aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, February 23, 2008

#12: The cow’s come home

Just home from the abattoir, the cow’s in the trunk (frozen). Our dog, Baci, checks it out.

Last winter we had gone out to the pastuer and picked out the calf, #12. Last year we went in with three couples on a half cow; this time around the three couples bought a whole cow. We took half.

292.5 pounds of beef. $757.89. That’s $2.59 per pound.

Here’s the breakdown:

9 Large (huge!) sirloins
19 T-bones
18 Rib steaks
2 sirloin tip roasts
5 chuck roasts
4 rump roasts
3 beef ribs (Doug doesn’t like them so most were ground up, the few we got are for the dogs)
390 burgers in patties (quarter pounders at least, I paid extra to have them made into patties)
9 boneless stew (packages of cut up meat for skewers on the grill, I’m thinking a package is good for 2 or 3 people)

Now, if that seems like a lot to you (and it does to most folks) let me just say that if it were to be eaten just by us, it would come to 1.87 pounds per week per person. BUT… it won’t be eaten just by us. We have people over. Often. And lots of them.

Further, this is grass fed, humanely raised and humanely killed, anti-biotic-free and un-processed meat. So, for example, where once we might have had a salt-laden highly-processed luncheon meat, now we will have a burger.

We had gone through last year’s sixth of a cow in four months and now we have my big eatin’ super-buff nephew living with us. I’m guessing he and his friends will help us finish this new cow off in no time…