As part of Hubby’s job, he gets meat. Â I love that…he loves that. Â We all love that. Â What a joy to get groceries and not to have to hit up the meat section. Â We do buy a little…sandwich meat, pork loin on sale, chicken and fish. Â We are really so spoiled because of this as the meat is the best cuts and the most flavorful.
Back when the used to milk cows at the farm where Hubby works we got lots of hamburger. Â Occasionally a cow would have complications with birth that she couldn’t recover from, slip and break a leg or wouldn’t come with calf. Â Typically prices for these cows isn’t the best. Â Often Hubby’s boss would take these to the locker and we’d be blessed with lots and lots of hamburger. Â Sometimes we’d have an entire, no joke, large freezer full of hamburger. Â Often we’d get more hamburger before we’d use up what we’d have. Â It was one of the those blessing/curse situations. Â It was a blessing we had all the hamburger we could want but a bit of a curse as it was all we had..and in those days, all we could afford.
I learned to make so many different things with hamburger. Â We honestly had some type of dish with hamburger, or straight up hamburgers for days on end. Â I got VERY talented in making dishes with hamburger. Â Although I felt frustrated with only hamburger as the cook, I don’t think my family felt frustrated with all the hamburger related meals.
In fact, a funny thing happened when Kelli went to college…first off, in all those hamburger dishes I fed her, none were hamburger helper. Â With seven hungry mouths to feed it was cheaper to cook completely from scratch than to buy hamburger helper. Â Second, Kelli had never bought hamburger in town. Â All of my kids thought we ate hamburger because we were cheap and it was a cheap meat.
Anyway, one day after getting teased by girls on her dorm floor that Kelli decided she would get hamburger and a box of hamburger helper and made herself some. Â First off she couldn’t believe that she had to pay that much for hamburger. Â Second she couldn’t believe that she had to drain the hamburger. Â (what we butcher was always very lean) and third…mom’s homemade hamburger stroganoff tasted much better than the box.
Things have changed since they quit milking cows. Â They raise beef steers now. Â There aren’t many that end up in the locker because of injury so now, we get a whole beef including steaks, liver, roasts and the like. Â The portion of steaks compared to hamburger is LARGELY different than what we were used too. Â This year, we ran out of hamburger in August. Â UGH….We still had roasts and steaks but no hamburger. Â It’s been a sad few month for me. Â Sure I could go buy some in town but it’s hard to do that when there is meat in the freezer.
Besides, Hubby and I both agreed that we really needed to eat down what was there so that we’d have the old meat used up.
I can’t tell you how happy I was when the meat came….
I had hamburger again!!
Hamburger allows me to cook ahead and I love that. Â Often I’ll make a lazagna and another hotdish on Sunday of busy weeks and simply pop them in the oven later in the week. Â It’s harder to do that with steak….don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for and love steak too it’s just that I love all things hamburger. Â Those early years of marriage when hamburger was all we had in the freezer really set me on what and how I like to cook.
We are so blessed that meat is part of Hubby’s wage package. Â Going to the supermarket and buying this much meat would be REALLY hard.
I’m off to go take some hamburger out of the freezer. Â I think hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes sounds just about perfect.
There is nothing better than grain feed meat. We have purchased a whole hog and I have a cousin who raises beef steers. I just wish I could find a good source for fresh chickens.
get a meat grinder and grind some of the beef down to hamburger?
Local is always best. One year my dad and a couple of his friends went together to buy a cow. Kept the meat at the local meat locker (do those things still exist?). They called themselves the Local Cattlemen’s Association.
We too have been blessed to have friends and family that raised cattle, pigs and chickens. Your right there is a BIG difference in quality. When we do not have access to a certain meat we just do not buy it at the supermarket.
When I was young, we got a side of beef each year (fall, I think) from one of my parents’ students since they both taught in rural schools. I am probably one of the few grade schoolers to have uttered in that day, “Steak, again?!” Now, I might take one of those fancier cuts and grind it myself and use it for burgers. You need to get enough fat in the mix, but you’ll get absolutely the best burgers that way.
I have never been fortunate enough to be given a whole cow even though I live in Texas!
I do have a freezer full of fish at the moment because we have had some excellent fishing trips in the Gulf this fall. And if my husband is able to go deer hunting, I can add venison to that. Enjoy your beef!
We live in ranching country and often bought a half a beef. I usually ran out of hamburger first because I struggled with what to do with some of the roasts and other cuts. We stopped buying so much when my only child went vegetarian on me. Now, when I find hamburger on sale–I buy as much as they have especially the lean packs.
We raise beef cattle and always have our own Angus beef…two freezers full. It’s good to have, but I look forward to a good pork roast cooked with potatoes from time to time.
The hamburger running out is a very familiar one here too! We don’t milk our cows anymore on our farm, we take them to a friends larger farm for that, but we keep and raise our heifers. Two weeks ago we had a heifer split herself and we ended up making burger from her. Lost the hind quarters due to the injury but still ended up with a good amount. It’s great to have in the freezer!
Congrats on the meat delivery — full freezer again! We are ground beef lovers – buy it in the grocery store, sadly – but we also love chicken, and I can fix it SO many different ways! I do have an urgent question: what is hamburger gravy and how do you make it? We have been missing out on that all these years!
I love your “divider” in the freezer. Chest freezers are great except when you don’t know what is on the bottom and how long it has been there ;)