My husband, Ace, and I have been dining on a "downer" for several weeks now, and we've found that the fat-free beef from this particular crippled cow wasn't all it's cooked up to be. We're feeling fine, though.
We wouldn't recommend downer dining, unless the meat's free. And our dozen pounds of 100 percent downer beef were cost-free, a gift from my brother, Jon, a Michigan farmer who raises beef cattle, mostly white-faced Herefords, as a diversion, if not a money-maker.
For those of you who have already been tested on Meat Production 101, you may skip to the recipe. For the rest of you, let's start with a definition:
A "downer" is an animal that can't walk. Downers staggered into the public eye -- and interest -- a couple of years ago after the first case of mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state, practically ruining my Christmas vacation in said state.
Much of a food editor's job is what we in the trade call "second-day stories." These are the stories that follow the big, bold (and sometimes misleading) headlines. The downer headlines implied that all downers must be sick.
The mad cow from Canada turned out not to be an animal raised for food, but a worn-out, black-and-white dairy cow that couldn't walk. The trouble was some of the sensationalized stories and headlines that followed. I only recently learned that the "Twinkie Defense" in 1978 started with a misleading head that missed the subtleties, but the idea survives to this day. The defense was actually one of "diminished capacity" based on the suspect's depression, and it was mentioned in passing that excessive sugar might have made his depression worse. (Still, Twinkies are celebrating their 75th anniversary, and the person on trial was convicted of murder, too.)
The same subtleties could be lacking when it comes to downers, because the essential question goes unanswered: Why is this animal down? Sick? Slacking off? Clumsy? In the case of the December 2003 mad cow incident, a good thing came out of a bad one. Soon after the story broke, the government announced that downers could no longer be accepted for slaughter. Let's make no mistake: that seemed like a great idea to me, especially since I couldn't have imagined that meat packers had been accepting downers in the first place.
The second-day story was that this was a rare incident and American beef was perfectly safe. Some doubted that, and some reporters, including me, wrote about developing a plan that could trace animals from birth to hamburger.
And that brings me to my brother and our life on the farm. People who are close to the source and processing of food go one of two ways: Some have seen bad practices and worry constantly. Others, like me, are optimistic and believe that our food supply isn't perfect but probably the safest in the world.
Farm kids know that you can't produce pork without a smell (scientists are working on using horseradish, though, to reduce the stench of swine manure) or milk a cow without manure nearby. Staying close to the source inspired our confidence: We'd buy the hog for our bacon and pork chops from a 4-H'er at the annual livestock sale and drink our raw milk straight from a favorite cow.
Would I drink unpasteurized milk today? Ever heard of undulant fever? It's one reason milk is pasteurized. There's a movement to bring raw milk back, but until I could look Bossie in the eye like the dairy farmers in Western Pennsylvania, it's probably not for me.
Just as we might be on speaking terms with a milking herd, so it is with knowing the history of beef that range free on the farm.
And it's here that the black and white of downers turns gray. After the Mad Cow scare, I interviewed several families who raise top-quality beef. One farm owner told me that they'd recently had an "incident" regarding their prize bull. One evening they'd noticed the bull trifling with a heifer in heat. The next morning, they found him down with a broken leg. Great one day, a downer the next.
"We buried him on the place," said the farm owner. They figured the meat was fine, but they didn't want to take the chance of selling the disabled bull and besmirching their farm's fine reputation.
Our downer beef, which had free-ranged on my mother's land, came about from another tortured tale. In this case, it was a Hereford cow who slipped on the ice in the pasture.
A cow of this size may weigh 1,200 pounds, so getting her on her feet again isn't anything like picking up a fallen ice skater. Brother Jon drove back to the pasture with his loader tractor and eventually hauled her to her feet. The cow galloped off. The next day, she fell again and split her pelvis. This time she was heading for ground beef. (Typically, a pound of ground beef might come from as many as 100 carcasses; ours came from one.)
My brother offered us some. "I don't know how it will taste," said my sister's husband, Dutch, who works on the farm, "but it's safe to eat."
Because a brood cow gives most of her calories to her calves, the red meat was as close to nonfat as I've ever seen. That presented problems. When Ace shaped the meat into a hamburger, it was tough as a tire and lacked the rich flavor that a well-marbled steer will provide, whether in a steak, roast or burger. (For the best burgers, some grillmeisters recommend ground chuck with a minimum of 30 percent fat.) The ground downer made a passable, though somewhat crumbly, meatloaf, which had eggs and Maui chili sauce to hold it together and give it flavor.
And our free ground meat was a healthful source of protein for our Garden Chili. Delicious, in fact.
Would we buy a downer on the open market? Doubtful. It's good to have laws against cattle with questionable backgrounds.
Today, my brother is worrying about a 30-year-old Hereford who has been part of his cow-calf herd her whole life. In her case, it may be better to bury her and erect a telling tombstone: In Memoriam: Garner Farms Longest-Living Hereford Cow.
PG tested
Garden Chili
This version of traditional chili has visual appeal and a lower energy density. It's from "The Volumetrics Eating Plan" Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories" by Penn State's Barbara Rolls, Ph.D.
Lightly coat a 4- to 5- quart pot with cooking spray. Heat the pot over medium-high heat until hot. Crumble the beef into the pot and add the onions, garlic, bell peppers, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the beef loses its raw color. Drain the liquid from the pot.
Reduce the heat to medium and stir in the chili powder and cumin. Add the remaining ingredients and 1 cup water, and bring to a boil, stirring. Cover the pot, reduce the heat, and simmer 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Yield: 8 servings of 1 3/4 cups each.
Cook's note: Leftover chili is great as a topping for a baked potato.
Tester's note: This was flavorful, even with our nearly fat-free beef.
Nutrition per serving: calories 315; energy density, 0.70; carbohydrate 31 g; fat 11 g; protein 25 g; fiber 11 g.