The Recipe Box

Have a happy healthy hearty holiday! Merry meat pies, CLICK HERE.

“The preparation of soup is a neglected art; yet nothing is so satisfying as a bowl of homemade soup.”
— Sally Fallon

Get your beef broth, soup bones and stew meat at Ranch Foods Direct.

Don’t forget your pet!

Hormone free beef bones and treats to brighten their holidays — and boost their health.

Request a chef for the holidays

Here’s a unique Christmas gift idea. Give the services of a personal chef, even if it’s just for a day.

The zaniness of the holidays is just the kind of atmosphere that inspires visions of extra help: pre-planned and already-prepared delicious meals that can be easily popped into the oven and served at home by the glow of a roaring fireplace.

Hethyr Pletsch of Everyday Gourmet Personal Chef Services in Colorado Springs (CLICK HERE to visit her website) offers gift certificates good for one-on-one cooking sessions or personalized meal prep, anything from a special one-time anniversary dinner to a long-term weekly in-home meal service.

“It’s very personalized,” she says. “I sit down with every client and do a very detailed survey. I do all of the cooking at my client’s house. I do all of the grocery shopping and bring my own equipment. And I thoroughly clean the kitchen before I leave.”

As a standard package, Pletsch makes five meals of four servings each that will last a week or more for a typical family, priced at around $375. Most of the meals are frozen and left with handy reheating instructions. But she’s extremely flexible and will create any number of variations.

“This way you know exactly what’s going into your food,” she says. “Obviously I use Ranch Foods Direct meat. I refuse to go anywhere else.”

“I love this job. It is just amazing,” she adds. “I am absolutely swamped right now.”

CLICK HERE to continue.

At just 11 years old, Echo Jones is the budding poultry farmer behind “Echo’s Eggs,” now sold at Ranch Foods Direct.

“She comes by it naturally,” says her dad, A. J. “Her grandfather was an avian scientist at Colorado State University in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Her aunt ran hatcheries for Foster Farms of California.”

“She’s a true animal lover,” he adds.

CLICK HERE for more.

Colorado Springs’ own Jim Keen immortalized America’s iconic ranching families in his award winning coffee table glossy, Great Ranches of the West. (CLICK HERE. Copies are also available at Ranch Foods Direct.) His multi-year effort to chronicle ranch families was recognized earlier this year by the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association as recipient of the 2008 Arts Award.

If you’ve had the pleasure of reading it — or giving it away as gifts to family and friends — but are still hungry for more, you might consider rounding up a copy of the similarly themed American Farmer: The Heart of our Country. It’s been named one of Amazon’s top best books of 2008. (CLICK HERE for an engaging and detailed website.)

Photographer Paul Mobley traversed the nation photographing 300 diverse family farmers. From Walter Jackson, a 104-year-old Florida citrus farmer, to Patsy Fribley, a stockyard hand in Montana, to Aaron Bell, a young ninth generation organic dairy farmer in Maine, Mobley's exquisite photographs reveal the face of American farming and offer a reminder of “what it means to live with simplicity, contentment, and decency in a world that so often forgets.” When he shot the first of what became a long series of farmer portraits, Mobley remembers looking through the camera lens and thinking: This is the most pure, honest photograph I've ever done.

“Where have all the good people gone? Well, I can tell you. Drive up to any farmhouse in this country. You'll find them. They're there,” he says.

he CSA (community supported agriculture) is a popular way for customers to invest in a farm in exchange for a share of the harvest. The idea is rapidly expanding beyond fruits and vegetables. CSAs now allow shoppers to buy part of the annual Maine lobster catch or a portion of the fleece from a shepherd’s flock or a year’s worth of fresh cut flowers. Eccentric organic farmer John Peterson (the star of the documentary, The real dirt on Farmer John CLICK HERE) used a CSA to help buy back Illinois farmland his family lost in the 1980s farm crisis.

Ranch Foods Direct is launching its own version of a CSA, delivering a variety of top quality foods right to your door. Upright freezer storage provided. To create a close, convenient connection to your favorite food provider without ever leaving home, ask at the store about this new home service option.

“We live in a world of ever-depleting resources. Money is no longer the currency.
Air and water and soil are the currencies of our future.” —Woody Tasch, author of Inquiries into the nature of slow money: investing as if food, farms and fertility mattered (CLICK HERE.)