Sunday, June 9, 2013

The daily grind

We should live off the land!  Says I.
I need to go out and slaughter a pig!  Says I.

All this junk that get's put in our food.  It's just crazy.  I don't want to eat chemicals and hormones and alien babies!  I don't think the time will come when I can ever slaughter a pig.  Or a chicken for that matter - but it doesn't mean I don't want to take what steps I can to eat healthier.  We don't eat packaged food around here (except on very rare occasions), we don't have a microwave and we grow much of our own produce.

I decided to start the journey to eventually slaughtering a pig with baby steps by grinding my own ground beef.  Ground beef at the grocery store was $4.99 a pound.  Roast was $5.49 a pound and buy one get one free.  That made quality roast about $2.75 a pound.  Roast was much cheaper than hamburger and I knew additional fat and gunk was not being added.  It still was not grass-fed beef - but I had to start somewhere.

So I set up the grinder:

 I cut a piece off the roast:

I tossed it into the grinder opening and cranked on the handle for about 5 minutes.  The grinder slipped and shifted.  The meat squished and squashed.   Stuff oozed and goozed.

My result:


The process was totally off-putting.  The results were most unappetizing.  Plus the labor-intensiveness of the process did not seem at all a good investment.

I might just turn vegetarian.  Except I like bacon.  And I like ribs.  And I like fried chicken.  Perhaps I need a newer grinder - this one was from the 40's or 50's.  I need something electric and with a tad less personal involvement because this did not work for me.  In fact - I just went to Amazon and ordered an attachment for my KitchenAid.



I should have the attachment in about three days.  I'll report back on how it goes with this tool...Wish me luck.

No comments:

Post a Comment