I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
Anyway, eating healthy has been an issue for me lately.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Add to that, the fact that it\u2019s so easy to just eat fast food because of my job keeping me far away from the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Excuses, excuses.<\/p>\n
I recently found if I just eat more lean meats and vegetables and stay away from too much bread, alcohol and pizza, it\u2019s been a bit easier to keep my weight down, plus I feel healthier.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been following this way of life for some time now (not including what horrors I indulged in over the holidays, of course).<\/p>\n
Anyway, I digress.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Being she is a single mom of a 7 month old, she can\u2019t really eat all of it by herself.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I also received a huge bag containing what I assumed to be a large meat item of some kind, on which the label said \u2018boneless whole beef knuckle\u2019 weighing in at 11.24 lbs, and wrapped in very heavy vacumn sealed plastic.<\/p>\n
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?\u00a0 Or is it really something else but no one wanted to claim it?\u00a0 Sort of like an orphan?<\/p>\n
I called the friend who gave it to me, and asked her. She told me she wasn\u2019t sure\u2026she guessed it was stew meat.<\/p>\n
I put it al lin the freezer and decided I\u2019d figure it out later.<\/p>\n
Friday night I steeled my nerves and got down to the business of seperating all the meat.\u00a0 I calmly fashioned 2 large meat loaves out of some ground beef and pork, and some other tasty ingredients.\u00a0 There was something about the\u00a0 squishing of raw meat one\u2019s hands that makes you feel sort of, I don\u2019t know\u2013-homey.\u00a0 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.
\nSo I did.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s not forget to mention the oven\u2019s range hood.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow,\u201d I thought, \u201cWhy did I buy that $3-a-bottle brand of cleaner that didn\u2019t 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?\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 It made me beam with some sort of motherly anticipation.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I dropped the sponge on the floor and quickly came to my senses.<\/p>\n
I nearly panicked, \u201cGOOD GOD ALMIGHTY, WHAT HAS GOTTEN INTO ME???!!\u201d\u00a0 It became apparent that I had spent a good part of my weekend doing all these house-wifey things!<\/p>\n
Then I smelled something weird.\u00a0 After about a half day of thawing, the mammoth orphaned beef \u2018knuckle\u2019 was still sitting in my kitchen sink.\u00a0 It was well on its way to totally thawed and there was a meaty bloody smell emanating from the sink.\u00a0 I knew I had to do something with it, and fast.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 boneless hunk of steak.\u00a0 He came over, we unwrapped the gigantimoungus thing, and as we did, it unfurled onto the counter with a juicy, heavy, thud.<\/p>\n
It was indeed, a large strip of boneless meat.\u00a0 It was actually very fresh and had no bad odor, just that bloody smell, which my neighbor slash friend said was \u201ccompletely normal\u201d.\u00a0 To my delight, Mr. Neighbor Meat Connessieur offered to help me slice and wrap it to store in the freezer.\u00a0 I got out some wax paper, zip bags and a knife and began sharpening it.\u00a0 Between him slicing and me packing,\u00a0 we had that sucker sliced, wrapped and sacked and put away, all inside of 15 minutes.\u00a0 I gave him a few pounds of the meat to take home, to thank him for his help.<\/p>\n
After that, I decided to call it quits on the domestic front.\u00a0 Things were getting way too scary!<\/p>\n
On Sunday, I slept in till nearly noon, wore the same tee shirt that I had on the day before, and didn\u2019t make any plans to do anything except feed myself and maybe do the dishes after meals.\u00a0 I had aa n of phone-calling and chatting, internet surfing, TV watching, and general slackdom to catch up on.\u00a0 Now as I\u2019m posting this, there is a wet towel on the floor in the bathroom, so things seem to have gotten back to normal.<\/p>\n
Whew! That was close.<\/p>\n
\nOther posts on this day:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m 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 … <\/p>\n