A Side Of Beef -- A Slice Of Americana -- Nothing About The Bakken -- For The Granddaughters

A little local Americana for the "big city" folks who might have accidentally stumbled upon this blog.

I have kept the "contact information" confidential / anonymous for various reasons. If seriously interested and can't find contact information any other way, you can probably contact the butcher in Miles City, MT.

Anyway, a reader sent me this:

We have two blue ribbon 4-H steers available by the half. A 4-H sale purchaser bought the Premium & we brought them home.

Scheduled for slaughter on September 8 at Quality Meats of MT in Miles City.

Top-quality, premium beef - asking only $2.60/lb. of hanging weight. A half will weigh APPROXIMATELY 400 lbs.

We will deliver them to Miles City, buyer pays the processing (approx. $250/half).

Fill your freezer with very affordable premium beef - they will go fast. Call XXX-XXX or message me if interested.

Omaha Steaks is running me about $40/lb for filet mignon, well-trimmed, wrapped in bacon. In bite-size portions, it doesn't cost all that much. LOL. If I use coupons, free shipping, loyalty rewards, and a sob story on the phone, I can sometimes get the cost down to maybe $30/lb for the second best filet mignon in the world (the best would be from Miles City, no doubt). By the way, I did not understand cuts of meat until I started "following" Omaha Steaks.

When I was growing up in Williston, my dad would occasionally buy a "side of beef." He would have the butcher down the street prepare a gazillion little white-paper-wrapped packages and then mom would arrange them in our freezer in the garage. Over the course of my 17 years living at home, he probably did this two or three times. Those were the good years, no doubt. Must have been fourteen or fifteen years of my dad living paycheck to paycheck.

By the way, I also remember Mom serving us beef tongue on more than one occasion. I don't recall the taste, but I do recall the toughness. Looking back, I'm sure my mom was using what little money she might have had at the time to stretch it as far as it could go. I can't imagine tongue costing all that much; for all I know, the butcher gave it to her free. Mom was quite remarkable in stretching the grocery budget.

Looking back, my hunch is that we were a lot closer to being poor than I ever knew -- really poor -- but we always ate very, very well. Mom was always trying something new.

Rhubarb pie was my favorite -- rhubarb from the neighbor's garden, for free. The rest of the pie "from scratch."

When I went to pick the rhubarb, I remember picking peas and eating them fresh off the "vine."