LIVING NATURALLY:

MANY of us living in this beautiful valley have a solid focus on nutrition for health, so we'll seek out fresher, locally grown and organic produce and drive the extra mile to access grass-fed meats and wild- caught seafood. We'll even take the time to create stock from scratch. But one super-nutritious food with a repellent reputation is easily overlooked in our wealthy modern culture.

When it comes to meat, our ancestors ate more of the animal than we do, including the organs. Nose-to-tail eating was the norm, unlike today, when it's sometimes regarded as a quirkier way to eat. But like many old nutrition practices, the inclusion of offal in the weekly meal plan offers a lot.

Offal may be healthy, but it's certainly earned the 'ew yuck' reputation. The texture is markedly different, even when you've been able to get past mental pictures of the role those organs played. As an antidote, our ancestors developed fancy terms like lambs fry or tripe to conceal the reality of what was on the plate. The only offal with a glamorous reputation these days is chicken liver pate.

You can see how you could easily skim past the organ meats for sale in favour of the muscle meats we're more familiar with. But offal actually has a lot to offer you when it comes to nutrition, and certainly for the budget-savvy. It has the same protein content as muscle meat, and also the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and E as well as B group vitamins, iron, plus zinc. And it usually costs less. Bonus.

The range of nutrients in offal is impressive: vitamin A to boost skin and eye health; vitamin D, with its important role in bone health; and E, too, the skin vitamin. Abundant quantities of B group vitamins, essential for the health of your nervous system are to be found, with B12 especially rich in liver, a nutrient needed more as you age as the ability of your stomach to extract it from food declines. The iron content is needed for energy, and zinc for immunity as well as skin health. Clearly, offal is good for you.

What most of us are missing, though, is knowledge: how to prepare offal to make it more appetising. You can locate that through old-time recipes like steak-and-kidney pie or liverwurst. Perhaps lambs fry and bacon. Your grandmother's recipe collection or directions from the new wave of nose-to-tail chef bloggers could be a good resource.