Monday, March 01, 2010

Buffalo Burgers

To celebrate spring, we decided to warm up the grill. (Don't say anything to me about it still being winter, I don't care.)

I also got out my new hamburger press. I was impressed with how easy it made patties (really big patties).

The first thing I did was to mix about a pound and a half of ground buffalo burger, 2 eggs, and about 1/2 cup of italian seasoned bread crumbs (from costco). (and this wsn't all the meat, I just didn't take a picture until I had already made several patties)


Next, I scooped a blob of the meat mixture into the patty press.


Then I pressed them, fairly hard. The patties are not as well packed as store-bought so you have to be a little more gentle moving them around, but they're fine once they're cooked.



My Mister grilled them.


And here's dinner. (Note to self, don't buy the cheap buns, they're way too small.)

Hello Spring

Pork Chops

Several months ago I posted about my thoughts after reading Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, and In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan, and also watching Food Inc.

Food Inc. especially really got to me, and made me think about what we are eating, and what the real costs of our food are. Rates of diet related illnesses keep going up, which is turn pushes up the cost of health care for everyone. The way the food we eat is grown or raised should really be considered. Is it sustainable? Can we continue to live the way we do and take care of the earth like we have been commanded to?

Back in December I started looking around for local sources for sustainably raised meats. At the time, the only things I could find were beef (which we don't need, because we get our "beef" from hunting), and pork. My family went in on a pig, and we picked it up on saturday.

Sunday for dinner, we cooked some pork chops (sprinkled with garlic salt and lemon pepper), made gravy from the drippings in the pan, ate the last of our indoor-salad-garden, made mashed potatoes, and steamed some carrots and broccoli with a little lemon pepper. It was the best dinner I've eaten in awhile. Here's a couple of the pork chops pre cooking...


And here are some while they're cooking (we experimented with the cast iron pan and the regular pan- the cast iron seemed to brown the outsides nicer than the regular frying pan, but the regular frying pan was better for making gravy out of the drippings)...


The last time we had pork chops was several years ago when they were on sale at costco, I don't remember them being anywhere near as flavorful.

We ordered a whole pig from Christiansen Family Farm, and recently placed an order for some chickens as well. The neatest thing is that they've added a CSA option, where you can pay, and then receive enough meat for your family for the whole year (I think you can break up the deliveries so you don't have to store everything in your freezer). They offer grass fed beef, pork, chicken and turkey. The CSA's come in 3 different sizes depending on how big your family is or how much meat you eat.

They also have a blog, and it's fun to read through about their experiences living on a farm, and including their small children in the farm chores.