The Other Stock Exchange

I want to share an excellent method for food sharing in social groups with very high nutrition-boosting and good food practices:


The Local Stock Exchange Party

Many people are switching to organic, or more ethically grown meat. But the most pressing ethic of meat consumption is the grotesque waste that goes along with the use of bones and organs. These parts of animals were used right up to the 1960s by common household cooking around the world - but now even the most well resourced areas are unlikely to feature heavy uses of stocks or offal cooking.

In The Wh*** Beast: Nose To Tail Eating, Fergus Henderson promotes a wholistic attitude to meat. Forget eating organically, which often uses up more resources than factory farming. The key thing is to make the food value of an animal last for as long as possible.

The key element of meat use that so many have forgotten is stock.

It takes very little to organise a Stock Exchange Party. Remind your friends that on a particular weekend, you will bring frozen stocks or soups made from meats you've prepared since. Since few cook bone carrying meat cuts every night, those who (for example) cook a chicken on a Sunday can make the stock on Monday. Those who had roast beef can boil down the bones the next day.

The party is literally a -stock- -exchange- party! Because stock preparation makes so much, you can share high quality stock with three or four other people from one cut of meat. Everybody leaves with a mixture of stocks that add flavour and nutrition value.

This idea is vegetarian-friendly. Vegetable stocks are not created equal and at the last Stock Exchange, four meat stocks and four vegetable stocks were shared. I made a beetroot and rosemary stock to give to my vegetarian friends who used it in pilafs, loafs, and as a soup base.

Simple and easy food security.