"You're right in liking meat!" - American Beef Mania continues

The I ♥ Beef! campaign, a snazzy new advertising program that's trying to bolster interest in that most American of products, is definitely not the first time the meat industry has tried to use utter absurdity to beef up (ha) their sales.

I'm not sure what bothers me most about these advertisements. The poor grammer? The perfectly manicured nails that are painted to match the color of raw steak? The fact that it calls pork sausages "tasty little mouthfuls of flavor" and claims they are "cheery eating anytime"?

However creepy the meat advertisements of yore are, the Beef Board is working to counteract that by emphasizing beef's inherent sexiness. According to their beef checkoff-funded consumer market research, 50% of Americans think Filet Mignon is the best way to say "I love you." Oh baby.

Speaking of babies... they need meats too. Meats. Plural.

The Butcher, The Baker, The Boeuf Bourguignon Maker

For a while now, I have had a hang-up about boeuf bourguignon. Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon, to be precise. I somehow came to view mastering this recipe as a vital step in the career trajectory of any serious foodie. I'm not quite sure how this happened, but it was probably somewhere between reading Julie and Julia and My Life in France.

I - and many others, I believe - have come to view Mastering the Art of French Cooking as the First Edition Foodie Bible, the embodiment of the original Good Food movement. Maybe MtAoFC was considered an entrance into the world of home cookery for housewives in the 1960's, but like a snowball rolling down a hill, it has gathered force and mass as it raced through the next fifty years. This book has weathered TV shows, newscasts, best-selling memoirs, The Julie-Julia Project, and a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep, for crying out loud. A humble little cookbook it certainly is not... not anymore, anyway.

Bouef bourguignon is well known as traditional French fare, and is now even considered haute cuisine.* As such, it does not come without baggage, historically and culturally speaking. When the manuscript for MtAoFC first came across editor Judith Jones' desk, she settled on boeuf bourguignon as her test recipe. In the introduction to my own 40th anniversary edition of the cookbook, she explained with no small amount of gusto:

I ran home to make the recipe - and my first bite told me that I had finally produced an authentic French boef bourguignon - as good as one I could get in Paris. This, I was convinced, was a revolutionary cookbook...

And this from a lady who had lived in Paris for over three years.

Reading Julia Child's little love note before the recipe didn't really help settle my nerves, either:

As is the case with most famous dishes, there are more ways than one to arrive at a good boef bourguignon. Carefully done, and perfectly flavored, it is certainly one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man...

Perfectly flavored, eh? One of the most delicious concocted by man? No pressure.

I started at the butcher shop. Doesn't that sound quaint? There are a lot of reasons to frequent a butcher, which I won't go into right now, but the primary one is that it gives you the most control over selecting your meat, short of raising and slaughtering the animal yourself. I, of course, have additional ethical concerns, and I chose accordingly.

I decided to go with The Goose, an Indianapolis-based shop that specializes in local, naturally raised meat. They also have a coffee shop and sell delicious sandwiches, as well as artisinal cheeses, fresh seasonal produce, and dairy products from a local creamery. I got six ounces of bacon and three pounds of chuck roast, courtesy of Fischer Farms in Jasper, Indiana. Their cattle is grass-fed with a grain-finish, as the nice man who wrapped up my juicy-looking hunk of meat explained to me.

Back at the ranch - I hauled out the cookbook and re-read the recipe to make sure I had everything. Then I prepared all my ingredients in advance - cut my bacon into lardon and my three pounds of beef into two inch chunks, and sliced up all the vegetables I would be needing.

Of course, I had an audience.

Then it was a matter of blanching the bacon (that sounds like it should be a euphamism for something), browning the beef (ditto), sautéing the veggies, and dumping everything into a pot with a bottle of red wine, some beef stock, garlic, tomato paste, and a bouquet garni, which was provided free of charge by my friendly neighborhood butcher man. Wasn't he something?

Ultimately, I don't know why I was so nervous. It's time intensive, to be sure, but most of the time is spent just letting the whole pot simmer in the oven for a few hours. You can even make boeuf bourguignon in advance... Julia's recipe actually recommends it as a way to let the flavors mingle.

You might even have time to bake a little dessert. Lemon-lavender pound cake, if you're me.

In the end, it turned out perfectly. The sauce was just thick enough. The beef was tender to the point of perfection, falling apart on our forks and melting on our tongues. My parents, my brother, and my friend Abbie (who I invited along) all made many yummy noises. It might have been the wine speaking, but I'll pretend otherwise for now.


*This may or may not be according to Wikipedia.

Happy Nutrition Month! Also included - Dietary Guidelines and I ♥ Beef!

That's right... March is Nutrition Month, brought to you by the American Dietetics Association. It might not be as prestigious as African American History Month or LGBT Pride Month, and it does have to share March with the likes of "Help Fight Liver Disease" Month and National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. So who knows how many people will actually hear about it. But despite sharing the limelight, the ADA has lofty ambitions, and is preparing to bring everyone better nutrition in 2011 with their theme, "Eat Right With Color".

Everyone who has anything to say about nutrition wants Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables. It's old news, really. When the USDA released the 2010 Dietary Guidelines on January 31st, no one was shocked to read that they want us to fill up on produce.

Now, I know I'm a little late to be talking about the 2010 Dietary Guidelines a month after the fact. They've already been picked over by experts and bloggers with far more insight than I - Marion Nestle is everyone's go-to girl for all things food policy related, and La Vida Locovore did a very nice job boiling down what all those experts seem to be saying. FoodNavigator.com also did a series of articles on the aftermath of the guidelines, compiled here by Marion Nestle.

Regardless. Here are my humble observations:

1. Everyone is happy that the USDA is telling us to eat more fruits and veg (at least half your plate, they say), but in our consumerism-dominated culture, telling anyone to eat more poses no problems. It's when you say to eat less that people start getting snarky, which leads me to...
2. In their own roundabout way, the USDA did say to eat less red meat. But they sidestepped it by couching it in euphamisms like "saturated fat" and "SOFAS", which stands for "solid fats and added sugars". This spares them the anger of the formidable meat industry, but just adds confusion for everyone else. 
3. Most of the reactions I read are lukewarm. The guidelines get a passing grade, but definitely not A+ material. Most responses point out that the USDA did state more explicitly than ever that obesity is indeed a problem, they did say we need to decrease our salt intake, and they did say we need to increase our fruit/veg consumption. But still a failure so far as reining in the food industry is concerned, or telling us point-blank what foods to avoid.

What I found especially interesting is that mere weeks after the USDA released these new guidelines, the UK health agency released a warning to limit red and processed meat consumption to 3 ounces or less per day, after it has been linked to bowel cancer. And they actually said "red meat" and "processed meat". How quaint, using actual words to describe things. Don't they know acronyms are the way of the future? Those silly Brits.

To add insult to injury, the American Heart Association has announced a partnership with the Beef Board (a program that markets beef, controlled by the USDA of all people), where they will endorse certain cuts of lean beef as "heart healthy". As Marion Nestle (her again!) said, at least this seems to be a slightly more considered choice than their endorsement of certain sugary breakfast cereals. Slightly.

And because everyone needs a fabulous advertising campaign, the I ♥ Beef! people are mounting a full scale assault. According to the website, "Steak is well-known as a "best match" for love, passion and romance." Who knew?

Aw....the steak is even vaguely heart-shaped. It must be true. But somehow, I don't think mowing down a 16 oz. steak is the sexiest thing in the world, so forgive me if I skip out on Longhorn for my next date.