I have not read the rest of this thread, just this most recent post, but I got 1/4 beef last week. The cow was apparently on the smaller side, at 610 pounds, so we paid our price per pound based on 1/4 of this total weight, so our portion was 152.5 pounds. We buy through a small local store, so our price per pound includes cut and wrap and everything in one number. We have 36, one pound packs of ground beef, about 18 pounds of stew, stir fry and cubed steaks, 10 pounds of steaks (we opted for rib roast for Christmas rather than rib steaks, and we chose to have more other roasts than steaks, so our steaks are NY strip, top sirloin, tenderloin and tri-tip), about 30 pounds of roasts and 6 pounds of "soup bones". I told them I wanted a share of the organs, they just left it for me to work out with the store, I think it depends what the other buyers want, but you should be entitled to a share of the organs. I'm not sure why, and we didn't get this before, but they also packaged about 25 pounds of bones and 18 pounds of "beef scrap". I have not gotten these when we've gotten beef before, even last year through this same place. Maybe it's because we discussed the organs being for the dogs (though I declined "dog bones" ) but I wanted soup bones, I really don't know. I'm going to thaw a pack of the scrap and see if it's feasible to cook that for the dogs, but I may also share it with my neighbor who hopes to have a deer to process this fall. Anyway, I just had to throw in that last part because all of this, including the 43 pounds of stuff we've not gotten before, fit in 3 cardboard boxes. Heavy boxes, but still will fit in the car with no problem. I think without the extras, it would have been pretty close to fitting in just 2 boxes.

James, You don't owe me an apology. I'm just glad you tried that method to cook rice. It really does product the perfect rice every time. Thanks for the ginger beef recipe. Adding to my "to try" list. Soon. Ann

Ann_t, I've considered it but it isn't worth it for us. The Costcos are not close to us and driving to areas I don't normally visit aren't worth my time/energy/gas. I enjoy cooking but not every day. Our budget is generous for going out and that's what I most enjoy. I LOVE chicken fried steak! But it is possibly the worst thing in the world for you, LOL. Restaurant versions are okay, but The Real Thing is dynamite. I wrote up my mother's method one day, when I was doing a restaurant review of a cafe that did a decent chicken-fried steak we liked. My younger friends and family have never had this recipe, so I included it in my email as a humorous touch. BTW, I do not claim this is an authentic Southern Recipe. This is just how my JapAm mother made it when we were growing up in Chicago, after she learned it from the Mississippi AfrAms in our neighborhood: *The Traditional (e.g., home-cooked) Chicken Fried Steak Yes, this is another thing my Japanese-American mother learned to make from Southerners (Mississippians transplanted to Chicago, hence our familys love of sweet cornbread and really good fried chicken from the legendary Harolds in Chicago [you can look up Harolds Chicken in Wiki]). It can be eaten for dinner or breakfast. Or lunch. Or....well, you get the idea. Like most Southern food, it goes best with biscuits. Real biscuits, the kind made with white lard and even whiter soft wheat flour, rolled and cut with a biscuit cutter (what do you mean, youve never seen a biscuit cutter?!?) and served hot out of the oven with lots of butterc. Definitely not the fake Pillsbury-in-a-can stuff. To the day she died (at age 84), my mothers idea of heaven would have included a hot biscuit dripping with butter. Start with decent-sized pieces of beef, well trimmed of fat. Bottom round is ideal. The mechanically tenderized "cube steak" is sheer laziness and has the wrong texture. Traditionally the pieces of bottom round meat are pounded thin with the edge of a heavy china plate (okay, my mother did use a traditional meat mallet instead). Never, under any circumstances, do you use a wet batter. Never, ever! The egg and the flour do not mix together promiscuously in a bowl; this is a worse heresy than a mechanically tenderized steak. As you are pounding the steak pieces thin, you sprinkle them generously with seasoned flour. The flour, up to a cup or more, is pounded into each steak. "Seasoned", BTW, means salt and pepper. Thats it, no garlic (powder) or onion (same). Just lots of the evil white Mortons. Heres where you get a split between the thin batter-fried and the thick batter-fired recipes. My mother was a thin batter advocate, so she fried the steak after pounding it with the flour. The opposing camp sets out a beaten egg and a pan of more seasoned flour. The steak is dipped in egg and then in flour again, making a thicker batter coating. Either way you do it, next you fry the bacon remember I said there was another whole level to this dish? The bacon doesnt actually appear anywhere else in the recipe, so you probably just nosh on the crispy strips which youve fished out of all that bacon-y, salty, greasy artery-clogging saturated rendered fat. If you happen to have rendered bacon fat on hand, why are you reading this recipe? You already know how to make this. While youre chewing and swallowing bacon, you fry the steaks really crisp in the bacon grease. This is where most restaurants fail. Its bad enough they use some kind of healthy polyunsaturated oil but to make things worse, they dont cook it long enough to really get it dark brown. Drain them on newspaper in a warm oven, while you toss leftover flour into the pan to soak up the bacon grease of course you dont drain any of the fat out, why would you do something so silly when thats where all the flavor is stirring and scraping for a few minutes to cook the flour. Then in goes the evaporated milk whole milk, not that ridiculous reduced fat stuff just enough to make a thick gravy that holds in nice clumps on the spoon. Not glue-y, just very thick. Some people make a thin gravy, but not in our house. Oh, and more pepper, too. Serve with two fried eggs. Or maybe three. Or better yet, eggs and biscuits so you can chase all that yummy gravy around the plate to sop up every bit. Real biscuits, the kind made with white lard and even whiter soft wheat flour, rolled and cut with a biscuit cutter (what do you mean, youve never seen a biscuit cutter?!?) and served hot out of the oven with lots of butter handy. After that, you go clear out an entire field of cotton, or chop down every tree in the forest, for the next eight hours straight (as youve already worked five hours before lunch). The discovery of statins to lower cholesterol is obviously Gods way of saying that every American has a right to copious quantities of salt, fat, and cream, three times a day. Also sugar, but that goes into the coffee, tea, and peach cobbler.

Get a couple of 3/4" thick Flat Irons and generously rub both sides with your favorite seasoning, using 1/4 tsp. of salt per steak if your seasoning has no salt in it. Let them stand at room temp for 10 to 15 minutes. Heat a skillet (I use a heavy, high-quality nonstick) over medium to medium-high heat. Add a little oil, fry the steaks for 5 minutes on each side, flipping only once (tongs - no fork.) Take pan off heat and let rest for 5 minutes. They'll be tender, juicy, bursting with flavor . . . guaranteed.