Butter and beef
Aug 30th, 2008 by Dani
One would assume, that with the Bread Winner on distant shores, I would purchase less food than is usual this week. Alas that was not to be due to two occurrences.
The first occurrence was running out of butter. A simple little thing you think? Except for the fact that it’s been 12 months since I last bought butter. That worked very well for me and I don’t intend to buy butter again for another 12 months. So I bought a 25kg block. It’s a bugger to carve up into manageable amounts but it enables us to eat our fill of unsalted organic butter for roughly the same price as supermarket home brand muck and less than half the retail price of organic butter.
The second occurrence was a call from Craig of Little Creek Beef to tell me that my order was ready for delivery. A total of 62kg of beef for the family, 14kg of pets mince plus some wonderful big bones that are just begging to be made into stock. The bones were thrown in gratis. Of course buying half a steer at a time gives wonderful value for money. Assuming of course you havet he freezer space for it. Which I do. In fact, I only have about 4 kg of beef left in the freezer from my last bulk meat buy. In case you’re doing the math and wondering, I paid a lot more per kg overall this time. The difference being 1/ the overall quality of the beef and 2/ the range of cuts bought. Little Creek Beef is grass fed and simply delicious and I have every cut from eye fillet to the most scrumptious cornish beef sausages. If we eat this beef at the same rate we ate the last bulk buy, it should last as long as the butter!
So all in all, the food bill was a little high this week. All in a good cause.
Do you freeze your butter? Just curious.
kazaris last blog post..The Omnivore’s 100
Absolutely Kazari. Especially as it is unsalted it needs to be frozen. As you can imagine, freezer space is at a premium around here at the moment!
I buy butter in bulk and freeze it too, but mine tends to get a freezer burn flavor after a few months. Is there anything special you do to keep yours fresh?
Fig I cut mine down into manageable blocks (about 500g or 1/2 pound) then I wrap it in cling wrap very firmly. The trick being to make sure that no butter is peeking out and that there is absolutely no air between the wrap and the butter. I also have a dedicated butter drawer in my freezer and I pack it together really closely to minimise the air between the pieces and maximise the freezers efficiency. Hope that helps!
Hi Dani,
Where do you buy your organic butter from?
Cheers,
Karen
I buy it from Organic Times, a wholesaler based in Eltham (Victoria)