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| Fortress of Solitude: Meat Department Prep in Light Red |
Some grocery chains have all of
their product come in pre-cut and they just put it out on the shelf. Reason’s
was one of those old school throwbacks that actually employed meat
cutters. Imagine the old school butchers
in the white coats. They would get in the primal cuts – big slabs of meat – and
then cut it into a variety of steaks. The wrappers then shrink wrap everything
and put it out for sale. We would grind our own hamburger meat. It was a full tilt
operation.
What this means is that if we send
out people on the hunt and if guys like Lance and Hunter come back with a deer,
we pretty much have everything we need to process the whole thing. We have bone
saws, tenderizers, full cutting gear, chain mail gloves for protection, large
cutting board areas… the whole shebang. And the secondary meat cooler is being
left operational but it a small walk in cooler as opposed to the massive cooler
that we shut the coolant off to and turned into the shower. It really is a
blessing the things that we have access to.
Now, as for our current Meat
Department stock levels, all that meat has a short shelf life, even with vacuum
sealing and such. So naturally, everything was shifted to the store’s two main
freezers to hold on to all of it for as long as possible. Then when the power
went down or the propane generator ran out, we would take emergency measures.
Thankfully, power is still running and with Fred’s acquisition of the propane
truck, we seem to be in pretty good shape.
Still, Sharon wasn’t taking any
chances. She set up dehydrators in the dairy and is making jerky night and day.
We have a large amount of propane canisters from the Propane XChange program
and since we are on the lake and were outfitted for summer, we have a variety
of propane grills and charcoal grills for cooking up on the roof.
Needless to say, the stuff that
expires quickly – lunch meat, Lunchables etc. – was the first stuff to be
consumed. We are just now getting down to the last of it. And, yes, before you
even ask the question… All that high dollar stuff was the first thing consumed.
I had never had fillet mignon before the apocalypse. It took the end of the
world (and the fact that it was free) to give it a taste.
I think we are all truly surprised
that the power has held on as long as it has and Sharon and Fred just work on
plans the day before for the day’s meals and we thaw out as necessary.
Technically, the Meat Department Prep Room is still active but once we start to
run out of stock, we will start dismantling that area like we did with the
Produce. Like with the Produce, we kept condensing down the stock as we went
through it. We emptied out the coffin cases and shut them down as needed. No
need to risk a Freon leak and compromise the cooling system. So Meat is still
active, just… modified.
