Cheap Meat

Thursday, December 4, 2008

One thing I have done to cut corners is ask the butcher at my local market to provide me with "Shanks and Bones with the meat on." For example I located a veal shank and lamb shank with very little meat, but enough meat to make a savory experiment. I asked the butcher how often he had these cuts and he said often but no one really purchases them because it's not enough to feed a family of four. My response was "I'll take it", I'm a family of one and sometimes two (empty nester) and this would be perfect for us. I now have the butcher's phone number and call him on Monday and Thursday to see what he has for the week. Okay, so you want to know how much I paid for the shanks? $3.01 for the veal and $1.03 for the lamb. No way...yes way! This was for the package of meat. Now, we don't eat a lot of meat (anyway) so I stretched it using lots and lots of vegetables. (mushrooms, onion, garlic, sweet and hot peppers etc)

I still have the veal in the freezer and I prepared the lamb into a wonderful lamb curry with couscous, of course served with marinated cucumber and red onion. There were no left overs, but now days I consider that a blessing, I know I'm not wasting food.

Go with the inexpensive cuts and cuts attached to a bone...you really can work wonders.

Share how you save on meat purchases at the supermarket?