Meat Party at My House!
If there isn’t a math formula that will tell you the volume of fifty pounds of butchered and processed beef, there ought to be. When I left for Humboldt on Monday, I chose an insufficient ice chest that was only about half the size I needed to cart home all the meat the Murphy family gave my mom and me in appreciation for our efforts on the Blocksburg book. Consequently I had to leave most of the roasts and a couple steaks at my grandma’s when I headed home yesterday. On my way out of town, I also stopped by my sister’s place to give her some. We watched from the porch as her two-year-old son repeatedly tossed a frozen London broil in the air with the kind of glee that should only be reserved for sustenance on the higher end of the glycemic index.
It wasn’t until I was about half way home that I realized that the meat I did manage to get in the ice chest wasn’t going to fit in our tiny little freezer. About that same time I remembered a fable I read as a kid--maybe in one of the Thornton Burgess books--about a squirrel who found himself in the exact same predicament after a frenzied effort to gather all the acorns in the forest. I can’t remember what happened to him, but it was bad, and yet I am certain it didn’t involve him worrying about his husband’s reaction when he discovered a pile of thawing meat in the back of his luxury sedan. I decided to call ahead, and by the time I got home Pat had arranged for us to store the meat in our elderly neighbor’s deep freezer. Crisis averted. I think in the fable, that squirrel was supposed to learn something about not taking more than you can use. I bet when I return from my trip in couple weeks, the weather will be perfect for a barbecue. Maybe y’all can come over and help us chew through it?
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