Mosie answers a few questions

I re-read some of your comments and realized there were questions to be answered.  Here goes!

How many lbs of meat do you think you ended up with?  Cliff guesses a little more than 100 pounds.  Of course we share the meat with our daughter's family.  We'd share with the son if he lived closer.

Does Cliff use Chicago Cutlery knives?  Cliff says he uses three brands:  He has a Forschner boning knife he likes because it's easy to clean; he prefers a medium-flexible boning knife.  For skinning, he likes Dexter and Russell knives (a google search tells me those two companies have merged now).  It used to seem to me he used very expensive knives, because during the years he worked at a butcher shop he had to buy his own equipment; when he bought a knife, it put a serious dent in our very tight budget.  He always had an assortment of both boning knives and skinning knives.  He said he has some breaking knives you'd probably enjoy seeing... some of them look like a sword.  A breaking knife is used when you first start to "break down" the carcass into manageable pieces.

Oh man YUM!  I NEED that potato soup recipe.  I can't think of any way to do a recipe on this, so I'll just tell you the process:  I peel and dice a bunch of potatoes (about one-inch chunks).  I take a carrot or two and dice it (very small) in with the potatoes.  I don't intend for anybody to taste the carrots; they're just for color because I don't like to eat anything that looks like wallpaper paste.  Slice a stalk or two of celery and add that.  Dice an onion.   Add some dried parsley liberally (again, just for color).  Barely cover with water and cook until done.  Take a fork and mush up the potatoes a little (this serves to "thicken" the soup).  Add milk and some cream and butter.  Cream is my secret ingredient, by the way.  It's what sets my potato soup apart from others'; this is not a diet food.  Salt and pepper to taste.  I like lots of pepper.  I was raised eating crackers with potato soup, but once I married Cliff I adopted his family's habit of having corn bread with it instead.

I've never had tater soup.  Want to share the recipe?  See above; I assume you knew that tater soup is the same as potato soup.

Don't go "hog wild" eating though.....you are my inspiration about eating less.       Too late.

I wonder if you could one day do a close up of the  background in picture 6 ?  Are those all toys in that big book case?  Looked like a neat ol' collection of tractors and I think I eyeballed a lunchbox. 
That gives me a good idea for a journal entry, so stay tuned and I'll take you on a tour of Cliff's toy collection before long.





 Tags: questions and answers