Monday, August 6, 2007 - "WHERE'S THE BEEF?" OK, I'M SORRY - THAT WAS SO LAME

Ok, nine months of planning, begging, saving and drooling have come to an end.  After my first taste of grass-fed and finished beef, I received The Call.  OK, it wasn’t a call, it was an email, but I received IT. 

My cow was ready.

Sure, it wasn’t a whole cow, only a side, but I consider it my cow.  In fact, it’s so much my cow, I named it.

I named it Chet.

In anticipation of this great event, I purchased a small chest freezer (9 cubic feet), enough to hold Chet.  My other stand up freezer would have my pig (a whole pig, mind you – named Carl) and the free-range (real free-range, none of that supermarket crap) chickens.

Or, so I thought.  You see, I made a terrible error.

Because I wanted to make my own stock, I asked what seemed to be an innocent question:

“Do you any extra bones?”

Well, Marcia, my beef lady spotted a rube right off and played me like a Steinway. 

She filled the trunk of my Grand Marquis with over 100 pounds of beef bones while I was in a beef haze.  I was the garbage guy she had always wished for.

By the time the carnage was over, Chet was comfortable in his freezer and Carl’s freezer was stuffed with grass-fed beef bones and I was in a quandary.