Thursday, December 6, 2007

Amy, the meat packer?

Tuesday night I got a call and then an experience I could not have predicted. A friend called and said "I know that you don't eat meat, but others in your house do. We have a deer that someone gave us and we already have plenty in the freezer, do you want a deer?" Thinking of my meat eating husband, I said yes, and so later they arrived with a few trash bags. We received four leg quarters and the back strap. We put the legs straight into the freezer and I left the back strap meat out for Todd to figure out what he wanted to do. I was told that the back strap was the best meat and it was already de-boned.

A little while later, Todd arrived home from class and got to surprise him with our acquisition. Not what he was expecting to do after a full day of classes and a big test the next day! He decided to make small "roasts" out of the back strap and freeze the individual pieces for pulling out of the freezer when he wants it. I've been told that I can roast the legs and then make barbecue out of it or be adventurous and grind the meat to use in whatever. (In our house we don't use ground meat for whatever, so that would even be a whole new adventure.) I can't see me going the ground meat route but maybe trying the roasting thing and have lots of shredded meat. So if you eat at my house anytime soon, you may end up with deer meat however we end up cooking some of it. You'll have to let me know how it tastes! I'll happily be eating my vegetarian sloppy joe.

My other gastric experiment coming to our kitchen very soon is dandelion greens. I bought a box of organic produce from a local health food store and in the mix was dandelion greens. They are supposed to be really really good for you so we'll try them. I'm not a huge greens fan in general so I'm being stretched here. Most of the recipes that I have found on-line call for bacon and bacon grease to cut the bitterness of the greens. This may be another adventure for my meat eating friends to enjoy and I'll just get the pleasure of preparing it!

The tables are definitely turning on me this week as far as food - I'm usually the one trying to get people to try new things. Now I have two different foods presented to me and I'm skirting this issue!

Happy Eating.

Options I'm considering for dandelion greens:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1571530
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Doras-Dandelions/Detail.aspx

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