The Farmer in the Dell: When Eating Liver Makes You Quiver...

I had been having ringing in my ears and moments of rapid heart beat even while sitting on the couch reading to my children. I figured that I would mention it to my midwife, along with the fact that I had been exhausted and supposedly the second trimester is the time when you are to have the most energy. Oh well I figured, this was the byproduct of being pregnant and having two little ones to take care of, it is probably just sleep deprivation.

Well it turns out that these were not normal pregnancy symptoms for a third time mom, I had really low Iron. This was not what I wanted to hear as I try and take lots of measures to boost my iron with food and food based supplements. I usually take black strap molasses at night and liquid chlorophyll during the day as well as eating as many greens as I can and taking a food based prenatal that has 100% of my Iron. Apparently this was not cutting it and I really hate taking Iron supplements as they have a habit of making me feel sick and nauseated.

I was willing to give it a try though as my energy was just not enough to keep up with my two little kids and I really didn't like ringing in my ears or feeling like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. So we went with the liquid Iron because it is assimilated better by the body and has less of an effect with the nausea. It took about two weeks for me to notice a difference, but what I think helped it along was I made myself eat liver once a week.

I know liver, I am not a liver fan. I have been trying, I'll admit halfheartedly, to like organ meats but it was not really a priority so lets say it was put on the back burner for a while. Well now I have low Iron and a freezer full of liver so I womaned-up and tried liver again. This time I used the recipe from Nourishing Traditions and surprisingly, I found that I liked it. "I must be really low in iron to like liver!" I would joke with my farmer but what I think really made the difference was that it calls for cooking the soaked liver in clarified butter. I had never used clarified butter before but it gives that butter flavor to your food while holding up to high heat while cooking.

The only downside to this awesome find is that one container of grass fed clarified butter was like 3x the price of regular butter and we use homemade anyway. The recipe uses quite a bit of the butter too so I decided to find out how hard it is to make clarified butter. What I found out was that it is very simple! I am so excited now I can use it for more than my weekly liver dose! Slather it on Naan bread use it for sauces and fish it is awesome! Here is how I did it.

Take your butter and heat it on med high on the top of the stove till it is melted and bubbling for a few min.