I Want a Garage Freezer

The reason: beef.

Beef has a bad reputation as something to be eaten often...and rightfully so. Just look at what has happened to this country (and you all know the major regions this occurs in) due largely to the consumption of nothing but roast beef and potatoes every day. Believe it or not, beef, in its original form, is actually really good for you. It's a great source of iron, protein, and those ever popular omega 3's. The problem is that beef has been horribly changed.

The industrial revolution- bless its heart- brought a lot of good with it, and we all know it brought a lot of not so good as well. When we have a piece of cow sitting in front of us at dinner time we all like to imagine that cow was once happily grazing on healthy green grass at a big sunny farm and taken care of by Pa from Little House on the Prairie. The ugly reality is this: that cow probably lived in a huge building crammed so close to other cows that it could barely turn around, standing in its own waste. Since these cows get sick very easily, they are injected with anitbiotics. Oh yeah, and now any of these cows may have come from a lovely cloned mother.

In this profit-driven day and age, the best way to make money is to make these cows grow large as fast as they can. They are fed a mixture of mostly corn, hormones, a little grain and sometimes ground up other cows in order to make them get big and fat as fast as possible (this fat is not good fat). Many of them don't need to be slaughtered because they die of ulcers. So what does this have to do with you? Well, these cows are not healthy when they die, and truly, you are what you eat. There is more corn in the beef than there is protein.

I am not a vegetarian or even an animal activist. I believe in the food chain, but I also believe that animals have a consciousness and pain receptors and should live healthy, happy lives before they give that life so that I can eat. I also want to eat healthy food. The only FDA way to guarantee that you are getting this is to buy %100 grass fed beef (note that I did not say organic beef). There is so much information to digest about this issue, and if you want more you can read about it here.

Anyway, back to my freezer. Of course, since grass fed beef doesn't produce as many cows as fast as factory farms do, there is a higher price tag. Usually $7-$9 a pound. Well, there are lots of local farms up here in the PNW, and one man raises and sells grass fed beef for $2.50 per pound. The catch is that I have to buy a quarter steer, and that is a lot of beef. Where would I put it? In a garage freezer, of course!

I went to Lowe's today thinking they'd cost, I don't know, a million dollars for a freezer or something, but they were actually quite reasonable. The one I wanted was only $188- a lot less than the quarter steer would cost me. I think this is a good option that would pay for itself in many ways.

Now, I will leave you with one of my favorite movies: