The Cow-operative

Some of the best ideas come out of a pun. In fact I often have the pun and then have to think of a clever way to use it in general conversation.

This wasn't actually my pun ...it was my husband Nicks'. He wanted to start a cow-operative - a community meat-market based around a cow.

He established a steering committee and invited around 12 peoples to become steak-holders. A steer, aptly named T-bone, was bought and raised on a small acerage outside Yass. He was a free-rangin', free-lovin', grass-munchin' happy cow until the moment of truth last week when he met his meat maker, Justin Baird, the local mobile butcher.

He was grazing to the end before he found himself hanging around the farm in ways that he hadn't suspected.

After 4 days hanging in the cool-room, Justin returned to the farm to do the job of butchering - cutting up all the bits and pieces that we recognise as meat and bits we had never seen before. He was a master of his trade and 8 hours later we headed back into town with 6 eskies full of steaks, roast, stewing stuff, mince, snags, bones, bits of offal and fat. Very little was wasted. I drew the line at making cow-fat-soap.

The steak-holders all came over to do the divying up - it was a veritable meat-market and a bloody mess. Obviously.  After an hour of bagging up the booty and me demonstrating me country-cryovacing technology*, eskies were re-loaded with 15 kg of the freshest, tastiest, happiest cow that ever their was. 

The cow-operative mightn't be everyones cup of tea, especially if you're a vegetarian, but if you like to meet your meat and know, acknowledge and respect where it comes from then there is no better way to do it. 

Now the freezer is chocka-block with meat - we have been dining on steaks and all manner of meaty products. I cooked up the most enormous stock-pots of bones and made the most lush beef stock ever. I'll be writing another blog on that another day becase, don't you just know it, I have come up with a pun which deserves a blog of it's own.

Braise be to T-bone. 

*I grew up on a cattle station in the Snowy Mountains and I have fond memories of when we would kill a cow and have it delivered in a few big boxes to the homestead. Everyone from the station would come over and we would bag it up - my job was to suck the air out of the plastic bags with a small bit of poly-pipe to stop the meat getting freezer-burn. I still have the taste in my mouth!