Friday Food: Steakhouse Wednesday

Friday 

Short version: Pot roast with tomatoes, onions and carrots; roasted potatoes; frozen green peas

Long version: I think the pot roast was a chuck roast. And I roasted the potatoes in the chicken fat I skimmed off the stock I made the week before.

That's about it.

Saturday

Short version: Shepherd's pie, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: The ground beef from our most recent steer is pretty lean, for the simple reason that the animal was entirely grass-fed and therefore had very little fat on it to grind with the meat. So I added the remainder of the chicken fat to the ground beef mixture for the shepherd's pie. It was very good.

Sunday

Short version: Stew meat tacos, with avocado hooray! plus chocolate-covered marshmallows

Long version: This was actually stew meat from our last steer. I thought I should use up the stew meat before A. and Cubby go elk hunting next weekend and potentially bring home a couple hundred pounds more red meat that I will probably mostly cut into stew meat. 

I cooked it with tomatoes, onion, green chile, and a whole (small) head of garlic.

Avocado because I went to the store when we picked up the van at the mechanic. Hooray for avocados*.

Since all four children were sick, I didn't insist that they do their bathroom chores. Which meant I chose the Sunday dessert. Except I kept forgetting about it, and didn't actually get around to making anything until 2 p.m. That's why I made something that requires virtually no time: Chocolate-covered marshmallows.

I made the dipping chocolate with chocolate chips and vegetable oil (because I was out of coconut oil), rolled the marshmallows around in that until they were covered, then refrigerated them on a wax-paper-lined cookie sheet. 

They weren't as good as the chocolate-covered peanut butter balls, but they were faster.

Not the most photogenic of desserts. But then, my abysmal photography makes everything look unphotogenic.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, steamed broccoli

Long version: Cubby and Calvin had the shepherd's pie. Jack and Poppy had tacos. I had a salad.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftover stew meat, bread and butter, pinto beans, leftover broccoli, graham crackers with chocolate

Long version: Yup, two nights of leftovers. A. periodically fasts for a few days to rest his digestive system, and when he does that, we eat a lot of leftovers. That's what happened this week.

I had a little of the chocolate left from the marshmallows on Sunday, and I needed a bribe so I could cut the boys' hair. There wasn't enough chocolate left to dip anything into it, so I just warmed it up and spread some on graham crackers. There were no complaints about this, and all the hair got cut. Success.

Wednesday

Short version: Steaks, oven fries, frozen green peas

Long version: I was looking for something other than ground beef or stew meat in the freezers and came across some packages of New York strip steaks and filet mignon.

Prime steaks on a random Wednesday? Why not!

I have no idea how much these would cost at a store, but at our house, all beef is about $4 per pound.

I made an thyme and garlic butter to top it with since we didn't have any steak sauce, made some oven fries with chicken fat, and it turned into a really good meal. 

A. broke his fast this day, and in spectacular fashion, I would say.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers, homemade flour tortillas, green salad

Long version: I had yet more of the taco stew meat left, which I knew the children would not be excited about. So I decided to indulge them by making some flour tortillas.

I've never actually made flour tortillas--thus far, all my tortilla-making has been of the corn variety--and I used this recipe. It's not traditional, and I know this because it didn't call for lard. But since I didn't have lard, and didn't think beef tallow would be quite right, I went with the vegetable oil.

The reason I've never made these before is because they have to be individually rolled out. I really dislike rolling things out. So tedious.

This girl didn't find it tedious at all, however. She thought it was great.

They were actually really easy to roll out (albeit still a bit tedious), and they bubbled up in the pan just as they were supposed to.

Mmm, doughy boils.

The children loved them. Of course. But when I went out to get the laundry from the line after they had all eaten their tacos, they started in on the remainder of the tortillas with just butter. So all the tortillas got eaten, but there is STILL taco stew meat left. Dangit.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

*Unfortunately, the van has not been properly fixed and is even now awaiting towing back to the mechanic. No hooray for that. NO HOORAY.

T.T.: A Forehead-Slapping Waffle Trick

My children are divided on the issue of waffle crispiness. Cubby is adamant that waffles must be crispy. Poppy is adamant that waffles should be soft. The other two kids will go with either.

Personally, I'm in the Crispy Waffles 4Eva camp. I would only eat a waffle right out of the waffle iron, because once they had been in the oven to keep warm, they got all limp.

But that, it turns out, is because I was putting them on a plate, like pancakes.

When I found this recipe for so-called Crispy Waffles, I didn't hold out too much hope for their crispiness. But they are, indeed, the crispiest waffles I have ever had. Part of that is no doubt because of all the cornstarch in them, but I think most of it is the instruction in the recipe that waffles being kept warm in the oven should be put directly on the oven shelves.

Oh. Right. Because that way they're not stacked and the ones on the bottom aren't getting soggy from steam being trapped under the others.

Why didn't I think of that?

So, in case this very obvious idea wasn't so obvious to you either, now you know: For crispy waffles, leave them on the shelves of the oven to keep warm. (Except not for longer than maybe 15 minutes, or they actually kind of toast and get a little too crispy.)

Of course, if you agree with Poppy that waffles are better on the soft side, then stack away. But otherwise, keep those waffles separate and directly on the oven shelves. 

I don't have any photos of recent waffles--and certainly no photos of my very dirty oven--but here. Have a really funny picture of Odin with sunflowers.

What a goof.

Monday Bouquet: The Last Sunflower

The steady rain we got on Friday, along with colder temperatures, finished off the sunflowers on the roadside. I found one last patch when I was walking with the dogs on Thursday morning.

The last of their kind.

So I had one more sunflower 'n' sage arrangement for the table this week.

It's been a good run.

One of those sunflowers drooped before the other, so I removed it on Saturday and now just have a single sunflower with the same sage. We'll see how long that final sunflower lasts.

I hope you have a lovely Monday, with or without flowers.

Snapshots: A New Perspective

Thanks to last week's Zoom schooling that allowed me to let the children sleep in, I managed a morning walk most days just as the sun is starting to come up. One morning I turned right instead of left when I went out the side gate. 

In case you were thinking I was strategically positioning my photos so it would only appear that we live remotely when actually we live right next to a strip mall . . . I wasn't.

I was, of course, accompanied by my faithful companions.

Odin decided to pose with the last patch of healthy-looking sunflowers I've seen around our house.

When I turned around to come home, the sun was juuuust starting to peek over the horizon.

And when I got home, I found a broken plunger in the dogs' water bowl. This is how you know I have children. (I removed it. You're welcome, dogs.)

And the singular non-walk photo I have from this week . . .

A. has planted the garlic for next year. 400-500 cloves. Too much? Nope.

And there you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: The Return of the Stabby Cake

Friday

Short version: Leftover meat, calabacitas, after-play pasta

Long version: Every year--well, except last year because of COVID--The Missoula Children's Theatre traveling directors come and help our school stage a play. The play was this night, so the boys were at school in the evening and had dinner there. 

They had ham sandwiches and chips and were all starving when we got home around 7:30 p.m. So then they all had leftover pasta, to which I added some cream cheese for a bit of protein.

A., Poppy, and I all had leftover beef rib meat. Poppy had hers with barbecue sauce and also had some bread and butter and cucumbers. A. and I had ours fried with the zucchini-like calabacitas, tomatoes, and garlic, and then I added some asadero cheese, too.

Saturday

Short version: Beef fajitas, pinto beans

Long version: The processing place that butchered our latest steer asked me if I wanted some fajita meat. As I mentioned before, I am all about them doing as much prep work as possible for me, so I said yes. I used one package of that for this meal, marinating it oil, vinegar, garlic powder, and chile powder and then frying it on my big griddle pan with bell peppers and onions. It was really good.

I think I still have about eight pints of pressure-canned pinto beans in the pantry. I really need to use more of them so I can cook some more of the dried ones that have been there for, uh, two years.

Sunday

Short version: Slow-food chicken strips, fast-food tater tots, corn on the cob, cucumbers with ranch dip, pots de creme

Long version: A. butchered the very last meat chicken. It weighed in at 13 pounds.

That's obscene.

The breasts on it were so large that I decided to separate them and use them to make breaded chicken strips, as a treat for the children.

I know I've said here before that the giant chicken breasts we would sometimes buy in New York were alarming to me. Like, what on earth does the bird look like that produces such giant breasts? Well, now I know. It looks like a small turkey.

Here's a visual for you:

Tablespoon measure for scale to show the alarming size of these things.

Anyway. 

I pounded those a bit with my giant rolling pin to flatten them, then cut them into strips and did the whole flour/egg wash/breadcrumb thing before baking them.

I very much dislike breading things. So tedious. Also, I really don't like the way my fingers get all gummy. I never think the finished product is really worth the whole process, but the rest of the family loved the end result, so it's a nice treat for them occasionally.

And after making an actual running-around chicken into breaded chicken strips using eggs gathered from our own chickens and breadcrumbs made from the bread I made myself, I served them with . . . generic tater tots.

I never claimed to be a really dedicated locavore.

Mostly I just wanted to get the remainder of the giant bag of tater tots out of the freezer where they've been for like eight months, but they were actually really good with the chicken.

And A. completed the children's absolute satisfaction with this meal by buying corn on the cob last time he was at the store.

Or maybe I completed it by making the pots de creme requested by Calvin. Which actually set up properly this time. It's been pretty liquidy the last couple of times, for unknown reasons, but this time it was the proper texture.

Incidentally, I must admit that although I proved it can be made with evaporated milk, I do make it with regular whole milk when I have it. I just don't really like opening cans to cook. Although it's nice to know it's an option.

Monday

Short version: Chicken soup, cheese, bread and butter

Long version: I spent many, many hours in the kitchen on Sunday. One of the reasons I was in there so long was because I had to deal with the remainder of the chicken carcass after I had removed the breasts. I pressure-cooked that in water to make stock, then picked off all the meat and used some of the stock and some of the meat to make soup. 

I really didn't want to be doing anything more in the kitchen Sunday, but I knew I would be glad I did when I got home from work Monday and only had to re-heat soup instead of actually cooking something.

So I made the soup with garlic, onion, carrot, celery, potatoes, some marinara sauce I had made with the food processor after I had made Sunday's pots de creme, half a jar of leftover pinto beans, and some frozen green peas. Sort of like a chicken minestrone.

It was very tasty, and I was indeed very glad when I got home from work that dinner was already made.

Tuesday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, rice, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: Nah.

Wednesday

Short version: Italian sliders, pasta, calabacitas/tomatoes/onion, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: This was Michaelmas, the feast of the Archangels. We always celebrate this by stabbing a chocolate cake. It's supposed to be a devil's food cake (because Michael was the Archangel that cast Satan into hell using a sword), but I just make Grandma Bishop's Chocolate Cake because . . . well, because it's really fast to make.

We were home this day, because the elementary school went virtual for a week and a half, due to the large numbers of kids that were absent because of colds/allergies/whatever. So, since we were home and Cubby had football practice in the evening, we had our cake after lunch instead of after dinner.

I was actually out of toothpicks for stabbing, but I have three boys in residence who are each the proud possessors of pocketknives and who are very happy to carve their own stabby pieces of wood.

Yes, I made calabacitas twice in one week. I'll make it as long as I have the calabacitas.

Late summer in a skillet.

Thursday

Short version: Chicken fusion soup, cornbread

Long version: There was definitely chicken in the soup. Also black beans, corn, rice, tomatoes, a bit of chile powder, and sour cream. So was it chicken and rice soup? Or corn chowder? Or taco soup? 

Whatever. It was good.

I always make Edna Lewis' recipe for cornbread muffins, because it calls for corn flour. Which is pretty much what the masa I have on hand in quantity is. It makes for a very soft and tangy cornbread, what with all the buttermilk in it.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

T.T.: Buying a Steer for the Freezer

We've been buying whole animals from farmers and ranchers for our freezer for many years now. Every place we have lived in the last fifteen years, we've found someone who will sell us a whole cow or steer (or, more rarely, a pig) and bring it to the processor for us.

This is getting more common, but it's not exactly the sort of thing you might learn in your average high school class. So I thought I would tell you how it works. With the caveat that this is how it works for us. In a more urban area, you might not be able to deal so directly with the person who raises the animal. I don't know. But here's what happens for me.

First, figure out what you want to buy. We have most commonly done this with cull cows (the cows that have had trouble calving or raising a calf and are going to auction anyway) or steers (a steer is a castrated male). That is, as you probably know, a very big animal. They do vary quite a bit in size, but generally speaking, if you want a whole animal, you need at least one chest freezer. We've had cows small enough that the entirety of the meat going in the freezer is only about 200 pounds. The last steer we got, though, was about 700 pounds. That's a LOT of meat, and it takes a lot of space.

We did have some frozen vegetables and things in one freezer, but this steer took up at least 3/4 of the space in two very large chest freezers.

So decide if you have the room for it yourself or if you need to find other people to share the meat with.

Next, you need to find the animal. 

Where we live in beef cattle country, that pretty much just means asking our neighbors if they have a steer or cull cow we could buy from them. One of them always does. 

Future freezer meat, just 50 yards from our door.

Before we lived here, we used to look in our local free advertisement newspaper--the ones that are often on stands at grocery stores in rural areas--or on Craigslist to find someone selling whole animals.

The way it has always worked for us is that we are buying the animal, but the farmer or rancher brings it to the processor for us. In that way, we don't have worry about proving transfer of ownership with a brand inspection or anything. And we also don't have to transport it. We don't have a cattle trailer, anyway.

So once our rancher agrees to sell us the animal, I call a meat processor to find out when it can be taken in for slaughter. This has gotten a lot more difficult in the past couple of years as more people are turning to small meat processing places to get meat. The place we used to use a couple of hours away is now scheduling slaughter out a year and a half from now. 

That's crazy.

Luckily, a new place opened about an hour and a half from us, and they got this last steer in within a few weeks of my calling. When I called, they took my name and phone number, as well as the name of the rancher who was delivering the steer. They told me when he should bring it, and I duly passed that information on to our rancher neighbor. 

Whenever we've bought an animal for processing, dealing with the processor is entirely my responsibility. All the farmer or rancher should be doing is dropping the animal off.

The animal is slaughtered the day it's delivered, but with beef, it has to hang and age in a cooler for some time. I always ask that it hang at least two weeks. For a bigger animal, three weeks is really better. That does require the processor to hold the animal in valuable storage space for longer, so not all of them want to do that, but they should definitely not try to cut it up any sooner than ten days after slaughter. The meat needs the time to age. It makes for better texture and flavor.

Sometime before the aging period is done, the processor will call to get cutting instructions. Every processor I have ever used has what's called a "cut sheet." It's just a list of the various cuts that can be taken from different parts of the animal. They will go down this list with me over the phone and ask my preferences.

So, for instance, some of the cuts can be made into roasts, or stew meat, or ground beef. Some of the cuts that can be roasts can also be cut into steaks. 

They will also ask how many pounds of meat should be in each package of things like ground beef and stew meat. Also how thick to cut the steaks and how many to a package. This new processor asked me if I wanted the meat vacuum sealed, or just wrapped in plastic wrap and butcher paper (I went with the latter, because it's less plastic overall), but that's the first time I've ever been given an option for packaging.

In addition, I have the option of getting the offal--heart, liver, kidneys, etc.--the oxtail and soup bones, and any additional fat. I get all of that, because the dogs will eat what I don't cook. If you don't have the space or just don't want to deal with offal, you can say no. If you do want the fat for rendering into tallow, you can usually ask them to grind it for you, which makes it much easier to render.

The person you're talking to is going to be very knowledgeable about the different cuts of meat and your options, so don't be afraid to ask what they recommend or what most people ask for.

This is the time to ask what the live weight of the animal was. The processor will weigh it before slaughter. That's the live weight, and that's how the farmer or rancher will calculate how much you owe them. We calculate it ourselves for our neighbors, using the price at our local auction per hundredweight for that particular kind of animal on that day. A cull cow, for instance, brings less at auction than a steer. Prices are pretty high right now for all kinds of animals, but our cost to our rancher this time was still less than two dollars per pound.

However, given that the steer we got from him was a bit over 1,300 pounds live weight, that's still a pretty hefty check to write up front. And that doesn't include the processing.

I pay the processor directly when I pick the meat. They charge a price per pound based on what's called the hanging weight. That's the weight of the carcass after it's been gutted. 

Taking both costs together, the price per pound for the meat we actually brought home came out to a bit less than four dollars per pound, which is the most we've ever had to pay. That may sound like a lot for something like ground beef, but keep in mind that that's what you're paying for filet mignon and porterhouse steaks, too. Even at these higher prices, it averages out to less than grocery store meat, and of course it's a much, much higher quality.

This is what 700 pounds of beef looks like when it's in boxes.

Having a truck is useful for transport purposes, because those boxes take up a lot of space.

Again, this was a particularly large steer, so this is more meat than we would normally get.

And now all that remains is to eat it. Without worrying about running out for a loooong time.

Monday Bouquet: Singular

I left the small jar of sunflowers on the table last week for most of the week. Long enough that they were looking pretty sad when I finally got around to replacing them. That happens when I'm working more.

That's why I only had one new arrangement last week.

Most of the sunflower patches on the side of the road look like this now.

Less flowery, more seedy.

It took some searching, but I did manage to find a couple of very small sunflowers for the replacement arrangement.

Plus sage and dried grass heads.

We anticipate a killing frost anytime in October, so we'll see if I can continue to find a sunflower or two a week until then.

I hope you have a lovely Monday, with or without flowers.