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I'd like to see Santa trying to get a 32KK into a Christmas stocking. 🎅

I am back on the cow trail. My usual supplier of dairy cow won't be offering them until the new year at the earliest. COVID has affected his usual sales patterns to restaurants and there isn't the room to keep dairy cows and finish them with a few months of special diet. Instead he offered me some beef from a blue-grey cow. He said it had gone down a storm with his restaurant customers. So... I ordered a hind quarter of cow. For the last few months I have been sharing pork, beef and lamb boxes with friends. Not this time. Dan had made the blue grey sound so good that I wanted all of the meat to myself. Not quite true. I didn't want to fuss with other people's requirements and so I just had the meat cut the way I wanted. I wanted to try the Argentinian style of cutting and so sent him this link: https://therealargentina.com/en/a-meat-lovers-guide-to-beef-cuts-in-argentina/. The article is impossibly rude about one of my favourite steaks - rump - but I forgave the writer because they had such good descriptions of each of the cuts. The cow was ready to be sent on Monday and they sent me a preview photo from the packing room: Here is the star of the show, sirloin on the bone: I asked for whole muscles because the Argentinians cut meat that way and I wanted to stay true to their philosophy. That means that I have ended up with huge joints and I need to figure out how to deal with them given I won't be cooking for huge crowds in our COVID affected world. It may be that I get a big joint out of the freezer once in a while and offer some to friends who may be interested. That said, I certainly didn't have room to freeze this monster cut whole. It is the flank and weighed a mighty 15kg. I was at a loss as to what to do with it and so searched on the internet. Found this excellent Youtube video: The Husband and I once spent an exhausting day butchering half of a small Dexter cow. We never saw this cut. I think that is because, on an animal that has been hung for a few weeks, this belly part of the animal shrinks to nothing. In fact, when I first got interested in meat many years ago I read that beef skirt was the butcher's treat and it didn't used to make it to the butcher's slab for sale. Given my hindquarter came from a cow that has been hung for at least 6 weeks, I think that my lump of flank may have come from a different cow. I will ask Dan. All that said, I had a great big lump of meat to deal with when I finished work last night. Twas fun. It went from this: To this: And then we broke into this: And ate this while watching Lennox Hastie on Chef's Table BBQ: Yum and yay!

We ordered our lounge chairs first week of May. They finally arrived today after many emails about delays and back order/COVID etc wife is happy. They turned out good

Hi Ron, hopefully before Christmas. Predicting the arrival of your KK can be hugely stressful and the variables are many. First hurdle is to get on the boat in Indonesia? Then I think there is a changeover in Singapore that will take its own time. Then they need to make the sea crossing. Clearing customs in the UK should be relatively quick but last time there was a Christmas backlog that meant the delivery date had to be moved. Naa. I am not going to get into the predicting game. I am hoping it will be here in November but anytime before 25 December is good with me.

Wow Tekobo, I’ll take my time to read through all these links and look forward to your cook. i managed to find Lennox Hastie book “Finding Fire” on the Gold Coast- it’s sold out after that show. It’s brilliant and has some sofisticated looking recipes. I went looking for a second book for you, couldn’t find it. will you be painting that sirloin in fat to dry age for 200 days?

This is one of those things that makes me feel good when I look at it. Angel Trumpet

Hope you folks Down Under don't have to put up with these "uninvited guests" at your cookouts too often! Good thing they're vegetarians! https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/celebrity/family-bbq-in-australia-crashed-and-swarmed-by-dozens-of-giant-robber-crabs/ar-BB19oqmt?ocid=msedgdhp

do you take reservations for this resort ?

That is very kind of you Basher. No problem there. I already had the book having bought after I spotted it on a visit to San Sebastian last year. It was inspiring, even in a language that I could not understand and so I bought it on return to the UK. Thinking about it. I don't want to risk the whole piece and so may try the painting trick on some of it, noting that it has already been hung for 6 weeks!

LOL

I know @tekobo you are keeping it to yourself what your choices x3 are but when do you think that they will arrive in the UK?

Pretty cool to have a special water source like that. I've been brewing over 25 years, so I've just about done it all, including meads and ciders. Don't have a particular favorite, but if you look at my brew log over the last decade, you'll see a few batches of Baltic Porter, my winter beer. COVID has put a damper on my brewing this summer - with all the Festivals being cancelled, I'm only brewing for myself. Have a few hops I want to experiment with, so maybe some pale ales/IPAs are in the works? I struggle with the super big IPAs, as I am not set up for oxygen-less transfers, so it's hard to pull those off.

https://www.pavesiforni.it/ 😅

@Basher, as a wife, I know what the voices were saying to you when you were thinking about buying that sign.

Is this still available? I'll put it on Instagram for you..

Hey there @buzilo, we will be sad to see you leave the fold. Your KK looks nice. Too far away for me though. You may want to show some inside photos and some of the back too. Are you advertising elsewhere too? I think others in the US have used craigslist. Good luck!!

Understand that completely. I started out brewing beer before the "craft beer" wave, when the selection of "good beers" was very limited, especially where I live. And, what was available was very expensive. But, even now when I can buy all sorts of amazing beers, both at the store and at local breweries, I still brew my own, just not as much as I used to. Now, it's more about experimentation than trying to clone a commercial beer. New hops and yeasts coming out all the time. I have a new, small brewing system coming that will be more tailored to experimenting with than my current system, which is geared toward making "standard size" batches of 5 gallons. I've enjoyed exploring ciders and meads, as well. Sourcing different ingredients and seeing what I can come up with? A few "winners" and a lot of so-so batches. Similar to concocting your own BBQ rubs. Lots of good commercial ones out there, but nice to tailor your own sometimes. YMMV