apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Fish? Or don't you consider that to be meat...

@klem, we'll spotlight fish and all the variety of seafood at another time. For the purposes of Meat/Un-Meat month we're looking at land-based forms of protein! :)

I haven't eaten redmeat for most of my life, but can't seem to give up that occasional piece of deep fried chicken tender in order to become a full pescetarian. :) Other than an occasional piece of poultry sprinkled into family dishes, I tend to eat mostly seafood.

Though I have to say that I've grown awfully fond of deep friend mock meat lately. YUM!

I eat meat at restaurants, or when someone else is cooking, but I have an inexplicable fear of cooking it myself. Any resources you'd recommend?

We eat a lot of pork around here. We get awesome locally raised organic pork and it is easy to use in lots of ways. I don't really like chicken, aside from livers and fried, so we tend not to eat that, though we should. We also go meatless a few times a week.

I eat beef most often--BUT I only eat it once a month (sometimes twice).

If it were more widely available, I would eat LAMB the most - it's so good, and it's what the people of my ancestral homeland (Georgia, the country) have traditionally eaten the most of. And until fast and processed food came to Georgia (fairly recently), the population was among the healthiest in the world, with an extremely long life expectancy. Coincidence? I think not.

We eat about one of each meat group every week, plus fish. We try to keep it to .25 lbs. of meat or less per person per serving, which is plenty.

We buy high-quality, no-hormone meat, so keeping the portions small also keeps costs in check. Though whenever I'm in the checkout line, I think about how much money we'd save if we were vegetarian.

I eat meat, but I've been making a point of reducing the quantity of meat in my diet, and increasing the vegetables. Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman have some interesting thoughts on this issue, and they have opinions I agree with. Mainly, that the average American diet includes too much meat to be healthy, and that meat production (especially beef) takes a big toll on the environment.

Like heather77, I'm spending on higher quality meat, with smaller portions. I also just signed up for a CSA share, which is forcing me to cook a lot more veggies. I love it!

Do sausages count? A little goes a long way, and they're quick and easy to cook (no messy deboning or filleting)... whether pork, chicken, turkey or lamb, we seem to use sausages a lot this winter.

The chicken here is amazing -- unlike chicken in North America, it is never watery or slippery -- it is dry and meaty. The French are not into breast meat -- they prefer thighs -- and so the breasts are small. We try to buy a Poulet de Bresse when we can, it is the Kobe Beef of Chicken, but like Kobe, it is very expensive. As I wrote last week, our 2kg chicken last week cost us $60; usually we only buy it direct from a farmer at our Saturday market, as he sells it for 12 Euros a kilo (about $18), which is quite a bit cheaper than what you pay at a butcher, which is about 16 to 18 Euros a kilo.

All this to say, as wonderful as the poultry here is, it is expensive to make a chicken, and so we have it as most every other week.

We buy "mountain pork", which is an ethically raised hormone-free pork (what is the expression for "free range pork"?), fed a high omega 3 diet. Fortunately, it is probably the least expensive meat alternative. Bear in mind though, that a pork tenderloin comes to about $28.

Never had good European beef -- Argentinian and Uruguayan beef (grass fed, hormone and antibiotic free, free ranging) is much better but harder to find, and very expensive.

We never buy beef and very rarely pork (bacon is the exception, and usually only if we are having somebody over for brunch). We do eat a lot of poultry, and I am trying to eat less of it but it is so easy to find! The local supermarkets are all getting better about stocking free-range or organic chickens and I usually buy chicken thighs or a whole chicken and they end up not being that much more expensive than conventionally raised stuff. And I have started volunteering at my local co-op and have started getting good quality ground turkey and turkey bacon from them (turkey burgers and turkey BLT's are both very nice when you are not used to the beef/pork equivalent). SO I guess I will be sticking with the poultry for a while longer, or until I find some more good vegetarian recipes...

Poultry. It's so cheap and affordable in America that it's just too easy to pick up $2 game hens or a 2 chicken pack for $10 at Winco. I miss beef :(

I buy one whole, organic free-range chicken each week. I use it to make chicken stock, then shred the meat to put back into soups during the week. We split the cost of a whole grass-fed organic steer once a year, and divided among three small families. It's amazing how, after eating organic, "happy" meat most of the time, the other stuff tastes bad. I'd rather have better meat in my diet, even if it means I can afford to buy much less.

I eat chicken, dark meat. I don't know how anyone would ever prefer white meat to dark - except for extreme health reasons.

I eat chicken mostly because its generally healthier and its also cheaper. I love pork. LOVE pork. And lamb. And beef. And ostrich. And bison. :)

One question - why is fish not considered meat? It roamed the earth (the watery parts) and had hopes, dreams, etc cut down by the knife, just like the land dwellers.

We definitely eat beef the most, but that has only been since I purchased a quarter of a pasture raised cow from a local farmer. The meat from this kind of cow is actually better for you than most chicken.

This is a hard question to answer, because I don't really eat any meat as the center of a meal. However, I'm not a vegetarian and like to flavor food with bacon, prosciutto, sausage of all varieties, etc.

Definitely beef, though not particularly by choice. Mostly chicken/fish/vegetarian (red meat maybe once a month) as I was growing up because my mother was a bit of a health fad follower. When I moved out on my own I diversified into pork and lamb.

But now because my fiance is a farmer, beef is free and plentiful (well, except for his cost of raising it). We split a cow with his parents, but if we don't eat it at least twice a week, we won't get the freezer emptied before the next one. Thus, I am constantly trying to find ways to cook it. Even rib-eye steaks and prime rib get tedious after a while!

I've really cut back on chicken because it's too pricy - usually $7.99/lb for breasts. I try to stock up on whole chickens when they're on sale. I would like to eat more lamb, but I have had a hard time tracking down a good local (as in, not New Zealand) source.

To cut down on meat costs, I've started buying everything on the bone. It's usually juicier, and you can either cook it on the bone, or cut the bone out beforehand and save it in the freezer for soups and stock.

I did have to get over an initial squeamishness, but now it doesn't bother me. I'm even considering grinding my own meat.

There is one meat I WILL NOT TOUCH though, and that is VEAL. Yesterday, we visited some friends who live a half hour out of the city, in an old stone house surrounded by farms (in France). Our husbands went out and visited the farm next door with the kids, who wondered why the little calves were kept (constantly crying for their mammas) in plastic crates with a rope around their neck, unable to walk...

xast -- here is a good place to track down good local sources of lamb:

http://www.eatwild.com/products/index.html

LAMB! I grew up in England, and have a French - Lebanese background, so lamb was always a staple. I don't particularly enjoy beef, I don't eat pork (for religious reasons), and I'm not the biggest fan of chicken, either. So when I do eat meat (very occasionally), it's usually lamb.

I was really hoping someone would check other and specify squirrel. Just for the comedy factor. :)

If I had my choice, I'd go for lamb most often. My mum and dad live in Australia, and I practically gorge myself on it when I'm there (it's abundant, affordable, and delicious).

I used to eat chicken and fish most often, but then I signed up for a CSA that includes meat. So now I eat whatever is in my box that week. It alternates between beef and pork, and I get a pound of meat for a week. I've received everything from stew beef to Italian sausage to bacon to ground beef. If I prepare that pound well, that's a week's worth of lunches plus. For dinners I tend to not eat meat since that was in my lunch.

I am mostly vegan, but I have been required to eat some fish lately, and I have let the odd sandwich in--only two per month at most. meat is very cruel. if you eat meat, you are in a good position to ask producers and even small farms to rethink things like stockyards, cages, abbatoires--or else "no sale." it's easy--there are so many meat eaters, but so few who care what happens to their food.

There is a new documentary coming on HBO out about factory farming you might be interested.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/deathfactoryfarm/index.html

Deer. My grandfather and several other men in my family are hunters. It helps thin out the population that always devours my parents' garden, it's free and so lean.

Kangaroo, it's lean, healthy, local and delicious.