Anyway, the milk man brought the BEST milk! It came in these beautiful glass bottles and had little foil caps that were fun to sorta peel off. The best part, though, was that you had to shake up the bottle before pouring out the milk. You see, my mom ordered raw milk from the dairy and the cream in raw milk rises to the top and needs to either be skimmed off or shaken up into the rest of the milk. Of course, not long before that you didn't actually have to specify "raw" milk, because it was the only milk. I drank raw milk for most of my young life.
My mom was a sort of very "early adopter" of the health nut craze. From Yoga classes to a largely vegetarian diet, we were health conscious. The first time anyone ever fed me pizza I freaked out and could barely make myself eat it.
My step-mother, Keri, was an even bigger health nut -- edging on health freak status. At her house we had kefir, alfalfa sprout and avocado sandwiches on pita bread and lots of almonds all purchased from weird little food co-ops. This fostered in me a great love for healthy foods. I can eat some junk, don't get me wrong, but I really love the healthier stuff and I think it has to do with the taste I developed for it early on.
So, fast forward to nowadays and I want to give my children the same awesome, healthy things I grew up with. I make them wheat bread and forbid white bread in the house. I buy organic whenever possible and focus on local produce. I cook from scratch and use very few pre-packaged items. I also want to feed my children the same raw milk I was raised on. It's actually the same milk my sons were raised on at their biological grandmother's house in Latvia and at the orphanage where they lived until we adopted them at 13. But, since I live in the state of Georgia, I can't buy raw milk for human consumption. Nope, I can only buy "Pet Milk" that is labeled "Not for Human Consumption." It's still the same thing, just a different label, so, whatever.
If it didn't make me madder than a wet hen, it'd be humorous to me. I can't feed my family milk from a trusted, clean dairy just down the street that uses grass-fed cows who are pastured (free range) and lovingly cared for and not fed antibiotics or hormones but I can feed my family milk that is from cows halfway across the country which are bred to produce massive amounts of milk and fed hormones and lots of antibiotics in order to keep their milk production at extreme levels even though they're fed soy mush or chicken waste or other such un-cow-like foods. Now, if the milk wasn't bad and disgusting enough, we'll just go and cook it and high temperatures to make it safe, because there is massive amounts of e. coli and other harmful if not deadly bacteria spread in these large-scale "dairies."
Did you know that cows at commercial dairies that produce pasteurized milk do not have to pass a health inspection for disease -- after all, the milk's going to be cooked halfway to hades so why bother! According to The Real Milk campaign, pasteurizing the milk "diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer." They claim that "Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity. " If that didn't gross you out enough, "raw milk sours naturally(which I can attest to) but pasteurized milk turns putrid; processors must remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal clarification." EWWWWWWWWWW (quoted from www.realmilk.com as of 6/2/08)
Recent advertisements for milk try to make you believe that drinking milk (pasteurized) will help with weight loss due to the calcium. Not so! Drinking Whole Fat Raw Milk from Grass-Fed Cows will help you lose weight and used to be used successfully at the Mayo Clinic as a cure for cancer, chronic fatigue, allergies, skin problems. Want to know more? Click here and scroll down to the comment section where Dr. Mercola comments about raw milk and cites actual scientific studies.
I could go on to talk about the link of heart disease to homogenization, but, well, that's just beating a dead horse... or cow....
I won't settle for that! My family deserves better than that! As I'm always telling my kids, I don't want "normal" for them, they're better than "normal" and "normal" these days is just sorry! So, after much research and even reading the CDC's diatribe about the dangers of raw milk, my husband and I believe that it is the best option for our family. So, we've found a source for raw milk and I have to go to pick it up each week. Yup! We go and get a gallon or two each week and boy is it good. The boys really had refused to drink the pasteurized stuff (a.k.a. cooked milk, as Annie calls it). But the first gallon of raw milk I brought home disappeared quickly.
Now, what does all of this have to do with Roasted Chicken?
Well, I'll tell you. You see, when you start doing "crazy" things like milling your own wheat and drinking raw milk, you start to meet a whole new group of people -- others who share your views of eating the foods that the Good Lord provides for us in a state as close to the way He provides it. So, my wheat lady lets my milk guy do a "milk drop" in her parking lot and, in addition to the milk, he sells raw honey (and creamed honey) from a bee keeper up the road and pastured, organic chickens (when he can get them from his farmer friend) off the back of his truck.
This week my milk guy was running low on milk. in other words, he had orders for more gallons than he actually had. And, rather than trying to force the cows to give more milk to meet the demand, he simply asked folks who ordered multiple gallons if they could spare a gallon. So, last week was a low-milk week in our family and I offered to not pick up a gallon this week. But, since he had chickens this week, I took one of those.
Tonight I cooked it and it was yummy. I use what I think is the simplest recipe possible. You just can't mess up a really good bird. Now, the ones you get at the grocery store that are all yellow and plumped up -- now those take some skill to make taste good. But a free-range, organic chicken just tastes good all by itself. So, here's my recipe.
Roast Chicken
First, in case you didn't get it from the above tirade, start with a good bird that isn't chock-full of chemicals. I'd also recommend using organic everything else, but if you can just get the bird right, the other stuff will probably not kill you today!
Ingredients
- Whole Chicken (roaster)
- 5 -6 medium carrots peeled and sliced into large, bite-sized pieces
- 4 - 5 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced into large, bite-sized pieces
- 1-2 medium onions (I use Vidalia) peeled and quartered
- Adobo or Spike or whatever seasoning you usually like to use
In a roasting pan (I use, and love, the Pampered Chef roaster with lid) scatter the carrots, potatoes and onions. Season. Place the bird on top, breast side down (so it gets all of the fat dripping into it and remains moist). Season the bird with what you seasoned the veggies. Place a lid on the roaster or cover tightly with foil. Cook until the chicken is done -- about an hour and a half, probably. Carefully remove the lid/foil away from you so as not to get burned by the steam. Carve the chicken and put it on a platter, scoop up the veggies from the bottom and put them in a serving bowl. If you want, you can make gravy form the drippings, but I usually don't bother.
How easy is that?
Want more info about Raw Milk? I have found www.RealMilk.com to be a great jumping off point for your research. And, just so ya know. I don't serve others raw milk without a warning and never give it to kids unless I have permission from their parents.
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