Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Another opportunistic adventure in evil yuppie survivalism. A coworker of the missus normally gets a 1/4 of a beef every year but this year she decided she still hadnt finished off last years bovine. She’d already committed to purchase it, so would we be interested in buying out her share? Well, thats a pretty big amount of dead animal but I called a fellow yuppie survivalist (and by yuppie survivalist, I mean he makes more than minimum wage) and he said he’d be interested in going halvsies. (Or halfsies, I guess.)

So we drove out to where the rendezvous point was…a parking lot near one of the interstate exits. Must have been about fifteen cars just sitting there with their engines idling. A few minutes later a big Ford dually pulls in towing a trailer. Everyone gets out of their cars and gathers ’round for the distribution…it was like some sort of beefy version of Catholic communion.

So we got about 207# of beef, some scraps for the battlepup, and went home to divvy it up. Half to us, half to my buddy. We got some awesome roasts that are about the size and thickness of a phonebook. Plenty of steaks and yet more ground beef. All the roasts and steaks were indivisually vacuum sealed so that saved a huge amount of time. I’ve filled the freezer. Unless there is some special cut that we need for a recipe down the line I think we’re pretty much done buying meat for 2011.

You know how some people have a policy about not letting the tank of their car go below half full? The policy Im instituting is that we dont go below 50# ea. of chicken and beef. As it stands right now theres easily 100# pounds of beef in the freezer and about another 70# of chicken. Careful management and menu planning could make that last a looooong time…without resorting to rice/beans and TVP.

So, Im crossing “fill freezer with meat” off of my list. I really do need to invest in a small generator to keep things on an even keel in case we get an extended power outage but in the 25 years Ive been here we’ve never had an outage that lasted more than eight or nine hours. Still, every good yuppie survivalist should have an EU2000 (or two) floating around. On the other hand, as all this meat freezes solid, the thermal mass should keep it quite safe and frozen for at least a day or two should the power cut out.

When the apocalypse gets here (or finishes getting here, depending on your point of view) we’re gonna be eating just fine.

Bonus: Unrelated picture of the battlepup starting his day. When you have a long day of chewing shoes and barking at strangerts in front of you, you want a double shot of that latte.