Meal #4 Burgermania

We had a little grillout in our little yard last night.  Mo made grilled shrimp cocktail inspired by smitten kitchen.  

Shrimp handoff - Phil! Use the tongs!

Mo triumphs over shrimp.

We also had many many burgers... but we'll have to see if Martin and Kari will post some photos of those.  Phil made the patties inspired by Jason's version last weekend, adding fresh onion and garlic.  He also made the guacamole, which I enjoyed on 3 million chips and my burger.  Kari brought cute mini-flans (flanitos?) made in muffin cups.  It was a great chill summer night... I love everyone's excitement for trying new things! 

It's definitely grilling season around here -  I wonder what we'd be doing with all this meat if we'd bought it in the winter....

(more) memorial meat

We tapped into our supply for a Sunday night dinner - bbq style!

Steaks were salt and peppa'd, and burgers were mixed with some soy, a tough of cayenne (and some other seasoning, Jason to insert later), and also, salt and peppa.


Mitch meat (also pictured: hot dogs)






Steaks on a grill. (Much more tasty than snakes on a plane).




Steak grillin', burger flippin extraordinare - Jason.





Chomp chomp chomp.

More BBQ'ing!

Okay this may be a little redundant since we fired up the grill for the last meat experience but the sun was just so shiny and grilled meat tastes so good! This took place on Memorial Day and we invited a couple of friends to join us in eating hamburgers and one freaking gigantic sirloin steak. We didn't do anything particularly special to the meat, just a little salt and pepper and maybe a dash of Old Bay. Still mighty tasty.

Here are some of the pics:

It's as big as my head!!!

You may think, oh the beef is not that big, look at it next to the strawberry. But you would be mistaken friend because that strawberry was on steroids.

Sam's double decker steak sandwich. Mmmmm...

wok smoker

So, I think we all have grills, but this NYT Magazine video on smoking ribs in a wok on the stovetop is still worth watching. 

like a bat outta hell...

today's menu: meatloaf! (+cauliflower potatoes, spinach salad)

I followed my favorite lunch recipe: Walk/run around the Mississippi for a couple hours, return home, receive plate of freshly-made food from boyfriend, do dishes, enter food coma, repeat.

I know Jason threw some barley in there, along with the ground beef (thank you Cow!). Here's the loaf evolution (as I witnessed it).

Pre-loafed meat with stuff in it.




The fully formed loaf. (Appetizing!...?)





A little prettier this way.





Myumyumyum!





This was my first venture (we're not counting the steak-taco regression. it happened at the may day parade. what happens at may day...) into red meat after a good 15 years of vegiedom.... dun dun dun....




Not bad! My exit from vegetarianism finalized with a big bite of moocow meat. Thanks for such a conscionable beginning!

Blog request

Hey Phil! Or maybe Mitch!

I think we could use an introduction to the cow blog. You know, something that talks about what kind of cow it is, where the farm is, etc. Does the cow have a name? These are things I'd like to know.

What The Shish?

Last Sunday I biked my way over to the BF's house with my rib eye steak in tow. Sam, Erick, and I were planning on doing some work on Sam's now gutted kitchen but the day was too nice and our hangovers were too present so instead we opted for playing catch and having shish kabobs. The kitchen is still no where near done, but I think we made the right choice.

(I cubed the meat and sprinkled it with a little salt, pepper, cayenne, and good Old Bay)

After deciding on the kabobs though a comedy of errors ensued that included many extra trips to Trader Joe's, gas stations and, unfortunately, target to get extra items like the veggies, appropriate lighter fluid (Erick tried to use the stuff we were supposed to use on the hard wood floors to get the black tar goo off - probably not a great idea), and those little wooden kabob sticks.

(A little toxic fumes never hurt anyone, right?)

Why is lighting a grill so hard? I think we need more practice. But finally it was hot enough to start grilling! It only took an extra 2, 3 hours. I figure it built up our appetites so no harm done.

(Just looking at this pic again is making me salivate.)

The whole thing turned out fantastic, if I do say so myself. The meat was juicy and oh so tasty. Everything had the perfect amount of seasoning on it with just the right spicy bite. I'd want to eat like this everyday if it wasn't such a time consuming event to make it happen!

(Erick and Sam, sated and happy.)

MMM mm ground beef!

After quite a long hiatus, I'm back into red baby! This whole cow slaughter was a deal too good to pass up! Unfortunately I have no pictures of the first of my meals made from Mitch's meat. I made delicious hamburgers seasoned with cumin, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cooked them on a natural wood charcoal grill and soaked it in nothing but the finest beer (PBR of course!). Deeeelicious! Thanks Mitch!

New heights of lameness

OK, in the interest of supporting my daughter's meat blog (hey, I cooked meatless meals for years for her and Julia), here are my photographic accounts of what I've done with the meat we've used so far.

1 pound of ground beef: Browned the meat. Ah, nice and lean. Threw in a jar of pasta sauce. Cooked some fun-shaped pasta and served the meated sauce on top of it.

1 package of liver and 1 rump roast: I'm not a fan of eating liver so I gave it to my mother and her companion (and the person who does most of the cooking in their household). I gave them a roast too because I am a nice daughter.

See the balance here -- nice mother, nice daughter. 

Meals #2 and #3 Steak Tacos and Steak Huevos

Phil made steak tacos with some of the round steak.  Next time we'd cook the steak for less time, starting the onions and peppers first.  

The next day, he whipped up pre-Art-a-Whirl brunch for 8 including apple-cardamom pancakes and huevos rancheros-type-thing with the leftover steak and veggies.

Seriously, someone else should post on here so we can enjoy some better photos of mitchmeat.

Meal #1 Improv Pasta Sauce

(camera phone = TERRIBLE photo)

We browned up a pound of hamburger with onion, green pepper etc.   We were hungry and didn't let the tomatoes simmer down for too long, but it was still tasty.