Weekend Update with Kevin Nealon

Friday morning we got up and went to B&W Meat Co. to order our side of beef. I went in and asked to talk to someone about a side, some guy came up and he was explaining to me how it worked and what the difference between "heavy beef" and "baby beef" was. (Baby beef is just smaller, go figure.) We went with the Heavy beef, mainly because the size of the ribeyes on the baby beef was so small. But also because my calculations told me that the heavy beef would fill our freezer, while the baby beef would probably not.

About 5 minutes into this guy's schpeel, the head butcher came in to ask what I wanted exactly and he took over for the first guy. He was concerned that I had wanted to take the beef right then because his truck hadn't come in. He was also concerned that I didn't want 20 roasts, but instead wanted it all in ground beef. Ok, not all, but I only wanted about 4 roasts. At the end, he asked if I wanted to pay then or when I picked it up. I told him I'd pay then.

So he went back and weighed a side - I don't think this was the side we got, because it weighed 410 lbs. When you buy a side, you pay for the hanging weight. You are supposed to lose about 30-35% of that weight to fat and bone. You are supposed to be able to store roughly 30-32 lbs of meat in 1 cu ft of space. A 410lb hanging weight should have translated to 287 lbs, which should have taken a little over 9.5 cu ft. We have an 11 cu ft freezer. It should have all fit in our freezer.

When we got home with it on Saturday, we filled the deep freeze, and the freezer on the fridge outside, and we put a few things in the freezer inside. And we had 22 two pound packages of ground beef left over. Ok, fine we could have probably stuck a few in where we put a few bones in for Scarlett and Fiona, but we already had 49 package of ground beef in the freezer, so we opted to keep some of the bones for the dogs over keeping an excessive amount of ground beef. It was beef that we needed to give away, or it was going to go bad. We called people we thought might want it, some were out of town, some were not really interested. After several failed attempts at giving it away by phone - we decided this was probably not the most effective way to get rid of it, we gave up and Clint and Shane loaded it up in a cooler in the car, and just headed out to drop by on people we know in the neighborhood and ask them if they wanted it. He did manage to give it all away in just 2 stops, which was a relief.

Our only slight complaint? We thought we didn't get any ribeyes. Because they mislabeled them, and it looks like we have 32 T-bones. We estimate 16 each, but you can actually tell from the size of the package which ones are T-bones and which ones are Ribeyes.

While there on Friday, we also bought a couple sausage links, a pound of pan breakfast sausage and a section of premarinated fajitas - mainly just to see how their stuff was. One sausage was garlic beef hot. It has a great flavor and then in knocked you on your butt with the hot, seriously hot, the kind of hot you feed your friends only to see if they can handle it. The other sausage was beef and pork mild - so good, and had just enough of a kick to it. The pan sausage? Well, let's just say that when I clear some room in the freezer? We'll be going back, and we won't be buying Jimmy Dean anymore. And the most surprising? The fajitas? They were not salty like most premarinated fajitas are. They were really good too.

What sucks? It's a 45 minute drive to get there.

(I did write something up about buying a side of beef for those of you interested, but I'll have to post it later this week, since it's not on this computer.)

We also found some time on Sunday to take Landon to the neighborhood park. He's all about the rock climbing wall, not so much about the slide. We didn't get to try any swings though. And I didn't have my camera on me, but we'll try again next weekend.

Oh, and write this down as historic. We took Christmas decorations down before Valentine's day. I don't think that's ever happened before. Speaking of which, we bought some new stuff this year, and decided that silver will probably never happen on our tree. And to make everything fit in our storage boxes I removed the things that we will likely never use. So I have a kit to fully decorate a tree with silver, clear, and pearly glass balls (they all have silver hanging things). Silver beads, 2 stocking hangers, 2 red and white stockings (traditional), and a country-ish looking tree skirt with a hobo looking Santa on it. It's cute stuff, the ornaments may have been used all of once, if that. If anyone knows of anyone who wants it, I will give it to them. Or I need an idea of who I could donate it to. All a person would need is a tree and lights.

Oh, and The Plan, is moving along. I mailed off my Education Evaluation to TREC this weekend.