I’m ready for winter

In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, Pa notices that the muskrats are building very thick walls for their homes. He worries that the coming winter is going to be hard.

Creatures of all sorts do different things in preparation for the winter. Some grow fat in preparation for a long hibernation period. Some store up food in preparation for a long dearth of fresh food. I am one of the latter. When the weather starts getting cool, I start thinking of storing up food. Of course, once the days get too much shorter, I’m going to enter hibernation as well–when my average sleep needed goes from a little less than eight hours to something well over ten. But I digress.

My local grocery store had a sale this weekend–sections of meat for reduced prices. So when I got off work at eight this evening, I went grocery shopping. I got a 14 lb beef bottom and a 10 lb tube of hamburger–oh, and several pounds of beans, a 15 lb bag of potatoes, a five lb bag of carrots…you get the picture.

This meat (and probably the potatoes too) should get our little household through Christmas at least (my sister thinks ’til next spring, but I’m not so sure). As of right now, my mother’s deep freeze (which she is so gracious to let us make use of, our little freezer being STUFFED full) now contains 2 roasts, 2 packs of steaks, about 10 packs of stew/stir fry/bbq beef meat, 8 bags of ground beef, and 2 bags full of meatballs.

Winter can come, my house is ready. We have beef enough to outlast it.