Where’s the beef?

I was happy to have somewhere to go today that wasn’t downtown to celebrate Canada Day. I went to a brunch party where I ate some good food, saw some amazing typewriter art, and met the Bubblemaster.

I also met some local celebrities whom I’ve always wanted to meet, and they seemed really nice but I felt kind of celebrity-shy and didn’t talk to them much. Next time I will.

Instead I talked to Janet, who updated me on her progress towards becoming a carnivore.

Last we heard, her organic ground beef was safely – and probably permanently – in her freezer after flirting with its best-before date.

Well, last night she was going to a dinner party and there were some carnivores attending, but the hostess didn’t have any meat. To further complicate matters, the carnivores were exclusively beef-eating carnivores and the hostess is boycotting beef because beef is environmentally bad.

“Because cows fart so much?” I asked.

This was a serious question, because I know farm animals fart and burp a lot and create tons of methane gas. Seriously, New Zealand’s biggest contribution to global warming is its gassy sheep.

“Um, that’s very interesting,” said Janet, “But I don’t think that’s her issue with beef.”

Then she told me about how cows are resource hogs, and how much raw material it takes to produce a pound of beef. It seems cows just aren’t an efficient way to make food.

So back to the dilemma of the exclusively beef-eating carnivores going to the beef-boycotter’s place for dinner. Janet, of course, had the perfect solution: she just happened to have half a pound of organic ground beef in her freezer. She offered to thaw the beef and bring it to her friend’s place.

But then she fell asleep and woke up a bit late and realized she didn’t have time to thaw it.

“Don’t you have a microwave?” I asked.

“Well yes,” she said, “But it would be environmentally irresponsible to use energy to do something that doesn’t require energy.”

So she phoned the butcher at Saslove’s and asked how to defrost the organic ground beef. He said she could microwave it, or, alternatively, she could place the packet of beef in cold water to hasten the thawing time. That’s what she did.

Then she took it to her friend’s place, and they put it on the counter while they talked about how to turn it into burgers, and it sat there for quite awhile. Eventually the Beef-Eaters showed up and, lo and behold, they brought four steaks with them!

“Which was great,” said Janet, “because we weren’t sure how to prepare the ground beef and what to use for binding and we didn’t really want to put our hands in it. Ugh.”

So the barbecue was fired up and the Beef-Eaters had steak and Janet had salmon and I’m not sure what the others had.

“The salmon was very good,” said Janet, “even though I charred it within an inch of its life. But everybody was happy.”

“And the beef?” I asked, “Where’s the beef now?”

“In Kate’s freezer.”

My jaw dropped. I felt like a bit of a meat nazi imposing all my rigid meat rules on her, like don’t keep it in your fridge for three weeks and don’t refreeze it. But somebody had to tell her.

“You can’t do that!” I said, “You’re not allowed to refreeze meat!”

“Oh, but it’s still in the original packaging,” she said, “It should be fine.”

“No,” I insisted, “You must not refreeze meat!”

We discussed it for a bit, and she wasn’t completely convinced so she’s going to call the butcher and ask him. If he concurs with me, then she’ll throw the organic ground beef in the garbage.

“Which would be kind of sad,” she said, “since it was a living thing and it died for me.”

Yes, that would be sad. But it was a 400 pound living thing, and only half a pound of it is being thrown in the garbage. Besides, food poisoning is so much sadder than food wastage.

It occured to me later that throwing it out isn’t necessarily wasting it. On my way home I saw these seagulls recycling the discarded food from Cicci’s restaurant. Janet might feel better throwing her refrozen organic ground beef in an open dumpster, where it could feed dozens of seagulls for a day.