Wondering how a Crowd Cow box fed my family of six for a week?
It’s true! Here’s what the week of dinner (or, “supper” if you’re in the South) looked like:
- Monday: Bubba Chicken
- Tuesday: Tacos
- Wednesday: Steak Kabobs
- Thursday: Shrimp n Grits
- Friday: Leftovers
- Saturday: Salmon
- Sunday: Breakfast for dinner
Before I tell you how we approached each night (real talk: I have four kids under age 7 so I had to get sneaky with some of this stuff), here’s what Crowd Cow is:
Crowd Cow is a “field to door” service that offers beef, pork, chicken, and seafood without added hormones or unnecessary antibiotics. Crowd Cow sources meats ethically from trusted farmers and saves you money.
If you are looking for a health and cost conscious way to feed a large family, this is it.
Why we need Crowd Cow
We recently moved to a small town on the coast with less than 800 people, so while we’ve got tons of local seafood options our meat counters at the grocery store are limited.
This is tough, because our family eats mostly meat, veggies, fruit, seeds, and ice cream (tastes better at the beach, it’s science).
I’m health conscious and want the best for my loved ones…but also feeding 6 people and not Scrooge McDucking in grocery money.
We have two local options that work with my lifestyle as a working Mom:
- Wal-Mart: questionable sources, they don’t deliver in our area so I consider the time expense when utilizing the pick up option and it’s a major added cost
- Instacart through Publix or Lowe’s grocery stores: expensive! I’ve done some of the BOGO sales at Publix through this service, but they are rare for beef and poultry
The folks at Crowd Cow reached out just as we were negotiating who would include organic meat in the pantry order pickups at Wal-Mart while simultaneously eagle eyeing the sales on Instacart.
They provided a variety box of beef, pork, chicken, and seafood in exchange for an honest review. It fed our family of six for a week!
Monday: Bubba CX
On Monday, we had “Bubba chicken”. This is a dish inspired by Lonestar Steakhouse, where I worked in college circa 1999.
They’ve apparently gone out of business now, which makes me sad. I made good money (line) dancing for tips.
Bubba chicken is grilled chicken smothered in barbecue sauce, bacon, and cheddar cheese.
You can put it on a bun if you’re a monster like my kids. I prefer to full on taste all four of these ingredients together!
We got two packages from Crowd Cow with two boneless, skinless chicken breasts each so prep was minimal and grilling made it quick.
Here’s the thing about chicken: you can taste a quality difference. You just can.
We also made the package of bacon, prepared in the air fryer.
Paired with with melted cheese , the bacon tops the chicken and voila – Bubba chicken.
Kids ate it on bread. Trey and I paired with a salad.
Tuesday: tacos
On Tuesday, we used one of the packages of Crowd Cow beef (there were two) for tacos. Because, Taco Tuesday.
Here’s how we add volume to our tacos with ground meet to cut costs and calories (while giving my youngest probably the biggest dose of vegetables he’ll willingly eat, never mind he doesn’t know they’re there):
Add cauliflower rice.
That’s right. It’s really easy and unseasoned cauliflower rice is so bland it serves as a vehicle for the delicious meat and taco seasoning- so, you get twice the volume, half the calories, and it tastes similar.
Seriously, by the time you slather lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese, tomatoes (all good toppings for dragons, by the way. Inside Mom joke) nobody even knows it’s there.
Could you chop your own head of raw cauliflower and make your own taco seasoning like my pal and past podcast guest Christina at The Whole Cook?
Yes, you could.
If you’re busy like me, brown the meat in the morning when you’re preparing breakfast, then put everything (meat, seasoning, cauliflower rice) in the slow cooker all day and don’t touch the kitchen again until dinner.
Your call!
All I know is, with a pound of Crowd Cow beef, a bag of cauliflower, and all toppings, this meal ended up being about $5.50 each for the 6 of us.
There weren’t any meat leftovers, but we used the taco shells and some of the toppings on leftover night later in the week.
Wednesday: grilled kabobs
We combined the steaks (two ribeyes at 1.1 pounds each, enough for all of us) with bell peppers, onions, pineapple, and tomatoes.
This is an easy meal for the kids to prep and we made The Whole Cook’s comeback sauce as a dip!
I put that ish on everything!
Something I noticed and really love is knowing where each piece of meat came from. It’s printed right on the package, like this one from Bob in Pennsylvania.
In my 9-5 job, I work with gyms to maintain and build the network for a Medicare benefit – it’s really fulfilling to serve the providers.
I imagine it’s really cool for the Crowd Cow folks to build their networks of farmers, too.
As a consumer, I like knowing my support helps the little guy. Like Bob.
Thursday: shrimp n grits
Look, we are picky about our shrimp. We live on the coast!
The Fair Trade Jumbo Wild Mexican Blue Shrimp in our box came from Del Pacifico Seafoods.
They use day-boats, small vessels that use the wind and tide to drift a highly selective net called suripera, which means low fuel consumption in the sourcing process.
You can go on a deep dive Instagram stalk below, but it illustrates Crowd Cow‘s commitment to ethics.
I wish I had a recipe or something to share, but the way we do shrimp grits is stupid easy:
- Boil shrimp (these were deveined, which I appreciated) in chicken broth and add all the garlic and Lowry’s
- Make grits- we like ours chunky
- Combine. Add sausage, ham, and bagel seasoning, more Lowry’s.
The end. It’s delicious.
Clearly we added things outside the box here but the shrimp was more than enough for everyone to have a really shrimp heavy bowl.
Everyone except Charlotte, who preferred her grits separate from her meat. Daddy obliged!
Friday: leftovers
Yep, simple as that.
We had a lot of leftovers from shrimp n grits and kabob night, so Friday was sort of a “eat what you can find” for adults.
Kids had chicken tenders.
That did not come in the box. Ha!
Saturday: salmon
We have been using this recipe for teriyaki salmon for several years now (and it’s easy to taste why it’s been pinned thousands of times!)
We got two very large salmon filets in our Crowd Cow box, so Trey and I had 5 oz or so each and the kid servings were more like 3 oz.
When we do things like this, we’ll typically do frozen bags of steamer vegetables- it just makes life easier.
Of course, fresh is best but frozen vegetables are frozen at their peak of freshness, so you aren’t losing any nutrients. I learned this when I lived in Alaska and pretty much all produce was from the frozen section.
You won’t die if you need to go that route.
Sunday: breakfast
We have done breakfast for dinner as long as I can remember.
Trey was in charge here and used the other package of Crowd Cow beef (there were two) for omelettes with ground beef, mushrooms, and swiss cheese.
He also made Kodiak Cakes power pancakes. You can get 20% off by signing up for their emails, but we get ours through Instacart.
How to get a box yourself
If you’re interested in Crowd Cow, you can use code 30OFFCROWDCOW to get $30 off your first box.
Prices differ slightly based on location (remember, these folks are working directly with farmers!) but you’ll save an additional 5% and get free shipping with a membership (recurring box versus standalone, which is also an option).
Every box is shipped in 100% recyclable and compostable materials, too.
If you’re all like, “sounds great but I don’t like seafood” or “I don’t eat beef” or whatever, you can customize each box to include whatever variety your heart desires.
If my Husband gets hold of our membership, I could very likely be receiving an entire box of bacon!
Let’s Connect
I don’t typically post what I eat on social but I bet we’d have a ball anyway. Let’s hang on Instagram!
