The Meat Bonanza and Results:

On Friday, I went to our local grocery store.  They were having a "Meat Bonanza", a huge sale.  I got all of that stuff above for around $90.00.  The steaks in front were buy one, get one free.  I chose one selection of beef and two of pork.  The butcher cut everything up for me and put it in those big bags.  I think that the beef bag was $27.00; one pork bag was $17.00, and the other was $15.00.  Cheap!

That set the rest of my day in motion though.  I had to figure out where to put all of that stuff, and my little freezer was already getting full.  I decided to go ahead and cook several meals at the same time, using 3 crock pots.

The butcher gave me some great cooking ideas.  He suggested that I slow cook the pork spareribs, and making it a Mexican dish, with cilantro, onions and peppers.  I also added a jar of salad dressing and some water.  I cooked this for about 12 hours, until the meat was soft and shredded.  I plan on using it to make enchiladas.  This made 3 1/2 quarts.  I know, because I poured it into canning jars and put them in the fridge for now.


I filled the second crock pot with pork spareribs and then added Buffalo BBQ Sauce and a bit of Honey BBQ Sauce.  I cooked it for around 10 hours, until, again, the meat was shredded.  I removed most of the meat, storing it in two small Ziplocks inside of a large one.  I have discovered that by doing this type of packaging, I reduce the chance of freezer burn, and have smaller packages of food for just the two of us.

After the meat was all cooked, I had this pot of BBQ sauce/shredded pork soup left over.  Instead of throwing it away, I added a small bag of navy beans, chopped onion and water.   I did not pre-soak the beans this time.  I cooked this until the beans were soft, about 5 hours.  The liquid was already boiling hot, so the beans cooked faster than usual for a crock pot.  I felt kind of proud of this recipe, because it was spur of the moment.  Homemade BBQ Pork and Beans.  Yum!

In my really big crock pot, I made pork chops in cream of mushroom gravy.  First, I seared the pork chops in a pan of hot Crisco (my new thing) and put them in the crock pot.  In a separate bowl, I combined 2 large cans of cream of mushroom soup, sour cream, ranch dressing and a package of fresh mushrooms.  That crock pot cooks faster, so those were done in about 4 hours.  We ate them that night when Darlene and Larry came over to listen to Tyler's game on the computer.  I froze the rest, but the meat was put into Ziplocks and the gravy was placed into freezer containers.  Now they are already to go for the next time.

The rest of the meat was repackaged into smaller portions and put into the freezer.  We are set for a while now!

~ Kathy