Gee, Ghee! And a Salmon Cakes Post Script

Three weeks ago Emma and I decided to go back to eating totally grain free.  I felt tired all the time since we added corn and rice back to our diets last fall.  Emma's scalp had become very itchy and flaky, and she was starting to need to take naps every day.  We decided to do the Whole30 plan to help us get back on track.  So no grains, no dairy, no sugar, no industrial seed/vegetable oils, no MSG, no processed foods, etc., for thirty days.

I can do without the corn and rice, but boy do I miss butter on this plan!  We can have ghee (clarified butter), though, so I have been making that.  It's a rather painstaking process.  Today when I was at Kroger, I decided to buy some ghee.  I found an organic one by Purity Farms.  It is made from the milk of grassfed cows. I found another by Ziyad that was not organic and was made from conventionally-fed cows' milk.  They both had no other ingredient besides the butter oil.

They were expensive.  The Purity Farms organic, grassfed one was $9.29 for a 7.5 oz jar!  The Ziyad brand was $7.99 for a 16 oz. jar.  I was surprised when I opened them to see that the non-grassfed one had a deeper color.  Then I dipped my spoon into the Purity Farms ghee and tasted it.  I didn't like it.  It was almost rancid tasting.  I tried the Ziyad, and it tasted better but still was not anything near what I would describe as tasty.  This shocked me.  I assumed that as expensive as this stuff was, it would be a better product than what I had been making at home.  As far as flavor goes, my homemade ghee from Organic Valley's Pastured Butter is far superior.  Unfortunately, I can't give a cost breakdown because I don't have a batch of homemade ghee that I can measure to figure out how much it costs.  Whatever it is, it is worth it.  This store-bought stuff was a waste of money.

The good news is that I found a good salmon cake recipe.  That's my other problem with this diet--trying to go without cheese on Fridays when we eat no meat.  These salmon cakes were easy, nutritious, and didn't scream for cheese.  Here's the recipe.  I didn't have the lemon-pepper, so I just squeezed half a lemon into it and added an extra teaspoon of coconut flour.

Ready to make into patties and fry.