sharing my love of canadian beef

Earlier this year, I was chosen as a Brand Ambassador for Canada Beef Inc, which I am totally excited about (Paul's pretty excited too). Not only are we both big beef eaters, we generally feel pretty patriotic whenever we're travelling and see "Canadian Beef" on the menu (which has happened in London, Cuba and Hong Kong!).

So, for the past month, I've been learning more about Canadian beef and already have my in-laws asking "Is it Canadian?" every time anyone buys beef for a family dinner. However, being a city girl, I don't really know much about where my beef comes from, so I thought that this would be a great opportunity to not only try new recipes involving beef, but also to learn more about how this product ends up from a farm to my table.

Since being chosen as an Ambassador, one of my go-to sources for all things beef is the Canada Beef site at http://www.beefinfo.org. Not only is it full of eye-opening information about beef and the beef industry, there are also tons of useful tips, recipes and useful tools on the site. For example, there's a Virtual Beef Nutrition Counter where you can see the nutrition values for various cuts of beef (I must admit, I played with this for awhile), a Make It Beef Club that lets you sign up for an e-newsletter, and lots of ways to connect to other beef-lovers!

(photo credit: from the Canadian Beef Facebook page)

And since I'm a little nerdy when it comes to facts and figures, check out these impressive stats about Canadian beef:

- There are 83,000 farms and ranches with beef cattle across Canada with a total of 4.27 million beef cows (Statistics Canada, Jan. 2011)
- Beef production contributed $24.6 billion to Canada's economy in 2010 (Canfax, Statistics Canada 2010)
- In 2010, Canada exported 50% of the total beef and cattle produced in Canada (Statistics Canada, Canfax, AAFC 2010), making it the 5th largest beef exporter in the world (excluding live cattle exports)

And my favourite factoid: On average, Canadians are eating 44.5 lbs (20.2 kg) of beef per person every year (Statistics Canada 2010). 45 pounds of beef! On average! That's quite a bit of beef!

Well, if I'm going to be eating that much beef in a year, I'd better make the most of it and make sure I'm cooking it properly! So, one of my favourite areas of the Canada Beef site is definitely the Cooking Lessons section of the site. This area not only gives you lots of beef-related recipes, but also has videos and step-by-step lessons on how to cook beef in various ways (ie. oven-roasting, broiling, grilling, etc). 

I'm definitely going to be learning a lot during my time as a Brand Ambassador! I hope you'll join me as I wrangle up some beef at the market and experiment with different beefy recipes (like these juicy homemade pesto burgers!)

Disclosure: I am a Canadian Beef Ambassador and have been compensated for this post. However, all opinions expressed are my own and have not been influenced in any way by my association with the program.