Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Moisturizing magic for overcooked meat
Laura:
Here is the recipe for the blue cheese goodness that we used to moisten up our slightly overcooked T-bones:
Saute a leek in 1T butter until soft, throw in a garlic clove or two. With heat on low, add 1/2 cup blue cheese, about 1/4 c light cream cheese and 1-2 T milk. Allow to melt slowly and spoon warm over burgers, steaks, veggies, cardboard, old shoes, ... you get the idea.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Quarter cow by the numbers
His is a busy lad.
Not sure why he hasn't worked this into his schedule.
He says he's not on strike. He's not dragging his feet because he his a principled vegetarian.
I've told him he can contribute to this blog and say anything he likes about meat, including our personal meat.
This may take some time to work out.
For now, here is the best we've got in terms of information aesthetics.
The Tale of the Tape
Ribeye - 8 packages
Short ribs - 3
Blade roast - 1
Arm roast - 1
Round steak - 2
Sirloin steak - 4
T-bone steak - 9
Rump roast - 1
Sirloin tip -1
Cube steak - 4
Gound beef - 14 @ 2 lbs.
Slaughter - 875
Processing weight 177.5 lbs @ .34 60.35
Cube steak 1.25
Trip charge 1.00
15# patties 4-1 x .25
75.10
Laura can explain what all of this means.
She's crunching the numbers in a spreadsheet, doing her best to find ways to slice this them in a way to reduce buyers' remorse.
On Sunday we had friend Kim over and overcooked three T-bones. Laura saved the meal with a delicious (read: moist) bleu cheese sauce.
That leaves six T-bones, for those of you keep score at home.
We haven't yet arrived at a strategy yet for eating all of this before the freezer burn sets in.
Should we burn up the steaks first?
Pound down the hamburger and save the best for last?
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Cheating on My Quarter Cow
Steve here.
We praying that the purchase of My Quarter Cow, and its home, the second hand freezer, will save us some money. We're still not sure we're paying less per pound for beef than if we shopped bargains at the grocery store. More on that later.
But, clearly, we believe we should spend less on eating out. Restaurant food has always been a sore spot for our family. It costs a lot. It's often unhealthy. We love it. Stuff like that.
But now there's more. Now that there's beef in the freezer, it's dawning on us that eating at a restaurant has a new layer of shame attached to it, almost like we're cheating on My Quarter Cow.
No longer is there any excuse about there being no food in the house, so our only alternative to starvation is restaurant food. Those days are gone.
Over the years we've developed some informal rules about eating out. First, there is always shame associated with it. Especially extramarital eating out.
Second, when confessing to a restaurant meal, you make clear the cost, and you have the courtesy of making little show of falling on your sword if it was more than $5.
So tonight, when she told me about buying breakfast before a business meeting at a local restaurant, she emphasized that she ordered a highly inexpensive meal of scrambled eggs, potatoes and coffee. Cost: Under $5. And, it goes without saying, no beef.
To be continued.
We praying that the purchase of My Quarter Cow, and its home, the second hand freezer, will save us some money. We're still not sure we're paying less per pound for beef than if we shopped bargains at the grocery store. More on that later.
But, clearly, we believe we should spend less on eating out. Restaurant food has always been a sore spot for our family. It costs a lot. It's often unhealthy. We love it. Stuff like that.
But now there's more. Now that there's beef in the freezer, it's dawning on us that eating at a restaurant has a new layer of shame attached to it, almost like we're cheating on My Quarter Cow.
No longer is there any excuse about there being no food in the house, so our only alternative to starvation is restaurant food. Those days are gone.
Over the years we've developed some informal rules about eating out. First, there is always shame associated with it. Especially extramarital eating out.
Second, when confessing to a restaurant meal, you make clear the cost, and you have the courtesy of making little show of falling on your sword if it was more than $5.
So tonight, when she told me about buying breakfast before a business meeting at a local restaurant, she emphasized that she ordered a highly inexpensive meal of scrambled eggs, potatoes and coffee. Cost: Under $5. And, it goes without saying, no beef.
To be continued.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Hamburger at home
All in all there's a fair amount of hamburger in there.
A brush with possible danger
From Steve:
Somehow I expected a little bit more.
I thought we would be buried in beef.
Here is what a quarter cow looks like after they drag it out to your car.
A quarter of a cow fits in five puny milk crates?
I guess so. You can kind of visualize it. If you stacked 20 of them and put them in five stacks of four, and put it on bony legs with hooves, I guess it would be about the size of a cow.
It all fit in three coolers in the back of the van.
Here's the scary part. Within minutes of packing the meet into the coolers in the back of the van, we had our first brush with cow-borne disease.
Laura may dispute this, but to me it's quite clear. Even a cursory examination of the meteorological data clearly displayed (in accordance with state health statutes, I believe) on the sign outside the butcher shop made it clear that these were not prime conditions for safely storing meat in the back of a minivan.
If it's not in the health codes, it should be: Any time the sign outside the meat processing facility shows the temperature to be above freezing, you should pack the meat in the back of the minivan as quickly as possible, then drive immediately at the highest speed permitted by law to your freezer.
After we loaded up the quarter-beeve, however, we went to a nearby outlet mall.
Needless to say, this side trip was made against my better judgement.
As shopping trips often do, this one seemed to take forever.
I didn't time the side trip to the outlet mall. And I didn't try to hurry Laura unnecessarily. I'm not that kind of person.
But I will say for the record that even one minute too long would have been enough to thaw the beef and endanger our family.
I think we got out of the stores just in time, because the meat was still all solidly frozen, although I could clearly imagine blood dripping from the the back door of the van. I don't think Laura noticed I was concerned. I'm not the kind of person who likes to worry other people.
Somehow I expected a little bit more.
I thought we would be buried in beef.
Here is what a quarter cow looks like after they drag it out to your car.
A quarter of a cow fits in five puny milk crates?
I guess so. You can kind of visualize it. If you stacked 20 of them and put them in five stacks of four, and put it on bony legs with hooves, I guess it would be about the size of a cow.
It all fit in three coolers in the back of the van.
Here's the scary part. Within minutes of packing the meet into the coolers in the back of the van, we had our first brush with cow-borne disease.
Laura may dispute this, but to me it's quite clear. Even a cursory examination of the meteorological data clearly displayed (in accordance with state health statutes, I believe) on the sign outside the butcher shop made it clear that these were not prime conditions for safely storing meat in the back of a minivan.If it's not in the health codes, it should be: Any time the sign outside the meat processing facility shows the temperature to be above freezing, you should pack the meat in the back of the minivan as quickly as possible, then drive immediately at the highest speed permitted by law to your freezer.
After we loaded up the quarter-beeve, however, we went to a nearby outlet mall.
Needless to say, this side trip was made against my better judgement.
As shopping trips often do, this one seemed to take forever.
I didn't time the side trip to the outlet mall. And I didn't try to hurry Laura unnecessarily. I'm not that kind of person.
But I will say for the record that even one minute too long would have been enough to thaw the beef and endanger our family.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
B-Day
From Laura -
We are leaving in a few minutes to pick up the meat. I put three coolers in the van and commenced waiting for Steve. Before we head off to the next phase of the Meat Journey I want to also enter into the record the conversation with a woman I will call Mrs. Schultz of GCW Schultz Farms as I was ordering the meat. I think she said that her son is running the farm now, but she handled the ordering process with me. I think things are different here, or at least with Schultz, than they were in Ontario where I got my schooling on ordering Beef. According to Mrs Schultz, if you are ordering a .25 cow you can't specify whether you get the front or the back end, which was an option available to my Ontario friends. (They recommended the back end by the way, as I told them I had a deep and abiding love of pot roasts). Mrs. Schultz informed me that here you and another entity are splitting a half cow, and the parts are dealt like in a card game. She stated that all the cows are grass fed and finished with corn at the end to bulk them up. The beef contains no hormones or antibiotics, but they are not certified organic. She gave me rough idea of the "hand" I would end up with, which is a combination of steaks, roasts and about 40 lbs of hamburger. Now here is the interesting part. I told her I was excited about ordering and expressed surprise that it was so inexpensive per pound (Roughly $2.25: Cost of meat and processing divided by hanging weight) I will also admit to readers that I did not shop around. However, Mrs. Schultz told me that she had gotten some comments from other Beef producers that she was selling the meat too cheaply. Mrs. Schultz went on to say that in this economy she can't justify raising prices as she already is having some families who are canceling their beef orders as they can't shell out the roughly $400 in one shot that is called for to buy beef this way. In good conscience she can't see charging families substantially more that the meat packing and processing companies pay. She also went on to say that there can be a substantial price difference depending on which community farmer's market you shop as it is generally accepted that people will pay more in Madison (particularly at the Saturday market) than they will at other markets. I am quite happily giving this woman my money. I realize she may be a great sales person, and I appreciate the effort.
Steve is now ready to go (approximately one hour and 10 minutes after he told me "I just need 10 minutes to finish this email". In the time I have been 'waiting' I made a batch of waffles, scrambled a mess of eggs with with chorizo and consumed them, cleaned the kitchen, took out the recycling, swept the driveway, took the aforementioned coolers out to the car, swept the living room and wrote this posting- but that's another blog, isn't it?
We are leaving in a few minutes to pick up the meat. I put three coolers in the van and commenced waiting for Steve. Before we head off to the next phase of the Meat Journey I want to also enter into the record the conversation with a woman I will call Mrs. Schultz of GCW Schultz Farms as I was ordering the meat. I think she said that her son is running the farm now, but she handled the ordering process with me. I think things are different here, or at least with Schultz, than they were in Ontario where I got my schooling on ordering Beef. According to Mrs Schultz, if you are ordering a .25 cow you can't specify whether you get the front or the back end, which was an option available to my Ontario friends. (They recommended the back end by the way, as I told them I had a deep and abiding love of pot roasts). Mrs. Schultz informed me that here you and another entity are splitting a half cow, and the parts are dealt like in a card game. She stated that all the cows are grass fed and finished with corn at the end to bulk them up. The beef contains no hormones or antibiotics, but they are not certified organic. She gave me rough idea of the "hand" I would end up with, which is a combination of steaks, roasts and about 40 lbs of hamburger. Now here is the interesting part. I told her I was excited about ordering and expressed surprise that it was so inexpensive per pound (Roughly $2.25: Cost of meat and processing divided by hanging weight) I will also admit to readers that I did not shop around. However, Mrs. Schultz told me that she had gotten some comments from other Beef producers that she was selling the meat too cheaply. Mrs. Schultz went on to say that in this economy she can't justify raising prices as she already is having some families who are canceling their beef orders as they can't shell out the roughly $400 in one shot that is called for to buy beef this way. In good conscience she can't see charging families substantially more that the meat packing and processing companies pay. She also went on to say that there can be a substantial price difference depending on which community farmer's market you shop as it is generally accepted that people will pay more in Madison (particularly at the Saturday market) than they will at other markets. I am quite happily giving this woman my money. I realize she may be a great sales person, and I appreciate the effort.
Steve is now ready to go (approximately one hour and 10 minutes after he told me "I just need 10 minutes to finish this email". In the time I have been 'waiting' I made a batch of waffles, scrambled a mess of eggs with with chorizo and consumed them, cleaned the kitchen, took out the recycling, swept the driveway, took the aforementioned coolers out to the car, swept the living room and wrote this posting- but that's another blog, isn't it?
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