The Meat Man Speaks

A couple of months ago my friend Mitch sent around an e-mail to his friends asking if they were interested in pooling together to buy some beef. Mitch grew up near Green Bay, and his folks were thinking about slaughtering one of their cows. Mitch's folks have had our cow since it was a calf. It was pasture fed. No rgbh, hormones, steroids, etc. In the past, they had just sold whatever left over meat to their local butcher, but this time around they decided to see if they could find buyers themselves. The extra money earned is going into their son's college fund.

Photo of Mitch & folks creepily stolen from Facebook. Sorry Mitch.

After considering the local/organic bent of many of my friends and petitioning for interest, I told Mitch we would be in. He explained we would be buying about a quarter of the cow and would receive over 100 lbs of beef. Over the next couple months he and I traded e-mails and phone calls about exactly how much beef we would be getting and when it would arrive. As the days and conversations passed, I learned our cut of the cow would be around 140 lbs hanging weight with the cost at $2.50 per hanging weight lb.

For us to actually get the cow Mitch's folks had to drive down from Green Bay with the back of their truck packed full of frozen meat. This trip was delayed once or twice, but an estimated weekend arrival was set. Mitch emailed me about it on the preceding Monday, however due to my internet system being down I didn't hear of the arrival until that Wednesday. Mitch's folks were only able to find one additional buyer, so they slaughtered one of their smaller cows to be split in three. Or rather, cut into many parts and then split into three.

Thus began a frantic search on my part for people who had expressed prior interest or were new to the arrangement but still wanted some beef. Thankfully within a couple days I arranged 9 partners in cow to help get most of this beef off my hands and share the $415 or so bill. Our meat eaters are Stu, Mo, Katie & Chris, Amanda & Neal, Kari & Martin, Andrew & Julie, Rynda & John, Andrea Eves & Jason, and Phil & Cate.

When I picked up the meat Mitch's parents mentioned they may do this again in the fall. I told them right on the spot we would definitely be interested, just based on the excitement I felt from all of you. I also know that a few more folks were interested in getting in on the action, but due to my last minute arrangements were unable to. (I know Julia and Rachel are in this crowd)

So keep on posting, keep on eating beef, and hopefully we'll get to do this again soon!


P.S. Miss Piggy is very pleased that Mitch's surgical knives are only used on cows...

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.