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Messages - donrad

Hot Topics / Re: Taste of raw meat
« on: May 03, 2012, 08:37:53 pm »
Cold fresh raw meat is tough and nasty. Fit only for dogs.

But if you take the same meat, like a butt roast, rub it with plenty of salt and pepper, leave  it out at room temperature on a rack for a couple of days, and it becomes completely different. Tender and delicious. Grass fed meat won't spoil like the supermarket stuff. This is called dry aging. The enzymes in the meat tenderize it. The drying gives it a beautiful firm texture. The salt and pepper give flavor and help preserve it (and keep the flies off).

Cut thin slices off any time you're hungry. The ultimate fast food. It will keep at room temperature for a week or more.

This is same as the famous expensive European prosciutto hams. When beef gets real dry it is called Jerky.

This is how our ancestors ate their meat for thousands of years before refrigerators and before civilization even. Cave dwellers  kept it by a smoky fire which also helps preserve it. This explains our love of smoky BBQ.

I even take grass fed ground beef (the more fat the better), mix it with salt and spices, form it into big thick patties, and leave them on a rack at room temperature. It is similar to sausage after a couple of days. After about a week it becomes salami. Ground meat is very cost effective if you are on a budget. And grass fed ground beef and buffalo are available frozen in most supermarkets now days.

General Discussion / Re: meat storage
« on: February 27, 2012, 09:21:47 am »
Our ancestors would slice it and dry it. I love jerky. Smoking and salting are other options.

General Discussion / Re: chicken pluck
« on: February 27, 2012, 09:14:33 am »
Insignificant. If you don't scald a 5 minute job will take an hour. Been there.

General Discussion / Re: Storing Meat in a S.A.D. Fridge
« on: February 27, 2012, 09:10:16 am »
Raw meat stores best where it can breath and stay dry. That is why you always see the high-end meat in a butcher case uncovered. Dry ageing makes it more tender.  A closed container will cause it to get slimy and turn green. Wrap it in a cloth and put it in a paper bag if your companions don't want to see it.

General Discussion / Re: Wild Deer / Bone Marrow Question
« on: February 27, 2012, 09:00:51 am »
There are theories that we were originally scavengers and first began using tools (rocks) to crack open bones to get the marrow. We would get to the bones after the tigers, lions, etc. had their fill. The lipids in our brains and marrow are similar. I leave my marrow bones out on a rack at room temperature to age. It tastes better raw at room temperature. It never seems to taste bad or smell off. I keep cloth over it so flies can't get at it in the summertime.

General Discussion / Re: Why do you bother measuring CHOLESTEROL ?
« on: May 17, 2011, 06:08:17 am »
Cholesterol is a molecule that transports lipids (fats) to and from cells. The good cholesterol is associated with transporting fat away from cells and using it for energy, the bad cholesterol is associated with transporting it to cells for storage. You can have a high total cholesterol but high good cholesterol which is really good: you are clearing out the excess fat.

People eating a lot of sugar and starch end up with a lot of bad cholestorl in the blood because the excess sugars are being converted to fat for storage. Scientists blindly made the association cholesterol = heart disease. It should have been sugar+starch = fat storage = heart disease.

Eating foods with cholesterol does not have the same association, and should not raise blood cholesterol more than briefly.

Watch what you eat not the cholesterol in the blood. We need cholesterol, it is good stuff.

See to help dispel the cholesterol myth.

General Discussion / Re: Fermented Rabbit
« on: May 17, 2011, 05:37:47 am »
I got a second rabbit and just dry aged it with salt and pepper, no pickling.

The pickled rabbit was more flavorful. Both of them became very tender after about of day of air drying. They lasted about two weeks in the frig with no off flavors or odors. I kept them in a brown paper bag. Still eating the second one now.

General Discussion / Re: Fermented Rabbit
« on: May 02, 2011, 06:49:40 am »
Beneficial bacteria and yeasts live in our digestive system and help us digest our food. They survive, we survive, everyone is happy. We co-evolved with them for millions of years. They even produce vitamins we need to survive. Herbivores must have them to survive and have evolved special digestive systems to help the process. 

Bad bacteria are either toxic themselves or produce toxins that make us sick. Evolution has given us the ability smell some of them so we can avoid them, while others are detected by our digestive system and we get diarrhea or puke them up. In sufficient quantities they can kill us, and they do. Some people have built up a resistance to some of them and somehow enjoy eating rotten (high) foods. To each his own.

Over long periods of time cultures have learned to cultivate and propagate the best symbiotic bacteria and yeasts. Yoghurt cultures, yeasts for bread and wine, sauerkraut acidophilus bacteria, and beers yeasts are examples. If you innoculate foods with lots of good microbes, the bad ones get crowded out. The good yeasts and bacteria can work inside or outside our bodies.   

If you are getting acid reflux you are not eating right. This is one of the top complaints brought to doctors in western diet countries. Millions of dollars are spent every year for medications to treat the symptoms.

It is unnatural. Indigenous peoples eating traditional diets do not get acid reflux. It is a disease of civilization.

Do NOT cover up the symptoms it will just make things worse. You need the acid in your stomach to digest your food. The problem is that the acid is backing up into your esophagus. Find the cause and correct your eating habits. There is a lot of information about this on the web.

For me it was no more alcoholic beverages and more fiber in the diet.

General Discussion / Fermented Rabbit
« on: May 01, 2011, 08:57:53 pm »
This morning I shot a rabbit in my garden. I skinned it, buried the offal in the garden, ate the liver & kidneys still warm, and put the fetuses & head in my perpetual broth pot. The bones will go in later.

I raised rabbits for about 10 years for meat, but always cooked it. I tried eating raw wild rabbit muscle before but found it tough and bland. I was going to try dry aging this one but then decided on fermenting.

For years I have been researching Hesenpfeffer recipes. This is a German dish where rabbit is marinated in vinegar. I figured this was originally a naturally pickled rabbit recipe, possibly involving sauerkraut juice, but could find no information on the web. I did find this experiment for primitive buried pickled rabbit at this very interesting blog:

however this person made broth from the rabbit and I want to eat it raw.

So I cut the rabbit up and smothered it with kimchi that I made last year. Kimchi is an oriental spicy fermented mixed vegetable food popular in Korea (its the national dish). It is made like sauerkraut.

I plan to leave it at room temperature for a few days to see what happens. I also added some orange juice and a little live vinegar. I am wondering if this will last for weeks or months like pickled vegetables.

Excluding high meat which I hate, does anyone have any experience or references for this type of food? This is more of a controlled fermentation using beneficial bacteria rather than just letting it rot. I imagine cevechi would be a similar seafood based ferment with a similar history and modern distortion.


General Discussion / Re: bison vs beef - omega 3 ratio
« on: May 01, 2011, 07:58:55 am »
The brains and spinal column bacame taboo by gov decree about a decade back when mad cow disease was in the news. They found it could be transmitted to humans. In Europe they were incinerating all the cow herds.

The problem stems from the practice (at that time) of grinding up butchering waste and feeding it back to the animals. I think that this is now outlawed or regulated. All grass fed should not be a problem. If you can find a butcher who is not federally inspected (if there are any) you can get the brains and anything else you want. Or butcher animals yourself.

My fed inspected country butcher will not sell brains/spinal retail, but on Saturdays ranchers bring in goats, sheep, & old cows that I can buy on the hoof, the butcher will butcher them for a fee and I can take home whatever I want. Certain ethnic groups prefer this and travel long distances for the service, Halal or something.

For a while I could buy frozen pork brains in the ethnic section of the supermarket. I'm sure they were factory pork brains but I bought them anyway as they were my only option. Then they quit selling them a couple months ago. Warm brains made me feel great.

General Discussion / Re: Liver
« on: April 24, 2011, 07:59:39 am »
Starch (plant based) is a long chain of simple sugars that breaks down very quickly in the digestive tract. Plants manufacture starches for stored energy. Animals break them down for metabolism. The plant seeds break them down (enzyme action) also when germinating.

I think the word carbohydrate refers to both starch and sugars.

General Discussion / Re: High/Rotten Plants
« on: April 24, 2011, 07:46:23 am »

General Discussion / Re: Parasites: Those who Inhabit us
« on: April 23, 2011, 07:26:49 pm »
It is my own idea from logical deduction after reading the blog. Trichinosis carrying swine have been religious taboo for thousands of years. And the post talks about bears being taboo in bear cultures. Most humans seem to have an inborn repulsion to eating dogs, cats, and other carnivores; but are fine with eating herbivores and marine life. Its like our inborn fear of snakes, spiders, and heights which cause death. Natural selection weeds out snake huggers, tree divers, and carnivore eaters. Those who avoid these things are more likely to live long enough to reproduce.

Why else would these trichinosis cysts migrate to muscle tissue and go dormant?

General Discussion / Re: Parasites: Those who Inhabit us
« on: April 22, 2011, 10:08:40 am »
As for trichinosis it seems to me that the parasite would want the host to be weakened so that it would be easy prey for other carnivores to consume. Thereby moving cysts to new hosts. This might explain why it weakens and kills humans.

General Discussion / Parasites: Those who Inhabit us
« on: April 22, 2011, 07:08:06 am »
I found this amazing blog on the web but could not find the author to give credit. Read and enjoy!

Parasites: Those who Inhabit us

November 15, 2009 in soul food, Thought

Parasites have been coming up a lot in my life recently. Almost every day I am touching them, looking at them, talking to friends about them. Trying to understand what their role is, in me. Much of it has to do with the salmon we have been preserving; salmon are host to many parasites, but the one I have been paying particularly close attention to is a parasitic nematode this world calls Anasakis. They look like long, stringy white worms, I have seen them in the flesh of almost every salmon I’ve ever butchered, usually still alive, wriggling around. Humans are not hosts for them, they require a marine mammal’s digestive system to continue their life cycle. If a human eats the raw, fresh (drying kills them, there are no eggs present in the flesh, just obvious, living worms) meat of a host fish, they might not ever notice anything, or they might get nauseious and even puke up a clump of these little fellas. In any case, our bodies are not their chosen bodies. Salmon, of course, do carry other parasites that can inhabit our bodies. Like, say, tapeworms.

Yesterday I was slicing up the meat of a deer for drying, and found a few tapeworm cysts in it’s flesh. One way tapeworms reproduce is by migrating out of a hosts digestive system and into the muscle tissue, where they form cysts, a kind of egg almost, the intention being that when a carnivore eats the hosts flesh, the cysts are ingested and come alive in this new, carnivorous host, where they live in the guts and shed eggs via feces. I once butchered a large buck whose back muscles were completely infested with small, stringy white worms – possibly juvenile tapeworms on their journey to encyst.

How does one react? These are all parasites infesting creatures I ate, and continue to eat, raw. Is it disgusting? Stupid? I do sometimes freeze meat (14 days of freezing kills all parasites, says the USDA), or marinate it in salt water or a weak vinegar marinade when it feels just too graphically obvious there are parasites in it that will inhabit me, but this is mostly for phsychological reasons. The times I don’t freeze meat insure I am exposed to these parasites, and, to a certain degree, some of them likely inhabit me.

As they have inhabited humans, always.

Why are we disgusted at parasites? Is it their creepy crawlyness, hiding out in ‘our’ bodies (not theirs), stealing our energy? Do we just not like the idea of sharing our bodies? Or are there actual legitimate health problems that cause an instinctive reaction towards them?

One thing I can’t help but notice, and seems to be of huge relevance, is that many, possibly most, probably all, of the wild animals I have butchered have been inhabited by some kind of parasite. This leads me to believe that wild animals pretty much just live with parasites, that is the way. The remarkable thing is, all of these wild animals have been incredibly strong, beautiful, sensual, well adapted, vibrant creatures, capable of living in balance. Salmon, with anasakis larvae and tapeworm inhabiting their flesh, have a ridiculously strong life force – their whole lives essentially result in creating more fertility where they were born, bringing more beauty and aliveness to this earth. Deer are graceful, quiet, aware, strong, well adapted – with horrific tapeworms apparently robbing their bodies of energy.

Ten years ago, some white hunters in northern B.C. found the body of a native man in a melting glacier while they were hunting mountain goats. Scientists eventually analyzed everything they could about this person, who had died there between 300-160 years ago – his stomach contents, his hair, skin. He was traveling over a mountain range from the coast into the interior, barefoot, wearing nothing but a ground squirrel skin parka and spruce root hat, carrying some seal meat, crab, dried salmon, usnea, and a few tools. Drinking glacier water, eating blueberries. Got caught in a storm. He had tapeworms, fish tapeworms from eating salmon raw, dried or undercooked. What he didn’t have were any of the often severe nutrient deficiencies associated with tapeworm infestations in modern humans. He was hiking across an incredibly rugged mountain range, barefoot, after all.

Is it possible that in a healthy host, some parasites do not actually cause harm? Is it possible that some could even benefit their host, helping it live in a beautiful, sustainable way? It would, after all, be in their best interests to have a host that lives a long, healthy life, wouldn’t it? And what if we, the hosts, need them, in complex, subtle ways, in order to live in balance?

A friend actually got tested for parasites recently, after eating raw meat quite consistently for a couple years. Her doctor told her all she had was a very common parasite, she forgot the name, which even western medicine considers beneficial and essential to a healthy GI tract. There have been many studies showing that certain parasites cause shifts in their host’s immune system, make them less prone to certain allergies, more resistant to certain viruses and infections. It makes sense – it is the same force that drives salmon to enrich their ‘host’: the rivers, forests and oceans they inhabit and depend on for their continuation.

I still have to admit, though, that having a 100 foot long tapeworm living in my guts isn’t appealing.

Presumably fish tapeworms were a near universal ‘affliction’ for the indigenous people living all along the northwest coast, wherever salmon was a major (or minor) food, yet when researchers look, they find that the people living here before civilization, as a whole, had little or no tooth decay, their skeletal structure in general was ideal, most all of the chronic diseases and cancers of modern society were absent (refer to ‘Price, nutrition & physical degeneration’). They did not suffer from deficiencies, despite the parasites inhabiting them. On top of that, they lived in balance with their land bases, as part of them.

Now, when a modern industrial human gets fish tapeworms, they usually don’t notice them, but if they do, it’s often because of severe nutrient deficiencies ( B12 deficiency, anemia etc.). I suspect that periodic cleansing, taking strong anti-parasitic plants internally, and a diet free from processed foods, grains and high amounts of sugars, allowed the indigenous people here to have fish tapeworms inhabiting their bodies in a way that was not pathological, that was balanced and symbiotic. If a modern diet has an unbalancing effect on our bodies, it must follow that whatever parasites are inhabiting us would be knocked out of balance also. So one way of ‘dealing’ with parasites, and this is the one I advocate, is eating traditional foods – excluding grains and large amounts of sugars (that includes fruit sugars, honey, maple syrup etc.), foods that knock our bodies out of balance, and are the foundation of this culture that knocks everything alive out of balance.

Still, there are parasites that the indigenous people of this land would get very sick from. Like, say, trichinosis – a parasite that inhabits the flesh (skeletal muscle tissue, specifically) of omnivores (bear, raccoon, seal, cat etc..), sometimes fatal to humans when ingested, hence warnings to always cook the meat of such creatures very well, while the meat of herbivores is commonly eaten rare or raw totally safely.

Many cultures had/have strict taboos against eating bear, likely related in part to trichinosis. Others had taboos against eating bear flesh (where the parasites are), but would still hunt bears for their fat, which would be rendered (cooked) for storage anyways. Yet Bears, raccoons, cougars, wolves and sea lions, incredible, powerful, amazing creatures, live amazing lives while inhabited by trichinosis. Like us, they are omnivores, but something allows them to live amazing lives with trichinosis while we, even if healthy, get sick or die….

Slicing up salmon to dry a couple weeks ago, pulling stringy anasakis worms out of their flesh, still alive, a friend and I discussed what we should do about all of these parasites in our food? Why not cook it all? Cause cooking meat (red meat in particular) causes it to become carcinogenic, way less digestible – and not as storeable. Eating cooked meat you are guaranteed to be ingesting something that is in some way bad for you, whereas eating it raw, you are guaranteed that you are eating something good for you, that humans have eaten forever, that *may* give you parasites, which might not affect you in a bad way, depending on the creature you are eating and your health in general. Freezing is a good option if you really want to reduce you chances of infestation, that is if it’s below freezing outside, or you live with electricity. I don’t, and, eventually, humans won’t, so it isn’t a long term solution. I jokingly said to my friend: ‘we could just microwave it all, I bet that would kill the parasites!’ And it’s true, it would – in fact until all of this earth, and our bodies, have been irradiated, parasites will continue inhabiting us – they are everywhere – and we will continue seeing only a tiny glimpse of what they are, as part of who we are.


We usually eat the meat of herbivores raw, dried, without any anti-parasitic measures. Like I said before, though, if it is just too obvious there is a huge amount of parasites inhabiting a creature, we do something to ease our minds – these are all methods of eliminating parasites from you food, though I would only apply cooking and freezing to omnivores:

-freezing 14 days

-marinading in salt water or vinegar water (exact proportions I do not know)


-microwave (joking!)

-drying kills some parasites (anasaki, possibly others) and reduces viability of many it doesn’t

-fermenting kills some parasites, if there is a signifigant change in the ph (acidity) of the meat.

-sprinkling salt on meat, provided it is sliced thinly enough

Eat traditional foods, what your ancestors ate, or what makes sense in the bioregion you currently inhabit – too many visits to the cake dumpster and those-who-inhabit-you will go crazy!

Romaine, the cat, and a pile of anasaki worms he coughed up after feasting on raw salmon for a few days.

General Discussion / Re: We Need Good Bacteria To Be Healthy
« on: April 21, 2011, 07:24:21 pm »
Three main bacteria groups identified, what's in YOUR body?

General Discussion / Re: pictures of grass fed meat and fat?
« on: April 20, 2011, 05:47:00 am »
There is grass fed-beef and then there is grass-fed grass-finished beef. If a rancher is attempting to build a customer base and reputation he/she will finish the cattle on prime agricultural land during certain times of the year when the grass is lush and nutritious with a high energy content that will be converted to marbeling (fat) in the muscles. It is more costly to finish cattle this way compared to sending them to feed lots.

The New Zealand beef industry is predominately grass-fed. They have developed breeds of cattle that grow and fatten well on grass. Same with Brazil. The international agribusiness corporations have not taken over all the food production there yet.

Cows on winter hay will have white milk and fat. In the spring and early summer it will turn yellow as the start to eat the fresh grass. Omega3.

Recently in the news they are finding more than half of grocery store beef contains drug resistant staf bacteria. The bacteria is coming from the cows themselves. This is because the feed lots have to pump the cows full of antibiotics to keep them alive in confinement eating food they were not designed to eat.

General Discussion / Re: We Need Good Bacteria To Be Healthy
« on: April 13, 2011, 01:39:02 am »
I am not familiar with these diets, but assume they are fairly modern. It is quite possible that races of people have adapted to certain environments but I believe that our plumbing works optimally with the nutrition for which it was designed during the past few million years.

My goal is to be active, alert, and disease free well past 110 years old. This requires a lifestyle in concordance with my evolutionary heritage. There is lots to learn. There are many things I can do and still survive but they will not bring optimal health and longevity.

It is easy to rationalize based on current cultural and world environments. Its a lot harder to discern what was going on a million years ago.

It is a survival adaptation for harmful bacteria and parasites to keep the host alive. If they killed the hosts off there would eventually be no hosts left.

Not dying does not mean not being infected. Everyone is infected to some degree. It is just a matter of more or less.

General Discussion / Re: We Need Good Bacteria To Be Healthy
« on: April 12, 2011, 03:43:49 am »
Fibre is essential because it was much larger part of our prehistoric diet. Humans are always trying to concentrate the food. All of the serious studies I have seen on prehistoric indicate that we were omnivores getting a lot of fibrous fruits and veggies.

The large intestine's job is to squeeze the water out of the digested food before it leaves the body. If there is nothing there to squeeze on it cramps up. The fibre also has a cleansing action on the intestional walls and acts like a sponge to soak up body wastes.

It helps prevent colon cancer.

Birds have the digestive system to eat very small grains like those that existed thousands of years ago. I think like humans they are harmed by the starchy grains that humans developed.

Hot chile peppers evolved their hotness so that mammals would avoid them but birds don't. The birds spread the seeds around.

Actually most berry and fruit seeds evolved to survive the digestion systems. They are coated with sweet colorful coatings to attract birds and animals. The seeds themselves pass through, get spread around, and fertilized.

General Discussion / Re: We Need Good Bacteria To Be Healthy
« on: April 10, 2011, 02:30:22 am »
I eat probiotic three or four times a day from raw milk yoghurt & cheese, live home-made vinegar, and fermented (pickled) home grown vegetables.

I very rarely get sick and my feces is nicely formed and does not stink.

I also get lots and lots of fibre which is critical. So is not consuming anything that might be harmful to the bacteria like antibiotics or alcohol.

Our evolution with bacteria goes back at least 2 billion years.

There have been quite a few public illness outbreaks traced to raw organic veggies because people think they don't need to wash it.

The problem is that organic growers can use manure to fertilize which gets splashed up on the plants. This can spread harmful bacteria and parasites. 

There are a lot of things that can be done to live in accordance with our evolutionary biological inheritance while tolerating civilization.

Work a low stress job that involves non repetitive diverse physical activity.

Eat raw foods that are naturally produced.

Avoid TV, video games, cell phones, automobiles, appliances, etc.

Get daily aerobic exercise. Bike swim run walk houseclean garden.

Worship nature, meditate, pray.

Join Paleo groups like community gardeners, outdoor sports leagues, La Leche League, etc. etc.

Hunt, fish, gather food in the wild (preferably in groups and in primitive ways).

Research other ways to get back to where you once belonged.

Enjoy the best of both worlds.

Strive to be happy. We have the potential to live an active disease-free life for 120 years or more if we make the right lifestyle choices and humbly serve others.

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