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Uncle Dave's Cow: And Other Whole Animals My Freezer Has Known
A guide to sourcing, storing, and preparing healthy, locally raised meat Demystifies and explains the process for acquiring non-commerical sources of meat
Written for urban dwellers who want to eat fresh, sustainable, and healthy meat like they do back on the farm
Features 45 original recipes for beef, pork, goat, and lamb
As folks like Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin have been preaching for years, commercial meat production isn't good for the animals, our bodies, or the planet. Yet the organic, sustainably-raised pork, beef, and lamb one finds at supermarkets and specialty stores are often pricey, and the marketing labels can be beyond confusing. What if you just want to eat meat as healthfully and enjoyably as possible, all while sticking to a budget?
Uncle Dave's Cow: And Other Whole Animals My Freezer Has Known shows you how to find and evaluate local farmers, form a buying group, plan out cuts and quantities, store and preserve your purchases, and dish up an entire animal one part at a time. Author Leslie Miller, a busy Seattle mother who hails from a long lineage of Central Washington farmers, shows readers how to go whole hog or cow, or goat, or lamb, for that matter as she takes the reader along on her own educational journey, from the moment she locates and buys her first pig, all the way to her last forkful of tender pulled pork. Miller explores local farmers markets and 4H fairs, talks to dedicated farmers and butchers, and explains how even her children connect to the cow in the freezer. By sharing her whole-food experiences, readers also will connect to the source of their food, while her 45 original recipes show them how to cook mouthwatering meals from the abundance of whole animals.
Written with urban charm and a knife-sharp sense of humor, Uncle Dave's Cow is a friendly and accessible guide to sourcing and eating local meat for parents, foodies, and everyone who wants to learn how to be a well-prepared consumer and cook through to the bone.
Leslie Miller is the co-author with James Beard-nominated chef Ethan Stowell of Ethan Stowell's New Italian Kitchen, the recipe editor for From Tree to Table (Skipstone, 2011), and the lead author behind the forthcoming In the Kitchen with the Fish Guys, a seafood cookbook. A frequent contributor to NW Palate Magazine, her food reviews, articles, and features have also appeared in Beer West magazine, Time Out New York, and Redbook. The "Uncle Dave" of her book is a real, live uncle who is a third-generation Central Washington farmer. Miller lives in Seattle, Washington, with her family.
Written for urban dwellers who want to eat fresh, sustainable, and healthy meat like they do back on the farm
Features 45 original recipes for beef, pork, goat, and lamb
As folks like Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin have been preaching for years, commercial meat production isn't good for the animals, our bodies, or the planet. Yet the organic, sustainably-raised pork, beef, and lamb one finds at supermarkets and specialty stores are often pricey, and the marketing labels can be beyond confusing. What if you just want to eat meat as healthfully and enjoyably as possible, all while sticking to a budget?
Uncle Dave's Cow: And Other Whole Animals My Freezer Has Known shows you how to find and evaluate local farmers, form a buying group, plan out cuts and quantities, store and preserve your purchases, and dish up an entire animal one part at a time. Author Leslie Miller, a busy Seattle mother who hails from a long lineage of Central Washington farmers, shows readers how to go whole hog or cow, or goat, or lamb, for that matter as she takes the reader along on her own educational journey, from the moment she locates and buys her first pig, all the way to her last forkful of tender pulled pork. Miller explores local farmers markets and 4H fairs, talks to dedicated farmers and butchers, and explains how even her children connect to the cow in the freezer. By sharing her whole-food experiences, readers also will connect to the source of their food, while her 45 original recipes show them how to cook mouthwatering meals from the abundance of whole animals.
Written with urban charm and a knife-sharp sense of humor, Uncle Dave's Cow is a friendly and accessible guide to sourcing and eating local meat for parents, foodies, and everyone who wants to learn how to be a well-prepared consumer and cook through to the bone.
Leslie Miller is the co-author with James Beard-nominated chef Ethan Stowell of Ethan Stowell's New Italian Kitchen, the recipe editor for From Tree to Table (Skipstone, 2011), and the lead author behind the forthcoming In the Kitchen with the Fish Guys, a seafood cookbook. A frequent contributor to NW Palate Magazine, her food reviews, articles, and features have also appeared in Beer West magazine, Time Out New York, and Redbook. The "Uncle Dave" of her book is a real, live uncle who is a third-generation Central Washington farmer. Miller lives in Seattle, Washington, with her family.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 17, 2013
After reading Uncle Dave's Cow, I'm adequately equipped, confident and perhaps even daring enough to purchase whole animals; at least in share sizes that will fit in an apartment freezer.
A fare warning to friends and family, I'm looking for folks to go halvsies (or quartersies or eightsies) on a whole beef (~500 lbs?!) or whole hog (~125 lbs). I'm even considering venturing solo into unexplored territory of whole goat (~22 lbs) or whole lamb (~35lbs).
Great book for becoming familiar with: the lingo (how the animal was raised, breeds, slaughtering methods, each animal's primals and the subsequent finished cuts); what to expect when ordering; how much meat you'll receive and freezer space you'll need to allocate; tips for success; and even preparation ideas (recipes!).
I really enjoyed Leslie Miller's pragmatism, spirit of adventure and light, slightly self-deprecating humor that seasons every page. Favorite quotes abound but the following series of paragraphs at the mid-point of the book spoke to me, giving me hope, as a former country-girl turned city-dweller that is now trying to combine the best of both worlds (in urban farming and urban homesteading) to become healthier, reconnected with nature, place and community, and more self-sufficient in the process:
"For me, this started as an adventure and grew into a way of eating that made me feel good. And along the way, something curious happened. I started making jam. I picked tomatoes and dried them in the oven. I rendered huge pots of lard and made delicious pastry with it and 'then' made pies, pies full of blackberries that I picked before pulling the canes out of my rosebushes.
"To be honest, it scared me a little. It was like living with my fixie-riding Portland doppelgänger. I nearly knitted. And although I joyfully made fun of myself while I was doing it, I also recognized that buying my lambs and goats and parting out the big animals and figuring out how to cook them in diverse and delicious ways had made me both thriftier and more homespun, in the same way that someone who installs her own light fixture feels suddenly handy.
"You see, I grew up in a house with a 'fruit room,' the place where canned peaches floated in a cloudy syrup and jars of pickles stood at attention. I ate homemade peach leather dried in the Yakima sun and dehydrated pears picked off our trees. 'Preserving' held no artisanal cachet for me, new as it was for many of my friends. But Uncle Dave's cow led me somewhere new, to a place where I received a pure kind of joy from taking the food growing and living around me and using it to its fullest and most delicious extent. I could always cook, but this was less mastering something than letting go. It wasn't 'local' or 'sustainable' or 'green.' It wasn't a buzzword. It was just good."
A fare warning to friends and family, I'm looking for folks to go halvsies (or quartersies or eightsies) on a whole beef (~500 lbs?!) or whole hog (~125 lbs). I'm even considering venturing solo into unexplored territory of whole goat (~22 lbs) or whole lamb (~35lbs).
Great book for becoming familiar with: the lingo (how the animal was raised, breeds, slaughtering methods, each animal's primals and the subsequent finished cuts); what to expect when ordering; how much meat you'll receive and freezer space you'll need to allocate; tips for success; and even preparation ideas (recipes!).
I really enjoyed Leslie Miller's pragmatism, spirit of adventure and light, slightly self-deprecating humor that seasons every page. Favorite quotes abound but the following series of paragraphs at the mid-point of the book spoke to me, giving me hope, as a former country-girl turned city-dweller that is now trying to combine the best of both worlds (in urban farming and urban homesteading) to become healthier, reconnected with nature, place and community, and more self-sufficient in the process:
"For me, this started as an adventure and grew into a way of eating that made me feel good. And along the way, something curious happened. I started making jam. I picked tomatoes and dried them in the oven. I rendered huge pots of lard and made delicious pastry with it and 'then' made pies, pies full of blackberries that I picked before pulling the canes out of my rosebushes.
"To be honest, it scared me a little. It was like living with my fixie-riding Portland doppelgänger. I nearly knitted. And although I joyfully made fun of myself while I was doing it, I also recognized that buying my lambs and goats and parting out the big animals and figuring out how to cook them in diverse and delicious ways had made me both thriftier and more homespun, in the same way that someone who installs her own light fixture feels suddenly handy.
"You see, I grew up in a house with a 'fruit room,' the place where canned peaches floated in a cloudy syrup and jars of pickles stood at attention. I ate homemade peach leather dried in the Yakima sun and dehydrated pears picked off our trees. 'Preserving' held no artisanal cachet for me, new as it was for many of my friends. But Uncle Dave's cow led me somewhere new, to a place where I received a pure kind of joy from taking the food growing and living around me and using it to its fullest and most delicious extent. I could always cook, but this was less mastering something than letting go. It wasn't 'local' or 'sustainable' or 'green.' It wasn't a buzzword. It was just good."
October 31, 2013
I found this book to be pretty redundant and much of the first half of the book was unnecessary. The author makes it clear that she's not a fan of all of Michael Pollen's ideas because they are too hard to sustain. Granted, for the average person with an average budget, it's a bit much to follow everything that he talks about, but the way that the author dismissed him grated on me. In addition, she dislikes Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" because as she puts it, Barbara's "lush, royalty income" allowed her to experiment with the local eating. Correct. Barbara Kingsolver is a highly successful author who does have royalty income. And that income allowed her to do an experiment so she could write another book about it and get more royalty income. Just the way that the author words her distaste of Barbara's thoughts smacks faintly of jealousy.
However, while the author scorns Pollen & Kingsolver's high ideals and tries to paint herself as a normal person like the rest of us, she has her moments where I want to punch her for her self righteousness. The most infuriating incident was when she described a busy time in her life where she found a package of hot dogs in her fridge that she gave to her kids for dinner. Her boy asked if it was made from "their" meat and she says, "Ah the guilt!... I was a terrible mother." She then says she "took the time to sit down and look him in the eye. 'It was made by a Seattle company, though...'". After that, she comes to her mommy realization that it's ok that not every piece of meat on their plate came from their stock, because as long as she got her kid to think about where his meat comes from it's ok. I can't even tell you how irritated I was by this whole scenario.
The second half of the book is better because it gets down to the practical stuff-- what types of cuts you can get and recipes to make with them. There is definitely good information in here and it's what saved this book from getting only one star. As someone who lives in the Seattle area where the author lives, it would have been nice to have a list of local farms or farmers that she has used or likes from her research. For heavens sake, she talks enough about how many places she's visited that she could have passed on that information. Personally, I'm lucky to have a local butcher in Auburn, WA who is beyond fantastic and who also sells whole butchered animals. Should you be looking for someone in this area, I highly recommend the Proper British Bacon & Meats company.
Honestly, this book could have been said in exactly one sentence: Buy a whole cow (or maybe a half or a quarter), stick it in a big freezer, then thaw and cook as wanted. I did not need to waste 223 pages of my time to figure that one out myself.
However, while the author scorns Pollen & Kingsolver's high ideals and tries to paint herself as a normal person like the rest of us, she has her moments where I want to punch her for her self righteousness. The most infuriating incident was when she described a busy time in her life where she found a package of hot dogs in her fridge that she gave to her kids for dinner. Her boy asked if it was made from "their" meat and she says, "Ah the guilt!... I was a terrible mother." She then says she "took the time to sit down and look him in the eye. 'It was made by a Seattle company, though...'". After that, she comes to her mommy realization that it's ok that not every piece of meat on their plate came from their stock, because as long as she got her kid to think about where his meat comes from it's ok. I can't even tell you how irritated I was by this whole scenario.
The second half of the book is better because it gets down to the practical stuff-- what types of cuts you can get and recipes to make with them. There is definitely good information in here and it's what saved this book from getting only one star. As someone who lives in the Seattle area where the author lives, it would have been nice to have a list of local farms or farmers that she has used or likes from her research. For heavens sake, she talks enough about how many places she's visited that she could have passed on that information. Personally, I'm lucky to have a local butcher in Auburn, WA who is beyond fantastic and who also sells whole butchered animals. Should you be looking for someone in this area, I highly recommend the Proper British Bacon & Meats company.
Honestly, this book could have been said in exactly one sentence: Buy a whole cow (or maybe a half or a quarter), stick it in a big freezer, then thaw and cook as wanted. I did not need to waste 223 pages of my time to figure that one out myself.
November 20, 2013
I'm amazed by all the positive reviews for this book, since it does little more than repeat, ad nauseam, how to calculate the hanging weight vs. purchase price of an animal, or how to find or contact farmers who sell direct. I was hoping for more information about the actual use of an entire animal, how certain cuts might differ or be better suited to particular cooking techniques. But it became quickly clear that this book is more about hand-wringing over whether or not one is "sustainable enough". My housemate put it well - this is just enough crappy lifestyle book by some blogger, and not meant to be a practical guide.
April 22, 2013
I literally giggled my way through this book. Hands down, this is the best book for anyone looking to purchase meat in bulk and then figure out what in the world to do with it afterward. There are delicious recipes for beef, goat, pig and lamb, easy-to-understand description of cuts, and different places to buy whole animals!
And for the ladies out there, this is a great book for a guy to read if he loves to grill and cook!
And for the ladies out there, this is a great book for a guy to read if he loves to grill and cook!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews