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Before joining Marx Foods I worked for one of Washington State’s largest privately owned companies. One of those places that is run by a strict set of rules and guidelines, where your job is set in stone, and there are no variations allowed. With that background in mind I’ve come to fully appreciate the perks of working at Marx Foods. One of those perks is that everyone, no matter their specialty, gets to learn a fair amount of knowledge of how every bit of the business works which is how I managed to get into the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco a couple weekends back.

I’m an artist, first and foremost. I’m part of the team who takes the photos, who designs and codes the webstore and blogs. Color options, check, I can help with that. But thanks to some handy unofficial office policies I’ve also gotten a decent taste, so to say, of what makes a good product for our store. For the most part, everyone here has good taste when it comes to our products because it’s important to believe in the products we carry. So, when a few months back, Justin asked if I’d be up for joining him at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco I jumped at a “work” weekend. It’s a pretty good office perk I have to admit. As a dad of a 4yr old any vacation/trip that didn’t include the words “kid friendly” is welcome. But as things got closer Justin got called to a weeklong trip to New Zealand for our great new grass-fed beef line during the same week of the show, and of course who was he to turn down New Zealand in their summer when our weather report was calling for record amounts of snow. I got a quick crash course on the business end of things by daily pop quizzes and sent on my way.

The first day of the trip was for me to get down there early and to explore what the town had to offer to the food scene, as part of our research as we develop our retail store. Seattle is pretty respectable on the food front but it never hurts to check out new locations, see what’s going on in other places. After 10+ miles on foot across town from small food retailers to the Ferry Terminal, I retired to dinner at the Chef’s table at SPQR and took notes for plating techniques for our next photo shoot followed by early to bed. Not a bad first day. Oh, and what a first day as my fair skinned Norwegian heritage came out as a minor sunburn, in January…

The next day the show began. I knew that this was one of the biggest places for likeminded food industry people but I was overwhelmed. “80,000 specialty foods and beverages from 1,300 exhibitors spanning 35+ countries” spread out over both the north and south halls of the Moscone Center.

Now again, I’m a designer/photographer, all day behind three computer monitors or out in the field with a camera, which made the first day that much more overwhelming. Olive oils, vinegars, crackers, chocolates, cheese, teas, and just about any other specialty food item you can name. Major food producing countries had their own mini cities. Rows and rows built up with towering displays, and sectioned off rooms for business dealings. Just about every food brand you find in your local big box grocer had a presence as well. My job was to find that rare quality product, among the 80,000, that was both as exceptional in quality and a good fit for our very curated store. I had a small mental list of categories that we needed to expand, as well as an open mind for the occasional product that just looked too delicious to pass up. It took almost the entire day to take it all in, take notes and find my way to The Slanted Door where I sat and had a lively discussion with a chef over something more substantial. Almost forgetting I was half way through the show and had yet to actually find a specific product or three to take home. Oh my, a little bit of butterflies that night. I had to produce if I hoped to be offered the job again.

But the second day was a lot less stressful. I had seen it all, I had a plan. I knew what I wanted to bring back to the office. And it was a lot more fun. The pressure was definitely off once it became known I wasn’t in charge of buying the product, only recommending them. I could really just pursue and enjoy the many fine foods without needing to deal with sales pitches. My attention could be on what I was tasting, not what I was hearing. Cheeses after cheeses, oils and vinegars, chocolate, sauces, occasionally the bite of something that was just needed to cleanse the palate between cups of straight olive oil. Occasionally there was a product that just tasted horrible, and once in a while there was a product I’d be happy to serve my guests. Then a quick BART ride back to the airport for a late night flight home, trading the sunburns of California to the freezing snow/rain of Seattle in January.

So, thanks to Marx Foods’s great policies, this designer got to travel to a sunny climate in the middle of winter and eat better than I will again for quite a while, and got paid to do it. Now I just have to figure out how to convince Justin that its essential that I get to New Zealand.

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I was raised in a Veal Slaughterhouse & Meat Packing Plant in New Jersey

I don’t mean that I lived in one, but my father owned one and I spent quite a bit of time in a veal slaughterhouse in New Jersey. That’s three nouns, any of which all by itself might make someone cringe depending on their politics and preferences and such. Veal. Slaughterhouse. New Jersey. Add them together and it is difficult to imagine a less idyllic environment to visit your father at work. Set it in the 1980s before the modern animal rights and food safety movements really took hold and, well, it’s what I knew so it all seemed normal. My father and grandfather and so on grew up similarly.

My father, the 4th generation in our family business ran the abbatoir. And when I was very young and the business was small, he actually did the slaughtering … and as a young child I apparently used to hang out on the kill floor with him and watch him slaughter livestock.

At age 11-14, I worked in the slaughterhouse during the summer in the mornings. Not sure if I have formed my own mythology about those days, but I remember my job functions as follows: the first summer was spent with a hose in my hand. I bounced back and forth between the holding pens in back where I would hose the shit off of live calves and the room next door where I would hose blood off the inside of the body cavity. The next summer I held a hose again, this time rinsing organ meat on the kill floor drain table. The latter two years I was mercifully moved to the packing area where I helped bag, cryovac, label, box, and move meat cuts. The mercy in this move is only apparent in retrospect. I don’t think I minded the dirty work and I certainly didn’t know any different.

Those days formed my work ethic. There are few jobs that are stinkier and dirtier than hosing shit off calves. And, few jobs are colder or harder on the hands and face than stacking boxes in a -10 degree freezer. My father paid me for my work and expected me to work just as hard as anyone else. The only break I was given was that I was allowed to leave at lunch, when my mom picked me up to take me to the beach. You can look at it as favoritism, but keep in mind that I was younger than the legal working age and most certainly the youngest plant worker by a margin of many years.

It has been 20 years (7 of which I didn’t eat meat) since I have been in a slaughterhouse. Recently, I toured an uber-modern facility in New Zealand, not knowing what it would feel like or whether I could handle the sight of it. I knew however that I wanted to see everything. Apparently, many visitors don’t want to see the actual kill floor, but only want to see the boning room where primal cuts are broken down into retail and food service cuts. I wanted to see it all.

New Zealand facilities are reputed to be among the world’s most hygienic, humane and technologically sophisticated. That reputation is for good reason.

In the coming posts, I will try my best to articulate what it is like to be in a slaughterhouse in the first place, but will also explain why New Zealand is the class of the world in terms of animal husbandry and meat processing.

In the last few years, we have developed about 700 recipes, like this. Up until recently, we held the photoshoots at my house. My lucky neighbors would come over in the afternoon and help us make sure that no food went to waste.

When we moved into an office with a kitchen, photoshoots moved there … and a lightbulb went off. Instead of a monthly smorgasbord for my neighbors, why not spread the love around and pick a person or two to invite as our eater of honor. What a great way to thank those that have helped us and also a great opportunity to get to know people better.

So, we started a tradition of having eaters of honor. At each shoot, we cook and photograph 10-15 dishes. We prep all morning and then around midday the dishes start coming out fast and furious. Our eaters of honor are invited to come park themselves in our lounge usually from 1-5 PM, just when the parade of dishes come off the stove. We stuff them full of amazing food, keep their glass full of whatever drinks they fancy and they just hang out with us for the afternoon. Good times.

Eaters of Honor Alumni:

Tom Gagne & Rick | October 2011 | Beef, Beef, Beef & Alba Truffles
Tom & Rick worked tirelessly to build out our amazing new office. They were the first eaters of honor because our office would no way be as cool as it is, if they hadn’t done such an amazing job.  Thanks guys!

Jenny & Jenny | December 2011 | Dungeness, Halibut, Lobster & Geoduck
I invited the Jennys as a thanks for the good work that they do in our community by organizing the Will Bake For Food bake sale. Plus, it was a great opportunity to get better acquainted with these two lovely ladies.

Hsiao-Ching Chou & her guest, Marc | January 2012 | Grass-fed Beef & Pantry Panoply
Hsiao-Ching was our PR consultant for a very short period before she stopped working with clients to pursue another great opportunity, but from the first moment she taught me so much about how to develop long-term relationships with journalists and editors.  Grateful, I am.

Now imagine the opposite of that.  Rather than assembling a car, a meat plant is disassembling an animal.  After it is slaughtered, the animal hangs from a hook by its leg and moves along the disassembly line.  Each butcher along the way has a specific job.   The blood is drained, the feet are cut off, the head is removed, the hide is mechanically pulled off, the belly is opened and the guts are released, the side of beef is split with a giant handheld bandsaw/chainsaw, and a few dozen other various things happen that I can’t explain because I don’t know the names of the parts.  And, that’s just on the kill floor.

The sides of beef then move on rails to the chiller to chill down.  When it comes out of there, it is separated to hind and fore, both of which move down separate disassembly lines.  A progression of butchers separate the bones and the larger cuts and put them in various chutes.  From there, the meat gets cut up into smaller and smaller pieces by other butchers until it is in a more familiar form to us.  Nothing is wasted.  The aorta goes here.  The jowl goes there.  In addition to the whole muscle cuts, the blood gets used by the medical/pharma industry, bones get made into pet food and the trimmings which are a mix of fat and meat get graded by percentage of fat content and ultimately become ground beef.

In the New Zealand Grass-fed Beef plant that I just toured, there must have been 300 workers each with their own very specific job.

I have a lot to share, but wanted to get this post out today.  More to follow tomorrow hopefully…

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Veal is a byproduct of the dairy industry.

In order to produce milk continuously, the dairy cow needs to be impregnated annually.  Most dairy cows are Holsteins or Jersey cows because those breeds produce the highest volumes of milk.  But those breeds are not suitable for beef production.   The result is that every dairy cow on the planet births one calf per year.

So the farmer has a choice of killing the calves upon birth or raising them for veal.   Depending on economic factors exclusively, the dairy farmer makes that choice.  Since the main objection to veal over the past few decades has been on grounds of animal rights and humanity, the question is: What is more humane?   When it comes to “milk-fed” veal, that is a good question and I don’t know the answer.   I do think that rose veal production in general is more humane than immediate slaughter.  And, it is certainly a better use of agricultural and environmental resources given all the inputs required to gestate that calf.

The bottom line is that there literally would be no veal if it were not for the dairy industry.  I am marinating in irony as I think about this.

I have this picture in my head of conscious consumers discussing the animal welfare implications of veal, while sitting down for a spread of cheese and crackers.   I am imagining the caricature of an animal rights advocate: an urban liberal pontificating over an elegant spread of something hard, something soft and something blue.

I can’t help but think that all of the animal rights advocates have missed the point.  The symptom is veal husbandry.  But the real cause of the problem is our demand for milk and milk products.

I am also imagining pro-lifers voraciously consuming milk and not even knowing that a consequence of their milk production is that some of gods creations are being unceremoniously slaughtered and buried after birth.  I presume that they value human life over animal life, but how is it not a contradiction to argue against aborting a human fetus while supporting an industry that routinely terminates live creatures.

There’s just too much irony.

My wife is a naturopath and she often reminds me that we are literally the only species on the planet that not only consumes milk as adults, but that drinks the milk of another species.

How is it that our species has come to drink so much milk?  My guess is that the milk industry’s success is one of marketing’s great triumphs.   But, maybe it also sells itself.  After all, who can’t resist a great cheese plate or indulgent dairylicious dessert.

DB Infusion Chocolates is a Marx Foods customer who were gracious enough to send us a 27-piece box of their chocolates to try.  It came in on Tuesday morning and since the holiday season has us all working so hard I invited the entire team to take a break and taste some chocolates.  We cut up each truffle into quarters and went to town.  We all thought that the chocolate truffles were excellent!

I asked Matthew to write up a review since he is unquestionably the most authoritative chocolate truffle taster in the office.  Here are his thoughts:

Before even discussing their chocolates’ flavor, one must first cover the packaging and presentation.  They are simply too impressive to be ignored.

The Box
The chocolates arrived in a long embossed chocolate-brown gift box with gold trim.  It screamed luxury so effectively that I’m having a hard time using the word “box” instead of “case” (as in display case) and was an elegant showpiece for the jewel-like bonbons inside.

The box was sealed with a magnetic clasp that unobtrusively held it closed while offering little resistance to impulses to have “just one more piece.”  Inside, a cardboard matrix separated each piece from its compatriots, preventing damage to their glossy finish.

The Presentation
The chocolate work on display in a DB Infusion showcase is impressive.  Most of the chocolates we received were molded rather than dipped or enrobed, giving them a sleek elegance and clean lines.  Of these, almost all were brushed with tinted cocoa butter, adding shine and blends of vibrant colors well paired with the fillings’ themes.

A few pieces were slightly more rustic (dipped or enrobed), each garnished delicately with a few bits of sea salt, pistachio, candied zest or a crystallized flower petal.  Like the molded chocolates, these were well tempered & executed cleanly with thin shells.

The Flavor
DB Infusion’s flavors are almost universally about pushing boundaries.  If you order one of the 27-piece boxes, you’ll likely find a few expected favorites, like a salted caramel (with cashews), a raspberry-dark chocolate ganache (with Framboise), and possibly an espresso ganache.  That said, the majority of the pieces are more groundbreaking pairings like mango-passion fruit caramel, lemongrass-kaffir lime ganache, and bleu cheese ganache.

Fine chocolates should showcase intense flavors, with each offering a distinct experience from the last.  In this respect DB Infusion certainly delivers.

While some flavors were more subtle (the bleu cheese ganache is delightful – milk chocolate followed by a mild-yet-complex bleu cheese-chocolate finish) most were very powerful, demanding the tasters’ full attention even when we’d quartered the pieces to share.   The fold-out flavor guide was useful in determining which piece to try next, but nobody needed it to describe what they’d eaten after tasting.

To sum up, the experience of tasting from a box of DB Infusion Chocolates is more akin to a tasting menu at a “molecular gastronomy” restaurant than a visit to a classical French fine dining establishment.  If you’re looking to have your expectations challenged and your taste buds thrown to the four corners of the earth in 27 bites, you’ve discovered the right chocolate company.

I know that dogs like to sniff your cute butt, Nyoki, but come on … this is TOO MUCH!

Well, we didn’t want to let the holidays pass without having some fun with the pack.  Our dogs are great.  So obedient and loving.  Nyoki especially will do ANYTHING for a treat, but the other dogs were also very eager to work for some treats.  Here’s the behind the scenes:

It’s a breast pumping station!  Katy recently came back from maternity leave and needs to pump.  The choice was to either carve out a little private space for Katy or let her go make her baby food in the same space where people drop bombs.   The latter was not an option.  So, Katie & I built her a little private place, a milking parlor, hehe.

The bonus is that through those windows is a view of Puget Sound.  Not a bad place to take a break.

Not the time you are thinking of … It’s the time of year to clear out of our sample supplies so we can start fresh for next year.  We’ve got some great Dried chilies, Dried ‘shrooms, some vanilla beans for a lucky few and a whole host of random delicious pantry ingredients.  Want to experiment with some on your blog?

If so, email Katie: kwallace at marxfoods dot com.   Include in your email your address, full name and blog URL.

Supplies are limited, so first come first served.  And, you don’t really have to be a blogger … if you promise to put the ingredients to good use and take your culinary game to the next level, then we’ll send some to you anyway.

First, let’s get to the winner of the reader poll. Congrats to ZestyBeanDog! Your Bacon and Vanilla Fregola Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting were a huge hit. Your spoils are $100 worth of baking ingredients from MarxFoods.com. We know you’ll bake up something delicious again soon…we just wish we could eat the goods.

We also have to give honorable mention to Cook Eat Delicious, who came in a very close second in the reader poll with Creamy Fregola Pudding with Saffron Vanilla Bean Syrup. It’s clear the people love their sweets.

To finish the three-way tie, I called Matthew and Katie up to my office to help me decide. After talking about the three recipes for a while, I realized I couldn’t pick a clear winner. So, the rare occurrence of a tie has happened. The two winners of the internal poll are Adesina’s Kitchen and Okay, Check it Out. Congrats to you both! The Sweet Fregola Arancini with Spiced Blackberry Coulis from Adesina’s Kitchen and the Fregola Doughnuts with Saffron-Grapefruit Caramel from Okay, Check it Out were both delicious and really different. Each of you also win $100 credit to use on MarxFoods.com towards any baking goodies you want.

These competitions just keep getting more fiercely delicious and we couldn’t be happier about it. Thank you so much to all of the bloggers, we loved reading your recipes and we hope you keep ‘em coming.