Monthly Archives: March 2011

Slicing into a box of frozen meat with a razor blade, Garry Kuneman revealed, “I’ve got one customer who special orders buffalo testicles every few weeks.”  Pushing aside elk medallions, ground venison, and bison ribeyes, he found one to show me.

I’d never seen the testicle of a buffalo, or any ruminant for that matter.  Catching a glimpse of one didn’t really engender a desire to order any of them either, but it’s nice to know that the option is there in case I change my mind and jump on board the testicle sensation sweeping the nation.

But more likely, I’ll be visiting Kuneman’s shop, Natural Local Food Express, to reload on grass fed beef, lamb, and bison.  Or perhaps to get some venison or elk.  Or free range chickens.  Or pork.  He carries just about every natural meat one could fathom, certainly the most complete assortment anywhere in the Detroit area.

The Meat

My first visit to his store in Plymouth came in December 2010.  Every year around that time, I’ve made big birthday dinners for my wife, and this year, I wanted to do something new.  Having remembered that Will Branch of Corridor Sausage mentioned in the fall that a guy in Plymouth had started selling grass-fed beef, I found the shop and paid him a visit, picking up a couple of bison ribeye steaks.

For our entrée on the evening of the dinner, I served the ribeyes medium rare, cooked for a few minutes on each side in a stainless pan over high heat.  The steaks were placed over a bed of roasted butternut squash that I glazed with a bourbon, maple syrup, and brown sugar mixture.  While there were a few stringy bites, the majority of each of the bison steaks was delicious – and much, much lighter than beef tends to be.

The beef is superb, albeit a bit variable in terms of texture.  We most recently enjoyed a flank steak processed by C. Roy, a meat packer in Michigan’s thumb area that also sells meat through Western Market in Ferndale.  Despite the oft-deserved reputation for stringiness, this particular steak was tender and easy to eat.  There’s no avoiding the fact that the type of grass the cow eats will impact the flavor, so it’s no surprise that the popular Columbian grass fed beef found in some supermarkets is going to taste dramatically different than the stuff from local Michigan farms.  Thus it’s worth mentioning that Natural Local Food Express carries exclusively Midwestern meats, mostly from Michigan and Wisconsin.

Several weeks after trying the steak, we fashioned some simple venison burgers and buffalo burgers.  While I can’t say that I took detailed notes, my impressions where that the venison burgers felt dense like beef whereas the buffalo had a legitimately light texture and flavor to it. (If you’ve never cooked venison before, I’d strongly recommend erring on the rare side; the dense muscle and lack of fat make for excellent hockey pucks when cooked past medium-rare or medium.) Neither was gamey, despite the various myths that are popularly reported and repeated.

Grass-fed products tend to be the subject of quite a few myths, actually: It’s gamey, it’s stringy, it tastes like rotten meat, it’s discolored, and it’s not juicy because it has no marbling.  While some of that certainly can be true, it’s certainly not always true, as this particular store clearly demonstrates.  While it’s the case that without the fat from corn, there isn’t as much marbling, and the more natural fat tends to look yellow rather than white, the flavor and tenderness of their meats aren’t negatively impacted. And gamey flavors tend to come from poorly treated meat, so just as with any food product, only buy it from a place you trust.  It’s not as though chain supermarkets have never sold a rotten rack of spareribs.

All the products I’ve tried have been frozen, but at least once a week, Kuneman orders fresh meat as well ranging from filets to tougher sirloin steaks.  And he’ll special order just about anything one could want – including buffalo testicle.

What’s Natural?

Obviously, I’ve enjoyed the meats I’ve purchased from Natural Local Food Express.  But given the store’s focus, one might wonder what’s so important about the “natural” moniker given to the food.

Several months ago, there was a compelling article somewhere online arguing that the term “natural” had lost its meaning in relationship to particular wines that were made without much in the way of modern winemaking practice.  With little legal framework and no strict guidelines, natural is defined by “the eyeball test” or perhaps a loose set of unofficial guidelines concocted by aficionados and hobbyists.

I’m not typically one for semantic games, but the author has a point.

For example, take Kashi.  I eat a lot of Kashi products because compared to other granola bars or protein bars, they seem to contain fewer mysterious ingredients, ingredients for which the health benefits or risks are largely unclear to me.  Visit the Kashi website, and there is (as of today) a big graphic that says “Eating naturally…” with links to its snack bars underneath.  A few clicks later, one finds oneself staring at a list of ingredients for the Chocolate Malted Crisp Protein & Fiber Bar.

One of the ingredients listed appears to be Calcium Caseinate, which is a protein with a particularly high glutamic acid content.  And if glutamic acid sounds familiar, I imagine that’s because it’s the component of the well-known stomach turning chemical MSG.

I like Kashi, and I’m not going to be overly critical.  But that doesn’t really sound like “eating naturally” to me.

So what is natural?  What does pass the eyeball test?

Kuneman’s meats certainly fit the bill.  As his website proclaims:

Our beef, bison and lamb are always grass-fed and free-range.

Our chicken is always free-range and vegetarian-fed.

Our pork is raised in an outdoor environment with no hormones or antibiotics.

The concept of natural has to be considered a sliding scale, but these meats certainly qualify as fitting any reasonable definition of natural.

Who Cares?

During in the documentary King Corn, the filmmakers undergo some tests to identify how traces of corn are passed into people’s bodies.  The results are fairly astonishing: Despite eating not a kernel of corn, the signs of its consumption are throughout their bodies.

The reason, of course, is that corn is in every popular, mass produced food in the United States – from Twinkies and Coca-Cola to beef and McDonald’s burger buns.  Since being heavily subsidized in the late 60s, corn has become the most economically viable way to make just about anything: food, ethanol fuel, plastic cups, and of course, cattle feed.

Ultimately, this means that many people have never had the pleasure of tasting beef in its most natural state.  I say “natural” because cattle are not typically inclined (or really even able) to consume corn.  They eat grass, which provides very different nutritional value to cows and thus to the people who feast upon said cows.

Since grass-fed animals and other hormone-free, pasture raised creatures tend to eat the animal equivalent of the South Beach Diet, their meat tends to be lower in unhealthy fats and higher in omega-3 fatty acids.  Conversely, corn-fed animals are weaned off of grass, put on a high-starch corn feed diet, and pumped full of hormones and drugs to allow them to keep eating it.

My intent isn’t to get into the politics or ethics of raising animals this way; head to the “food writing” shelf at your local bookstore and look for the giant Michael Pollan display if you want to have that conversation.

Nor am I interested in any of the vegetarian or vegan arguments that meat is unnecessary.  Playing cards, rubber fishing boots, and iPhones are all pretty unnecessary, but millions of people use them anyhow.  There is a sweet spot between environmental activism and utilizing the earth’s resources to improve our lives that humanity has yet to find, and it seems unlikely to me that forgoing all meat for all eternity is necessarily part of that answer.

Suffice it to say, I think that if one can find the meat at a reasonable price, eating natural products carries fewer risks of eating something we don’t yet know to be problematic and also carries more clear and obvious health benefits.  Everyone learns in 3^rd grade that nutrients and energy make their way through the food chain: Animals that eat green plants instead of artificial hormones and corn engineered to be extra starchy obviously pass along better things to your body when you eat them.

That’s not to say that even natural farming isn’t without its environmental or ethical hazards – obviously, if everyone ate grass-fed beef, we’d likely need to utilize more land for pastures, and so on.  But an inexpensive supplier that carries exclusively natural products – like Natural Local Food Express – has to be a far better option currently both for omnivores and for the environment than a chain market carrying additive-laden supplies of corn-fed beef.

The Store

I haven’t spent much time talking to Kuneman beyond the standard “how long have you been open?” sort of chatter, but he conveys a strong passion for farming and a genuine interest in providing quality meat to his customers.  So it’s unsurprising that Natural Local Food Express carries chicken, pork, beef, bison, venison, elk, and lamb – albeit some more regularly than others.  And again, the store will order just about anything you want that they don’t currently have in stock.

Quaint and unassuming, the store is at the end of a short strip mall building along Ann Arbor Road in Plymouth. A cute sign with stock art-style illustrations of animals hangs above the front window, and at times, a sandwich board is out on the front sidewalk to let passersby know where to find their natural meats.  Drive around back via the driveway just west of the strip to find the parking lot, and enter through the rear door.

Inside, an unadorned, irregularly shaped white room is packed full of freezer cases, refrigerators, and wire shelving.  Signs are posted above each of the freezers indicating prices and what can be found where.

In addition to meats, they also carry Calder’s Dairy and other local products ranging from salsas and sauces to chips and pastas.

Frozen meat isn’t something for which I imagine most metro Detroiters making special trips, especially on a whim. But curious foodies or anyone planning a spring barbecue party once the weather warms up should give some thought to checking it out.  You’ll be enjoying grass-fed beef steaks and buffalo burgers – maybe with a side of testicle – soon enough.

Natural Local Food Express
1192 Ann Arbor Road, Plymouth, Michigan
Google Map Link
248.231.6533
www.naturallocalfd.com