Want to buy a cow?

We just bought a cow. Half a pig. Few chickens. Some little shrimpies. Did I mention a cow?

Ok, so not really. And I had NO intention of leaving my house today - after all, I'm sick. Really don't feel all that better, despite the fact that I went back to bed for another five hours. When I got up, Chris made me chicken broth with saltines and I managed to sip that down...it actually soothed my throat quite a bit. While I was sipping, he was perusing the circulars that had come in today's mail.

One of the ads included was for the Country Meat Market, located only about 3 miles from our house. The deals that were listed were fabulous - really, I felt they were too good to be true. Before I knew it, we were getting dressed, rounding up Chris' mom, and heading down the road to see what we could see.

OH MY GOD.

We just bought about 15-18 month's worth of meat. What we did is buy the family of four plan - a 12-month plan meant to feed four adults with, um, fairly nice tastes. Not the crap meat, in other words. And since we're only two people...three for the winter while Chris' mom is here...the owner, who waited on us personally, estimated that we'd be in meat for 15-18 months. We really think it'll be longer...

They had EVERYTHING there. It was the neatest little shop. And they do their plans on 12 months same-as-cash financing. In other words, if you pay every month on time, you never pay a dime of interest. And since their financing is coordinated through our bank, we're able to set up an auto-deduct from our checking account to pay the amount every month - so we're golden. It's about 1/2 of our monthly at-home food budget (not to be confused with what we hold aside for lunches at work and dinners out occasionally and stuff), which may seem like a lot, but thinking about what we normally buy, we're getting a great deal here. SUPER EXCITED. Especially since I really do think this food will last us until, well, forever.

Once we agreed on a plan (our credit qualified us for the plan that's meant to feed 10 people per month - uh, no thank you!) they ushered us into the back, where we personally picked the cow that would be coming home with us. Now, folks, I grew up in a grocery store. Literally. My dad owned the town's grocery store. And they did most of their own meat cutting right at the store, in a back room that never saw the light of customers. So I was somewhat shocked that they brought us right back to where Bessie and her friends were hanging out, chilling. (I do apologize for the visuals, especially if any of you are vegetarians.)

We picked our cow - our plan qualified us for about 350 pounds of beef - and then started picking the 100 pounds of add-ons that also came with the plan - which we could split between seafood (blech), pork and poultry. Then, they put us to work. We moved out of the refrigerated room and into the cutting room. Four workers lined up to begin processing our chosen cow, and they placed Chris and I at the end to label the wrapped packages and pack our two shopping carts full o' stuff. Karen headed outside to smoke...I really think the atmosphere upset her a bit. It took about 45 minutes...I was freezing and miserable by the end...but we ended up completely, 100% filling our stand-up freezer in the garage, which is really a quite huge device at 19.6 cubic feet...and when we got home pre-filling, only had a pound of ground beef, a few random steaks, two microwave chicken dinners, two packages of bacon, some muffins, some leftover ground venison, and a frozen pizza left inside.

So here's what we got: (some listed in quantity, others listed in poundage - and some of the steak packages had more than one steak inside, but I couldn't remember which ones, so really just packages are listed instead of true quantity)

STEAK
Ribeye Steaks: 29
Porterhouse Steaks: 6
Bacon-Wrapped Filets: 30
T-bone Steaks: 8
Bottom Round Steak: 5
Round Steaks: 10
Rib Steaks: 16
Sirloin Steak: 16
Pre-packaged NY Strip Steaks: 10 pounds
Pre-packaged Ribeyes: 10 pounds
Ground Beef: 27 pounds

ROASTS
Cross Cut Rib Roasts: 2
Chuck Roast: 5
Bottom Round Roasts: 1
Arm Roasts: 2

RIBS
Short Ribs: 4 packages, about 5 pounds each
Country Style Beef Ribs: 6 packages, about 5 pounds each

PORK
Pit Ham: 7 pounds
Bacon: 25 pounds
Pork Chops: 38

SAUSAGE
German Sausage: 18 6-inch links
Pre-packaged Smoked Hot Links: 7 pounds
Smoked Sausage: 5 packages

CHICKEN
Chicken Breasts: 25 (pre-cut - as in the whole breast, deboned and skinned)
Pre-Packaged Hot Wings: 5 pounds

SHRIMP
Shrimp, pre-cooked: 2 pounds
Shrimp, uncooked: 5 pounds

Oh, yeah, and we bought enough to get a $100 gas grill, free! (Naturally, we put it together the second we got home - Chris just HAD to see his new toy assembled.) Plus, if we run out of ground beef, we can go back and get it within the 12-month period for $1.99/pound - way less than the supermarket, especially since I insist on lean ground beef, which is 90/10!

OH! And they GUARANTEE, in writing, against freezer burn! So if you unwrap a steak or chicken breast or whatever and somethings wrong, you just have to snap a picture of it, take the pic and the meat back, and they'll replace it - without time limit! I really wonder how this place stays in business, truthfully, but it was busy the whole time we were there...and not to be snarky here or anything, but it's AMERICAN owned and operated - we could actually carry on REAL conversations with EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE we encountered.

So yeah...dinner's at our house...indefinitely! I've gone out to the freezer to just look at it all in awe several times already. I mean, the dang thing is full. Just can't believe it.



And now, sick-girl here is going back to bed! :-)