Kick off Super Bowl Sunday by shopping at Ranch Foods Direct for Bristol beer brats, Callicrate beef franks and a super deal on a bundle of burgers — 20 one-pound packages for $59.99.

It’s good for the heart! Give the gift of good taste. Gift flyer, CLICK HERE.

For sweethearts with a sweet tooth: Pixie Dust Candies.

Ranch Foods Direct’s own Mary Stephenson started making and selling her Pixie Dust Candy last year, CLICK HERE.

Kickin’ chicken - Recipe favorites for skinless, boneless natural chicken breasts, CLICK HERE.

February 2008

“As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows
more than chemists.”- Joan Gussow

Tipping our hat
It’s a short drive up the canyons west of Denver to Evergreen, a mountain town that has grown rapidly but still maintains its quaint air. Ranch Foods Direct is well-represented in Evergreen, where the Blue Spruce Market offers a fantastic deli and take-out and the Black Hat Cattle Company is the spot for a wonderful relaxing steak dinner. We continue to recommend Dave Rodriguez’ Black Hat as one of the finest steakhouses in the Denver metro area. Consider making a day trip to get out of town and enjoy a great steak. For hours, location, menus or to make a reservation, CLICK HERE Or give them a call: 303.670.0941. Hours of operation are Monday through Saturday 4:30 – 9 p.m., and Sundays, 4-8.

The not-so-extreme makeover
More shelf space; more variety

As regular shoppers have noticed, Ranch Foods Direct rang in the new year with a remodeling job. As February gets set to begin, contractors were putting the finishing touches on several weeks’ work. “We wanted to expand our offerings and provide more local food,” says owner Mike Callicrate.

“We’ll now have much more shelf space,” he continues. “This doubles our square footage. We’ve added another check-out station, and we will now be able to move people through more quickly and efficiently.”

The shopping experience will be enhanced by a coffee bar offering freshly brewed Umpire Estates brand coffees.

“We plan to have more ready-to-eat items in the days ahead,” Mike adds. “We’ll be carrying locally-made bread, area produce in season and other unique products produced locally, including bone broths and homemade soups.”

"All sorrows are less with bread."  —Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote

Shawn Saunders

One new item already gracing the shelves is bread by Shawn Saunders. Shawn is a bread-making genius and uses only the highest quality ingredients. He will be familiar to many as a regular at the summer Colorado Farm and Art Market. One taste, and you know his creative selection of breads are made with care and intention.

Speaking at Colorado College in late January, a national leader in the local sustainable food movement called on the college to do something important and significant by signing a new food service contract that would involve serving more locally grown food. CC is currently in the process of negotiating a new food service contract, expected to be finalized by next fall. Nationally known direct-market farmer Joel Salatin talked about why serving local food is so important during an open lecture on the CC campus.

For more on Salatin’s talk, CLICK HERE.

“Nature never tries to farm without animals.”
  — Sir Albert Howard

What makes Joel Salatin’s books and talks so phenomenal is his deep understanding of the symbiosis between various production systems on a diversified farm. The livestock — in his case, pigs, chickens and cattle — naturally work up the ground and fertilize it, as they rotate between different pastures. Small farms across the Plains traditionally were characterized by a harmonious relationship between the production of livestock, grains and grasses.

Callicrate Beef is an example of this elegant and sustainable relationship between livestock and grain production. “Humans have been feeding corn to cattle for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years,” says rancher and store owner Mike Callicrate. Although cattle for Callicrate Beef are fed a lower percentage of corn than cattle in industrial feedyards, they still receive grain as part of a carefully managed diet that is also supplemented with linoleic acid. Linoleic acid is transformed into healthy CLA in the meat. (Grass-fed beef is getting a lot of attention for having elevated levels of highly desirable CLA.)

Callicrate Beef cattle are additionally genetically superior in fat quality due to the influence of Japanese Wagyu breeding, adding another boost to the CLA content. The animals are carefully bred and raised to fit the Callicrate Beef production standards. Absolutely no roughly handled worn-out dairy cows go into the program, and customers can also be sure the animals are not pushed to unhealthy growth levels using artificial growth stimulants.

“We believe Callicrate Beef is in a class all its own,” Mike says. “But we also help process and package meat for a number of local grass-based ranchers and will be happy to supply names to any of our customers looking for strictly 100 percent grassfed beef. Regardless of what you choose to serve on your dinner table, we urge you to support local farmers and ranchers, and ‘buy local.’”

Another book examining the dangerous American trend toward highly processed foods loaded with sugar and sodium — rather than whole foods like unprocessed meats, vegetables and fruit — and the shortcomings of government nutritional advice comes from gifted science writer, Gary Taubes, author of the newly released Good Calories, Bad Calories. CLICK HERE for more info or to order on-line. Taubes is also the author of the fantastic New York Times Magazine article, published in 2001, “What if It's All a Big Fat Lie?”

An excerpt from the book: “Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization… The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homoeostasis - the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, well-being.”