FreshMeatFebCarnivore!


#141

So, Mrs. Bear came home with COVID last week. She was out of action for a day, and now has the snuffles and things. On observing I’d say she was not her normal self for about 3 days. But by day 2 she needed to be moving and just got back into yoga and Pilates. I called off a few trips to the city on the basis of being exposed. One was for my mum’s 82nd birthday. But I’ll catch up with her next week. Mum’s not fussed about fuss.

Nope, I couldn’t seem to catch this COVID. Didn’t do anything special or out of routine that was over and above extra cups of tea and doing the town trips for shopping or Billie to the vet.

Continuing on plan. 3-egg breakfast omlettes at about noon, 2 coffees per day, then red meat ruminant meal at night. Sometimes with halloumi. Last night I had half a rib-eye steak and pan fried-Atlantic salmon. Really enjoyed the surf’n’turf. Sleeping well. Sunshine and outdoors each day. Back to teaching in the classroom work next week.

Here’s a summer postcard from down at my place for y’all:


#142

:crazy_face::stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes::partying_face: this was funny to read! your posts are good!

In my area seafood prices are jacked high also. thru the roof on alot of our carnivore is more normal now, ugh.

Hey, just curious, are you still riding your bike around?

ewww, sorry Mrs B got nailed like that but sounds like a lesser hit so I am glad you didn’t get it and happy she is recovering well. So smart not to see your mom just in case. Being older never worth exposing them at all for sure. A no fuss mom, love it!

Wonderful pics! It seems like you are in a good carnivore shape right now and you know me, surf and turf is one of THE finest meals out there!

---------------I had such a great NY Strip steak yesterday. melt in your mouth tender, hitting one of those perfect steaks is always such a friggin’ joy to eat! I made a mini meatloaf and it was like 1.5 lbs but only ate 1/2 for 2nd meal. Will eat that leftover first meal today and next meal will be country pork ribs.

I might get dragged out to dinner tonight, not sure cause hubby’s brother and wife came up for viewing but also decided to stay the week til the VA burial service next Thurs. So I know a dinner is happening, just not sure if today or tomorrow. I hope it is tomorrow. I tell ya I don’t enjoy going out to eat anymore. Too expensive and it ain’t my cooking. But play today by ear on it all.

My resident red tailed hawk that lives around my gray horse barn is surprising me lately. He was on the back porch railing at my back door. Opened it and there he was, so close but he flew off very fast when he heard me. Seems he is coming closer and closer to the house, huh. I am thinking of researching about putting up a feeding station, like a post and platform and buy some freeze dried mice for him from the pet store but I am thinking that might not be a good idea. lol. I just love him being around and now I wanna feed him, crazy me. probably won’t do that tho HA

zc on strong all


(Robin) #143

Happy Mrs. Bear wasn’t hit hard and is recovering. And I know you’re glad to be back in the classroom.
Thanks for sharing your lovely view.


(Geoffrey) #144

A Texan’s delight. A 15 pound brisket slow smoked for 17 hours.
IMG_9696


#145

gotta ask, pic this looks very dry to me??
but pic doesn’t tell so was this juicy and fatty or overcooked like my eyeballs kinda see LOL not sure on it, just wondering kinda. sometimes when I go low and slow I realize I overcook that juicy fat out and have learned to actually slow cook less hrs to keep that big fat in the meat… could be way off on my sight on this one :slight_smile: ok curious on taste/texture and juicy on it…


(Robin) #146

HAVE MERCY! Heaven on earth.


(Karen) #147

Spent some time with my daughter on Saturday. We did the shortest of walks as she says her bump is getting heavy and she needs to wee more frequently … ha, i know those feelings, she was a little b for sitting on my bladder! So we went to the nature reserve, had a cuppa and then a short walk. There were lots of people feeding the birds … so nice to have got rid of the avian flu cos we weren’t allowed to feed them during that period and it seemed to be a long period. The robins were looking well fed and very tame feeding off peoples hands. Really lovely.

I had eaten tuna scrambled eggs before going out for the walk and talk and ate a small sirloin steak when i got home before getting ready to go dancing in Northants. It was a 7.30pm start so had to pick Raymond up at 6pm to drive down. Had a fabulous evening dancing all night. Got home about 1230am and was famished so had some tinned tuna.

Today had brunch of 2 burgers with a bit of mature cheddar on top. Went dancing this afternoon and had a super time again then dinner was a bit of cheese and i cooked some chicken thighs i had defrosted. Wasn’t sure they would be okay as they had been in freezer for a long time… they were awful and then i noticed they should have been cooked from frozen so i put some more in oven from frozen in the hope they would turn out better. In the mean time i cooked 4 small black puddings with 2 fried eggs… nice. The 2nd batch of thighs were a bit more edible… at least i thought they were but they soon became hard to eat so i have had to throw them in the bin with the 1st batch… and i guess that’s what will be happening to the remainder in the freezer!:roll_eyes::roll_eyes:


#148

No, I almost only just walk nowadays. Or not even that, I was too inactive lately… Spring hopefully will bring my bike riding and hiking back! Last year was so bad with my foot having problems with longer walks, my bike was broke down for long too and I still don’t use it, the forest was usually muddy and I prefer riding there… But we have plans. Alvaro is missing a tad longer hikes more and more and actually I miss it too. I never did much hiking in winter but Nature gets even prettier now.
We saw the first fly today. (It’s not an example of beauty in Nature though I saw pretty flies before, with red eyes and shiny everything.)

Oh today was bad, very strong assymmetric headache, the pill did nothing. It’s good I very rarely have this. Alvaro cooked his biggest food ever (outside. I made a very good fire in no time. last time I was very sleep deprived with other negative circumstances and I couldn’t do a fire and Alvaro said I can’t make a fire but I can, I just don’t always focus on it enough, what is the fun to do it so quickly? and that time I tryly lacked brain power and mood for anything. so I was extra attentive today and it went smoothly and super quickly), it didn’t even fit the pot :smiley: Even though he forgot the 3rd big amount veg ingredient… So now he has A TON of food, I don’t need to do much cooking in the next days. I just fry some pork for myself, have peasant’s breakfast plans too as we have all these nice smoked pork and sour cream, even cheese… Egg is low but not very low and Alvaro won’t eat any for days, probably, with this meat+veg dish. I am the one who eats eggs all the time, it’s just one option for protein for him and he has meat and cheese now so egg isn’t needed (legumes don’t work for him like that, he often eats them but he still needs the animal protein part of the dish. except sweet stuff, of course, the big exeption). Meat and protein rich dairy can lower my egg need too (even other, non-carni protein sources in a pinch) but I still need some.

How lovely you have him :slight_smile: We only saw raptors far away, usually, sometimes closer but it’s just a flash or a tiny speck on a tree and we hardly ever can tell the species!
But Alvaro saw a HUGE deer today, he was astonished and told me, I didn’t saw it. We see deers a lot but it was very unusually big, he says, he was so excited! I only saw a great tit, closer than usual, birds like the grape vine and thuja in front of the kitchen window, I saw all kind of small birds there. I very often see eurasian jays too, there are so many around here :slight_smile: We tend to talk about our animal sightings of the day. Other people may ask the other about their day, I ask about the animals he saw. Even when it’s dark, he often sees some when he crosses the forest. Raptors are rare but occasionally happen, like when he spotted some at the small (but biggest around here) river… His guess is a lesser spotted eagle but he isn’t sure. And once he scared a hawk right at our house, poor bird caught a dove and left it and never came back :frowning: He just came home and was all harmless but the bird had no idea about it. I felt sorry for the hawk but it was summer, less brutal than winter… There are voles galore here too… I like to imagine our majestic smaller and bigger (there aren’t really big ones) birds of prey don’t have serious food problems even in winter.

@FrankoBear: Nice photos as usual, these postcard things have a mood I so love every time :slight_smile: I am glad the COVID came and went without being too serious even for Mrs. Bear!


(Geoffrey) #149

No, it’s not overdone or dry. Brisket is a very fatty meat. So fatty that I trim some of the fat off to make tallow from. It’s also a very tough cut of meat that requires special handling during the slow cook. Cooking a brisket is a staple in Texas bbq. It’s also an art to make the perfect brisket. I have pretty much perfected that skill as most people who have eaten my brisket will attest to. Nobody in my family will even go to a bbq restaurant anymore because they’d just as soon wait until I fire up my pit again. I ruined them from eating anyone else’s Q.
That black you see is called the bark. It’s not burnt. It’s a soft crust that forms on the outside of the meat from the smoke that seals the juices in and has a wonderful smoky taste and depending on what rub you use and the wood you smoke with it may have a sweet flavor. It’s delicious. So tender that even my father in law who has no teeth can chew it with no problem.
All I used for this brisket was kosher salt and pepper. I dry brined it in salt and pepper for 12 hours before I started smoking it. Then smoked it using oak. The flavor was fantastic and slightly sweet.
The pork butt I smoked in the same manner was fantastic also.
Any Texan would see that picture as a work of art.


(Geoffrey) #150

An OMAD day today. Bison ribeye, my homemade bacon and eggs.


#151

I love how ya ruined restaurants for people, too cool.

I am NC. We know BBQ here for sure too LOL Ahh, I think that is what caught my eyem I noticed the fat cap wasnt on the slices like I am used to I guess, made it seem diff then, when we do brisket I keep all that fat cap on and you would see my slices with a thick layer of fat cap under the bark so when I saw yours it gave me that drier looking meat impression…,but since ya say it is juicy I feel ya on that. Just an eyeball thing with it looking diff than my cut. I always eat the meat with that big juicy fat cap in the same bite, I am one who wants that cap on the meat but you are doing tallow so you removed it. interesting,

TX and NC and SC and all us Southern people are ones who thrive on BBQ gor sure LOL Gosh now I wanna eat up more BBQ like it is going out of style.

@Shinita, yea I remember your having food issues back then. things like that can cut our activity short for sure. Hiking, love it too…if Alvaro wants to hike longer with the better season coming you guys should go for it, plus you could get great photography options along the way. What I love about hiking most is just those unexpected moments that make it good, like running into deer, or other critters, or great scenery ya come upon, now I wanna get out and hike too :slight_smile:

------------luckily I didn’t get dragged out to dinner yesterday. will see if that goes down tonight or not, still hoping no on it.

today I got planned a NY Strip steak for first meal.
second meal either going with making a lb. mini meatloaf or throw my fatty country pork ribs into the oven. either way it is fine, or dragged out to dinner in which case it will be some kind of plain ol’ steak at a high price LOL eh, all works.


#152

Wow, I wouldn’t have thought that! :slight_smile: But I don’t think I ever even saw a brisket irl…
(Woe is me.)

I already thought last time I would gladly taste your brisket but now it’s even more true :smiley: I love smoked stuff but people here rarely have a smoker (BBQ must be a thing but not nearly as a big one as cooking outside in a pot. that is my traditional stuff. and we don’t put marshmallows on stick, we use a piece of smoked pork belly). Maybe one day I get too envious and motivated… But no, I can get enough lovely smoked stuff from the farmer’s market and the pig farm. My main food is fresh meat and other fresh items. But who knows…

Yeah we would do that but if my foot starts skilling me after 1-2 hours, that is a problem. I always was fine after 1 hour lately, that’s promising but I still spent the rest of the day with an aching foot :frowning: Aching in an annoying way, sudden pain flash though it :frowning:
Great photography options, oh we need a lens for that first (and eventually a new base, this one is getting really old and cranky). Except for macro photography :slight_smile: Or bird photography with the 300mm lens, that is a monster :smiley: Even back then, Alvaro needed to work for it for months (now it would be very many months) so we better use it sometimes… :wink:

And my food is fine, I have nice variety and good taste… It’s just not mutton EVER. It’s so crazy one can’t buy mutton here. It was a traditional, very common food in Hungary in the past :frowning: WHY there is NONE? I keep reading people in the US, UK or AU just go and buy some in a local supermarket and I can’t get any in the big city hypermarket. And only could buy it once from a farm. Farms sell beef or pork and that’s it. I can live without mutton, sure but I just don’t understand why it is such a rare item. And it’s very, very good. Both the Racka and the mouflon was nice, those were the 2 cases I had mutton in the last… Way too many years… I probably didn’t eat mutton more than a few times in my life (but I was a vegetarian or almost for decades and Mom barely ever cooked meat that wasn’t chicken). And I would gladly to do it more. Maybe next time I will be lucky but eventually I will use my searching abilities to find a place…


(Judy Thompson) #153

Morning, welcome to a new week and a happy Monday. Hubby is off to San Antonio taking a friend in for surgery. I didn’t go this time because I’m teaching online this afternoon at 4 and hospitals can lag enough to make me miss lessons! They may stop on the way into Fred and pick me up for lunch if they’re on time.

@Fangs there have been a few changes in locations in the past year and a half of these steady gigs but we’re still working for the same guy and his 5 or 6 venues. We are 8-10pm Fri-Sat at the steakhouse and 2-5pm Saturdays at the winery. Sunday we’re still playing at the little ranch church. We’ve beefed up our equipment, mainly for the winery, which is large, with new amp and mixer. They sound great, and would fill a stadium I think!
We constantly work on new tunes to keep things fresh. This week we cranked in a couple new Motown tunes.

Meanwhile ZC life is going well. Saturday we split another thick ribeye and sous vided a chicken and then roasted half of it for Sunday, before we both crashed for the rest of the day.

This morning I was hungry! I had some of the L Reuteri yogurt but still starving so cooked up 2 eggs and a half pound of burger. NOW I’m happy, just need a coffee to finish it off.

@Geezy56 yes your brisket looks amazing! I have one in sous vide now for 72 hours (since Friday), then tomorrow it will only need about 3 hours smoking to get it perfect for lunch. I’ll do the salt and pepper, it’s not that much pepper. I’m trying to use just a little more than just the salt these days although just salt tastes best to me now. I buy pre-trimmed brisket and it’s still fatty, but easier.

I ordered kefir grains and I’m just a couple days from full processing. The colonoscopy dr wanted me to get lactobacillus tablets (and milk of magnesia, yikes!) but I decided to kick out the pills and make superior Probiotics myself.

@FrankoBear sorry to hear about the covid in your house! I’m glad the big C is so much lighter and shorter lived than it used to be and she’s back to daily activities. Maybe it was so light for Mrs Bear partly because she’s in such good shape.

Here is some food:





The moon was full Saturday night but lastnight it was balmy and in the 70s so we sat on the deck and I took some lovely shots of the moon through the trees.


It does seem like winter is about over here. Almost time to hang up the hummingbird food!


#154

@JJFiddle: The last moon photo turned out really well, it has a nice mood…

I start to realize that the few very vital things I want in a fridge… Can’t happen. Fridges never are like that. Even if I give up the free access top freeze shelf and don’t care about price or if it fits into the house… The tall fridges apparently always need TWO big boxes with buzzwords so the normal shelves part is never enough for our purposes. It seems people don’t want to put pots into their fridges WHILE having more than tiny freezers. Odd. The door shelves barely hold anything, fine but we need to put our cooked food into the fridge.
I need the spacious normal part of small-freezer-on-top fridges with the nice bigger freezer of the freezer-on-the-bottom ones, in one. With an open freezer top shelf if possible as I use it all the time but most Whirpool fridges have that (I only saw it from that brand. strange, I would think it’s basic :smiley: ). I don’t need any fancy-smancy things except no need to defrost (bigger efficiency is fine but I can’t expect too much there, okay). I am very fine with whatever our food does in our current, old fridge. I just want a bigger freezer and a bigger bottom “veggie” box (that we mostly use for cheese and smoked pork. sometimes lemon. as it’s tiny and Alvaro’s occasional big vegs can’t fit. and even that isn’t important as they can stay in the basement).

Alvaro is down because there is no more heating in his workplace. As a superior stole and sold the fuel months ago (I am amazed there was some heating until now). We won’t have a proper winter anymore, it seems so they won’t freeze to death (smart ones wouldn’t anyway, they wouldn’t go to work) but it’s not good enough for him and it’s understandable. It’s physical AND mental/emotional anguish. He feels like a tasmanian devil on the bottom who only gets the tail. His words.

I had turkey and peasant’s breakfast today. Among others. I don’t do carnivore but I am trying, I am just horrible at everything I try now. Food is a better as I have knowledge, good habits and not bad taste. But I still can mess it up any time.
I can’t wake up in the morning and it upsets me very much at this point.
I don’t wanna whine. I am still optimistic anyway.

We didn’t get our webshop order so Alvaro starts to run out of coconut oil. It’s good I could find another webshop and we hope for the best. But it’s typically quick, it’s one or two slow case per year. I decided I won’t wait almost until the last minute to order staples in the future… :thinking:


(Judy Thompson) #155

We decided ages ago that what we wanted was a dedicated freezer and a dedicated fridge. By the time we went to buy those they didn’t make dedicated fridges anymore, but we got a “flex fridge”, the 2 little freezer drawers on the bottom can both be freezers or one can be a fridge. So now one is a fridge and the little freezer is mostly for ice cream bowls for our ice cream maker.

When I quit keto I was so happy to get rid of 30 jars of pickles and countless bags of fake flour! Hubby eats simple. So our fridge is fairly organized now and we have our dedicated freezer.

Thanks, on the pic. My phone camera is SO awesome.


#156

We don’t have a smartphone now and both our tablets have bad camera, we don’t even try… But I don’t like phone cameras as they aren’t good for macro photography and I care too little about food pics… They are better for that though, HUGE depth… I can’t do that with the camera. And it’s fine, I like food pics with a small one, I just lacks to skill to pull it off :smiley:

I don’t want a separate freezer but I will think about it as I can’t get what I want anyway. I looked at my fridge… 5 shelves, 1 can hold a pot, 1 can hold our tall pressure cooker… They must go there as they often contain our cooked food. And we have 4 door shelves and we need them all. Butter and garlic on top, jars and smaller sour cream containers next, then 2 rows of jars of vegs and fruit and milk. We already run out of space when we bought 4 liters of milk, okay, that is very rare but one of my 2 favs was on a good sale and we have a very milky phase… But one shelf must be sacrificed for the big veggie box. Now, between the bottom door shelf and some part of the fridge, its size is seriously reduced. Newer fridges don’t have either problems so the box is almost thrice as big :heart_eyes: But we don’t have those insanely big American (or what) door shelves, ours are tiny. And not sturdy enough, they die first but as I need them, I managed to fix them somehow.
But I worried about fridges enough this week, I will revisit the idea later. Maybe when I will be in a proper store, photos don’t help enough. I bring my measuring tape too.

It took me some years but yep, I am almost done. I still have grapeseed flour :smiley: It’s awful, gritty and tastes bad according to Alvaro, it reminds him of wine-mash (I googled the word, never met it before). He can eat anything in bread but in this case the amount is too tiny so it would take 10 years… I can eat it in bigger amounts in biscuits but well, if I eat off, I rather use walnuts, that is tasty :smiley: Maybe one day I get brave and throw it out. It’s not good, after all. I just have VERY, very serious mental barriers against food waste. I just never do it, no matter what. But this isn’t really food…
We love pickles though :slight_smile: They are low-carb enough even for me even if I obviously don’t often eat them, it may not be apparent but I do try to eat carnivore. And fail, yes but if I add vegs, I can’t eat my rich, salty food without. And it’s not a very realistic scenario when I have eggs :slight_smile: And I typically have them. But pickles are very innocent in my eyes and Alvaro eats them up anyway. We never have much.
We have hungreds of jars of fruit (and some vegs and forest mushrooms) all the time though. Last year was super bad for fruit, it’s spring and we still have so, so much… But they last long so it’s fine as long as I don’t run out of cupboard tops to store them. And fridge top. I am so glad Alvaro eats fruit all the time as I love my fruit garden but could’t make a dent in the produce if I wanted. But I am glad he doesn’t eat overly much fructose as that isn’t healthy… Sadly, he buys very much fruit but jarred stuff can’t replace fresh stuff and we lack certain important kinds due to various reasons.

Erm sorry. It’s very hard for me not to talk about fruits when the topic gets close to that.

Our have some level of chaos but basically it’s pretty good, every shelves have their dedicated role. A vague one, hence the chaos and there are items without a place so those just go wherever they can. But I have a cheese shelf :slight_smile: With other roles as it’s the shortest one and good for plates too. As we have too much cheese after shopping, some goes in the veggie box as I already wrote, along with the unopened smoked pork and other processed meat products. If the latter ones are opened, they go to the cheese shelf. The the sizes pretty much dictates what goes where. And the door shelves are very much organized. I am quite fine with the normal fridge part but the freezer is a chaos, I do what I can but it’s just 2 small shelves, I can’t organize that much. As I can buy meat locally, the size isn’t that big of a problem anymore but 3 shelves still would make things much better.

Thanks, now I am looking into separate freezers and fridges! I didn’t want that but now I can see I can get whatever I want from both world and IDK about the energy usage yet… The freezers use almost as much as a whole combined fridge/freezer… :frowning: I did find some perfect size only fridges with a cute energy usage… And they are almost always greatly structured for me. Sometimes I can’t be as free with the shelves as I can be but I can make it work even in that cases, I just can’t put the bigger pots on the lowest shelf. But if I can, I want total freedom and choose which shelf is tall…

I am very deep in it now but poor fridge is really in a bad shape already and I am so looking forward to a big bottom box and a bigger freezer since ages… And I have found a ton of rust underneath lately too… We really should get over this hurdle soon.

I still have turkey for today and got out a pork chuck slab from the freezer. I used up my lard yesterday and it’s not good. Chuck provides little but it’s enough for now. I will fry up the fattiest part in small cubes to get maximum amount of lard. Then I better find some 30% fat pork in the supermarket but in the worst case, it will be pork shoulder…


(KM) #157

Wouldn’t it be easier to get some more suitably sized storage containers than a whole new fridge?


#158

No, our pressure cooker has the right size (and it works so we can’t throw it out anyway). And even if it was smaller, it wouldn’t solve our problems. We need a big, flexible fridge part with 2 tall shelves. With a smaller pressure cooker one could get a bit smaller but it would just fall into the gap between simple and combined fridges.

Meanwhile I gave up on 2 separate machines. But now I know some small freezers have shelves… That is so nice… :frowning: I have zillion tiny things in the freezer…

[…]
And I think I have found the one :smiley: Now that I gave up on the easy access freezer shelf, it’s not nearly as important as the other things.
Yay. I will show it to Alvaro when he comes home and will be in the right mental state for it.


(Denise) #159

Wow, I was beginning to think this forum was dead!! I just keep getting Email Notifications now, everything for the last month it looks like. Must have set my notifies for that. Hopefully, once I get caught up on EN’s I will get regular notifies and be able to participate in more threads.

Really not sure what happened as I reset my notifies to the “Mailing List” mode and that was a week ago, 6 days, and something is working :wink:


(Karen) #160

Monday went for brunch at the cafe in Beeston with Raymond and had 2 fried eggs 2 bacon 2 sausages all very nice…if i have any grumbles it is that when eating fried eggs in a cafe they are either fried in oil or on the griddle…and i miss the fat!

Did a shop in The Company Shop and stocked up on steaks. There were no ribeyes so i bought a couple of packs of sirloin and a couple of packs of rump… they will keep me going another week or so. No ribs or wings which was a bit disappointing but i picked up some buffalo wings in Lidl. Dinner was some lambs liver and 3 slices of topside beef spread with butter.

Up early today for dentist appt. It was 9am!!! :astonished::astonished::astonished: i went in on the bus and had the broken front tooth filled and built up as it was chipped at the bottom. The dentist is amazing … you can’t tell it was ever broken! I reckon in a few weeks i won’t remember which tooth was broken in the first place ! So pleased.

Had some bacon at sally army cafe. The lady thought they had run out of eggs and after i had finished my bacon she said she found them… in the fridge :rofl: she was looking for them on the work top as that’s where she keeps them at home lol. Dinner was 2 ostrich burgers with sliced cheese. Don’t know why i bought them cos i didn’t care much for them the first time bought them!

Ate some cheese and just eaten a tin of tuna. Always feel really full as if i have eaten loads but when i look back at photos i realise i haven’t eaten a great deal really.