Half a Cow
We bought half a cow today, the other half is probably still walking around in the paddock somewhere. Well actually they had to kill the whole cow and I'm not sure where the other half of it went. Anyway my sisters and I stuffed as much as we possibly could into the freezer that is part of the fridge and tried to organize our chest freezer as well as we could so there would be as much room for the half cow as possible. My hands got so cold! and I thought it was a hot day earlier.
Then Dad got home and the frantic rush started. We raced to get paper to wrap the meat in, while Dad carried in the four cardboard trays full of all the different cuts of meat. Sausages, mince, top thingys, blade, stuff for roasting and all the rest which I forget the names of. The trays were not small trays either!
The heat meant that we did have to get the meat into the freezer as fast as possible.
Dad packed the freezer while us girls wrapped paper around the bags of cow guts. Trying not to get the cow juice that seemed to find its way out of a few of the bags onto our fingers. We wrapped and packed and wrapped and wrapped, we hoped we might just fit it all in. We didn't. So we dug some more strange things from the side basket of the freezer. We discovered frozen Christmas cake from at least two Christmases ago... 3ks of plums for jam (no idea how old)...three (smallish) containers of mulberries, that I picked from our tree in 2011...while we were doing an elimination diet so couldn't eat them...a rather large bag of frozen ancient bananas and other strange stuff. We shoved a few more things into the other already stuffed freezer.
Then managed to pack the rest of the meat in. Half a cow is a LOT of meat. We couldn't find any room for the mulberries to go back in, so they stayed out for the creating of some magnificent mulberry pies. I can still taste it. (sorry sidetrack) But then we realized pies need pastry and we had just packed the pastry rather close to the bottom of the freezer....
We eventually got everything packed again (after getting some pastry out) and actually managed to close the lid of the freezer! We cooked tea, the pies and eventually got around to eating tea and then we set about one of the pies. Mulberries, sugar, flour, puff pastry, and a little cream on top. Mulberry pies are sooooooo tasty!
Talking about cows reminded me of when we went to our uncle's farm for Christmas. One day he took us out in his ute to move some of the cattle and our cousin kept comment on the cows saying that some of them look like they would be really tasty. She seemed to see just walking steak and not cows at all. Even in a big old bull which her dad told her would only be good for mince, she just wanted to eat them. I had never looked that way at a cow before...
But I'm sure no cow tastes as nice as the mulberry pie did....
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"our cousin kept comment on the cows saying that some of them look like they would be really tasty." That hit my funny bone. We talk about some of our animals that way, and almost everyone looks at us as if we're crazy.
ReplyDeleteOh, and if you think half a cow is a lot to pack into a freezer try packing a whole cow--or 1 1/2 cows. We've done it--but we had to get a new freezer. ;)