I’ve been meaning to visit the legendary Staubitz butcher shop in Cobble Hill for months.  It’s just a few blocks down from the local Trader Joe’s.  I found my excuse to make the trip this afternoon, and lo and behold, was not disappointed.

The meat case was laid out with exquisitely colorful, well marbled, fresh cuts of meat. All are apparently sourced from ranchers who know what they’re doing, and treat their livestock right. As you can see, you pay for quality, but many of the items are quite reasonably priced.

My own philosophy concerning the ethics of eating has whirlpool’d around a central idea, mainly that I don’t want to contribute to the polluting, torturing, resource wasting ways of factory farms and agribusiness.  I think it can best be summed up by this TED talk from Mark Bittman. I don’t think I’ll ever stop eating meat, but I don’t need to eat it every day, or even every week, and I don’t mind paying to be sure that it’s of the highest quality, and that the animal was allowed to follow its instincts and live in as stress free an environment as possible whilst it was alive.

(Oh and P.S. – I bought one of those Cornish Hens, and some slab bacon to wrap it in.  It will likely be my lone meat including meal for the rest of the week.)

UPDATE:  It was delicious.  The big surprise was how incredible the liver was which roasted alongside the bird. In other news, I recently heard about another such butcher shop, which stakes (steaks?) its reputation on providing all local, grass fed, etc. meats.  It’s called Marlow & Daughters. A bit of a pain to get to if you’re not near the J/M/Z – but probably worth an excursion sometime soon.