Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category

Last night Jeremy and Dana cooked the elk and bison sausage we bought at the farmer’s market. We have been watching all these food channels recently – so they each made a separate dish with the same food. Jeremy made a sausage patty and Dana made a tomato sauce (recipe at the bottom). We were joking around about how nice having local elk and bison was and Jeremy made a comment regarding the last episode of The Next Food Network Star.

The last episode was an episode on budgeting. Basically they had $60 to shop and make a gourmet meal for 12 people. As is typical of these shows, they had different types – chefs, restaurant consultants, a mom, personal chefs, and finally a nutritionist highly focused on local and organic food as they presented her on TV. And after they cook the meals, they have to give a brief summary of what they cooked in an entertaining manner which is related to the theme.

As we were discussing that the elk and bison sausage we had was relatively lean, Jeremy commented how the contestant Katie Cavuto had talked about the health benefits of using chicken saugage over pork saugages in a budget show. Nobody on the show seemed to give Katie credit for making a point that had anything to do with budgets or cost savings.

As I thought about this – on one hand it really reminded me a bit of some of the price quotes and rfps we have been submitting lately. One category is always price. In one rfp we saw recently 40% of the points were for price. In other instances, agencies just look at what they have budgeted and see who has the lowest price that meets the budget.

What is interesting to me is that agencies (and the food network) should be looking at the lifecycle cost of a project including all savings. So the real price should be the net cost or even in Therap’s case the net savings.

On the other hand, I should point out that most agencies seem to realize that they have to look at the full set of costs and benefits in an economic analysis. Therap is quite price and budget conscious and our price generally is lower than any other feasible or viable option.
In the case of chicken vs pork sausages, if Katies point was that chicken is healthier – then it would seem that over time there would be a difference in medical costs, in sick time, in other items that actually can be quantifiable. I realize that during a severe recession it can be difficult to say to spend extra money each week on food because at some point in the future there might be a health difference. But society has done that with items such as eliminating trans fat from most packages.

Perhaps the Food Network could do society (and their viewers) a service by focusing on the full lifecycle cost rather than just the short term analysis.

Dana Free Range Sausage Tomato Sauce
½ Lb Elk Sausage and ½ Lb Bison Sausage (meat was loose sausage, almost like ground beef)
2 Cans Muir Glen Oranic Fire Roasted Crushed Tomato Sauce (or equivalent)
4 Cloves Carlic
2 Little Onions (I am not sure what kind)
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Parsley
Basil
Basically- first Brown the meat with 3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil with 2 chopped cloves of garlic and a little salt and pepper to taste. After the meat was brown add the tomato sauce and everything else.