We have meat!

I've mentioned a few times in my unprocessed posts that one of our biggest challenges in our unprocessed journey has been meat. We are big meat eaters...hubby grew up in a Western Kansas meat-and-potatoes family, and while I wasn't always a big meat-eater, I have become more so in the past few years. (Starting when I was pregnant with my little guy and developed an absolute obsession with hamburgers...something I'd never really been fond of. Must've been low in iron, or something. Anyway, the obsession lasted throughout pregnancy, and never really went away.)

So while I liked the idea of eating less meat, and eating more lean meat, and eating only free-range grass-fed organic meat...I couldn't really figure out how to manage it. For one, good meat is just so expensive. For another, I didn't really know where to find it. We'd pick up some whenever we went to the farmers market, but we don't go there every week. And our grocery stores don't have the best selection.


In our first attempt at going unprocessed last April, I didn't meet our meat goal at all. This past October, we did better. I was able to find some organic free-range chickens at a couple of stores, and we hit the farmers market a couple of times. We still defaulted to grocery store meat sometimes, though.

Well, how excited was I when I was contacted about getting a meat share from a local farm?! One of my mom's good friends was planning to split a share of meat with another coworker; when that coworker backed out, they were looking for someone to share with, and she asked my mom, "Would Abby be interested?" She sure would!

We got our meat a couple of weeks ago. It took some rearranging in the freezer, but we were able to clear a shelf for our bounty: 13 pounds of ground beef, two roasts, six steaks, and one rack of ribs.


I defrosted the first roast this week and made my favorite pot roast recipe.

I was a little nervous when after the two and a half hour cooking time, the meat was not fall-apart-tender. With the grocery store roasts, you usually just have to touch it with a fork and it falls to pieces. With this roast, I still needed to work to separate it into servings.

I needn't have worried. I don't normally think of myself as having that discerning of a palate, but I just could. not. believe. the. difference. The meat was so incredibly tender...almost buttery...with the most delicious flavor. It was like a completely different food from the grocery store roasts. The little ones gobbled up their servings and asked for seconds: "Veggies, too?" "NO! Just meat!" I admit that the hubby and I had seconds, too. :)

The leftovers are reserved for tomorrow night's dinner: pasties, and we are so looking forward to it. We'll be using our first package of the ground beef for dinner this week, so I'll report back on that.

If you live in the area, I strongly recommend checking out Rising Moon Farms. I have eye-witness reports that they have very happy cows, and we can attest as to the quality of their meat!