A .25 cow query on the India version of Y! Answers

Just for the record, Hindu people consider the killing of cows to be taboo. Chels lives in Wisconsin, and we'll assume that she's not observant. We knew Y! India was a good source of news about cricket. Apparently it's also a portal for advice on bulk beef. .

Meat/no meat

The meat/no-meat question has been alive in our lives for a long time.

We had dinner Thursday night in Minneapolis with a long lost friend from college. Margo has been a vegetarian or vegan most of her life. Laura remembers eating wet burritos with her at the old Chico's bar on East Michigan in Grand Rapids. Margo would order a bean burrito and comment on the double-meat burrito on Laura's plate.

If someone questions Laura's nutritional choices, it most certainly will not end the friendship. But it does strain things. We lost track of Margo when we left Grand Rapids. We certainly didn't leave because of Margo or her friendly, conversational advocacy for vegetarianism. We knew a lot of other vegetarians there as well.


We lived in Saginaw, Michigan for 14 years, and dined dozens of times at the Bringer Inn. Their coffee is squeezed from dishrags, but they have great burgers, pies and breakfasts, and you'll seldom be troubled by talk of the beef economy, growth hormones or slaughterhouse practices. On a recent visit, our daughter, Emily, ordered potatoes and eggs, and we saw that no revisions have been written into the script for Bringer's slice of life in the I-75 corridor. The waitress still writes down such orders, then moves her center of gravity almost imperceptibly forward. Her head pitches ever so slightly to one side and her eyebrows draw together just a smidgen. You don't know what's coming. Then comes the question that gives you the one and only last chance you deserve under these circumstances: "No meat with that?"

The effect is powerful. The question is an ultimatum. You are on notice. This is your last chance to redeem yourself as a member of the carnivore herd. But the waitress hardly waits for an answer. And you realize it was less a question than a statement of fact that lays bare a character defect you will live with until your next visit, your next chance for redemption.

Your order is marched to the grill where one of the Bringer brothers examines it briefly, comprehending at a glance all that it reveals, and then expertly cracks the shells of your eggs over the hot greased metal expanse before him.

Bracing ourselves

We're still awaiting word about when we can pick up the meat. Lately, Laura is throttling back on the weekly retail beef purchases. And Steve seems more able to drive by Butterburger outlets.
Could it be that this massive impending acquisition of beef is changing us already?
Without risk of overstatement, this much is clear: Soon will have somewhat more immediate access to beef than we have ever known.

Intro to me(at)

From Laura:    

Let me start by saying this. I eat meat. I like it. I also feel like I physically require it to be healthy. I am 51 years old so I have lived through days when everyone around me was trying to be vegetarian and I was always hungry, often crabby, and at times anemic. If I have a vegetarian meal I am often thinking of the next meal before it is over. I am a product of a large Catholic meat and potatoes kind of family, although my current tastes wander somewhat multi-culturally. I have struggled to establish healthy eating habits. Since moving to Wisconsin about 10 years ago I have appreciated access to locally grown produce and meat.  I thought it might be fun to do this blog as a family project, and I also thought it would be good for me personally to be thinking about my relationship to food, and cooking and meat. Here is how the saga of my quarter cow started.

     I had been thinking for a while about ordering beef in bulk. It all came together on a visit with  friends at their farm in northern Ontario. Walt and I were there for a week. I ate wonderful, home cooked food for every meal. It was satisfying and homey and all of the beef we ate came from a local farm via their freezer. It made me realize that over the last few months I had been eating more meals out and on the run, and I had put on some weight. More concerning though, was that I was not feeling  as connected to my home, particularly my kitchen.  A few years ago we gutted our 1950s galley kitchen, and put in new (all hail the great god) IKEA cabinets and counter tops, and we installed a simple but respectable cooking appliance to replace a broken and ugly drop-in stove top and an easy-bake-oven-sized oven.

I tend to be the primary handyman person in the family also and I took a lot of pleasure in pulling this all together, and working with the contractor. So the kitchen feels like my space and is really pretty pleasing to me, and I go through periods where I really enjoy cooking. As you will see later, as we eat our way through the beef, I am a pretty simple family cook. I am not all organic/granola, but I don't like a lot of processed foods. In the last few years I have developed and allergy to wheat, which has thrown me for a bit of a loop.

Anyway, when I got home from that trip, I found a freezer on craigslist and took myself up to the Monona farmers market on a Sunday morning to find a meat vendor. I talked with a nice young man from GCW Schultz Meats, in Ft Atkinson. Later I will describe the ordering  process, and although Steve mentioned a bit about how this all plays with my lifelong vegetarian teenage son, that bears more conversation also.

So, I also want to say, this is my first blog. I am notoriously bad on Facebook, and I am also not that avid a home email user.  Let's see how this goes...

Us v. food

Volatile interactions with our food? Welcome to our world.

Yesterday our vegetarian son, Walter, took the phone call from our local cow-seller notifying us of the slaughter of the animal. He took it well. At least we think he did. He's 17 and much harder to read than he was a few years ago. The tension in our family between the vegetarian wing and cow butchery contingent hasn't always been easy to smooth over.

The quarter cow has also conjured conflict between Walter's omnivorous mother and father.
Laura has been the driving force in this, hunting down an inexpensive second-hand freezer, and pursuing the cow. Laura feels the quarter cow will allow us to eat better and spend less money.
Steve, in contrast, predicts that a significant portion of our quarter cow will eventually fall victim to freezer burn and be discarded. And maybe we should be following Walter's example and eschewing meat.

Today the butcher called to discuss the process of processing our quarter cow. Do we want the organs? How many hamburger patties? Any sausage? We're negotiating the possibility of some liverwurst. Yes, it's among the unhealthiest substances you can create from animal flesh. But we both have childhood memories of the stuff that somehow today seem pleasant. So it's on the table.

Why My Quarter Cow?

We're Steve and Laura.
After months of debate, we recently bought a second-hand freezer and one-fourth of a cow.
Sounds like a simple thing, and maybe it is.
But we see it as more.
It's about eating well, about making do in tough times, about being connected to the food we eat. And it's about us, two strong-willed individuals who are trying to be healthy while raising a family and working long hours outside of the home.

We plan to track our consumption of this quarter cow -- recipe by recipe, rib by rib, pound by pound -- while also examining the volatile relationships we have with our food, our bodies, our community, and each other.

"I will not participate in a forced blog."

-- Laura

Laura's first contribution to MQC is a reference to our early years. Once or twice I underestimated the mileage, difficulty and number of hours involved in hikes I wanted us to embark upon. These hikes became known as forced marches in our family mythology.

Prelude:
In this photo, a power tool is employed during the renovation of our galley kitchen, wherein MQC will be cooked and eaten.
During the renovation we replaced the Easy-Bake Oven and Silly Stand-Alone Range that had been installed long before we moved in.
- Steve

Welcome to My Quarter Cow

Join us as we buy and consume a quarter cow.
We are not kidding.