Maggie's Farm

Bird Dog ...
I don't think I quite agree with you about Kobe beef, not because I think it's not a scam in one way. We obviously don't have sweet little old ladies drinking Japanese beer and spitting it on the cow's coats, to be massaged in. That's not "the American Way." But I understand there are some ranches here and there raising cows [without the old ladies] which, heritably speaking, come from the same bloodlines as the Kobe beef cows in Japan. I have a great respect for hybridizing toward one purpose or another, because that's what I did with my orchids for twenty-five years. But as an orchid judge, I traveled to shows all over the country and had a chance to see how climate and growing conditions can make a great difference in plants from the same orchid cross, and probably it's true about animals as well.
When my husband and I were in Japan, we went to dinner one evening and had some of the so-called Kobe beef, which was indeed a minor miracle... soft as butter and exquisitely flavored. Celestial. It was absolutely the best beef I had ever had. I haven't yet been able to duplicate the experience here in the good old US of A, even though there is a ranch somewhere in the state of Texas which is reputed to raise genuine Kobe beef. We've dined on meat from the ranches once or twice and the meat was delicious. But not the same.

Maybe it's the tender attentions of the little old ladies that we were missing. Do ya think?

Marianne