Things That Cause Me to Make Up Stories: From Duck Farm To Table

Food. It's such a simple word but it can evoke such a variety of emotions, thoughts and even physical reactions, depending on your mood. By definition food is nourishment consumed to sustain life, provide energy and promote growth, but we all know that it's much bigger than that. Everyone has food memories from childhood. Everyone has favorite foods and foods that comfort them. Everyone has foods they don't like, won't eat or will never ever try. And everyone has issues with food. I literally cannot think of a single person I know who hasn't at some point thought critically about their diet, changed their eating habits to lose weight, or castigated themselves for overeating. Food is a complicated aspect of being human. It can bring so much pleasure and so much pain. My struggles with food have evolved over the years from subsisting on junk food to yo-yo dieting to where I'm at now, which is more of a moral quandary. I've read too many books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma to be blissfully ignorant about what I am putting in my body and the repercussions of my choices. And I am not just talking about my health, but about what kind of practices in the food industry I am supporting. I WANT to eat all organic, grass fed, cage free, free range, cruelty-free, hormone-free animals that lived happy lives with farmers that loved them before slitting their throats and draining their bodies of blood. In an ideal world, this is what I would do. Do I always do this? No. Do I sometimes eat at McDonald's because I have an unnatural craving for whatever kind of crack they put in their Chicken McNuggets? Yes. Do I do this even knowing the conditions that the chickens were subjected to are practically torturous and that McDonald's has singlehandedly altered farming in our country while simultaneously making us one of the fattest, diabetic, heart disease riddled nations in the world? Yes, I do. (hanging head in shame). Why do I do it? Because I can tuck it away in the back of my head and pretend that what's going on behind the scenes isn't really going on since I don't have to see it on a daily basis.

Now that I am in culinary school, there are so many opportunities to go behind the scenes and see how things are done and where my food came from. An opportunity presented itself earlier this week in the form of a field trip to a farm in the Hudson Valley. My classmate, Jersey was on the hunt for foie gras and ended up organizing a tour for a few of us of one of the best foie gras purveyors in the country: Hudson Valley Foie Gras. If you've never had foie gras, but maybe have heard of it, you already know it's controversial. The ducks (or geese) are force fed to enlarge their livers and make them extra fatty and delicious. And it is truly delicious. It's rich, buttery, flavorful, melt in your mouth fatty goodness. But as you can imagine as the term force feeding implies, not everyone thinks it's humane.

We (me, Jersey, A La Greque, and hmm...nickname...it could be "I never leave the East Village", but I think I will just go with Cheese-ophile for managing to surpass my own obsession with the good stuff, actually let's just contract the two and call him Evil Cheese. It works beautifully on so many levels). Anyway, the four of us set off last Tuesday morning for the duck farm, which was about 2 hours north of the city. It was a picture perfect autumn day. The air was crisp and as we wound away from the city through tree lined highways, the leaves changed from green to golden to fiery orange. When we finally arrived at the duck farm and stepped out into the country air, we realized two things: 1. it had turned from crisp to bone chilling and 2. a duck farm smells like bad breath and duck poop. We located the office and met up with our tour guide, Marcus, who is the Operations Manager of the farm. He was soft spoken, lanky, and bearded, basically exactly how I picture a farmer.

He spent some time explaining to us what we would be seeing over the next few hours and then laid out the defense of their farming practices, which he has clearly spent a significant portion of his job doing. He led us through different parts of the farm where we met ducks grouped and housed by their ages. As we toured, he regularly thanked us for giving him the opportunity to show us firsthand their standard of farming, which he was personally very proud of. He also remarked several times that he knew that not everyone would make the decision to consume foie gras (or serve it in their restaurants) after seeing the farm, but he was happy that we had chosen to educate ourselves before making a decision.

We were able to watch the force feeding which occurs three times each day and lasts about 5 seconds per duck. It involved inserting a rod into the ducks mouth and pouring food through a funnel. The ducks don't like being handled, but it didn't seem to hurt them either. Marcus explained the ducks anatomy in great detail and how the force feeding would feel to the duck (which is to say, not painful, just momentarily uncomfortable), but since I am not a duck and have no clue if that is true, I made my judgments based on the ducks behavior.

The process did not horrify me at all, as I thought it might. I actually came away from the visit thinking that the farming of ducks for foie gras is probably 100 times more humane than the farming of commercial chickens. These ducks roamed around uncaged (except during the feeding stage) in a safe habitat that was kept far cleaner than a factory farm. Most chickens are kept in cages where they can't stand up or ever support their own body weight and are covered in their own filth. So until I decide to give up eating animals altogether (which is not likely to ever happen), I have no reason to give up eating duck or foie gras from a producer that treats their animals more humanely than the billions of chickens produced by companies like Tyson and Foster Farms every year. If anything, it compels me to learn more about the sources of all my food and choose producers that spend a lot of time and money ensuring that they are applying the highest standards to their farming and production practices.

After we left the farm, we went straight to Wendy's, because there wasn't much but fast food around and chowed down on burgers and chicken sandwiches from animals who living conditions probably made the duck farm look like the Four Seasons. This moment of hypocrisy made me realize that I have to vote with my dollars in hopes that someday high quality, humanely treated food will be as widely available as McDonald's. We spent the remainder of the afternoon picking apples at a farm in New Paltz and planning menus based on the bounty of duck and apples we were carting home.

A La Greque Garden of Eden Style

I ended up searing the foie gras and serving it with sauteed apples and apple juice reduction. The duck breast I picked up was spiced with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove and star anise and seared, sliced and accompanied by a spinach salad dressed with an apple vinaigrette. (It seriously tasted like filet mignon with crispy skin - the best duck I've ever had). And for dessert, baked apples with fresh cheese. It was lovely to enjoy a meal of which I knew the source of its components and it's something I hope to do more and more of going forward. Jersey's next idea? A visit to a slaughterhouse. Stay tuned.