Karen de Coster’s the food expert around here, and many of you with her encouragement are seeking out the lesser known and local operations, coops and farmer’s markets where you can get good food products. You can find cheese, sausage, salami, and so on makers, and eggs, chickens and vegetables. There are internet shippers to be discovered. Of course, you can make or grow your own in many cases. I’ve made my own lox, using internet recipes. When we were young, we made our own beer. We aged our beef and salamis. We raised our own ducks, geese, and pheasants. We pickled our own cucumbers and tomatoes. I knew an ex-marine and his family back in the 50s who was waaay ahead of his time. He lived on the top of a wooded hill and he plowed the road in the winter. He raised his own beef, hog, goat for milk, and chickens.

In our meat market, we eviscerated the chickens on the spot for the customers. There’s a gob of chicken fat that comes out when you gut the chicken. We’d save it and then render it for use in cooking. This also produced a steady supply of chicken livers, which customers often didn’t want. These chickens tasted much better than the commercial ones today. Our favorite was to bone and roll a beef loin, while separating the tenderloin and wrapping the sirloin around it. Then age this for 4–6 weeks (my memory is hazy on that). Trim off any spoiled or greenish part. In those days, the beef was much fattier, and the result was incredibly good.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff