A Carnivorish Life

Our low carb life has brought with it great improvements in our health but also great challenges in the kitchen. Having been raised on good old farm style cooking it takes huge effort to leave most of that behind and walk another food path. Especially breaking the sugar addictions from which most of us suffer and that is the cause of so much ill health in the world.

Add into the mix trying to eat mostly homemade and wherever possible homegrown. And then there are foods we need to avoid to fix certain health issues (currently I can’t have milk or cream due to it aggravating an ongoing sinus issue, which is slowly improving). Sometimes the menu can get a bit repetitive, and we struggle to find the balance between eating for health or for pleasure. It’s a difficult thing to let go of the pleasure of food, not that we need to entirely as many of our healthy foods are delicious. But if we ate solely for our health the variety would grow very slim indeed.

I think of times gone by and how simply many of our ancestors ate. It is only in recent times that we have been surrounded by so much choice and easy availability. But it seems this choice doesn’t extend to catering for keto or carnivorish diets in our small town as we struggle to find suitable lunch choices when out and about.

We spent a good part of this past year eating carnivorish, it’s a diet which is predominantly based on meat. David went full carnivore for a time, and he thrived on the diet but did miss having at least some veges. Slowly we slipped back to adding sauerkraut to our meals. Avocadoes were purchased online by the box load (our trees are babies and its dodgy growing land here for avos anyway). Then fried cabbage and the occasional stir-fry, or a stew with perennial leeks and pressure canned beans from the coolstore.  Spring came and the asparagus emerged, who can resist fresh asparagus.

Over about eight months we consumed a whole steer, all that is left in the freezer is a few packs of schnitzel. But also, several big lambs, a couple of kunekune and all our roosters. It is a diet that is the opposite of what is pushed upon us all. It is high meat and high fat, when everyone is talking about reducing meat intake, meat free meals and going vegan. They want us to consume insipid low-fat foods and masses of carbs and veges. But as a homesteader the carnivorish diet sits better, just as it sits better on my waistline. If you have the land, it is easier and less time consuming to grow meat than to grow, process and store many other foods. Well, that’s our view on the matter anyway.

We made some bikkies today, hazel nut shortbreads (we’ve gone back to baking occasionally and make low carb bread a couple of times a week). They are a new recipe and turned out very nice with a lovely hazel nutty flavour. But to make the 1 ½ cups of hazel nut flour we had to crack open the nuts which have been drying since last autumn. If you have ever gathered hazels by hand, you will know time, effort and bending over it takes. Once cracked the nuts are removed from the shells then slowly roasted until the skins start to loosen and become fragrant. The hot nuts are wrapped in a tea towel for a few minutes to sweat then rubbed in the tea towel to remove the skins. Allow to cool a bit before blending into flour to make the bikkies. This all takes time and all for a batch of non-sugar homemade bikkies which are a ‘treat’ not food for health. This is the reality of using whole ingredients which we must process prior to using. But it reminds of a quote a friend used to make ‘treat foods should treat you well’ perhaps we need to rethink what foods are treats.

I hear many people talk about being self-sufficient and I know that there are many levels on this journey. But I wonder if people realise the sheer amount of work and time involved to create a life that is self-sufficient in food alone. It is through looking at what we eat, what we still buy and what would it take to make it all ourselves that the carnivorish life starts to look even better.