern. But most popular fish have more selenium than mercury so it is not going to be an issue in terms of human health
• No other omega-6, omega-3 fatty acids (arachiodonic acid & DHA) are selectively chosen to transfer over to the placenta
• DHA and arachidonic acid are the most abundant fats in the brain- this means pastured eggs & fish are beneficial to eat because they support the health of your brain!
• Fish only consist of 9% of our dietary intake of PCB’s and dioxins
• Highest dietary sources PCB’s and dioxins are found in dairy, vegetables, beef, chicken, pork (industrially raised)
• Vitamin D can be absorbed by the sun but people who suffer from obesity or inflammation have a decreased conversion from sunlight to vitamin D
• Fish is the highest source of natural vitamin D

  GMO–

• 88% of corn is GM in the U.S. and 94% of soybeans are GM in the U.S.
• The vast majority of infant formula in the U.S. is from cows treated with the bovine growth hormone or it has genetically modified corn solids or sweeteners
• Soy in infant formula is also GMO

 RAW MILK-

• Pasteurized milk is NOT a good source of calcium because of the phosphate enzyme that is completely denatured due to pasteurization. Phosphate helps activate the calcium bank which allows it to take calcium in and out of the body when needed. Without the phosphate the availability of calcium drops and the calcium is no longer bioavailable.
• Phosphate is present in raw milk thus increasing bone density which has been reported by many consumers

Don’t miss out on this one-time event! Sign up here

Until next time,
Loriel – Healthy Roots, Happy Soul

This blog post is part of: Real Food Wednesday

What does the word organic mean to you?

What does the word organic mean to you?

Personally to me, organic means a food has been grown exactly as nature has intended (i.e., no use of chemicals, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics- nada! Just the soil, water, sun, and animal to fertilize). It means something is whole, fresh, unprocessed and simple. In my head the idea of organic means small family farms passionately orchestrating the symbiotic relationship between the land and the animals with the end result of creating nutrient dense foods that nourish the surrounding communities. Organic (in regards to meat) means the same thing as pastured- animals get to satisfy their innate desires (such as a chicken pecking in the grass and cleaning up after the herbivores). To put it simple, organic means natural and natural foods is what we should be consuming.

So why the need for calling something organic? And if you agree with me on the fact that organic means natural then how come if you walk into your local Whole Foods there is an organic microwavable TV dinner with a list of ingredients totaling more than how many different pieces of food are in that plastic container (not to mention they are ingredients you can not even pronounce)?

The meaning of the word “organic” has been completely changed and the pureness of what organic should mean has been stripped.

In normal supermarkets a consumer has no sense of connectivity to the place where their food has come from. All a consumer sees when picking up a package of chicken breasts are the wordy labels including quantity of chicken, barcodes, and price. In his book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Michael Pollen states, “One of the key innovations of organic food was to allow some more information to pass along the food chain between the producer and the consumer- an implicit snatch of narrative along with the number.”

When people buy chicken say from Whole Foods, that has some little description about where the chicken was raised or how it was able to roam freely, they almost feel better about themselves because they become more rooted with the environment. Almost like how it’s a good feeling to buy directly from a farmer because you can put a face to your food. But can you put a face to the chicken you buy at Whole Foods? Nope. So how much of that little story written on the package can actually be trusted?

Take Rosie the organic free-range chicken. Pollen talks about his visit to an industrial organic poultry farm in Petaluma, California to meet Rosie the organic free-range chicken. Just by the name of her, you automatically imagine her running around outside, doing what her chicken-self wants to do with a big barn and rolling hills as her backdrop. I mean, that’s what free-range means right? Turns out, Rosie the chicken is living far from that. Here is the description of Pollen’s tour at Petaluma Poultry.

“The chicken houses don’t resemble a farm so much as military barracks: a dozen long, low-slung sheds with giant fans at either ends. I donned what looked like a hooded white hazmat suit- since the birds receive no antibiotics yet live in close confinement, the company is ever worried about infection, which could doom a whole houes overnight-and stepped inside. Twenty thousand birds moved away from me as one, like a ground-hugging white cloud, clucking softly, The air was warm and humid and smelled powerfully of ammonia; the fumes caught in my throat. Twenty thousand is a lot of chickens and they formed a gently undulating white carpet that stretched nearly the length of a football field…. and did pretty much everything chickens do except step outside the little doors located at either end of the shed.

Compared to conventional chickens, I was told, these organic birds have it pretty good: They get a few more square inches of living space per bird (thouhg it was hard to see how they could be packed together much more tightly), and because there are no hormones or antiobiotics in their feed to accelerate growth, they get to live a few days longer. Though under circumstances it’s not clear that a longer life is necessarily a boon. 

Running along the entire length of each shed was a grassy yard maybe fifteen feet wide, not nearly big enough accomodate all twenty thousand birds inside should the group ever decide to take the air en masse. Which, truth be told, is the last thing the farm managers want to see happen, since these defenseless, crowded, and genetically identical birds are exquisitely vulnerable to infection. This is one of the larger ironies of growing organic food in an inudstiral system: It is even more precarious that a conventional industrial system. But the federal rules say an organic chicken should have “access to the outdoors,” and Supermarket Pastoral imagines it, so Petaluma Poultry provides the doors and the yard and everyone keeps their fingers crossed.”

He went on to say because the food and water are inside the flocks remain inside. During the first 5 weeks of their life the doors remain closed so the birds become well settled into their lives inside that they see no reason to venture out to an unfamiliar world. The birds are slaughtered at 7 weeks of age so apparently the free range aspect of their lives isn’t really much of a lifestyle as it is an option. Pollen ended the sub-chapter with him stepping outside and waiting by the chicken door to see if any chickens would take that option and stroll down the ramp to the freshly mowed yard. He waited and no chickens came. The space is there, not for the chicken’s purpose, but to honor something that is now taken as a joke. Note: Pollen’s book was published in 2006 so there may be changes to the way the birds are living… but I highly doubt it.

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Going back to the word organic… It’s amazing once you do your research you come to realize what you read is not necessarily true because Rosie indeed doesn’t live the life she claims to live. Remember, to read it, is not to believe it but to see it, is to believe it- especially when it comes to your food.

One more reason to do everything in your power to find local farmers who’s fundamentals are built on the perfect symbiotic relationship between the land and the animals. Because the health of the animals determines the health of you. By finding those farmers you can eliminate all those perfectly designed phrases, stories and labels on food that may confuse you into believing what you are about to consume is indeed organic… or in other words all natural. Since when were organic thin mint cookies all natural? Does someone know of a tree that produces thin mints out of the ground? If so, please point me into that direction.

So what does the word organic mean to you now? And what does it mean to you now when you pick up that “free range” chicken, “free range” eggs or the carton of organic milk that labels their cows “graze on green pastures.” How long do they actually get to graze on those pastures? Or are they even green?

Until next time,
Loriel – Healthy Roots, Happy Soul