Today I would like to tell you about Bessie. I don't know if that's actually her name, but that's what we call her. And I bought half of her.

Bessie is a cow. Or at least she was one. Now she is beef. I have friends who farm, and they do so without antibiotics and hormones. Unless the antibiotics are absolutely necessary. Many farmers just inject them periodically whether they need them or not!

Anyway, we routinely purchase 1/4 or 1/2 a cow whenever they are slaughtering. I know that sounds gross, but the meat tastes great. When you make up the ground beef, there's hardly any grease or liquid, because they don't add water or filling, like they often do at stores.

And it comes out to about $2.30 a pound for everything, including the Porterhouse steaks and the Prime Rib Roast!

I just tell her how I want the cow cut (divided between roasts, steaks, stew beef, ground beef, etc.). I tell her how many steaks I want vs. roasts, or ground, or whatever, and I get exactly what I want.

The only problem for me this time was that I needed to buy it now because she was killing the cow now, and I already had a lot in my freezer. So I had to madly rearrange everything. But here's what it looked like after I emptied my freezer:

Here's the rest of the meat ready to go in the freezer (there are two other bins not in this picture):

Labels: cooking, Works for Me Wednesdays