Remember that I said we were going to use our economic stimulus check to buy a 1/4 of a cow from a local farm that specializes in hormone-free grass-fed beef? I was so excited to tell you about the great deal we got on this and how we found a freezer to store it in for a steal off of Craigslist.
However, that was not to be.
Oh, we bought the meat alright–all $614 worth of it. And we bought the freezer, too. We were thrilled with the whole experience and were looking forward to lots of great hamburgers and roasts and steaks over the next number of months.
We didn’t get a chance to eat any before we went on vacation, but I couldn’t wait to get back and get cooking. I had visions of all these various dishes I could make and all the great grilling we could do. Since we’ve cut back on our meat consumption for years in an effort to keep our grocery budget low, this high-quality meat was going to be a real treat.
We arrived home from our week-long excursion to Arkansas refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to get back to real-life. As we were unpacking our bags, I went to throw something into the recycle bin in the garage.
I noticed a somewhat-strange smell when I opened the garage door and went to investigate.
You guessed what it was… our whole entire freezer full of meat was off and completely thawed! Not only that but it was room temperature and wreaked of spoiling meat!
Apparently, it rained while we were gone and the electric outlet our freezer was plugged into was shut off as a safety mechanism. (We didn’t know that our garage outlet did this or we sure as ever wouldn’t have hooked our freezer full of meat up to it!)
Gratefully, since we had just purchased the freezer, it wasn’t also full of other things, too. Had it been a few weeks later, I very likely could have had it full to the brim with food in addition to the meat. It was still quite a big disappointment, though, not to mention being disgusting.
I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say it will be a very long time before I’ll be able to eat another hamburger again. So much for our bright idea of buying meat in bulk.
Note: It looks like we’re going to be able to recoup about $140 from our renter’s insurance, but since our deductible is $500, that’s all the recourse we’ve been able to drum up. Oh well, at least it was our economic stimulus check and not money we’d worked hard to set aside for this purchase.