When I was in my 20's I toyed with vegetarianism for a while. I still ate fish, but eschewed any other meat. (For some reason, it didn't occur to me that fish are alive, too. Perhaps I mentally disqualified them due to their lack of innate cuteness. When something looks at you with warm brown eyes its easy to not want to eat it, but fish, well, they're coated with slime, they never blink, and would anyone want to cuddle with a fish? )
I'm not much of a vegetable eater (which in retrospect makes me question how I ever thought I'd be a successful vegetarian) so my diet consisted mostly of carbs. Pasta, bread. Ice cream. It didn't take more than a year or two of staring longingly at other peoples' prime rib dinners for me to admit I was living a lie. I wanted meat. Even though it stung my pride to eat my words, I finally came out to my family: "I'm not a vegetarian anymore. Can I have a one of those hamburgers?" Bless them all for only saying "I told you so" with the voices inside their heads.
I like my steak rare. Once on a trip to Boston for work my then-boss took me to a little steak house. That sirloin was the best tasting steak I've ever eaten. I don't know what they used for seasoning, but I've never been able to replicate it. I'm starting to salivate a little just thinking about it. Every steak I've ever cooked since that meal has been a vain attempt to seek carnivore nirvana.
When I "accidentally" ended up with a small flock of chickens (another story for a rainy day) and they started gifting me with fresh free-range eggs, I was reminded of living on our little hobby farm as a kid. We had our own eggs, our own garden, and every year a deer and half a grass-fed angus in the freezer. Still, the money aspect.
Last year we had the opportunity to buy part of a steer from a friend. It weighed out at about 700 lbs, and my brother, a friend and SG and I bought a half and sorted it out into three relatively even piles of beef. Those steaks, those roasts, they were excellent. Worth every penny.
With SG on the road and earning, we felt emboldened to buy another half a beef this year, but this time a whole half. The steer went to the butcher just after Thanksgiving, and two weeks ago Stephen went up there and brought home 325 lbs of steaks, roasts, ribs, hamburger, stew meat and carne asada. We had to clean out the box freezer to make room for it all.
Whenever I put a steak on the grill or a roast in the oven, my taste buds remember that perfect Bostonian steak. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes its a miss, but always, especially when you know the meat you're eating is hormone-, pesticide- and drug-free, its better than good. So far I've cooked a couple of roasts and made one batch of chili in the crock pot.
I am a happy, happy carnivore.
