Homestead mailing list

[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Saturday night, my friend and neighbor-you know the one, had a little
emergency at 9:30PM.  They discovered that somehow the GFI circuit
breaker had been tripped but not reset in her basement (the house is
still under construction, but they are living there) and their large
deep chest freezer was plugged into a GFI outlet down there.  The meat
was 90% thawed, so it must have happened a day or so prior.  They
freaked out and loaded up and divided all the meat and gave me about a
third of it.  It was mostly venison and elk, some beef. I was totally
psyched!!!!  I must have been given close to or over 50 pounds of meat!
 My friend was exasperated and couldn't imagine cooking it all, was
actually thinking about throwing it away(!!!!)...I told her to just pull
out the crock pots and marinade bags and get to work.  She was so tired
that she actually hung out at the house for a few and watched me start
to cook/prep everything, so I know I gave her ideas. I pulled out both
crockpots..I had 4 elk roasts in one of them, and 5 pounds of venison
stew meat in the other.  I seasoned them up using that old bottle of
Merlot(still), and went through all of my fresh garlic that night.  I
made meatloaves out of mixtures of the ground meats, browned about 5
pounds of sausage for use as pizza toppings and sauce additives, etc.  I
sauted the tenderloins, and marinated a bunch of other stuff for the
grill and round 2 of crockpot cooking.  There was also about 5 pounds of
pre-sliced venison for making jerky, so today, I have the dehydrators
going full blast.  I feel bad that they had that accident, but what a
windfall for us!!  We didn't get a chance to hunt this year, and
consequently did not get any venison, so having this really does stretch
our budget and give us months worth of food.  Also, since we had
to cook the meat, it will make for quick dinners after I start working.
I don't think my friend ever thought about making meatloaves and
meatballs and sausage patties and putting 5 things in the oven, 4 roasts
in a crockpot, etc.  I think she was thinking that she had to cook it
all one at a time or something.  We got the meat at 9:45, and by 11:30,
we sat down to watch TV, and by 12:30, I was wrapping meatloaves and
packaging the food for later.  The next morning, I got up and did the
same with the meat in the crockpots, and got them going again, and then
last night, I started drying jerky..It's all been great fun, and
hopefully, this has opened my friends' eyes that you don't have to slave
for hours-with a little creativity and organization, you can save a
freezer full of meat and save time in future cooking, etc.

Bev
--
Bevanron of EarthNSky Farm   Sleep well tonight, for somewhere in the
ocean's depths, MY son is protecting YOUR freedom.