my carnivorous home

it wasn't as bad as i thought. while i'll get my fill of beef by the end of the weekend, i am quite pleased with the final outcome of the big thaw:

• a delish meatloaf dinner
  
• 5 pounds of ground beef in the freezer (mexi night, chili, assorted casseroles)
• 5 pounds of rump roast on its way to being sweet and hot beef jerky
• probably 9 pounds of arm roast and a mysterious cut slow cooked into the most delectable melt-in-your-mouth meat. we ate at least a meals worth right out of the pot and the rest is in the freezer (bbq beef, soups, stews)

thanks to a great pep talk from my mil, i'm actually excited for another roast - they are super tasty and really easy! my 'American Classics' cookbook declared that even the toughest cut will soften when slow cooked.
it will feel good to turn off the stovetop and get back to some fresh cold salads again.

Kum-ba-WHAT??!!

we love ginger beer. now that hubby is off diet coke, ginger beer tends to be our treat. i was at a seminar a couple months ago when the speaker mentioned the bottle he was drinking was a ginger flavored kombucha and better than any ginger beer he had tasted.
i had heard about kombucha, but it went straight into the really extreme health freaks category. but i haven't been able to get his claim out of my head. since stewarts just discontinued our favorite, hubby has been talking about wanting to brew his own ginger beer.
so a couple weeks ago when i went to pick up my milk and eggs and there was a starter, i snatched it up, catapulting us into the world of kombucha.
here are the fast facts:

• aids in digestion
• detoxes the body
• good for constipation
• stimulates the metabolism
• combats aches and pains, headaches
• helps reduce anxiety
• helps lower blood pressure
  
• "good for all kinds of ailments"
  
• "contributes to life extension"
  

why WOULDN'T people want to try it? well, it is a bit tart, vinegary. it is expensive to buy, but its pretty easy, and inexpensive, to brew.
simply steep some unflavored green or black tea. add sugar, then the culture and let it sit for a week or so. then bottle it up, add the flavor of your choice, let it ferment a bit more and develop a carbonation, and drink up.
the results? hubby LOVES it! he tells anyone who comes into our home about it and offers them a drink - before he shows them what it looks like. good strategy. one of my friends thought i was marinating chicken - i guess i can understand why:
here is a look at our bottled brew. we'd like to get some flip top bottles that are a little stronger glass, but these work fine.

so i guess you can add us to the really extreme health freak category. now that we're here i don't feel so freaky :)

up to my armpits in beef

hubby came running upstairs this afternoon, interrupting his concrete staining project in the basement to shout, "the power was out and we lost everything in the deep freeze".
we are in the middle of remodeling our basement, transforming it into a two-bedroom apartment and more importantly, the new home of our offices which have made their home in my home since we were married!! it has been a slow project, nestled in between other jobs, chipping away during the evenings and weekends. in previous remodeling projects (we have moved 3 times in our four years of marriage) i have been able to work alongside my hubby. but this time i feel so out of the loop, unable to help with my full-time zoom job. the past couple months have been mostly skilled labor (electrical, plumbing, finish carpentry..), so our carpenters step in for a day or more when they can. now it is crunch time. hubby's business partner moves her offices into the new space this saturday. last week we sheet-rocked, mudded and taped. this week we finished the trim, and tonight hubby is staining the concrete (a super cool bronze-patina acid wash). then we paint and whew!! so some time in all that the deep freezer must have been unplugged.
we aren't sure when, or how many days it has spent defrosting, but i nearly cried imagining a box full of blood and meat. we get a quarter of a cow every year (thankfully it is in dec so we are more than half-way thru our meat) and i was picturing the rest of the year's supply of beef in the garbage, along with our friend's who we are storing until they finish their home remodel. at least it was something i could deal with instead of adding one more thing to his list.
armed with an armful of rags, a garbage bag and anticipating the worst i headed downstairs. amazingly the interior temp was pretty cool and some of the meat was actually still semi-frozen. not knowing how long the thawed meat had been sitting there i decided we should probably just cook it up and have beef for the next few days.
coincidentally, i have been craving meatloaf so that's what we did tonight (fantastic recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, American Classics (from the publishers of Cook's Illustrated) .
now i am browning up the remaining 5 pounds of ground beef, freezing them for tacos, chili, and good old midwestern hot dishes. tomorrow i'll cook up the 3 roasts and a couple misc cuts (the labeling is illegible) and freeze them for soups, stews and maybe make some bbq meat.
in the end we didn't loose anything, but certainly didn't intend to spend all day today surrounded by meat.
what would you do with all this meat?

the bridge

on wednesday evening the 35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi river. right in the middle of rush hour traffic. we didn't hear about it until our family out west called to see if we were okay. we were shocked. this is a very prominent bridge going north and south thru the state. zoom and i were just on it the day before, running errands and visiting a couple friends. hubby was coming home from a meeting just an hour before the collapse, and a couple friends we across just minutes prior to the collapse. it is a horrible tragedy and the scene extremely dangerous. the rescue and recovery continues today and is it remains a very dangerous situation. chunks of concrete, re bar, broken glass, pieces of steel, misshapen cars, murky water. THAT is a miracle.
i have not been able to stop thinking about this tragedy and my imagination runs wild with different scenarios where we are directly involved in the collapse. i can work myself to tears thinking about it. one keeps replaying in my head, over and over. zoom and i are coming south on the bridge when it goes out from under us. i panic immediately, aware that we are falling into the water. we hit hard, glass breaks and water starts coming in the car. somehow i get to the backseat and start to get zoom out of his car seat, but the parent-proof belt won't come undone.
in another version i get him out, but we can't get out of the car and i stop the story when we are choking the last breaths of air remaining in the van.
finally last night hubby and i had to go thru my plan of rescue to help me make a new story. we had actually just seen a show on water rescue where they specifically spoke about the best way to get out of a submerged vehicle (but naturally, in my nightmare i forgot everything i learned). what we learned form the show was that if you open a door or window, the water comes gushing in, making it difficult to stay aware of your surroundings and plunging you into the depths. water will slowly fill the car and it will dive nose-first into the water. so first i would get out of my seat belt and get to zoom. after taking him out of his belt we wait until the water level covers the lowest door (most likely the front door), breathing steady and talking calmly. the guy said that power windows and door will actually continue working for a few minutes even underwater. we'd go for that door and paddle for the surface.
what i don't know is how to help zoom hold his breath. do i breath into his mouth and then hold his nose and mouth shut the entire time?? i'll have to do more research there.
it may sound silly to have a plan for something that is so rare, but it has really helped my crazy imagination from going to the worst possible end - watching my child drown in a panic before my eyes.
another thing that has been hard for me is to read all the comments blaming God for such a disaster, calling him cruel and unloving. it is so easy to blame someone when we are hurting, or simply don't have answers. i do, however, consider this such a miracle! only five have been confirmed dead, and while 8 are still missing, there must have been hundreds of people on that bridge, including a busload of kids (sans seat belts) who survived! there are no answers yet, but it is a comfort to me that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.

more on beets

responding to a comment on my previous post on beets (ohmygosh, someone is actually READING my blog!!) i'll share a little more about beets!
i grew up eating beets and i cook them the same way my mother did. trim off all but 1" of the greens, cut off the roots, and boil for about 50 minutes. the peel slips off very nicely. we ate them with butter and salt - it is fabulous!!
pickling is one way to cook up a bunch of beets at once and then sit back for weeks and just enjoy them bite by bite without having to sit over a hot stove every time. my recipe is simple, right off epicurious.com
i also really like a recipe for Chilled Beet Borscht from mollie katzen's moosewood cookbook. grate the beets, add salt, lemon juice, honey, black pepper, dill, a cucumber (peeled, seeded and grated) and a couple scallions (whites and greens). mix them all together, add some buttermilk and enjoy! it is a refreshing summer salad - and pretty in pink! i noticed that she has a few other beet recipes on her website - i love her recipes. she cooks really healthy and always from scratch so you get a real time estimate for preparing the recipe (which she always includes). she also has loads of suggestions for optional additions which is a nice way to make the dish unique each time.

pineapple twice in one week!

when i open up a can of pineapple, i rarely use the entire thing. in the past i've had a hard time figuring out what to do with the rest (aside from eating it right out of the can, which isn't bad). but not this week! two dinners, completely different, using pineapple.
on monday we had talapia - a fish i only learned about a year or so ago. also called st.peter's fish, which i learned from my parents after their travels to Israel. they were impressed that i knew it. it must be a midwest thing.
anyway, i made a quick and easy sauce which i got from the six o'clock scramble (an weekly menu of easy, relatively healthy dinner recipes that i received via email - thanks m.i.l).
in a small saucepan, heat 1TB oil over med heat, add 1 cup slivered onions and cook them for about 3 minutes. add 1 cup pineapple and 1 TB soy sauce and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced by about half. she recommends frying the fish, but i just broiled it and poured this sauce over the top - tasty. we served it with a wild rice salad full of almonds, apricots and craisins, and bread. it was tasty.
i sipped away at the pineapple juice, then tonight i made a new pizza - Tasty Thai!
i threw together some peanut butter, soy sauce, garlic, pepper and water until it became a good consistency for spreading on the dough. (next time i'll add a little flame). i sprinkled coconut on the sauce, added some leftover chicken, basil picked from the garden, and that leftover pineapple. WOW!! this recipe jumped to the top of my pizza recipes on its debut dinner!
i also made a margarita pizza using basil from the garden, fresh tomatoes from a friend's garden (she has over 70 tomatoes and gets more than a bushel a week!!! she's going to teach me to can next month) and mozzarella cheese. tried and true!