Post 2346 - Meat!

I'm back in the city after a day and change at my mother's.

I will continue to call it "my mother's".  Perhaps I should call it my parents' place.  Or maybe "the family dwelling".  Not sure.

Anyway.

My side of beef arrived during the lunch hour today.  Leonard backed up his truck into the driveway and proceeded to unload 3 large cardboard boxes full of beef.

Let me back up.

If you go back through the "year in review" series and re-read the 1983 entry, you will recall I obtained a summer job that year working at the local Burger King.  I was there for about 3 months.  That entire summer, I did not see as much hamburger as I saw today arriving at the house.  One of those boxes had a couple pieces of steak.  The rest of it was hamburger in one pound packages wrapped in butcher's paper.   All fresh, nothing frozen.

There were types of steak I am pretty sure I have never eaten, probably because it's too expensive in a restaurant.  I have a piece of brisket, and a couple pieces of stew meat.  Four or five large roasts.

It took me 45 minutes to unload the 3 boxes and transport them to my mother's freezer.  Leonard says it will take a couple of days for all that meat to freeze and that I should distribute it throughout the freezer so that not all of the steak is in one place.  Of course, since there is so much hamburger, I would need a freezer like you would see on a navy ship that will be out to sea for six months.

On top of all that meat are the remnants of the contents of the freezer from when Mom was living in the house.  I put all that stuff in a series of grocery bags; my sister will be taking that stuff to her own place over the next couple of weeks.

I decided to bring back with me a few pieces of steak as well as a few pounds of hamburger.  Coupled with the scallops I brought back, we have decided to have a surf and turf supper Monday after work.  I am looking forward to sinking my teeth into this beef.  My mouth is watering in a way that makes me think that there is something wrong with this carnivorous yearning of mine.  I hope there isn't.  I don't really care if there is.

The meat in that freezer will last us all year, and maybe even longer.  I hope it is gone by the time my neighbours have their next cow beefing.

I'm reminded at this time of the time when my parents had a garden behind the garage.  The soil was exceptionally fertile even though Dad didn't do anything to make it that way.  I'm guessing some of the things the then-neighbours did leeched into our soil.  We had carrots and cukes and lettuce.

Somehow a few pumpkin seeds got into a packet of other seeds.  We dutifully planted them.  Before we knew it, we had pumpkins coming up all over the garden.   I had never seen so many pumpkins in one place at one time.  This was before people grew huge pumpkin patches and invited the public to look at them.

Not to let things to go waste, Mom cooked as many of the pumpkins as she possibly could.  We had pumpkin pie, pumpkin tarts, pumpkin this,  pumpkin that.  We did not eat any of the seeds because we didn't know that this was something one could do.  This was a while ago, remember.

We were pretty tired of pumpkins after that year.

Anyway, all that hamburger in the freezer this afternoon reminded me of that long-ago time.  I hope that I am not sick of hamburger after all this is consumed.  I not aware of hamburger tarts, but perhaps I should see if there is such a thing.

If you have any neat recipes involving hamburger, please send them my way.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy