Realizing for years how bad the things they put in meat are for you, I turned a blind eye because having a food allergy to both nuts and lentils rules vegetarianism as a way of life out of the question for me.
Toying with the idea of organic meat, but never really take the plunge, it lingered in the metal long laundry list in the back of my head. Last weekend I decided to check out my very first butcher shop, and organic butcher shop at that!
It was amazing! It was one of those things in life when you think to yourself, "why on earth did I wait this long?" It was like discovering that if I really did take my purple puffer everyday I would be able to run and breath. It was that feeling that people with kids tell me they have after they look into their little ones eyes for the first time... but on that one I will just have to take their word on it for quite some time thank you.
I did the usual, two pounds of ground beef, two pounds of chicken wing drumets that I usually like to have handy, but then I asked one of the staff for his opinion on what type of sausage I should put in a soup that I was going to make.
A few weeks earlier I had been down at St. Lawrence Market, and the sausage lady gave me some fabulous sausage, but do you think I could remember the name?
Well, the butcher looked at me and then smiled. With the look in his eye and the smile on his face I knew in a heart beat that we are on the same page and I was about to learn something very very tasty...
He said, do you really want to know what I would suggest, prolonging the anticipation that was already building inside of me. I said, "what's that?" He then pointed to a blackened piece of something that use to belong to a very unlucky pig. I could not help but let out a "oh!"
He patiently explained to me that what I was looking at was something very beautiful indeed, it was a 12 hour smoked ham hock. So I'm thinking, burnt pig foot? He saw my hesitation and showed me to the sausage, and as he explained the different types I thought to myself, "Isn't this why you are here? To take chances, try something new? Did you really take two buses and a subway to come to a specialty butcher to buy ground beef and chicken??"
With that, I interrupted him and said, "Do you have a smaller hock?" He smiled and said, "Let me take a look."
I left with my burned (or badly singed at the least) pig foot, pick up some local veggies on the way home and set out to make some soup. Or should I say, create ... some soup.
It was a hit!! Oh my goodness! Based on this soup alone, I am now a butcher fan/groupie/junkie whatever label you want to slap on. This soup raised the bar on what I am capable of doing in the kitchen. Needless to say that I had a very happy hubby who said to me with the cutest glimmer in his eye, "Lunch tomorrow is going to be good!"
These are the moments when the sore feet from my concrete kitchen floor make it all worth while.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment