Eat Local Shabbos

The Versitility of Ground Meat

Buy 1/2 cow and you get a lot of ground meat. At least there's a lot to do with ground meat. When the weather seemed Spring, early in the week, I thought I'd mix the ground beef with some local onions (minced), local garlic (minced) some local herbs and some non-local spices, toss it on the grill and call it kefta. By Thursday, we were thinking spaghetti and meatballs. Friday morning, the weather seemed grillable again.

As I noted earlier today, I cannot just have food. I need food in the proper combination. What goes with kefta does not go with spaghetti and meatballs. Because the morning sun did not fully convince us of kefta, we went shopping for antipasto fixin's. At Caputo's Cheese Market, we did not really buy, and the rain that came seemed not enough to stop the grill.

Indecision brings new ideas. Sheppard's pie my wife suggested. A new way to use the ground beef. By the time the kidz came home from school, we had not figured it out. We surveyed. I mean one of the reasons spaghetti and meatballs was not moving full speed ahead was that I thought the kidz did not like. The survey results came in, and the meatballs, to my surprise/dismay, came in third, ahead of the kefta. Of course, to my real dismay, the write-in, Wingstop, came in first in the survey of kidz choice for Friday Night Dinner.

In second, they picked the devil they did not know, Sheppard's pie.

Hat Hammond would be proud of the recipe my wife dug up, from Staffmeals, one of her favorite cookbooks; ketchup being the secret ingredient to the ground beef. It did add a touch of sweetness that married well with the frozen peas, frozen corn (all local) sauteed in plenty of local butter and finished with a good splash of local cream.

Before the Sheppard's pie, I made soup from local escarole, a prosciutto end from Caputo's and the rind of some Roth Kase Grand Cru Surchoix Gruyere and a semi-soffritto of local onions, local carrots. Sheppard's pie seemed to demand a cheese plate and we sampled four great local cheeses: (from strongest down) , Hook's Blue Paradise, Hook's 10 year old cheddar, a new wedge of the same Roth Kase used in the soup and Zingerman Creamery's Manchester. We had to drink local. The kidz had Filbert's root beer. Mom and Dad finally found the L. Mawby Michigan champagnes we've been searching (Marion Street Cheese). We had Sex (hahhaha), a fitting Sheppard's pie kinda wine. We digested our food in front of recorded NBC Thursday night comedies, then ate pie.