My Quarter Cow

Overheard at the garden show

2010-02-13T15:20:00.000-08:00

From Steve
Brisket, steaks, hamburgers ... we are eating apace. I believe the frost is starting to form inside some of the packages, but so far no freezer burn.

Food comes from gardens and today we went to Madison's Garden Expo. It's huge. Lots of people in booths, always closing. Lots of people who are barely tolerating the latest in a seemingly endless series of winter months. The demographic skews way middle aged and elderly. A few people were coping with 12 oz. clear plastic cups of beer by 11 a.m. Major human logjams throughout the exhibition hall, notably around the honey booth, the vinegar booth, the grow-your-own-mushrooms booth.

Elderly female spouse: Do you want to go down this row?
Elderly male spouse: No, it, uh, doesn't look like fun.

Laura mercifully got us out of there and back into the sunshine not long after noon.

Recipe for Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake

2010-01-16T19:09:00.000-08:00

Reblogged from McSweeney's (Who knew it was a food blog too?)

1. Allow the angel to reach room temperature. Then kill it.
2. Kill God. Set Him aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
4. Ecstatically whip, as if possessed by a storm-wind of freedom, 1-1/2 cups of excellent egg whites with 1/4 tsp. salt and 1-1/2 tsp. cream of tartar. Continue until peaks are as if raised to their own heights and given wings in a fine air, a robust air.
5. Gradually add 3/4 cup sugar, about 3 tbsp. at a time.
6. You are brilliant.
7. Now, add 1 tsp. vanilla and 1/4 tsp. almond extract, and then sift together 1-1/4 cups flour and 3/4 cup sugar.
8. Blend in God and the angel. Emboldened, add the egg mixture.
9. Gaze into the überbatter. The überbatter will gaze into you.
10. While prancing about in a frenzy of self-satisfaction and anticipation, use a rubber scraper to push the überbatter into an ungreased 10" tube pan, for it is destined to be there.
11. Bake on a lower rack until done, usually 35-40 minutes, while reciting to the upper rack a long, convoluted anecdote about your childhood.
12. Invert the tube pan over a bottle for a few hours. Then impetuously rap the pan. Shout, "Aha!" and slide a knife along the pan's insides.
13. Call what tumbles out a cake if you dare. Call it miraculous even.
14. Eat it. It is delicate, morbid, loveable, and you will die depressed, delirious, and overweight.
via Rebecca Coffey

Swinging meatballs

2010-01-03T17:30:00.001-08:00

From Steve

We just got back from the last holiday party of the season, a wonderful regifting potluck at the lovely lakeside home of some dear friends, Jan and Roger.

Laura made two sets of meatballs, one glutenous and the other free of gluten.

Both were delicious. I'll leave it to her to detail her recipe.

But I remember feeling a little strange about it when she told me that she'd mixed grocery-store ground pork with ground beef from our quarter cow. Had we cheated again? At the very least it seemed to me to be a sort of carnivorous three-way, but as I've thought it through, I think I was letting my puritanical streak get the best of me. We mix beef with all kinds of other foods without becoming judgmental, and I have come to believe that the same open-mindedness should apply to the mingling of pig and cow.

Cheating on the quarter cow

2010-01-03T17:29:00.000-08:00

From Steve

We cheated on our quarter cow.

The whole idea was to buy in bulk, and stop purchasing fast food and grocery store meat.
But on New Years Eve we ate two delicious New York strips from a local grocer.
Blame it on the holidays, I say.

A few days earlier I defrosted and fried some edible ground beef patties. I served them on small plates with an assortment of mustards and some dill pickles. I didn't cook any side dishes, and I got the feeling that Laura felt I hadn't really created a full-fledged meal for the family. But I found it quite satisfying. Kind of like a "lean" meal at a restaurant.

I'm not sure why, but I resist planning ahead when it comes to defrosting meat. (Once again, a quarter cow is not just food. It's a test of character.) It's difficult. How am I supposed to know what I'll want to eat tonight or tomorrow or the next day? Am I a Peter Pan with regards to menu planning?

***

The meat cooks quite badly when it's not fully defrosted. I've always known that you are supposed to fully defrost before cooking, but my recent experience with the burger patties were the first time I've seen why. I can save you the trouble of trying it at home: They tend to blacken on the very outside without cooking at all inside.

The burgers I defrosted in the microwave cooked quite nicely. Laura says she has over-defrosted some of the patties in the microwave, and the results were inedible. I'm not sure if she over-defrosted as the result of inattentiveness or haste. In this blog, as in real life, I will refrain from speculating on any possible character defects in other people.

2009-12-03T19:43:00.001-08:00

Spare Ribs

2009-12-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

From Laura:

I have been neglecting my cow. Since the last post we have consumed a huge 4 pound round steak, a couple of patties and an utterly ridiculous amount of beef ribs. The beef ribs are definitely the most interesting story. I had family coming for Thanksgiving, my sister and brother in law with whom we have shared a couple of Famous Dave's dinners. My daughter was also coming home with one of her friends, a student from Mainland China who I have never seen not wearing a suit that is generally 2-3 sizes too big for him. His name is David.

So, with the .25 Cow package we received 3 packages of Beef ribs frozen solid. Each package contained 4 ribs, split in half. I have never eaten Beef ribs before much less cooked them. I thought what I was seeing through the shrink wrap was at least 75% Bone so I defrosted all of it. That's right -all 3 packages. Giving me 12 large Beef ribs. Let me put it this way, I broke out the Nesco to cook all of this.

I looked up some Beef Rib Dry Rub recipes on the internet, rubbed my ribs and let them sit overnight. I lined them all up in the Nesco, laid down some steaming liquids -- cheap red wine, water and beef stock -- and cooked them for about 4.5 hours at 225. The recipe mentioned that I should cook them long and at low temperature so that the Beef Fat could be "rendered" ( How appetizing!). In the last hour or so I slathered all of it with my favorite Bar-b-que sauce. I produced about 8 pounds of cooked meat, at least 60% fat. I have to say that the meaty parts were very full of juicy goodness... but the fatty parts were so unappetizing just thinking about it engages my gag reflex just a tiny bit. I am not sure if I will ever bother to cook beef ribs again. I have recently perfected my Pork ribs, so I really have no incentive. I have a satisfactory bar-b-que sauce delivery system. There was a definite Fred Flintstone type of appeal to the whole thing, It seemed like I should be scratching myself in odd places while eating, or grunting something primitive. My guests at dinner made polite noises, but I could tell that the two dogs in attendance were the only ones that were really excited. I ended up tossing about four ribs, the most "waste" we have had so far.

About the round steak- I will say this: PRESSURE COOKER. I split the steak and did two separate recipes over the course of a couple days. One involved red wine and vegetables, the other - UBA (Universal Binding Agent i.e. Cream of Mushroom soup). The UBA-enhanced round steak was clearly the better choice, but it brought back memories of my Mom's pressure cooking artistry, which is generally not a great thing. I think she used to buy round steak that had seen better days to put it delicately. At some point she would cook it up in a gravy/soup type sauce in the pressure cooker, maybe throw in a can of peas, or mushrooms if she was feeling "fancy" and serve it over toast or bread for supper. Both my round steak dinners kind of tasted like that. Not good eating, but you weren't going hungry either.

Tomorrow: Flatty burgers...

Regarding cows, time travel and telekinesis

2009-11-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

Cow-related item found in a seldom used corner of this computer. Actually these look like fractions of cows, so all the better. If you are the creator and would like credit or removal, just contact us.

Moisturizing magic for overcooked meat

2009-11-14T17:13:00.000-08:00

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.

Quarter cow by the numbers

2009-11-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

We had hoped to entice our Photoshop literate son to present this information in a lively, pleasing-to-the-eye infographic. That hasn't happened yet.
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?

Cheating on My Quarter Cow

2009-11-10T17:27:00.000-08:00

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.

Hamburger at home

2009-11-09T17:51:00.000-08:00

Here's my quarter cow in its new home, the second hand freezer in the garage. The tub in the middle has bunch of beef in it. The white boxes on the bottom are full of hamburger. Behind them are frozen hamburger clubs.

All in all there's a fair amount of hamburger in there.

A brush with possible danger

2009-11-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

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.

B-Day

2009-11-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

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?

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

2009-10-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-31T10:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-10-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

     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 the phase when everyone 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 also have always struggled to establish healthy eating habits.Since moving to Wisconsin about 10 years ago I have really appreciated the ability to buy so much 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. So here is how the saga of my quarter cow started.
     I had been thinking for a while about ordering beef in bulk, but it all came together on a visit with some friends at their farm in Northern Ontario, Canada. Walt and I were there for a week and 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 really made me realize that over the last few months I had been eating more meals out and on the run, and I had of course, 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 had gutted our 1950's galley kitchen, and put in new IKEA cabinets, counter tops and replaced a broken and ugly not very functional drop-in stove top and easy-bake-oven-sized oven with a real range. It's not fancy, or expensive, or stainless steel for that matter. It's just a normal family kitchen in a pretty small space. But I like it. 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

2009-10-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-10-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-10-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

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