Meat Meat Meat

Living in Africa generally takes a bit more time than in the States.  Typically, I don't mind this, as the slower pace of life allows for it.  From making my own brown sugar to drying everything on the line to walking to the market -- I usually don't miss the little conveniences of life in America.  But I have found something I do miss: nice little wrapped in cellophane packages of already ground beef.  All you have do is go the store, pay for it, take it home and cook it.  So nice and clean.

It is not so much like that here.

I go to the local butcher here in town and while looking at large slabs of meat hanging from the ceiling in a hot room open to the outside, I place my order for 10kg (22 lbs) of beef fillet. We buy that much at a time because the process is messy and I don't particularly like to do it that often. We always get the fillet here because if we don't, we spend half our day on chewing.  So, the next day I pick up my 22lbs of cow in  black plastic grocery bags and take it home, where I hoist it up onto my kitchen counter and take out my knife.  The best chunks get separated out for slow roasting and the rest get cut into skinny strips and dropped into the meat grinding attachment to my kitchen aid mixer, where it plops out into a bowl all nicely ground.  I then pick up a handful that I think looks like a pound or so and drop it into a ziploc bag and stick it in the freezer, ready for use sometime down the road.  I then spend 20 minutes washing the cow off my hands and arms.  It takes about 2 hours once I get the meat on my counter to when it gets stuffed into the freezer.  All I have to say is, thank God for the kitchen aid mixer.