Ground Beef

Meatballs

November 22, 2011 by mamakay 1 Comment

Ingredients

6 lbs ground beef (or a mixture I like to use 1 part beef, 1 part pork & 1 part venison)
2 cups bread crumbs
1 cup finely diced onions
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 cups tomato sauce
6 eggs

Mix the ingredients together. Using a small scoop make meatballs and place them on a cookie sheet. (It is really important not to handle the meatballs very much as it makes the fat melt on your hands & thus dries out the meat.) Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees until cooked through. Remove to another clean pan and after cooling place in the freezer to flash freeze. (This takes an hour or so but it can wait on you.) After they are individually frozen put meatballs into bag.

These work great by themselves, served with BBQ Sauce, Sweet & Sour Sauce, in Stroganoff or with Spaghetti.

Makes approximately 120 meatballs

Cooking Day 11/4/11

November 22, 2011 by mamakay Leave a Comment

I got together with another friend whose family is similar sized to ours for a cooking day. A successful cooking day is made possible by spending a couple of days getting ready for the cooking day. We planned out our menu, made the grocery lists, went grocery shopping, did prep work and then finally spent 6 hours together assembling and cooking the meals on the actual cooking day.

Here is a list of what we made:

120 Meatballs
4 9×13 Chicken Stuffing Casseroles
4 9×13 Poor Man’s Casseroles
6 9×13 Sloppy Joe Casseroles
4 Gallons Black Bean Chowder
50 Beef, Bean & Cheese Burritos
40 Calzones

Chicken Tenders — were on the list but we decided to make them up separately since I forgot to thaw out the chicken ahead of time

Spent $332.33 for 56 meals which comes out to $5.93/meal or $0.74/person. (We both have 8 people in our families.) These meals are main dish only in most cases and will require additional sides such as bread, salad, etc…

Prior to cooking day we split up the following list of items to prep:
Cook ground beef
Cook chicken
Make chicken broth
Make bread crumbs
Chop onions
Chop celery
Chop carrots
Cook black beans

On cooking day we tried to be as efficient as possible. Here’s how we worked through the recipes.

1) Started the Calzone Dough
2) Made the mashed potatoes for the Poor Man’s Casserole
3) Made the white sauce to use in the Chicken Stuffing Casserole
4) Boiled the pasta for the Sloppy Joe Casserole
5) Assembled the Sloppy Joe Casseroles
6) Cut up the cooked chicken
7) Prepared the stuffing (from mixes)
8 ) Assembled the Chicken Stuffing Casseroles
9) Assembled the Poor Man’s Casseroles

10) Made the meatballs
11) Flash froze the meatballs
12) Took a break — yeah! look at all we accomplished so far!
13) Made the Black Bean Chowder
14) Assembled the burritos (the whole crew helped with these which resulted in some crazy looking burritos but boy were we done fast with 8 kids helping!)

15) Assembled & baked the calzones (again with all the kids helping)
16) bagged up the meatballs, burritos and calzones
17) bagged up the extra ground beef all cooked & ready to go
18) divided up the food and dishes

19) Cleaned up the mess (well, partly anyways)
20) Rested! Shew! That was a long day but so worth it!

Where’s the Beef?

February 12, 2007 by mamakay 3 Comments

In my freezer! 8)

Beef

After a year of waiting we finally got our half of a cow we agreed to buy from our CSA farmer. Overall it was more expensive per pound than I expected but still better than what I could have paid elsewhere for grass fed beef. The steer was around 2 years old (He should have been butchered earlier last fall but they couldn’t get an appointment until January.) He was a Jersey so we knew their wouldn’t be as much meat as a beef cow would have. He was raised on a small farm with plenty of grass to eat, fresh water and sunshine. They have 5 cows and treat them almost like pets.

We get our milk, eggs and veggies from this farmer.

All in all we got 145 pounds of grass fed beef for $533.40. Which works out to about $3.68/pound. Online grass fed beef goes for around $3.50-$22/pound depending on the cut and quantity you order. So I think I did pretty good & I didn’t have to pay for shipping and was able to support our local farmer.

Here’s what we got:

25 -2 pound packages of ground beef
7 packages of rib steak
5 packages of T-bone steaks
6 packages of sirloin steak
12 cube steaks (1 feed our whole family Friday night)
4 arm roasts
8 chuck 7 bone roasts
4 tip roasts
2 packages of porterhouse steak
3 packages of liver
6 soup bones

A lot of these cuts of meat I have never cooked so if you have any tips please let me know! We are used to ground beef, rump roasts and grilling sirloin steaks.

I’m very curious how long this meat will last us. I’m estimating that it will last at least 8 months. We may need to get more ground beef towards the end but it will be interesting to see how this all works out!