Meet the Meat....

I've been thinking a lot lately about food budgets. My own especially since my two almost three year old has the appetite of a teenager. He eats almost as much as I do at a meal! So I thought I would go through our budget again and figure out where and when we can make improvements in both expense and quality.

To take it back I thought I would talk about meat first. About 7 years ago we started buying pork in bulk, whole animal. Then about 5 years ago we started buying beef that way too. Now we raise our own chickens, get a deer, and if we can afford it we also buy a lamb (this year we are raising lamb and maybe a beef too!). We also fish our pond for fresh fish and have duck and turkey now and then. All fresh, all local. That's a LOT of variety. This year if we had paid for our own pork as a customer, the cost for 175 lbs of meat would have been approx 614$. Our pastured beef side was $850. So pretend that we didn't get all the other meat and just bought beef and pork in bulk....that's 1464$.... 121$ per month, $35 a week for enough really good meat to host several large parties and serve T-Bones and Iowa Chops and our family eats really well, not just on sale poor quality ground meat and cheap cuts.

I get to be creative. I get to learn about new cuts of meat and how to prepare them. I get to use my heirloom cast iron skillets. My family eats well. We eat together. We eat at home.

That last bit saves us a lot of money. We eat at home. Quite often, the cuts of meat and quality of meat we eat here at home is better than what is served at the restaurants we can afford. I won't pretend I am a sous chef, but I know I have put on the table meals that were better than Cracker Barrel or Applebees menu fare. I know my Iowa Chops rival the State Fair on a stick variety (and those are really good!). Plus, this is for weeknight fare and regular breakfasts not special occasion meals.

I also know that we are paying premium price for our bulk meat and it is still cheaper than store bought. Easily found in our area are cheaper bulk rates, for example we charge $2.75 per lb hanging weight for our pork and a neighboring farmer charged $0.60 cents per lb last year. I cannot figure out how he can charge that AND pay for feed for the animal since our feed costs are double that at least.