Freezer lamb

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Becky and I loaded three screaming children into the back of a minivan and headed off for our first road trip in years. We were going to Rhinebeck in search of freezer lambs. As she accelerated on to the highway, I was laughing, almost giddy at the rush of the road.

It's funny how bonding changes as you get older.

Becky and I took our first road trip in college. We went to Georgia where one night we found ourselves in a bar. And the bar had tequila shots with a raw oyster in the bottom and dash of Tabasco to top things off.

Now it just so happens that tequila, oysters and hot sauce are three of my favorite food groups, and yes there are stages of life when tequila counts as a food group. The three together in one shot glass were too much to resist, and I found myself, among other function issues, unable to remove my contacts at the end of the evening.

And so there it was on the bathroom floor of an apartment on St, Simon's Island in Georgia that Becky went from rugby buddy to life-long friend.

She gently put two fingers onto the white of my eye, and then she squeezed. Pop out came my contact. She managed this delicate operation a second time on my other eye before letting me settle in for the night on the floor. A couple of years later when Becky announced that she'd decided to go back to school to become a doctor, I wasn't surprised. In fact, I figured I might have even played a small but important role in her self discovery.

Of course, if something similar happened now, and I found myself stuck with a new friend who got herself so drunk that she couldn't take her contacts out, I'd be thinking, I don't have time for this sh--.

But I met Becky during the time in life when it was still OK to be an idiot, and the occasional night on the bathroom floor was part of the friendship deal.

So when Becky showed up at my house for our trip to Rhinebeck and she'd forgotten the name of the place we were going, the directions and the phone number, all I did was laugh. Friends like Becky are somehow grand fathered in for life. Almost 16 years after our night on the bathroom floor, Becky is still the person who knows all my idiot moments, and I know hers. And to my great delight, this was one of hers.

Becky is an accomplished doctor who has lost all her baby weight well ahead of her daughter's first birthday. She makes lists, and she sews her own curtains. I have never had to take contacts out of her eyes. So I relished my momentary role as "together friend."

Rhinebeck is more than an hour south of Albany. Becky's house is 30 minutes north. There was no time to go back and get the information.

Let's go anyway, I said. We'll figure it out.

Plus, I'm a trained reporter. How hard can it be to track down a Dutchess County farmer in possession of a hundred pounds of frozen lamb meat?

Becky drove while I worked the cell phone. I struck out on all the easy gets and moved on to the Kevin Bacon technique. I knew a few farmers. How many degrees of separation could there be? I left several messages and hoped someone would return my call before we out ran the cell phone reception.

The closer we got to the no-cell-phone zone, the better my mood. Me and Becky on the road, the future uncertain, just like old times. Except, of course, the screaming newborn and whining twins in the back seats. And, uh, the not-quite-located freezer meat.

Becky and I are both trying not to buy mass-produced supermarket meat. We want to feed our families food that isn't pumped full of chemicals and hormones. We also want to support our local farms when ever possible. There is plenty of $10-plus-a-pound "happy" meat at the farmers markets, but I have to feed a family of six. Even if I just make curries and stews, I can't afford those prices.

So a few years ago, I invested in a chest freezer and called up Michelle Hicks, a woman I knew through my husband's sheep farming community. She agreed to sell me a half a cow, which I split with another family, and one freezer lamb. The meat comes butchered to order and freezer wrapped. It lasts a year, and the final steak tastes just as good as the first. The price changes a little every year, but it usually comes to about $200 for the lamb and around $400 for my share of the beef. That works out to about $3 a pound hanging weight for the beef.

(If you want to order meat from her, you can reach her at 845 453-4903.)

And the quality? Let's just say that we are spoiled now. Very spoiled.

Usually, Michelle and I would meet in a parking lot at some halfway point and transfer the boxes from her trunk to mine. (I would always have a moment of feeling like we on some kind of clandestine venture with all this frozen flesh and car trunks.)

But this year, due to scheduling issues, Michelle needed us to come down to Rhinebeck and pick up the meat from her husband while she was at work. Which wouldn't have been a problem if we'd had the address, or her husband's name, or his cell phone number.

I had worked the phones as much as I could and all there was to do was drive and hope and watch the little reception bars on the cell phone shrink.

Becky's baby was crying and my twins had moved on from whining to threatening to puke. But this was still more time together than Becky and I had had in months, and we were doing our best to talk over the racket.

Finally my phone rang. It was Jeff Traver. Now there might be a farmer in Dutchess County who Jeff doesn't know, but they probably don't have very many sheep. Jeff didn't have the cell phone number, but he did have directions to the farm. We'd just have to get there and hope Michelle's husband was within shouting distance.

After stopping to feed the kids in Rhinebeck, we pulled into the farm road.

There was a big dog on the front porch of the house, and he made sure that Michelle's husband, whose named turned out to be Jeff, knew we were there.

The dog looked pretty forlorn to part with so much meat.

He even tried to come home with us.

But eventually we got the car loaded and headed back to the highway. This time the kids slept the whole way home. And Becky and I talked. And talked. And talked.