washington Archives - Community Food Co-op

Welcome North Cascade Meats

by Melissa Arbiter, Meat Team

Enrique Barrau North Cascade Meats by grazing cows trees

We love doing business with other co-ops, and this new cooperative is bringing local, grass-fed beef to our stores. At left is Whatcom County farmer and cooperative member Enrique Barrau.

Local, grass-fed, and cooperatively owned—we're so happy it’s here!

Having lived in Whatcom County for the past eight years, I have developed a passion for learning where my food comes from. I prefer local over organic any day and, given the chance, I will take a drive out into the county to get a glimpse of where my food is grown. Before working for the Community Food Co-op and becoming the meat department manager at the Downtown store, I was always curious about how and where to get local beef. Driving around the county, I’ve seen many pastures dotted with happy cows, munching on grass.

The question for me has been: where can I buy the meat from these cattle?

Up until now, the Co-op has carried a small selection of frozen, local, grass-fed beef from Matheson Farms located near the Guide-Meridian on Smith Road. Having enough beef from one small, local farm to supply two busy stores is a stretch, which is why we mainly carry Country Natural Beef and Painted Hills Grass-Fed Beef. These are both excellent sources of delicious beef that satisfy our Meat Guarantee, but definitely not as local as I’d prefer.

Thankfully, we now have North Cascade Meats: A Farmer’s Cooperative. This farmer-owned-and-managed cooperative has begun work to establish a new USDA meat processing facility, in partnership with Del Fox Custom Meats in Stanwood, to service farmers in Island, Skagit, Snohomish, and Whatcom counties. They’ve already established the North Cascade Meats grass-fed brand in the region to provide their cooperative members with a marketing program offering an above-average return on their livestock. This means that those happy cows you see while enjoying pastoral views of the countryside may very well be what’s available on our shelves.

cows walking on grass by fence with mountains and trees in background

Barrau Farms offers lush pasture with a view that most any farmer (or cow) would envy.

North Cascade Meats is currently providing us with pasture-raised, grass-fed beef from two local farms: Forest Cattle Company in Skagit County and Barrau Farms in Whatcom County. As more farms join the North Cascade Meats cooperative, we’ll have more beef available. For the time being, what we have on our shelves from week to week will vary depending on how many cattle are processed from each farm.

So far the meat that has arrived is gorgeous and is competitively priced. Each cut is labeled with a “local” and “grass-fed” green sticker as well as a sticker noting which farm that particular cut came from. Looking for a particular cut? Just ask us at the meat counter!

Learn more at northcascademeats.com and forestcattle.com.

Grass-fed Beef

In general, grass-fed beef has a deeper, “beefier” flavor than its grain-finished counterparts. Nutritionally, it contains less saturated fat but more of those healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Typically, you’ll want to cook grass-fed meat less as it tends to be quite lean.

My favorite way to enjoy grass-fed steak? A nice ribeye, brought up to around room temp, seasoned liberally with salt and pepper, and placed in a rocket-hot cast iron pan with some fat (bacon grease, ghee, or coconut oil are all good choices). Sear both sides and when it’s about 10 degrees away from the desired doneness pull off the heat to rest, covered, for at least 8 minutes (this allows it to finish cooking and ensures all those tasty juices stay in the meat).

As always, your meat department experts love what they do and are more than willing to share cooking tips and ideas … just ask us!

raw steak with rosemary whole peppercorns garlic cloves salt

San Juan Island Sea Salt

sea salt maker building farmer on salt farm

Salt maker Brady Ryan collecting the harvest on his salt farm.

Photos by Dave Hanson

by Laura Steiger, Outreach Team

What do you get when you combine sea water, greenhouses, and sunshine? San Juan Island Sea Salt!

That’s what Brady Ryan discovered, long after his less-successful initial childhood attempts at making sea salt on his parent’s stove. I’ve got to hand it to him—as a kid growing up on San Juan Island and pondering possible homemade gifts, sea salt was a pretty brilliant idea.

No longer relying on the kitchen stove, San Juan Island Sea Salt is produced using solar energy.

Seawater is filtered and collected into 3-inch-deep ponds inside passive greenhouses. It takes 3 to 6 weeks for the sun to finish a batch, and each greenhouse produces 200 to 300 pounds of salt per batch.

Most brands of sea salt, produced by an energy-intensive process of boiling off the water, are almost entirely pure sodium chloride (NaCl), but the ocean is only about 80 to 85 percent NaCl. San Juan Island Sea Salt’s evaporative process retains the mineral wealth of the sea resulting in wonderfully wild and briny flavored salt.

The salt is transferred to drying racks where moisture levels are carefully monitored before the salt is ground and packaged.

An interesting by-product of this process is the production of nigari, also called bittern. Nigari is used as a coagulant in the making of tofu, and the salt farm sells it to people who want to make their own homemade tofu. Who knew?

After careful monitoring to achieve the preferred moisture content, San Juan Island Sea Salt is ground to a consistency similar to fleur de sel. The irregular crystal size, lots of minerality, and a slight moisture content make it ideal as a finishing salt to sprinkle atop your baked goods, meats, vegetables, chocolates and caramels, egg dishes, or pretty much anything that would benefit from a pinch of salt. Of course, you can also use San Juan Island Sea Salt in recipes, just like any common salt.

Due to a combination of the trace minerals in the salt and our wet climate (and steamy kitchens), it’s completely natural if your San Juan Island Sea Salt gets a tiny bit clumpy. When needed, just give the jar a quick whack to loosen and sprinkle on the salty riches of the sea.

From the Salt Maker

Our theory in salting is plain: The simpler the food, the more powerfully our salt impacts your experience of it. With that in mind, here are some of our favorite ways to harness the flavor of the sea.

Fresh cherry tomatoes with salt and vinegar
Avocado on toast with salt
Salt on a fried egg
Salt on a fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookie
Salt with nutritional yeast on popcorn

Take a virtual tour of the salt farm and be amazed by the wondrous beauty of salt crystal formations at sanjuanislandseasalt.com.

Drink Up the Benefits of Organic Milk

Most of us have been there. Standing at the dairy case and comparing milk prices, then wondering if it’s worth spending the extra bit of money for organic. Wonder no more.

A Washington State University study has confirmed the benefits of organic milk, finding that “organic milk contains significantly higher concentrations of heart-healthy fatty acids compared to milk from cows on conventionally managed dairy farms. While all types of milk fat can help improve an individual’s fatty acid profile, the team concludes that organic whole milk does so even better.”

Why? The short answer is that cows on organic dairy farms are pasture raised and spend their days outside grazing on a variety of grasses and legumes, and they are raised hormone and antibiotic free. As compared to conventionally raised cows that spend their days in barns, or otherwise confined, are fed a diet high in corn and soy (both at high risk to be GMO), and are treated with large doses of antibiotics and hormones.

The resulting human health benefits from organic milk include 62 percent more healthy omega-3 fatty acids, including ALA which is an omega-3 that cannot be found in fish, and 25 percent fewer omega-6s (unhealthy fats found in disproportionately high levels in the American diet). You may also want to note that many nutritionists now recommend whole milk, rather than 2 percent or skim, as it provides more beneficial omega-3s since skimming off the milk fat also skims off the omega-3s.

Even our environment benefits from organic milk, because of the careful stewardship of organic dairy farmers who maintain healthy pastures free of GMO crops, persistent pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers.

The Co-op carries two high-quality brands of organic milk, Organic Valley and Fresh Breeze Organic. Organic Valley is a nationwide dairy cooperative. In the Northwest region 27 farms provide milk to the cooperative. Among them are Hans and Colleen Wolfisberg, owners of Edelweiss Dairy and Organic Valley members since 2005. Some of you may have visited their picturesque 80-acre farm along the Nooksack River in Everson during a recent Whatcom County Farm Tour. Another local Organic Valley farmer is Andrew Dykstra, one of the first dairy farms in Skagit County to earn organic certification and join the Organic Valley cooperative.

The Co-op’s other brand of organic milk comes from Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy, a fifth-generation Lynden dairy farm located on property homesteaded by the family in 1901. They bottle their organic milk right on the farm—and it doesn’t get any fresher than that.

So, here’s to your health—and to the health of dairy cows and our environment. Enjoy some peace of mind knowing that the benefits you reap from purchasing organic milk far outweigh the small extra expense.

Welcome North Cascade Meats

by Melissa Arbiter, Meat Team

Grass-fed Beef

San Juan Island Sea Salt

by Laura Steiger, Outreach Team

From the Salt Maker

Drink Up the Benefits of Organic Milk

by Laura Steiger, Publications Editor

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