My grandfather farmed peaches in Palisade. I spent many an hour shoveling cow manure, planting and watering trees, and so on. I guess I still have a bit of farmer in me.
Jennifer and I figure we’ve dried nearly 100 pounds of fruit so far this summer. We got 67 cent per pound apricots, $1.34 per pound cherries, mangos at Costco, and strawberries for 88 cents to a dollar per pound. Now we have outstanding dried fruit to eat through the winter. We’re still looking forward to peaches and tomatoes.
This evening we ate the first tomato from our garden. It was small, but very sweet.
And I cooked twelve grass-fed cow livers, chopped them up, and froze them in portions to add to dishes. I thought it would make a fun song:
In the middle of summer,
my true love made for me
Twelve bovine livers
Eleven pounds of berries
Ten trays of mangos…
Five red cherries…
And a tomato from the back yard.
With the liver, I was inspired by Jessica Seinfeld’s book on pureeing vegetables and adding them to various dishes. I’ve taken to pureeing broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, and so on, then freezing portions in baggies. Then I just dump a bag or two of puree into any random dish. I decided to try this with liver as well, as It turns out that Jennifer is no fan of liver and onions.
I bought this liver based on two dietary theories. The first is that grass-fed cows offer more nutrients than junk-fed cows. The second is that organ meats contain higher amounts of certain vitamins such as K2. (Besides, grass-fed cow liver is pretty cheap, so at worst I’m getting a modest-cost dish add-in. By the way, NutritionData.com shows that cow liver has low Vitamin K but high amounts of other vitamins like A and B12. I’d get grass-fed cow milk if it weren’t so danged expensive.)
It seems funny to me now that I used to stock my freezer with junk frozen dinners and burritos. Now it’s stocked with grass-fed beef, assorted frozen fruits, sale meats, and shredded cheese — the joys of abundance.