Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Give the Gift of Grassfed Meat–Not Candy–for Valentine’s Day!
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Heart-shaped measuring cup for romantic scoops on Valentine's Day!
It has long been a custom to give your loved one candy as a gift for Valentine’s Day. A very profitable custom, with a whole industry built around it. Boxes of sugar-soaked chocolates are particularly popular. I used to do this, until I learned a lot more about nutrition.
I submit that it is not romantic to give your loved one an overdose of addictive, harmful sugar.
Processed sugar is bad for people, period. Grassfed meat is one the most nutritious foods you can eat, improving every bodily function, and providing extra energy and vitality.
So what do I give instead? I give a gift of delicious grassfed meat, with a bit of a Valentine’s touch. One year I had the butcher carve a beautiful grassfed rib steak for two into a heart shape, which was especially delicious. The next year I trimmed two strip loin steaks so they formed a heart shape, and held them together with skewers made of Rosemary branches. The branches provided a wonderful rosemary flavor to the meat. The next year we had a heart shaped sirloin steak that was covered with a red marinade, made of pureed tomatoes and peppers, with paprika and other powdered red peppers. So delicious!
This year, I am going to carve some heart shaped depressions in a grassfed tenderloin roast, and fill them with finely chopped mushrooms sautéed in plenty of butter. I will then cover it with a homemade mushroom butter before roasting. I think that will be delicious, also.
It is also a custom to go out to a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, which is a great benefit to the restaurant industry. It is almost impossible to get a great real food meal in a restaurant anymore, so we enjoy a much better meal at home. I find great joy in cooking the Valentine’s dinner myself, using the money we would otherwise spend in a restaurant to buy a special cut of meat for the occasion.
We will also have a special side dish along with the steak—my version of Jansson’s Temptation, a magnificent dish of finely chopped potatoes cooked with onions sautéed in butter, anchovies, more butter, and rich cream. There is so much delicious animal fat in this dish that we have absolutely no effect from all those carbohydrates. I will use a heart-shaped metal measuring cup to serve portions of this dish. I put this recipe on Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s outstanding blog. Here is the link to the recipe: Christmas Side Dish Jansson’s Temptation for the Holidays
Finally, we will have more mushrooms, sautéed in plenty of real butter. You cannot have too many sautéed mushrooms. Or too much butter.
If this seems over the top and sappy, it is, but it is also a lot of fun. And so delicious! What can I say, I am a romantic. But my wife does not mind. She is also a romantic. Lucky for me.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday, and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.