FOND Bone Broth

Not only is Fond Bone Broth good for you, being shelf stable for one year, it makes an excellent gift.  

On their website (here) they say that they took the name FOND because it is French for "base" or "foundation."  They do not say that the word "restaurant" comes from "restore." Following the disastrous policies of Louis XIV and his interventionist minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the middle class of Paris was starving amid plenty. The French cuisine we treat ourselves to now was designed to puff up severely limited resources with air.  Those who could afford it went to "restaurants" where they were restored with strong broths and other good foods from whole ingredients.  FOND broths follow in that tradition. 

I met Michal from FOND Bone Broth
of New Braunfels, Texas,
at the Wheatsville Co-op on South Lamar.  

You could make this yourself. My wife, Laurel, does. It takes her two days. She has the time because she works from home.  Most people do not have two days to cook the bones of happy free-ranging animals along with organic herbs and spices.  

And then there is the retail price. It is less than $15 per pint. ($154 for a case of 12.) That sounds like a lot if your head is still in 2008.

I had a couple of graduate classes in economics during the Bush-Obama Wall Street Bailouts. One of my professors, Steven Hayworth, was a good Marxist. He knew his stuff; and he was intellectually honest.  He put up a graph of the infusion of cash into the banking system. (He said $3 trillion. It was more like $4 trillion.  See Forbes magazine here. ) Prof. Hayworth asked, "What will happen to prices?"  No one said anything.  With two index fingers, he pointed to me up front and my conservative comrade in the back. "You tell them," he said.  "Prices are going to triple," we said.  Prices have not tripled over night because banks have been storing the imaginary money, eking it out slowly so as not to trigger public panic.  Prices today are only about 40% higher than they were a decade ago. The true cost of nutritious food has gone up while fast food chains sell "salads" of iceberg lettuce for the price of meat.

Biodegradable packing from corn starch.
Fond Bone Broth has a Kickstarter campaign (here). 

"A short cut tastes like a short cut, so we don't take any. We start with local farms, and carefully tended backyard gardens whenever possible. Then using traditional french cooking methods, and a lime-twist of modern mixology we arrive at our FOND™ signature flavors perfect for sipping or for use in your every day cooking."

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Sunday at the Co-op
Hail Merry Desserts
Shannon Beer of Keller, Texas
Great Bean Chocolate

The Hat Creek Pickle Company

The Hat Creek Burger Company is a local chain of fast food restaurants.  One evening, I met one of the local coin club guys at Recycled Reads, the retail used book store of the Austin Public Library.  On our way to the coin club meeting we stopped at Hat Creek Burgers; and it was okay.  This afternoon, I met their latest venture, Hat Creek Pickles, at the Wheatsville Coop.  

Hat Creek Burger Co.,
5902 Bee Caves Road, West Lake Hills, Texas

After trying five kinds, I bought the Texas Sauerkraut.  Writing this, I am on my second serving.  It is spicy but balanced, crispy and crunchy.   It is two dollars a jar more expensive, but dollars being so small these days, the marginal value is easy to perceive.  Sauerkraut is high in vitamin C.  A day without sauerkraut is like a day without sunshine. 

Not Drew Gressett

• No artificial preservatives, calcium chloride, or other chemical firming agents added

• Free of sugar & corn syrup

• Supports immune system

• Probiotic and rich in enzymes

• Lactose & gluten free

• Increases the quantity, availability, digestibility and assimilation of nutrients in the body

(I note here that those claims are not substantiated by the Food and Drug Administration – as opposed to claims about Viagra and Ritalin, which are approved by the FDA.  You have to wonder what the dialog would be like if you could bring Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton forward to our time.)

"In addition to brewing and bottling beer, Drew Gressett, owner of Hat Creek Burger Co., plans to use Strangeland Brewery to ferment pickles for the newly formed Hat Creek Pickle Co.  “A pickle makes a hamburger,” Gressett said. “To take the time to make our own pickle is synonymous with the care all our food receives.” – Impact News (Austin Metro) 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

Awesome Austin Foods at the Wheatsville Co-op

High Brew Cold Coffee

Formulas for Success

Shooting the Roadhouse Relics Gallery

Kale, Oats, and Mai Tais

Kale is a superfood, loaded with nutrition, lacking bad stuff.  Kale is unfortunately tough, bitter, and generally difficult to eat. Cooking does little for it, except to remove its nutrients.  Rhythm Super Foods found solutions to all of those problems. Their kale snacks actually taste good and have far more nutrients than popcorn, pretzels, or potato chips.

"Treat yourself to a crispy chip packed with the nutritional power of kale. We gently air-crisp organic kale that has been tossed in our hand-crafted dressings, made from the most delicious and nutritious ingredients on the planet."

http://rhythmsuperfoods.com/
at the Wheatsville Co-op

"We purchase fresh, organic kale weekly! By the time it starts its long, low temperature dehydration process in our kitchen, our fresh-picked kale has been de-stemmed, washed three times, and is ready to be made into our crunchy delicious chips."

Kale seeds are often sprouted in a greenhouse. Seedlings are transferred to perfectly spaced rows for a 60-90 day initial growth period. It’s a beautiful sight, these fields ‘o kale!

After about 60 to 90 days (depending on the weather), kale is hand-picked in the field, loaded into small totes, and rushed to the triple wash station. The fresh-picked greens are placed in a stainless steel flume, gently agitated and rinsed three times, then spun in a giant “salad spinner” to shed excess water. Once dry, the Kale is boxed in clean, reusable plastic crates and shipped to our dehydration kitchen."

Nutrition is pretty easy to understand. It can be harder to achieve, especially when you work in an office.  Proteins are at the top of the pyramid.  You can break it down into sugars; you cannot build sugars up into proteins.   Sugars burn fast, like newspaper in a fireplace.  Proteins burn slowly, like oak.  So, in the office, the best snack food at the moment might be a protein bar.  They all have problems, so you make your best choice for trade-offs.  But there is a better way.

 

Standing there, right next to the kale chips.
http://givebar.com/

"Since 2007, founder Trevor Ross has been on a mission: to handcraft innovative products that heal.

"Losing his sister to breast cancer served as a wakeup call to Trevor, a busy young professional in the high tech industry in Austin. He started to think about food differently, almost as medicine, and overhauled his diet, focusing on small frequent meals that contained high-quality proteins, healthy fats, and antioxidants.

"Not satisfied with the nutritional profile of available bars, he ended up making his own. Soon, demand for his bars grew beyond his friends and family and Oatmega Bar was born."

The problem with cocktails is not the alcohol; it is the other stuff that goes into the mix.  Beer enthusiasts have their micro-breweries. You even can get gluten-free beer from one of the world’s largest factories.  Where do you go for a good mai tai?  

 

88% real fruit juice.
Real cane sugar.
http://www.rocksmixers.com
is a redirect from their other URL
http://www.rocksmaitais.com

"In 1959 the Mai Tai knocked the Zombie off its pedestal. Why 1959? That's the year Hawaii became a state, and it's also the year the Boeing 747 went into service. Trips to this new exotic state took four hours instead of 12 and Hawaii became a tourist mecca almost overnight. All the tourists went to luaus and were served a fruity drink called the Mai Tai. Soon there were backyard Polynesian theme parties with "ham wrapped around pineapple and other mid-century hors d'oeuvres … plus Mai Tais."

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Drippin' Sauce

Awesome Foods at the Wheatsville Co-op

Science versus Common Sense

Slow Down and Think