Normalize Eating Organ Meats

Still unsure about organ meats? A lot of people are! Today you can learn a framework for how to prepare them, how to introduce them to picky eaters, and why they are excellent sources for energy, clarity, and the ability to set and accomplish goals. Janine Farzin from Offally Good Cooking even tells us her own story of how she went from disliking organ meats to now craving them…and how her kids love them now, too!

Visit Janine’s website: offallygoodcooking.com
Check out our 11 Wise Traditions Dietary Principles

See our sponsors: Earth Runners, Paleo Valley Optimal Carnivore

—

Listen to the podcast here

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Janine Farzin.

Energy, clarity and an ability to set and accomplish goals are markers of good health that come with including organ meats in the diet. Unfortunately, no matter how much we hear that organ meats are good for us, there are often still a few hurdles to including them in the diet like a lack of familiarity, concern that the family won’t eat them and uncertainty about how to cook them.

In this episode, we address these hurdles and more in an effort to normalize eating organ meats. This is episode 415 and our guest is an organ meat expert that helps people become kitchen confident when it comes to organ meat preparation, enjoying therefore the benefits of energy and empowerment that come with organ meats. Our guest empowers us by giving us a framework for cooking them.

She offers practical tips for how to identify various cuts and the best approach to cooking them. She also offers solutions for overcoming obstacles to including organ meats in the diet. She tells her story of having to practically force herself to eat organ meats in the early days and she contrasts that to where she is, essentially craving them. Her kids crave them too. Our guest is Janine Farzin from Offally Good Cooking.

Before we dive into the conversation, I want to let you know that The Weston A. Price Foundation has come out with something new. It is a resource going over the eleven principles of the Wise Traditions diet. We hesitate to use the word diet because that often connotes a restrictive way of eating but the Wise Traditions’ dietary recommendations are quite the opposite. Eating the Wise Traditions way includes satiating traditional fats like butter and lard, properly prepared grains, raw and cultured dairy, pastured meats, unrefined salt and even natural sweeteners.

These are general principles based on traditional wisdom that can be applied to your preferences and budget. Check out the new section on our website that outlines the 11 Wise Traditions Dietary Principles. It’s a super clear and easy-to-navigate page. We have a booklet that outlines the 11 Wise Traditions Dietary Principles for sale for only $5. That’s half of the usual price for the first eleven days of April 2023.

It is your chance to get in under the deadline. Take advantage of this offer by going to Weston A. Price and clicking on the 11 Principles page. Order yourself a booklet and 1 or 2 to give away. While you’re on the site, you can also become a member of The Weston A. Price Foundation using the code WT11 for 25% off the regular rate of $40 a year. Go to the website, check out the new pages on the 11 Principles and get the booklet.

Visit Earth Runners, check out all of their sandals and use the code WISE23 for 10% off at checkout.

—

Visit Janine’s website: Offally Good Cooking
Check out our 11 Wise Traditions Dietary Principles
See our sponsors: Earth Runners
Paleovalley
Optimal Carnivore

—

Welcome to the show, Janine.

Thanks for having me, Hilda. I’m so excited to be here.

We are so happy to hear from you. Unfortunately, I missed the conference so I didn’t get to hear your presentation but this will give people a taste of what you have to offer. Let’s talk about when you were in college and you were given an assignment and you said it opened up your eyes to the world of nutrition. Talk to us about what you were assigned and what happened next.

Many years ago, I studied Industrial Engineering as an undergrad and there was a time that we had a class project. It was an optimization problem where you write out these mathematical equations and then iterate through a solution to try to find a maximum or a minimum optimal. One of the assignments that we had in one class project was to go to McDonald’s, get the menu and find out a way to meet the RDA for the lowest cost.

I love this project. I thought it was super cool. Like all these types of optimization projects, I’m super into them but it wasn’t until many years later that I read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, which a friend had recommended to me. I had no exposure to The Weston Price Foundation or anything. A friend of mine just said, “I think you would like this book.” I checked it out of the library. I read it from cover to cover and I realized for the first time that nutrition is a thing and that nutrients matter.

In the standard American paradigm before, I didn’t realize that nutrients mattered and why they even have the RDA, these minimums and everything. At that point, I realized, “If this wasn’t a school problem, this is real life.” If you only get so many calories in a day, at some point, you’re maxed out. You can’t eat anymore. If you only get so many calories in a day, how do you maximize the nutrients that you can consume every day? For me, it was eye-opening. I didn’t grow up eating this way so it was a big shift for me but I was all in. I was committed.

During that assignment, you were trying to solve for Like and figure out how you get the RDA with the least amount of money. It was years later when the a-ha hit you like, “This isn’t just an intellectual puzzle. It’s something that we need to think about how we are nourishing ourselves.”

There are so many projects in school that I liked but they are McDonald’s. The only thing on the menu at McDonald’s that has any vitamin C is orange juice. You have to get orange juice. I remember that and then you have to get the hamburgers. This was confounding to me at the time because I emphasized plant foods. Red meat is still the best you can do at McDonald’s but in real life, it’s organ meats.

That’s what Weston Price showed us. It’s the sacred foods and every culture had these sacred foods. They valued them. Emphasis was given to prospective parents, lactating, pregnant moms and growing children. This is what preserved gut health. They had a language and a culture around this that was so supportive.

When I dove into this, I was like everybody else. I got Nourishing Traditions after that and warped in the pages of how to soak and sprout grains and everything because I wanted to preserve the foods that we were eating in our home. I knew from reading that book that the common thread through all the cultures is not soaking and sprouting greens.

The common thread through the cultures is the preservation of these sacred foods and going to the ends of the earth as far as those cultures knew it, to find, preserve, have access and provide them to the people in the community that needed them most. I was like, “This is what we’re doing.” I’m all in. We’re doing organ meats every week. We’re on board. I didn’t know how to do it but I was in.

The common thread that connects cultures is the preservation of organ meat and how they provide it to the people that need it the most.

You read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration from cover to cover. That’s Dr. Price’s seminal work. Talk to us about some of the cultures and how they prized these organ meats.

First of all, it comes up in every chapter of the book. Every chapter has these special foods. You’d have to go ask the chief if they could tell Dr. Price what they were or not because if Dr. Price was friendly with the culture, then they would share that with him. Normally, they wouldn’t tell why this happens in a couple of cases.

There was one culture in Sudanese, Africa that they regarded the liver as the soul of the animal but also the soul of the person. It was so sacred that they wouldn’t touch it with their hands and they revered this food. They only touch it with a stick and would try to get as much liver as they could. That was the prized food in their culture. There are so many of these interesting stories. The organ meats were prized at all costs.

You were saying they wouldn’t even want to touch it. It makes me feel how we have a disdain for organ meats on the whole. In the US, they were looked down upon. They maybe are the food of the poor people because they’re cheaper or the offcuts. Talk to us about why were they considered sacred foods. What nutritional elements do they have that are nourishing us on such a profound level, even greater than muscle meat?

There’s a spectrum. In general, plant foods are here and then animal foods are a little bit higher and then organ meats are next with respect to nutrients in general. It could vary depending on a particular cut, organ or plant. In general, that’s a good way to think about it. Organ meats are the most nutrient-dense followed by muscle meats followed by plant foods.

WT 415 | Organ Meats — Organ Meats: Organ meats are the most nutritious and dense, followed by muscle meats and plant foods.

Plant foods have their place. The Weston A. Price Foundation emphasizes that it’s a well-rounded diet. We’re not against plants at all but for nutrient density, even higher than that is the muscle meat and higher than that still is the organ meat. What we’re going to talk about is exactly what nutrients are we talking about.

Organ meats tend to have most of the fat-soluble like what these tribes were looking for. These cultures were thriving with fat-soluble vitamins. It wasn’t always that they would get them in organ meats. Sometimes it was fish roe, eggs of different animals or insects. All arthropods are very high in fat-soluble vitamins. Arthropods are insects. In our culture, we don’t do a lot of insects but it’s funny because we do.

We are familiar with the sea insects like crabs and lobster. We do prize those foods and we have traditionally but also land insects. The identical class of animals is high in fat-soluble vitamins but the organ meats as well and also animal fats. Dr. Bill Schindler talks about how when we transitioned from being scavengers to being the hunter, we had first access to blood organ meats and animal fat.

It also changed our brains and our species. We were able to grow and develop from that. That was a transitional point once we had access to those fats and nutrients. The liver, for example, has high levels of all of the B vitamins and high levels of minerals but then it’s also a storage unit of these fat-soluble vitamins. It contains all of them. They work in concert together. A, D and K, for example.

Sally always says that A is the detox organ. It’s breaking things down. Vitamin D is building things back up. Vitamin K is the conductor of the symphony and is directing D on where to go. In some medical literature, these vitamins are so important. They’re referred to as hormones. They act like hormones in the body. However, the thing about animal food, real food, the food itself as opposed to individualized supplements like a vitamin A supplement or something is that they’re in balanced proportions and concentrations.

We evolved by eating the whole animal and having them in these kinds of ratio concentrations. You will find that in there. The other thing about organ meats is that if you eat a lot of muscle meat, you can end up with high levels of certain amino acids like methionine but then it’s the organ meats like the skin, bones, connective tissue and collagen that balances that.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t end up with high homocysteine levels, which has lots of adverse effects in our culture like heart disease, stroke, fatigue and stuff like that. Eating the whole animal balances out the muscle needs. It all goes together. If you go back in time and think about how people ate, it’s the whole thing. We wouldn’t have left parts aside.

Suddenly, you had this a-ha some years after your college assignment and you’re like, “I’m going to cook organ meat.” What did you start with, Janine?

I did start with the liver. I didn’t know what I was doing at all but I was like, “We’re going to eat this.” I was not about to hide it. I was like, “This is a value system. We are going to embrace the whole animal and eat the whole animal. I’m going to plate the liver and serve it. You’re going to eat it and I’m going to eat it.” I had no idea how to do this.

When I got started, I had this cookbook by Marcella Hazan. It’s the Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. She has this one recipe in there. It’s liver piccata. She has a fancy name like Sautéed Calf’s Liver with Lemon, Piccata Style or something. It sounded very grandmotherly and I liked that. I was like, “This is it. I’m going to make this liver recipe every Monday night and we’re going to eat it.”

I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to cook it. I’m sure that I was overcooking it and then I was ultimately undercooking. The thing is if you cook the same recipe once a week for months on end, you come to some relationship with it. You have a sense of what works for you and your family and how you like it, which happened over time. The other thing is I could not even swallow the liver when I started cooking it. It was so hard for me. I would prepare the meal. My husband has always eaten everything I’ve served.

At the time, I had a two-year-old and an infant. They didn’t know any better. That was the meal. They just ate it. My husband ate everything. When I look back, I’m like, “That was so poorly done.” He ate it and then I would go to the table last. I was very methodical. I wouldn’t eat anything all day long so I’d be starving because I knew I couldn’t stomach it. I would cut these very thin slices and put them in my mouth. I would chew and chew until it was like mush in my mouth but I couldn’t swallow it. I was so repulsed by it.

I’d look back and it was like a comedy. I would go get a bottle of sparkling water only on liver nights. I’m never been one to have a lot of beverages in the house but I would have it with the liver. I would take a swig of that to swallow the liver. Psychology Today says it takes 15 to 20 times to acclimate to a new flavor. It’s like if you’re trying kimchi, Vegemite or something for the first time. Over many months, I can swallow it on my own. I started to enjoy it and then crave it. I was like, “I knew that I was feeling better when I would eat this food.” I would look forward to Monday nights and our liver dinners.

One thing I’m looking forward to is learning about your framework for cooking any organ meat because a lot of folks are exactly where you were. They were like, “I want to eat organ meats. I have no idea how to start.” Before we even started, you said, “If we become familiar with the cuts, it will become easier to know how to prepare them.” Talk to us about your framework for cooking any organ meat dish.

If you have something in front of you and you don’t know what to do with it, it’d be nice if you had a compass that could point you in the right direction. I have this compass and it’s my connective tissue framework. Organ meats tend to have a lot more connective tissue than muscle meats, which is another reason that they tend to be unfamiliar in our culture but knowing what to do with those different kinds of cuts can help break it down.

First of all, what is connective tissue? Let’s get an understanding of this. Connective tissue is like scaffolding. It protects and supports the body. I’m from the Bay Area and we saw the Golden Gate Bridge as I was growing up many times like class field trips and stuff. The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge. It has these huge cables, the scaffolding, the structure, the support and the protection that’s holding the bridge up but it has a cross-section of one of these cables there. Inside that huge cable are over 25,000 individual wires. One cable is 25,000 to 26,000 individual wires and that is what gives it strength and structure.

I like to think that the connective tissues are those wires inside the cable. There are all these little wires and they’re giving it structure. The glue that’s holding all of those wires together is collagen. I suppose you have this cut. It’s got a lot of connective tissue in it and you cook it gingerly. You quickly pan-fry it for a moment on the stove or maybe you grill it with your grilled open for a moment. It’s tender and delicious and it’s great.

Think of a rare steak. It’s juicy and tender. Fine. No problem at all. The problem is that if you hit 140 degrees with connective tissue, those fibers, the wires in the cable are going to seize up. Let me translate this for you. Seizing up is the edge of the meat will curl in the pan and it’s going to be dry, tough and chewy. It’s not good. It’s not what you want.

A lot of times, organ meats end up being prepared exactly like this and they get a bad rap. Think of a steak that’s well done that’s pretty dry and tough but it’s much worse than that because there’s a way more connective tissue in the organ meats than there is in that steak. If you get to that point, what you need to do is go way beyond that and cook it long enough that those fibers in the connected tissue start to soften, relax and break down. That collagen glue that’s holding it together melts into a rich gelatin.

Organ meat gets a bad rep because they are not prepared properly. If you hit over 140 degrees when cooking them with connective tissue, they will curl up and become too chewy.

You have something different. Think of your pot roast. You come home at the end of the day, you open your Crockpot, you have meat that’s falling apart and it’s in this rich beautiful broth that’s gelatinous and divine. You’re thinking you’ve got something wonderful and delicious but in that middle area, you can get into a lot of trouble. This is my compass and this is the connective tissue framework. Once you know where all the organs fit in this framework, you’re empowered to cook them in any way.

Are you saying that there are varying degrees of connective tissue with each organ? Some have more than others.

Yes. Let’s do liver for example. I’m telling you that all of these organs have tons of connective tissue but the liver is an interesting organ. It has very little connective tissue. It’s an agglomeration of cells. If you cook that for a long time, it’ll disintegrate and become very dry and crumbly, which is very different. Here’s the thing. The liver does have connective tissue in the membrane that surrounds it.

I suppose you have a slice of liver and it has the very shiny edge of silver skin all around the border of the slice. You then go to put it in the pan and cook it but the thing is because that membrane around the perimeter is all silver skin, it is going to curl up in the pan when you go to cook it. It will never lay flat and you can never cook it evenly.

With liver, you want to trim all of that off. Cut that out because that’s going to allow the liver to lay flat in the pan and you can get a nice even cook. It’s up to you to know but nothing can take the place of a little bit of experience of how you like it best. With liver, there’s a trade-off between texture and intensity of flavor.

If it’s cooked more, it has a more intense flavor but if it’s cooked less because it does not have the same texture as muscle meat, it can be unfamiliar for some people. It could even seem a little bit gooey. If you’ve ever tried to make a blend with fresh liver and you put it in your blender, you end up with soup. There’s no structure to it at all and that’s gross.

The liver is a funny one but something like the kidney or the heart, if you have those organs, a lot of people will try to pan-fry them, cook them or mix them in a blend or something but you can get into trouble that way. What you want to do is cook them rare so that they never get into that spot where they seize up and curl.

Julia Child will cook the whole beef kidney in one piece in the pan, flip it over, cook it in the pan and slice it afterwards. She won’t cut it all into individual lobes because that would be too high of a temperature but if you have the whole big kidney and then you slice it afterwards, then you end up with rare slices in the middle. She’ll cover that with sauce and then you end up with a kidney that’s tender and delicious. Otherwise, you have to go in the other direction like steak and kidney pie where you braise that for hours and then it’s the filling of your pie. Knowing how they all fit in, then you have organ meat. You’re like, “I know which direction to go in.” It takes the guesswork out of it. It’s like a compass.

—

Coming up, is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Janine covers how to get the right balance of organ meats to benefit your body while avoiding vitamin A toxicity. She also offers tips for getting a family of picky eaters on board with organ meats.

Go to Paleovalley and use the code WISE for 15% off at checkout.

Go to Optimal Carnivore on Amazon and use the code WESTON10 to receive 10% off all products.

—

I want to ask you. Can you have too much of a good thing when it comes to organ meats? I’ve heard you talk about vitamin A toxicity. Is that common when you indulge in too many organ meats? Talk to us about that.

I’m so glad you asked. This is an important point. In the absence of a culture that has familiarity with these cuts and a relationship with them is easy to get into trouble. It’s interesting because in general, most Americans are super deficient in vitamin A. They don’t have enough and it’s important for growing children. What you see is that it’s fortified in breakfast cereals, juices and milk because the government has identified that this is a deficiency as a whole.

You had Morley Robbins on this show. He gives an excellent explanation of how copper is essential for cell energy and metabolism. You don’t have to look very far in our country to find people that are short on energy and have dysregulated metabolism. In general, we have a huge copper deficiency and it’s probably true in the Weston Price Community.

Judy Cho and the carnivore meat-based community have spoken up about this. They’re starting to see excess. She’s seen signs of vitamin A toxicity in her nutrition practice and high copper levels on lab reports. There are two ways that people get into trouble with this and both have to do with supplementation. She’s reporting that she has people in her practice that are eating upwards of 6 to 16 ounces of liver a week. It’s just 1 ounce of liver a day. If you think about the whole animal, it’s a lot. If you have a 1,200-pound cow and it has 500 pounds of muscle meat on it, it has a 10 to 15-pound liver. Where’s the balance there?

In the absence of a culture that’s telling us, I was fortunate enough that I leaned into my family culture because my grandparents were immigrants from Portugal. My mom grew up in an immigrant home and she has all of the anecdotes and stories that come with that. This was traumatizing for her. She hated it because of all these weird foods. She thought her family was weird. She was the only non-native speaker in her school.

It was not a great experience for her but she does have the stories of this, which is that my late grandma who lived to 101 served liver every week of her life. When I came to this, I’d heard her talk about the liver. I was like, “Did you eat liver? Why don’t you still eat it?” “I’ve eaten enough of that.” She did say, “We served it every week and this is how we served it.” I was like, “This is what we’re doing in my home. If this is the way my grandma did it, this is the way I want to do it.”

She served it every week but not every night. That’s part of your point.

Exactly. It’s become popular to take liver, cut it up into little capsules, freeze it and take it like a vitamin. That could be a lot. If you’re doing that endlessly, there’s a definite place for supplements if you don’t have access to real food for some period and there’s a specific thing that you’re correcting. In general, another reason people get into trouble is that there are other sources in their diet or lifestyle that they’re not aware of.

With vitamin A, if you have acne and you bought a retinol skin cream, you might not realize that it is a topical vitamin A supplement. It’s not only in prescription skin creams but it’s in many skin creams. If you’re using those, you might have a supplemental form of vitamin A or fortified foods so you don’t realize that you’re entering this territory.

What are the signs of vitamin A toxicity?

I haven’t come across this so I feel like the things I know are things that I haven’t had an experience with but it could be blurred vision, nausea, dizziness, cerebrospinal pressure, joint pain and things like that. Whereas with deficiency, it is night blindness and bumps on the back of your arms, which I remember having my whole life pretty much. That’s what I know from reading about it. It’s interesting though because I do find that whenever I look up these vitamins, vitamin A is essential for vision, cell growth and immunity.

However, with this vision thing, if you look at deficiency symptoms and excess symptoms, you’ll both find dysregulated vision. It’s like the same thing is getting dysregulated but in a different way. It could be night blindness or blurred vision. Sometimes, it can be confusing but there’s always a personal story of where you are at in the spectrum.

People can look at their diets and habits and get an idea if they’re having too much vitamin A or too little. Your word of warning about the supplements is a good one too. Let’s talk about the hurdles that people face when it comes to organ meats. Some people will say, “My kids will never eat it.” Maybe they don’t have a spouse that is as agreeable as yours or they think it’s too complicated. What advice do you have to overcome those hurdles?

In my course, I have this framework for overcoming all of the hurdles that people have because there are so many of them. My nourish framework is corny but I’ll run through it quickly and then address these specifics. The first thing is to set an intention to normalize organ meats but after that, overcoming barriers and understanding the benefits of why we are doing this. Overcoming the cultural barriers and having a framework for thinking about like, “This is so gross. I feel so squeamish. I don’t know if I can do it.” People are always like, “My husband, my kids.”

If you want to normalize eating organ meats, set an intention to do so and prepare to overcome cultural barriers.

I often think that like me, it’s them. I used to say things like that. “I don’t know if my kids will eat this,” but it was really like, “I don’t know if I can eat this or prepare it.” It’s overcoming barriers, understanding the benefits and being ready for yourself. That’s like scheduling it. Whatever’s important to you and your life, you schedule it and show up for it. Also, sourcing it and then it’s time. Prepping and cooking are going into the details of how to prep and cook each organ.

Also, serve and survey. Consider it all as an experiment and take notes. “What can you learn from this experience?” It may be true. Your kids might not eat it. Sometimes I serve their favorite foods and they don’t eat them. That does happen. In families, kids don’t eat meals sometimes and even the ones that you have lovingly prepared and have put a lot of care into. H in Nourish is Hooray. It’s to celebrate all the baby steps and progress. I do think as he’s saying, “There’s a lot of work and all this,” there’s a perception.

When I met my husband, he was from the Midwest and I was from California. We were in college. There was one time we were hanging out together and I was going to make guacamole. He was like, “You can do that? You can make guacamole?” I was like, “You could buy guacamole?” I had never seen it bought and he had never seen it made. It’s like coming from different places. I feel like that is a big part of the perception of organ meats. People haven’t seen it to believe that it’s possible. They had it where it’s good.

I remember you had another guest on the show that talked about how to go and eat organ meats at a restaurant. You can see how somebody else prepares it and open your eyes to the possibility that it could taste pretty good. It may not be that hard. I also think that it gives an overview mindset thing. This idea of experimentation is super important. We say, “These organs are so nutrient-dense. They’re important for our children. We’ve got to do this work.”

It then becomes this heavyweight. If you say, “I’m experimenting with this. I have no idea how it’ll go,” people probably won’t eat it. “I don’t even know if I’m going to like it but I’m going to try it and it’s going to be a small serving.” Minimize the expectations. Experimenting with them lightens the whole thing. This is not serious. It’s nice, fun and easy. I don’t think life is supposed to be hard. It’s part of the perspective that organ meats gave me over time.

I used to be tired of everything. It used to be hard before I introduced these foods into my life but now it’s like, “It’s not supposed to be that way. It’s no big deal.” We’ll experiment with it and see how it goes. You might be surprised. We’re always like, “What if the worst-case scenario happens but what if the best-case scenario happens?” What if they do like it and you were shocked? You even surprised yourself.

What if it wasn’t that hard to cook? What if it came out better than you thought? What if this was your new favorite food? What if your kids started asking for this on their birthdays? That’s what happens in my house with these sacred foods. I’m like, “It’s so much work,” and they’re like, “Please, make it for my birthday.” How could I say no? It’s their birthday. I’m like, “Fine. We’ll make it.” Try trotters’ marrow.

What a 180 for your family and you. I am thinking of the reader who’s like, “I’ve heard so much of how good these organ meats are for my family but I am not going to bother.” What are they going to miss out on, Janine?

Hilda, I do believe that everybody’s path is different. I don’t know what your path is. I can only speak from my experience and my path. My path called me to this path. Once I stumbled upon it, I was like, “I loved optimization problems.” I’m thinking about these kinds of algorithms. I had all these frameworks of cooking organ meats and stuff. It’s like an analytical mind. I feel like that was my dad coming in. My mom was this amazing cook. She was always having dinner parties and preparing food for everybody. She loved to cook.

For me, all of a sudden, when I learned about nutrient density in food, I was like, “This is my gig. I’m into this. I love it.” I didn’t love the liver at first but I liked the idea of it. I have always enjoyed experimenting with organ meats, getting to know them and becoming familiar with them. If somebody’s not having them, maybe it’s not their path. Maybe accept and celebrate exactly where you are at this place in your journey.

The more exposure you have to people like me or something, it might open your mind a little bit over time but maybe it’s not for everybody. I confess to my mom like, “I’ve had enough. I don’t want it.” Every time she comes over, she’s like, “Did you hide anything in here?” There are times I have but I have to tell her. I’m like, “Mom, it has heart in it but I don’t think it’s a big deal. I don’t know if you’ll taste it.” She’s like, “Okay,” but she doesn’t want it. I’m like, “I can honor that. That’s your path.”

I’m only speaking to the person that has a little bit of meat in them that resonates with what I’m saying. If they want to learn more, the website and blog is Offally Good Cooking. It has nearly 100 recipes on it. I started it in 2017. My intention then was like, “If I could have had all this in one place when I got started.” It’s because I was scouring old library books.

Any old cookbook I could find, I would flip to the index and see if it had organ meats. I would read all of it. I was like, “These grandmas have to have something to share with me.” I would try to find a way. If that’s you and you’re curious about that, check out my site. Come and see. There are so many recipes on there. Something is bound to spark an interest or look good to you. That’s who it’s for.

Let me ask you the question I like to pose at the end, Janine. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

If you want to up-level in 2023, I would say to include some organ meats. I do think that they are so essential. Something that’s under-recognized in our culture is mental health and things like that. That is the foundation, these fat-soluble vitamins. Chris Masterjohn has a paper at some point talking about arachidonic acid, fat-soluble vitamins, eating liver and all of these nutrient-dense foods.

He has a quote in there. It’s like sustained effort and goal-oriented behavior that stems from these nutrients. It’s funny because after I read that, I looked back on the before and after. I think, “I thought I was healthy then.” I look back now and I see the energy and the ability to focus on things. I have clarity and energy for the things that I love in my life.

Organ meats are not the end goal. Organ meats are the path to freedom in your life to do the things that you love. There are so many places you can start. If you’re just getting started, there are organ blends. It’s super easy. Amesbury has the pluck seasoning. I love that because you’re putting it on food and you’re chewing it and eating the food itself. Not bypassing that mechanism with supplementing and eating meals and chewing food has always been part of my value system. I advise that.

Eating organ meats regularly is not the end goal. It is only the path to freedom to do the things you love.

You can go to the store and buy a store-bought pâté but if you’re already doing all that stuff, go to my site, check it out and find a new recipe. Get an organ that you’ve never tried before. There’ll be something new there and/or a recipe that you haven’t tried before. Lean in and see what you can do with it and experiment. Have fun. You might surprise yourself.

I’m so grateful that you shared your experience in this episode with these insights and inspiration for us to roll up our sleeves and dive in the way you did but maybe even better equipped because we have more resources now. Thanks to the research that you’ve done. Thank you for this conversation. It’s been wonderful, Janine.

Thanks for having me, Hilda. It’s been great to be here.

—

In this episode, our guest was Janine Farzin. Visit her site, Offally Good Cooking, for recipes and tips on preparing and cooking delicious meals with organ meats. For our recent review from Apple Podcasts. “My favorite podcast. Thank you, Wise Traditions, for pulling together many of my favorite healing subjects and introducing me to new ways to build health and happiness. I heard about the Weston A. Price Foundation decades ago but just came to appreciate all WAPF is doing. You are officially my favorite podcast. I listen to an episode almost daily and look forward to catching up on the hundreds of back episodes.”

Thank you so much for this review. It means so much. It’s great to hear from you all. If you’d like to rate and review the show, simply go to Apple Podcasts and click on ratings and reviews. Leave us as many stars as you like and tell the world why this show is worth following to. Thank you so much for reading. Stay well, my friend. Remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

About Janine Farzin

Janine Farzin helps people with uncertainty around organ meats learn to confidently prepare them so that they can feel kitchen-confident, energized and empowered with their health. She has engineering degrees from UC Berkeley and MIT and considers nutrient-density to be a great optimization problem. She can be found at offallygoodcooking.com and on IG/YouTube @offallygoodcooking.