Link Loitering, April 20

Have you heard about the Arsenic in Chicken controversy? Here's a great article. All I know is, I am happy with the pastured chickens we buy from local farmers and we'll keep it that way. And yes, we can TOTALLY taste the difference between their chickens and the ones we'd purchase from a grocer. My chicken stock is totally different too making it from pastured birds. No thanks to chicken meat containing antibiotics and antidepressants - yes, you read that right, antidepressants! And, you can bet your bunnies I purchased the Organic Starter feed for our chickies that doesn't contain Roxarsone!

And while we're chatting about Poultry, can I just share these photos of pastured eggs I picked up this week from a local farmer? They are gorgeous -- the photos don't even do them justice! One was a beautiful olive green color, another a double yolker. I paid $1.75/dozen - what a steal. These eggs are so completely different, and better, than the ones you buy from a grocery store. Even the 'organic' and 'cage-free' ones people choose, thinking they are making a wise decision, and paying upwards of $2.50+ a dozen. Those marketing schemes are such a racket. I let the farmer keep my quarter in change when I handed her $2.00 - even still - what a steal. And you bet when we cracked these open, they were a nice, rich orange color.

When I was leaving, the husband stopped me, as this was my first time purchasing from this local farm, and he asked me if I'd looked at the eggs. I looked at him with what was probably a tad of confusion on my face and said 'Yes, they are gorgeous!'. He said 'Oh good - you know, sometimes people pick up eggs and get freaked out when they look at them and they are not all white'. REALLY? Yikes! It is a sad day when people think they eggs need to be all white and uniform in size.

And now, moving on to a completely different topic, though still food related, here is a nice blog post from The Healthy Home Economist this week on another reason Vegetable Oils are not good for you.

Upset that the government tries to control what we eat? You'll appreciate this blog post! Sorry, but I'd rather not eat GMO's and I certainly don't need to government telling me what is healthy and what is not!

Enough Already!

***Also, next week is turning into 'Unofficial' Beef Week over here at The Life of a Novice! I am working on a post on 'Decoding Beef' and the information can certainly be spread out over a few posts! So - send me your beef related questions and I will see what I can dig up for you to be reported on next week!