I’m your typical lazy, single apartment-dweller who runs her own business and works on average 14-18 hour days, and has no life because of it, and certainly the last soul on earth planning to be caught dead with a rag and bottle of cleaning solution in her hands, let alone a frying pan.
Anyway, eating healthy has been an issue for me lately. It can be tough to do when everyone I have meetings with, orders pizza, wine and beer and then we go out for cheesecake afterward. Add to that, the fact that it’s so easy to just eat fast food because of my job keeping me far away from the kitchen.
Excuses, excuses.
I recently found if I just eat more lean meats and vegetables and stay away from too much bread, alcohol and pizza, it’s been a bit easier to keep my weight down, plus I feel healthier. I’ve been following this way of life for some time now (not including what horrors I indulged in over the holidays, of course).
Anyway, I digress. The other day, a friend of mine told me she gets really good deals on groceries and said she had lots of meat she could do without. Being she is a single mom of a 7 month old, she can’t really eat all of it by herself.
So she sent me a delightful care package with 4 pounds of ground pork, 2 pounds of salmon, 6 pounds of ground beef, 7 pounds of ribeye steak, 6 pounds of chuck roast, 4 pounds of snow crabs and 2 pounds of butter. I also received a huge bag containing what I assumed to be a large meat item of some kind, on which the label said ‘boneless whole beef knuckle’ weighing in at 11.24 lbs, and wrapped in very heavy vacumn sealed plastic.
What the devil can one do with a nearly 12-pound mammoth mound of beef that seems to have conflicting origin? Was it really a knuckle? Or is it really something else but no one wanted to claim it? Sort of like an orphan?
I called the friend who gave it to me, and asked her. She told me she wasn’t sure…she guessed it was stew meat.
I put it al lin the freezer and decided I’d figure it out later.
Friday night I steeled my nerves and got down to the business of seperating all the meat. I calmly fashioned 2 large meat loaves out of some ground beef and pork, and some other tasty ingredients. There was something about the squishing of raw meat one’s hands that makes you feel sort of, I don’t know–-homey. Then I rolled out a bunch of breakfast sausage links and patties, following a recipe I found online.Saturday morning, there was an omni-present urge for me to shine my kitchen sink.
So I did.
And the countertops. And the backsplashes. And all the corners, removing the coffeepot, microwave, soap container, spice rack, etc. And the top of the fridge And the windowsills.
And let’s not forget to mention the oven’s range hood.
There I was, scrubbing like a banshee, can of Comet cleanser in hand. Suddenly, my brain went into commercial mode and I was doing testimonials for Comet in my head.
“Wow,” I thought, “Why did I buy that $3-a-bottle brand of cleaner that didn’t do the job last time, when CLEARLY, this 85-cent can of Comet does the job? Why would ANYONE continue to buy those $3 bottles of cleaner when none of them comes close to harnessing the CLEANING POWER THAT COMET DOES?”.
Then I started to feel sort of like I wanted to do them for someone, as in, besides myself, like probably a man and some children. It made me beam with some sort of motherly anticipation.
That’s when I dropped the sponge on the floor and quickly came to my senses.
I nearly panicked, “GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY, WHAT HAS GOTTEN INTO ME???!!” It became apparent that I had spent a good part of my weekend doing all these house-wifey things!
Then I smelled something weird. After about a half day of thawing, the mammoth orphaned beef ‘knuckle’ was still sitting in my kitchen sink. It was well on its way to totally thawed and there was a meaty bloody smell emanating from the sink. I knew I had to do something with it, and fast.
I decided to call my neighbor friend, who I knew was a self-proclaimed meat connessieur of sorts. He said that it was likely just a big ol’ boneless hunk of steak. He came over, we unwrapped the gigantimoungus thing, and as we did, it unfurled onto the counter with a juicy, heavy, thud.
It was indeed, a large strip of boneless meat. It was actually very fresh and had no bad odor, just that bloody smell, which my neighbor slash friend said was “completely normal”. To my delight, Mr. Neighbor Meat Connessieur offered to help me slice and wrap it to store in the freezer. I got out some wax paper, zip bags and a knife and began sharpening it. Between him slicing and me packing, we had that sucker sliced, wrapped and sacked and put away, all inside of 15 minutes. I gave him a few pounds of the meat to take home, to thank him for his help.
After that, I decided to call it quits on the domestic front. Things were getting way too scary!
On Sunday, I slept in till nearly noon, wore the same tee shirt that I had on the day before, and didn’t make any plans to do anything except feed myself and maybe do the dishes after meals. I had aa n of phone-calling and chatting, internet surfing, TV watching, and general slackdom to catch up on. Now as I’m posting this, there is a wet towel on the floor in the bathroom, so things seem to have gotten back to normal.
Whew! That was close.
Same day, different year..
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