Christmas is over: two down, one to go. Anyone working in retail will understand. I was out on my feet, literally in a daze, for the final two hours of my shift on Christmas Eve. This is not a “be nice to the poor retail workers who serve you at the holidays” plea; just about every customer was friendly and wished me a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, and I’m certainly glad to have a job I enjoy and which allows me to pay most of my bills on time. That being said, I came home and passed out on the couch quite early in the evening; great company, no doubt, for my brother and sister-in-law who made the two-hour drive to spend the night with us. At least the chain I work for has the decency to close on Christmas Day. Oughta’ be a law, but I suppose that would discriminate against non-Christians or some damn thing. Whatcha’ gonna do?
Lots of grassfed beef lately. Short ribs from our freezer cow on Christmas Eve and tenderloin at my stepdaughter and son-in-law’s house Christmas Day. Tomorrow we will feast on cornfed beef finished , I’m sure, on a CAFO (concentrated animal feed operation). I wrote that I’m not a grassfed only fanatic in one of my first posts; $4.99 a pound for choice rib-eye roast was too good a deal to pass up. I look at it this way: 90+% of the beef I’ve eaten in the past two years has been grassfed. Three years ago 100% of the beef I ate was cornfed and finished on a CAFO. If enough consumers make that same choice in the future we’ll start to see a real improvement in the way the animals we eat are treated, a reduction in the pollution generated by industrial farming and improvement in the general safety of our food supply. How’s that bumper sticker read, the one usually seen on sub-compact, foreign-made cars driven by someone who looks as if he or she were stuck in the 1960s? BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE. Hmmmmm…..
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Great post, Joe. Well worth the wait.
Wonderful to read you again! Happy Holidays! I can’t believe nobody left a comment on your last post. Was that the reason you took so long between posts?
Apparently, you work in a big chain store. That is a perfect job for a beef person such as you. Over the past couple weeks, when I have gone to big, crowded stores, I have felt as if I were part of a great slow-moving herd. So many fattened-up Americans blocking the aisles. I imagined I could hear them mooooo-ing. “The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes…”
Did you have a roast with strings around it on Christmas? How did it come out? Rare? Did you make gravy? We need a gravy recipe. Happy Moo Year!
I haven’t eaten red meat of any kind in 35 years but of. But of the meat to blog about I reckon grassfed beef would be the kind to blog about. Nice looking blog and thanks for writing about Bill’s Farm Market. By the way, what sort of wine would you pair with Butternut squash?
Thanks, Bruno. Are you in the Petoskey area? I woud pair a soft red with butternut squash, probably a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (good examples to be found at $7 +/-).