Cow meats

I decided to learn to cook meat, forcing the issue by volunteering to bring ground beef as a burrito filling for my Bible-study's weekly meal. I educated myself by watching a friend make the exact dish, and she showed me which package of meat to select at the grocery store. At home, I brought to mind all my memories of watching my mother do the same process for spaghetti sauce, and very attentively fried the meat into a good-looking bowlful of burrito-ready beef. The only concern was quantity: about 50 Bible-studiers, and only one other volunteer bringing chicken... I called to Matt in the other room: "Hon, do you think my beef is sufficient?" 

He laughed, assured me, and we've been making beef jokes all week.

In addition, I decided to tackle a Beef Rib Roast a few days later. Betty Crocker's big red binder cookbook has a straightforward recipe for this, which I perused carefully to make sure I could complete it... we've been receiving Food and Wine magazine for some reason, and often I'll be considering a recipe until words like "gianduja" or "mandoline" pop up as necessary ingredients/equipment/musical instruments. So much for that!

Back to Betty Crocker: I thought I had everything I needed, until cooking day. I read that I am supposed to place my Beef Rib Roast in a roasting pan. A roasting pan... What does roast mean? Luckily, Betty's book anticipated my ignorance and there was a definition available. It means: to cook in the oven. So, the same as bake, except for meat. Now, it seems that a roasting pan has a rack component. A rack being something with a grid or holes in it. My cooling rack for cookies didn't seem oven-proof, so how else could I improvise? I needed anything that would prop the meat slab up so that air could circulate under it. I walked over to my neighbor's house, and she had neither a roasting pan or a meat thermometer, my other missing tool for this recipe. I borrowed from her some kind of skewer with prongs that she found in her oven when she moved into her German house, but I honestly couldn't figure how to use it. The final solution wasn't so shabby, I think: potato towers. See photo.

Did I mention that meat must be taken out of the freezer way, way in advance of when you want to cook it? That proved to be my most challenging meat lesson of the week. It is hard to remember to do that! 

In conclusion, I think I overcooked my meat slab, which wasn't actually a Rib Roast, because I couldn't find that at the store. It was a Loin Tri Tip. I suppose I could have followed Betty's instructions a little closer, but I got some great potatoes out of it, and Matt thought my meal was wonderful. Tonight we are going out to eat. Yay!