So, you haven’t had a problem with the paper wrapped beef getting freezer burned? (How long do you think you could store it that way? The whole year, as you could if it were vacuum packed?)

Sorry to bombard you with so many questions! A friend and I went “meat hunting” the other day, comparing prices and options at PCC, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. It’s hard to find grass-fed beef that ISN’T ground up!

Otherwise I would look at Thundering Hooves. They come to town once a month and their prices are probably much better than Whole Foods, plus they have 100% grass fed beef from Washington. I believe they are selling their meat at PCC now (at least the Fremont one was going to start first). I used to get all our meat from them until we started sourcing larger and larger pieces of meat to get the pricing down. The meat from all of them is wrapped in paper, sometimes coated paper, sometimes with plastic inside the paper but all wrapped well enough to survive extended deep freeze in my experience. I wouldn’t be crazy about 3 months of peas, potatoes, corn, oats or wheat. 2 weeks of finishing on organic grains is all I would look for. Anything more than that can seriously change the composition of the meat. Sally Fallon is ok with 2 weeks but my preference is for none. Hope this helps!

ANYWHO. A friend and I have been scouting out our options for grass-fed beef…and none of them have really been that exciting.

So, I have two questions:
1) Did you like your experience with Cascade Farms Beef? Was the meat good? And, when the meat arrived (butchered and packaged) was it all just wrapped in paper? Or was it vacuum packed? And how much was it per pound?

2) At Whole Foods, they sell “Vegetarian Beef”. It is grass-fed until the last 60-90 days, and then finished on peas, potatoes and corn, plus oats and wheat, I think. Is…that ok? The corn raises red flags, of course, but oats and wheat are another type of grass. Help!!

(Ok, that’s really two VEINS of questions, instead of just two questions. Sorry!)

I found this: http://www.askthemeatman.com/beef.htm but there is so much info that it was overwhelming and I still made ordering mistakes.

Good luck finding a more affordable rancher – what part of the country are you in?

Do you fit all of that in your freezer, or do you have more than one freezer?

I’m still interested to read about your experience, because I want to buy some of that expensive (but cheaper than Whole Foods) meat, and I liked your tip about canning beef broth (which is what I guess I would do with a ton of bones that wouldn’t fit in the freezer). I wonder if there is a site somewhere that says this part of the cow can be this cut or that cut of meat?