Yum, Smell that Beef

Our half a cow arrived today, thankfully. Our yearling only dressed at 900 pounds which is small. It's amazing how much meat it is and at the same time, how much it isn't. 250 pounds of beef is nothing to sniff at. Really. But when we're looking at it from the perspective of how long will it keep me from buying beef at the grocery store.. it isn't all that much.

This weekend is going to have me in the kitchen, making and freezing meals. I'd planned on doing three different kinds of meatballs, meatloaf, beef stew and tomato base vegetable soup, so that on nights that we just don't want to cook, its a matter of heating up something out of the freezer instead of slaving over a stove or worse, eating out. I love to cook so I'm looking forward to spending the time in the kitchen with the kids, tripping over dogs and messing up dishes!

I suppose this is a good time for me to share my recipes... if I actually followed any when it comes to stuff I cooked in my grandma's kitchen or I just know how to make. Jake is getting there but is still surprised that I can say I want to make something and I make it with no recipe. I did this with meatballs a couple of months ago. I saw a package of them in the frozen food section, had to jump start my heart when I saw the price and just bought the hamburger to make them myself. It's the same principal as meatloaf (and I make a fantastic meatloaf) so I just made them and added what I wanted to give them the texture and flavor I wanted.

I have no idea what the measurements are. I just know what goes in and eyeball it. Not everything I do this with works perfectly and sometimes it doesn't work out at all, but for the most part, I just decide I want to make something and if I need some help from the internet, I look it up.

I'm trying to get away from this mentality now that I understand what my family will miss when I am no longer able to cook for them. A friend of mine just dies every time she sees certain foods because her grandmother cooked like mine does, like I do. Those little secrets have become very important to me over the past few years as my children grow up and ask me how this works or why I make things a certain way with a certain ingredient.

And I'm not talking Food TV Network here, with that, I do follow the recipes until I figure out how I want it to taste, then that recipe goes straight out the window. I'm talking about the pat of butter my father puts in every single jar of jelly he makes and how much of a difference that little pat of butter makes in the flavor between his jelly and someone else's or the specific way my grandmother chokes off her biscuits. I can't make them any other way, if I do, they are never as fluffy and light and my husband even noticed a difference when I put it to the challenge without saying anything to him about it.

These things, little as they may be, make a big difference and they are lost when they are not shared and past down. I still call my grandmother and father and ask them how they do whatever and I'm a fairly proficient cook, but I don't have their experience. Strangely, half the time, I'm doing the "I could have had a V8" routine because it's so obvious.

Tonight's dinner was excellent. The steak was flavorful with a minimum amount of seasoning and we could really taste the difference in the meat we have now and the meat we buy at the store. This is good stuff!

What I'm really looking forward to is the fresh vegetables to go with it. With my husband being the grandson of a butcher and me from a farm where we slaughtered our own, it's really taking us both back to our roots.

I'm pleased that I've met one of my goals. When gas prices started creeping upwards towards $3, I started setting goals to cut spending in our household. In most cases, it meant cutting something that saved us time or it meant cutting something that we could just do ourselves. Such as buying the half a cow and making some of the things from scratch that we'd normally buy prepackaged and growing our own vegetables with the eventual chickens, quail and a warren of rabbits after we've bought our own place. But there is a certain good feeling that comes with setting that sort of goal and then reaching it.

Speaking of growing your own. We've added bell pepper to our little garden. I had one sprout yesterday so I'm scrounging for a container big enough to put it in once it's ready to go out. I'm not cutting it too close with it, I've actually got til the end of the month to get some of this stuff out that I've just started to sow with plenty of time for germination. Not to mention that here lately, our cooler weather has been coming much later in October than usual. I'm gambling that I'll be able to squeeze a couple of extra weeks worth of ripening time for some of my garden. And if not, I'll be able to pick up the slack next year.

But for now, I'm going to get to meal planning and making a list of stuff I need to purchase for this weekend. If I'm scarce, then you know I'm hip deep in hamburger meat.