Local Mystery Meat

We did not fully commit to local when we committed to local. We were just not ready to pay the price of getting all of our meat from the farmers markets. We could get some of our meat there, but given the prices, my wife and I agreed that we could not get all of our meat there. We have since leaped the price hurdle by buying our local meat in bulk. Although we can now comfortably eat local meat, we still face problems.

I've complained before about the frozen nature of our meat. It means that all meat meals must come with a bit of fore-planning--in fact I could not quite understand how the Top Chef chefs bought meat at the Green City Market and then used it shortly thereafter????? [ed. TV Magic?]. The other problem with local meat, one I'm sure I've mentioned before, especially local bulk meat, is the mystery of it all. One never know quite what will be in side the white paper packages until they are unwrapped. It happened the other day when I decided to cook skirt steak or as I'll call it, "skirt steak".

I could tell from the feel of the package that it was not a big steak. It was not to be an Atkinsesque meal. Instead, I planned on making big salad with the steak and some our mondo lettuce head. I did not expect to find steak pinwheels. Inside my package marked skirt steak were two rolls of meat, each pinned in place with wooden skewers. The meat itself was about the size of a garter snake all rolled up. They were perhaps the skirt or from that part of the cow. Perhaps, they were surely quite fatty but also with the livery-ish flavor of hanger steak. I pan grilled one rolled and one unfurled (the kidz like their steak more well done).

Like all of our meat, it featured the sweetness of our cow's diet of surplus fruits and vegetables. It may have been too fatty. How it got packaged as a skirt steak, well that's a mystery.