Last week we took our two beef to the slaughterhouse.

(My husband told me later that he and the kids were still trying to get the second steer off the trailer when they heard the gun go off inside. I guess it’s an efficient operation?)

Since then, I’ve been consumed by beef. My Google searches are all about hanging weight versus live weight, briskets versus roasts, flank steaks and cut charts and videos and cubic square footage for freezers. The freezer issue even had me up for a couple hours one night. How in the world would we fit all that meat into a couple freezers? (But then I put out a Facebook plea and within a day two different freezers landed in our laps, whew.)

For days, I puzzled over my cut sheets. If I get ribeye steaks, then no rib roast, right? What’s the difference between a Porterhouse and T-bone? Is NY strip steak better than filet, or vice versa? And how thick should they be? How many per package? It was enough to make my eyes cross.

Yesterday I drove to the butcher shop so I could talk with an actual person. The owner, bless his heart, came out in his blood-spattered white coat and talked meat with me for a good twenty minutes. He asked me questions and explained the process, filling out the official cut sheets himself as he went along. When we were discussing steaks, he went to the back to fetch some freshly-cut steaks so I could get a better handle on the thickness. And when I hesitated on the roasts—each steer yields 30-35 3-4 pound roasts and there was no way I needed that many—he suggested I take the six best roasts and turn the rest into burger. (For the other steer, we got the 12 best roasts. His logic: count on about one roast per month, but since we’re vacuum sealing, they’ll last longer than a year.)

The meat will be ready for pick-up next week and I am so excited. All-we-can-eat meat: burger (over 300 pounds of it, to be precise), short ribs, steaks, brisket, roasts, stew meat, soup bones, sirloin! I need to read up on pressure canning beef (on the recommendation of some friends, I plan to can a bunch of the stew meat), and I need to buy a meat thermometer. I’ve never really understood meat, especially not large hunks of it, and I know nothing about steak, so now’s my chance to experiment and practice and actually learn something.

It’s pretty much the only way out, right?

PS. This morning when I told my husband that I’d spent the night, yet again, dreaming about beef, he said, “Well, I dreamed one of the steers looked through our bedroom window and then jumped off the roof.” Clearly, we’re obsessed. Or maybe haunted?

PPS. If you have any to-die-for beef recipes/methods, I’m all ears. Actually, anything beef-related—advice, cautionary tales, whatever—is welcome. Because there’s a good chance I might be in over my head…

This same time, years previous: pile it on, the quotidian (8.8.16), a new friend, horses and hair, crunchy dill pickles, why I am recuperating, elf biscuits.

Last week family members traveled from the ends of the earth to converge, once again, at the big red house in upstate New York. Not everyone could make it this year (we were down one sibling, two sibs-in-law, and five cousins), but still, when there are 46 potential attendees, a 38-person attendance rate (plus the beloved childhood babysitter) isn’t anything to sneeze at.

We were there only two full days and three nights, but the time was packed full of all sorts of activities: a birthday celebration for one of the brothers at a lakeside restaurant, window shopping in downtown Corning, the first ever 5K (ish) at which both my husband and my older daughter got stung on their right ankles. There were fire circles and swimming, s’mores and pizza, beer and wine. People played cards and braided hair and ate candy and jumped on the trampoline.

The cousins slept in the big room above the garage. They dubbed themselves “Teen Club,” which we all got a big kick out of because these kids are so not like regular teens. And then they decided to get Teen Club t-shirts made.

The tag line reads, “We’re, like, sooo responsible.”

The first evening we were there, the sibs decided on whim (because Murches do everything on a whim) to go on a sunset cruise on Seneca Lake.

I was kind of hoping a big storm would blow up, just for entertainment’s sake, but no such luck. Instead, it was completely placid, which was probably just as well. We had plenty of time to visit and take photos and eat the the complimentary grapes and sundried tomato cheese curds and bread.

The next day was the big event: the 50th Wedding Anniversary dinner. We met at a lakeside hotel to feast on steak and cheesecake and celebrate the two people who gave so many of us our DNA.

At our table, the bread basket cloth caught on fire (I put it out). The long waits between courses about put the hungry kids over the edge (my younger son was beyond excited for his shrimp scampi), but they survived.

In between dinner and dessert, the kids ran outside for a quick photo shoot under a rapidly darkening sky. The fat raindrops forced us back inside just minutes later, but not before we got a bunch of photos!

Then there was a little talent show, of sorts—ukulele, piano, singing—and a recorded story by the children’s (our children’s) great grandfather.

Sunday morning, most everyone headed out. The Hong Kong contingency left first so they got the biggest send-off. We left next.

And the Tennessee cousins were last. My sister-in-law later said that, so they could have a proper send off, she and her husband drove off by themselves so their kids could run alongside their car and wave goodbye. Then they stopped the car at the edge of the property, picked them up, and drove off.

This same time, years previous: knife in the eye, glazed lemon zucchini cake, cheesy herb pizza, kiss the moon, kiss the sun, babies, boob, boo-boos, and bye-byes, the end, a birthday present for my brother, gingerbread.

This same time, years previous: my deficiency, do you strew?, a pie story, joy, the quotidian (7.30.12), blueberry torn-biscuit cobbler, a quick pop-in, a bad experiment.