Come on, fire up the grill!
[Editor: If Vinnie were older he would not be hanging around the grill. Molly could tell him about me and the grill after hurricanes. It isn’t a fun story. I’m handy with a camp fire, but that stupid grill has never produced anything edible.]
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Established: 21 November 2004
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22 comments
Love the markings.
he’s been reading ichc, i see.
.-= last blog ..Run, ntodd, run! =-.
Vinnie has one little black dot between his shoulder blades, so he is really easy to spot, Jill.
If he’s waiting for a “cheezburger” on that grill, or from me, he will be a very hungry kitty. I don’t do much beef anymore, a rare pot roast or beef stew, but you just can’t trust ground beef. Most of the stores are using the pre-packeaged stuff, and there have been too many recalls to even waste the time buying it.
i don’t do pre-ground meat either — beef, turkey, or fresh pork sausage — for the same reason. i still buy polish sausage and liverwurst occasionally but not often. i generally buy steaks and roasts and pork chops, and because i hate the smell of raw chicken, i buy it already cut into pieces — out of the package and into the cooker, with no intermediary stops on the way for that stuff.
.-= last blog ..Run, ntodd, run! =-.
I do a lot of chicken, but you have to do the chicken separately and clean up the area and your hands before you go on to anything else. Generally I boil it, when simmer it for a very long time, and I only use leg quarters because that is the only tasty part of poultry. It makes good cat food, and the cats get the skins in their portion of the meat.
I don’t bother with steaks, even for stew beef, because it is generally so lean that it is tasteless. The marbling is where the real flavor is found and it makes the the beef tender. It’s rare anymore to find a properly marbled piece of beef.
You can get good pork down here, so that’s a staple.
Of all the things that would tempt me away from my vegetarian status, ground beef is close to the bottom of the list. OTOH, I admit to satisfying my occasional craving for a “cheezburger” with one of those veggie patties: broiled and with enough cheese, they’re actually not too bad. You wouldn’t mistake them for beef, of course; at least no cat would make that mistake 😆 …
No one who has actually tasted the real thing would ever mistake what is currently being marketed as hamburger for beef, so they are at least as good as McDonald’s. I would note that the strength of the original McDonald’s franchise was their milkshake machine, and they went on to develop the truly good french fried potatoes. McDonald’s so-called meat products have never been a draw for me.
We have the Angus Beef Burger War’s here currently. 😆
McD’s here are supposedly using 100% prime Angus beef in their new burgers.
Angus Beef Story
And Hungry Jacks (owned by Burger King) are doing the Angry Angus (they claim 97.7% Angus beef patties):
Angry Angus Nutrition Information
Of course, being a Burger King owned company, they did what these companies usually do when confronted about their actual nutritional value… quietly fixed it overnight. McD’s also got caught out (quickly) and quietly *fixed* it. Amazing… not.
Hungry Jack’s Angry Angus burger goes on a diet
I tried them recently, and I have to admit they were surprisingly good. *sigh*
Naming a cow Angus doesn’t mean the meat will be any good. Actually, I would want proof that the animal named Angus was a cow.
There’s no law that says that properly cooked microbes can’t be tasty. If you deep-fry it and add mayonnaise, you can get most Southerners to eat anything.
I remember those milkshakes… them was the days! When Mickey D’s quit those milkshakes and their real coffee, I had no more reason to go there. I’ve been to McD once in the past year, because someone else wanted to go there, and offered to pay for my Carbohydrate Charge…
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Yeah Steve!! And McD’s fries were good too, until the damned *vegan’s* got up in arms over McD’s frying the fries in lard (beef tallow). Vegans, Greenies, *insert whatever religious denomination you like here* have to ruin stuff for everyone just to make themselves feel good for missing out on the good stuff by their own choice (usually).
and yeah… I know there are a some exceptions… so what? 😛
I do miss those shakes and fries… and I don’t care if they had the nutritional value of cardboard or not! Hmmph!
Do gooders… shoot the lot of them! 😈
Bryan: Hey… I didn’t name them! Go chat with the Scot’s! LOL (Angus are supposedly the AAA grade beef producing cow here). As with almost everything… the truth is somewhere in there, if you know where to look, a magnifying glass usually helps. As with all *organic* produce, the actual quality one get’s out depends upon the quality of what one puts in. GIGO, every time! 😛 *shrug*
“Making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” 😉
When they made food with real food ingredients, they had fast and inexpensive to recommend them, but since they decided to use ‘more economical ingredients” they became cheap and tasteless.
Furthermore, the latest research says that the shift to Frankenstein oil for frying isn’t the health boon that was assumed. Humans can deal with real fats, like butter, suet, and lard, but not so well with the alternatives because we didn’t evolve eating them. Nice concept, it just doesn’t work in reality. It’s just like HFCS, the body doesn’t deal with it well, like it does with regular sugar. All that is sweet is not dealt with in the same way, or HFCS will make you fat, because that’s what the body does with fructose.
Kryten, I was saying that naming an individual cow. Angus, doesn’t mean that it is from the breed of cows called Angus. Some of the “cows” may actually have had feathers when alive, because that’s how the fast food industry works. Most of the cold cuts that were once made from beef and pork, are now made from turkey. Conversely, it you order a sandwich that is supposed to have turkey in it, Bob only knows what it is made from.
When I buy meat, I want it dead, but recognizable, I have a food processor if I need it ground up.
Mmmmmmm… cheezburger! One of the few meat items I can’t give up.
I eat very little meat, but every few weeks I just have to have a burger. I have a local independent market I use for my meat purchases. They tell me they grind their own beef and only buy from one place. Tastes better too.
The kitty needs to stop by my yard… I’m pretty good with a grill. 🙂
.-= last blog ..Earth Hour 2010 =-.
i love mcdonalds coffee.
.-= last blog ..Run, ntodd, run! =-.
That’s how you get spoiled, Lady Min, buying from a butcher. My Mother spent the bulk of her working life as the bookkeeper and head cashier for an independent local grocery store that was noted for it’s meat. The meat was all local and arrived as carcasses. One of the owner’s was a butcher and everything that was in his meat case was cut in the store. He ground his own hamburger, and there was no charge for a special grind or cut. [I like it courser than normal for most things.]
That’s why I want to see the piece of meat, so I know what it is going to take to make it edible.
A lot of the current beef is so lean, that it is like caribou, and it will be tough and stringy when cooked. It is better suited for footware than food.
Vinnie doesn’t travel more that 50 feet from the feeding station. He is apparently concerned that he might miss a meal.
@Kryten – not all vegetarians are proselytizing. I, for example, would never tell you not to stuff whatever carrion you want in your own mouth. 😈 Seriously, it’s not anybody’s place to judge what someone else eats, within the span of the socially acceptable human diet (i.e., probably no cannibalism and probably no Spam 🙂 ). I have been vegan… supposedly good for type 2 diabetes, though I never found it so… and when I reverted to lacto-ovo-veggie eating, some of my vegan friends gave me grief (@#$%^ annoying) but most did not. Yes, there are people who are religious zealots about their food: most of them are carnivores. 😆
LOL Don’t worry Steve… I wasn’t aiming anywhere near you (though I’ll be honest enough to admit I was curious to see what you’d say), and I’m sure you dislike the loud mouthed self-interested minority types of whatever particular bug up the kazoo they may believe in for whatever (generally unproven, unprovable or simply distorted — either through pure ignorance or purposely) reasons they may have. I have never had a problem with anyone who has a legitimate reason to believe or behave in whatever way they choose, so long as they keep it to themselves, or like minded individuals and don’t for one moment have the monumental egotistical gall to pronounce they they know what’s best for me (or others who don’t share their particular view). 🙂
I need the animal iron 9which is proven to be different from vegetable iron) and assorted amino acids and protein available only from animal flesh. Artificial supplements don’t work on me, which has been proven by hospital stays for various deficiencies over the years whilst taking many such supplicants, a fact ignored by many of your brethren. 🙂
There is also the fact that if we did not farm animals as food, they would breed to plague proportions and we’d have to cull them for no benefit anyway (as is happening with the Kangaroos here now that the do-gooders managed to stop them being hunted. Thousands are now dieing from starvation, as are many other species because the ‘roos have eaten the land bare and poisoned the waters). Now these same do-gooder hypocrites are decrying the fact that the poor ‘roos are starving to death and slowly dying from various diseases, without of course sparing a single thought that it just might be their fault. It never is, of course.
Personally… I find it all rather academic anyway. 🙂 If the ‘Monsantos’, ‘DuPonts’ and ‘Coca Colas’ of this World have their way… We’ll all be a historical footnote within a few generations for any poor race that manages to succeed us, if any. 🙂
Most ignoramuses on this backward planet don’t realities, for example, that we are so different individually, that many of the wondrous medications developed or discovered from Aspirin up only work on average for 30%-50% of the population. And that’s a documented fact I discovered whilst working at HP and spending several months designing and setting up a huge network for GlaxoSmithKline. If people living in Bayswater where the HQ is here had any idea of the kinds of things being developed and the kinds of chemicals and bio-compounds they were playing around with in their supposedly 100% secure underground labs, they wouldn’t live within a hundred miles of the place. 🙂
Ignorance, as always, is bliss. 🙂
As I say, if it works for you and you feel good about whatever you choose to do, then good for you. And don’t let anyone try to change you. I reserve the right to say *STFU* if anyone tries to convince me to change, unless they can incontrovertibly prove their assertion, in which case, I’ll listen, research and decide for myself. 🙂
I enjoy good fresh veggies and fruit, and grow many of my own here. 🙂 But I also *need* red meat and fish. *shrug* tough sh*t for anyone who doesn’t like that. 🙂 I have a fave juice I make that lasts almost a week with a combination of apple, orange, celery, spinach, carrot and ginger. I call it ‘green and gold juice’ (because when done right you get a layer of green and a kinda golden/orange layer). Tastes great and helps with my T2 diabetes (I’m told it’s mostly because of the celery and ginger root, and you have to include the celery seeds when you make the juice). Green beans and broccoli are also good for diabetes. 🙂 If I don’t have red meat regularly, I develop what’s known as ‘heme iron deficiency’ and start bleeding easily. It’s quite common amongst vegan’s actually and some get smart and put meat back in their diet, unless they can find supplements that work for them, and good luck to them if so. 🙂 I do have to take some supplements that do work for me, such as 4g per day of fish or krill oil cap’s because I need a high dose of DHA (and the omega-3 doesn’t hurt), even though I have fish 3 or 4 times a week (usually some fillet for dinner, I had steamed Cod last night, and tuna or salmon for lunch).
I wouldn’t say I *love* McD’s coffee H… But I do like the McCafe’s fresh coffee, as I think I’ve said before. It’s not too bad. 😉 🙂 There’s a local bakery/Cafe here that I go to every Sat I can and have lunch. The barista there knows exactly how I like it and they make a wonderful orange/almond biscotti for me to go with it, and I usually have a wonderful chunky 100% beef and mushroom pie (or occasionally the baker will make his famous beef and guiness pie! They don’t make it often because it’s actually complicated and has about 14 ingredients. But it tastes divine)! And that, I can say, I love! It’s probably as close to heaven as I am likely to get! 😆
Vinnie looks like he might be fattening up from all the good food you supply the ferals. How nice! He sure is a pretty boy. Yes, he may think you might fire up the grill, but perhaps he’s letting you know he’s hungry, so you’ll put out some cat food. He”s probably a pretty smart kitty. As far as the “Angus” beef, I also think there is no way to prove that it’s angus beef, so if the supplier tells the company it’s angus, or the ad agency thinks “angus” will bring in the consumers, they’re going to use it. It could be a hereford “angus”, for all we know
.-= last blog ..Friday Cat Blogging – Centerfold. =-.
There is no more moral superiority is consuming one form of life over another, because the reality is that animals have to kill to eat, even if it is an artichoke. Ultimately it is a matter of what you need to survive.
Actually, OWL, Vinnie is one of the few ferals who is slightly fluffy, although there are no longer any truly fluffy ferals.
i love love love mcdonalds coffee! 😀
it used to be horrible, but a few years ago they changed to premium roast or whatever they called it — huge improvement. this is accentuated by the fact that it’s still cheaper than everybody else’s too.
4 of my 11 ex-ferals are fluffy, on the order of vinnie’s fluffiness, and a noticeable % of the neighborhood ferals are that fluffy too. no truly long-haired ones though, like you find among maine coons or norwegian forest cats or siberian cats.
It’s too inconvenient to take my mug with me, so I generally don’t drink anything in a paper or plastic cup unless I’m totally desperate and need something to hold me over until a store opens that will sell me real coffee. That’s the reason I don’t have one of those “travel cups” – they are plastic. It may be my imagination, but I believe it affects the coffee in a less than beneficial way. It’s not a “snob” thing, I drank military and police coffee, which is as bad as it gets… no college dining hall coffee is the worst, but I don’t have to do it, so I don’t.
It’s probably a manx thing, because there used to be a manx that belonged to a woman who owned a local business, he would wander around. As you say, not a long hair, just a fluffier, fuller coat.
Hmmm. McD’s now apparently uses Arabica beans for their coffee, but just because they are called ‘Arabica’ doesn’t mean they are any good, and it depends a lot on the Barista. 🙂 Still, the coffee is definitely a big improvement and I’m happy to have one when there is no better alternative (in some areas here, the McCafe’s are the best place for a decent coffee and a pastry or nice cookie). 🙂
I was born an omnivore, and I’m happy to keep my dental and digestive systems happy eating what they were designed to work with. If nature intended me to be a herbivore, I should have been born a sheep. 😆 I have speculated with some close friends (in some amusement I might add) whether evolution will notice Homo sapiens (and I vote we REALLY should change that classification, is it’s original Latin meaning is long lost. We are far from ‘Wise Man’! I’d leave it at the more descriptive ‘Homo Erectus’)… drive to devolve to a sheep by their growing eating habits, social habits and constant bleating about all and sundry. Homo erectus devolving into ovis aries would be the ultimate irony and I would laugh all the way to my grave and far, far beyond!! 😈 Still… that would take considerable time, Nature’s not in any hurry, and the Human race will probably be long extinct (which is far more likely all things considered). 🙂 Maybe whatever next race that evolves will get a slap about the head from Mother Nature and she’ll say “Now look! I made you omnivores and that what you will stay or else! None of this pretending to be sheep garbage, or so help me I’ll scrap you forever and just stick to trees!!” 😆
However, as I stated (and meant) before, if there is a legitimate health or medical reason, and not simply some silly squeamishness (in which case if kept to the individual’s own self, fine. Otherwise, I’d recommend a visit to a mental health professional, not that I think very highly of most of them), then go for it. 🙂