Output Stream of Consciousness

Link: http://horizonmeats.ca/

The traditional butcher shop is a pretty hard thing to find these days.

Actually, we were mostly on the hunt for strange meats to take to our friend Adam's mostly-traditional "stones" meal for new years (cooking on slabs of rock heated with an element). Started just doing a search for ostrich on the 'net, and tripped across the web site of a butcher's shop.

It's north on 27th Street from 32nd Avenue N, and it's on the right hand side. Not a spot you would typically just trip across from driving around :)

They have quite an amazing selection there, really, from mango chipotle chicken sausage to ground everything to elk, deer, alligator, and even yak New York steaks. We wished we had a deep freeze; there were a number of fill-your-deep-freeze type of deals. We settled on a yak roast and ostrich sausage.

The ostrich sausage was delicious. The yak roast, which we cut into strips, was magnificent... and lean. Our cleaver cut through it like butter. It's actually apparently a yak/cow cross called "dzo", and Alberta-grown.

They finally solved a mystery for us at the shop, too. Dena had moose a long time ago, the product of a hunting trip, and loved it. We have been looking in stores ever since. We would have looked forever. Butcher shops in Alberta can only sell inspected, farm/ranch raised meat, and not the products of hunting trips. So we have yak farms, deer farms and even elk farms... but no moose farms, so no moose :)