Show Me Steak

"Eat more protein," said the doc, and except for hot wings I think chickens are for eggs. I prefer beef or fish or lamb or pork, but especially beef and now I had license to eat more.

Because I know beef is a treat and not a staple I buy only favorite cuts and only grass-fed, for a while driving 42 miles round-trip to obtain favored cuts. So for the first time, and because it's winter, I had steaks delivered from a local source: farmergirlmeats.com, Warrenton, MO. Six in a box: 2 filets mignon, 2 strips, 2 ribeyes. Flash-frozen, they came from the farm to my house by UPS the same day. This shipping arrangement cost money but so had driving 42 miles. (There's a pick-up option if you want.) Now I have my favorites and will eat one steak per week. They're aged, too. Free-range chicken, lamb, and so on are also available.

The steaks arrived in a cooler.

I trim the thawed steak if it needs it, pat it dry, salt and pepper both sides liberally, place it in a pan that has heated to smoking a couple of drops of oil, and cook the steak 90 seconds on one side and 90 seconds on the other, then remove it to a plate, tent the plate with foil and leave it for 10 minutes to distribute heat and juices. I like it rare. Like fish, a steak is tenderest when raw, and after that it's all downhill.

From half of one ribeye I made the above-pictured steak salad. The salad is a Cooking Light recipe called Antipasto Bowl, using asparagus, olives, mozzarella pearls, and more. My lunch was as good as it looks. The secret of good food: good ingredients.

Dial 1-84-GOTBACON

My neighbor Terri said her cousins told her about a cool grocery store near Washington, MO, with all local grocery, produce, and meats, and we went to check it out, driving about 25 minutes to Old Highway 100, before you actually get to Washington, and after a while we saw on the roadside a kind of tumbledown farm stand. Was this it? "This can't be it," said Terri. "My cousins said it had a deli and cafe," and GPS pointed us half a mile farther and we found it: the Farm to You Market at 5025 Old Highway 100.

The place is an old factory refashioned into a grocery store, with aisles and freezers and checkout lanes and all. Terri and I rolled our carts once-around-the-store to check it all out, and talked with the owner. The farm we'd first seen, with the tumbledown stand, was his. This store was way different! Two young women staffed the deli; it was impossible not to order the "Peppered Pig" sandwich (peppered pork salami, jalapeno cheese) and the fruit salad as a side, and oh the delight when it arrived on marbled rye bread, my favorite. Terri had the turkey sandwich. There was indeed a cafe. I'd also grabbed a one-serving-sized bottle of local peach wine.

So I bought sausage, two reasonably-priced Porterhouse steaks from grass-fed beef, honey, horseradish mustard, an acorn squash, some peaches, and Terri bought among other things some fresh butter churned at the store (and later shared it). The most awesome items I saw were the many goat cheeses and huge bags of shelled pecans. I even sampled the homemade bologna. I asked the farmer/owner (he has a beard)  if he would one day please stock fresh-milled wheat flour, because the St. Louis area has none; the nearest mill I could locate is in Louisville, KY. He said the buyer would look into it.

In the meantime this will be my source of organic beef and pork, and will have another Peppered Pig sandwich for sure. They will also cook you breakfast. Check it out.

Here's the Beef

When I eat beef I want it organic, pesticide-free and hormone-free, so at a farmer's market on a September morn I approached a farmer seated at a table, just a table in the sun, taking orders for organic beef from her farm 10 miles up the road. I asked about buying a quarter of beef. Couldn't afford it; also it was too much meat for me. The farmer suggested I split a quarter with three friends.

So I put the word out, and three people signed up with me in October, each paying a reservation fee of $25, and were told we could pick up our quarter from the processor in early December. The beef was ready on Nov. 21, we cleared our freezers, and today the four of us drove 25 miles to the processor, each paying $33 directly to the processor. Then we divided between us about 110 lbs of flash-frozen beef. To complete the transaction we will now pay $94 each to the farmer. That's $152 for about 27 lbs. of  local, organic 3/4" cut steaks (t-bone, sirloin, rib eye), roasts, and ground beef. The quarter included 50 lbs of ground beef but only four one-pound packages of stew beef. That cut was not popular so I asked for three of the four pounds of it for my famous slow-cooker beef burritos. Splitting a quarter of beef with three friends was a good idea. Some of my share is shown in the photo.