The Meat Tray, praised be its memory, is a thing of the past and its never coming back. But, my local Albertson’s still ‘remainders’ meat at 30-50% off when it hits the ‘sell by’ date. This invariably results in me cleaning them out of whatever it is that has caught my palate’s fancy. For the last few months its been ground beef….an all-purpose animal protein (like chicken breast) that lends itself to all sorts of meals.
They remainder other things, too. Steaks, roasts, etc, but I usually just stick to the ground beef for its low(er) price and versatility. However, today I caught the pork on sale and marked down 50%. I only grabbed about a third of what was there because, honestly, Im running out of freezer space. I picked up another freezer a few years back to supplement my big chest freezer and both of those are darn near at capacity. Time to start rotating out.
According to the receipt, what should have set me back around $77 came out to less than half of that. So, go me!
Im not terribly worried about starving to death. I think that, on the whole, its pretty hard to starve to death in a country of $6 rotisserie chickens. I want to put that in perspective for a moment. A 5# bag of potatoes is about $3 at Winco, a chicken is $6, and a 15 oz. can of yellow corn is about a buck. Half a chicken, corn, and mashed potatoes for two meal comes out to about four bucks for dinner for today and lunch for tomorrow. For an outlay of ten bucks. Since virtually no job is less than ten dollars an hour these days, I argue that not being able to afford to eat is a bit misleading.
But, as I said, Im not worried about starving. I’m worried about inflation and supply chain disruption. America is the only country in history where “Theres nothing to eat” means “theres nothing I want to eat”. In this country, it means “I dont want pancakes and canned pears for breakfast again”. Everywhere else it means, “There is (literally) no food in the house.”
“Buying the dip” when it comes to meats gives me a lot of margin in the event of a job less, supply issue, or other disruption. It’d be crazy not to take advantage of these sorts of sales.