Do You Want Turkey With That? White Meat or Dark? Babe Ruth. Grizzly Bears Protected. Cargo Trailer.

For “Foodie Friday”:

“The U.S. government has a history of supporting confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), both by looking the other way when abuse or contamination occurs, and by directly subsidizing cheaply produced beef, and corn and soy used for feed

From animal abuse and environmental contamination, to antibiotic overuse and contaminated meat, CAFOs are an unsustainable, unethical and unhealthy way to raise food

To optimize your health, return to the basics of healthy food choices and buy your food from responsible, high-quality, sustainable sources, such as small organic family farms -- NOT CAFOs”

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Wilmar Poultry Company:

“In an undercover investigation, workers at Willmar Poultry Company, the country's largest turkey hatchery, are shown handling baby turkeys roughly and without care. This is the investigator's account of what really happens to turkeys once they're hatched.”

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Butterball LLC:

“Following allegations of animal abuse, police raided a North Carolina Butterball turkey farm in December 2011, inspecting nearly 3,000 birds.

The investigation, which is still ongoing, was prompted by hidden camera video obtained by the animal rights group Mercy for Animals, which showed workers kicking and stomping on turkeys, as well as injured birds with open wounds and exposed flesh.”

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Cargill, Inc

“Salmonella poisoning involving ground turkey has led to what is now the third-largest meat recall in U.S. history.  Cargill, Inc., has recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey across the U.S. due to Salmonella poisoning.

You simply cannot count on government regulations to keep you safe, either, as it may surprise you to learn that even if nearly half of ground turkey samples tested by USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) test positive for Salmonella, and that is perfectly ok!

As reported by Food Safety News:

“Currently, CU [Consumer’s Union] says, the FSIS standard for Salmonella allows almost half of the samples tested at ground turkey processors to be contaminated with the pathogen.

"The current USDA ground turkey standard, which allows 49.9 percent of samples in a test run to be positive for Salmonella, is unacceptable and clearly ineffective as a tool for food safety," said Jean Halloran, director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union.”

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What's the Difference Between White and Dark Meat?

“Confused about what makes white meat “white” and dark meat “dark?" You’re not alone. Misleading data about the good and bad sides of white and dark meat abound. Finally, here is the real truth about the meat you eat.

Dark Meat
Simply speaking, dark meats are dark because the muscles are used more (think drumsticks vs. breast meat). They have more myoglobin proteins, which help ship oxygen to your muscle cells.  When dark meat is cooked, the myoglobins turn into metmyoglobins, which are very high in iron.

White Meat
White meat contains glycogen, which is a polysaccharide of glucose, an animal starch. Animal starch is stored in your liver, then broken down into glucose when it’s needed by the white muscle.

Nutritional Differences
Dark meat contains more zinc, riboflavin, niacin, thiamin, vitamins B6 and B12, amino acids, and iron than white meat. Dark meats also contain more saturated fats, along with omega-3 and omega-6 fats.

So please don’t fall for all the hype that white meat is always better than dark. Instead, simply choose the variety that you crave. As long as the meat is from a healthy source, and you listen to your body, you can’t go wrong.

The way most meat is raised today, in factory farms, makes it essential that you pay attention to where you meat comes from. Ideally, you should find a local farmer who will sell you organic, cage-free, chicken and turkey, and grass-fed beef.”      More at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/11/01/what-s-the-difference-between-white-and-dark-meat.aspx

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On This Day:

Babe Ruth hits last home run, May 25, 1935:

“On May 25, 1935, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Babe Ruth hits his 714th home run, a record for career home runs that would stand for almost 40 years. This was one of Ruth’s last games, and the last home run of his career. Ruth went four for four on the day, hitting three home runs and driving in six runs.

George Herman Ruth was born February 6, 1895, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the first of eight children, but only he and a sister survived infancy. Ruth’s father was a saloon keeper on Baltimore’s waterfront, and the young George, known as "Gig" (pronounced with soft g’s) to his family, caused trouble from an early age. At seven, his truancy from school led his parents to declare him incorrigible, and he was sent to an orphanage, St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. Ruth lived there until he was 19 in 1914, when he was signed as a pitcher by the Baltimore Orioles.

That same summer, Ruth was sold to the Boston Red Sox. His teammates called him "Babe," short for baby, for his naiveté, but his talent was already mature, and he was almost immediately recognized as the best pitcher on one of the great teams of the 1910s. He set a record between 1916 and 1918 with 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play, including a 14-inning game in 1916 in which he pitched every inning, giving up only a run in the first.

To the great dismay of Boston fans, Ruth was sold by the Red Sox to the New York Yankees before the 1920 season by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, so that Frazee could finance the musical No, No, Nanette. Ruth switched to the outfield with the Yankees, and hit more home runs than the entire Red Sox team in 10 of the next 12 seasons. "The Sultan of Swat" or "The Bambino," as he was alternately known, was the greatest gate attraction in baseball through the 1920s until his retirement as a player in 1935. During his career with the New York Yankees, the team won four World Series and seven American League pennants. After getting rid of Ruth, the Red Sox did not win a World Series until 2004, an 85-year drought known to Red Sox fans as "the Curse of the Bambino."

Ruth died of throat cancer on August 16, 1948. His record for career home runs was not broken until Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run on April 8, 1974, 39 years later.”

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Grizzly bear is classified as a "threatened" species, May 25, 1975:

“In 1975, the grizzly bear--once the undisputed king of the western wilderness--is given federal protection as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Before the Anglo-Americans began invading their territory, the grizzly bear inhabited most of the country west of the Mississippi from Mexico north to the Arctic Circle. Its only serious competitors for food were the Native Americans, who considered it a sacred animal-although they did hunt the bear as a test of strength and its long claws were prized symbols of status.

Because of the grizzly's fearsome size and aggressive nature, most early European explorers of the West noted their encounters with the animal. During their expedition to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark encountered many of the bears and were awed by their impressive speed and power. On July 1, 1805, while the expedition was making the slow portage around the Great Falls of the Missouri River in Montana, Lewis wrote in his journal that grizzlies were all around their camp. "We have therefore determined to beat up their quarters tomorrow," he continued, "and kill them or drive them from their haunts about this place."

Because of such hunting and the general destruction of their habitat, the grizzly began to disappear in concert with the settlement of the West. California, which is estimated to have once been home to 10,000 grizzlies and placed the animal's image on its state flag, no longer had any of the bears by 1924. During subsequent decades, grizzlies gradually disappeared from their native homes in Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, the Dakotas, and probably Colorado and Washington. Outside of Alaska, by the 1970s small populations of bears remained only in a few isolated wilderness areas and national parks in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho.

In a last ditch effort to halt the decline, Congress designated the grizzly a threatened species on this day in 1975. Protected from hunting and trapping, grizzly populations have slowly begun to recover. However, there are still probably fewer than 1,000 grizzlies in the lower 48 states today, nearly half of them in Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. Recently, plans to reintroduce the species into two wilderness areas in Idaho and Washington have met with controversy. The future of the grizzly bear will depend on human willingness to share their habitats with the bears and set aside areas of wilderness large enough for them to survive.”

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Yesterday:

Misty and I went to get Jay.  She looks forward to her daily walk around there down by the lake.

It was rather windy, or we would have raked up more pine needles and burned them. 

Instead, we started to hook up the water to the faucet in the cargo trailer’s sink.  But before we could install the sink permanently, there needed to be a removable shelf over the water tank under the sink, so that small stuff couldn’t get lost behind it.  It was easier to design it with the sink out of the way. The sink area is across the corner and it also has the water lines and drain coming up through it, so this was a difficult shelf to make.

We also designed a way to keep the bed base and dinette table stored and anchored, when the trailer was going to be used a toy-hauler.

Now we know what latches will have to be bought at the hardware store, so we couldn’t finish that yesterday.