Meat Shopping

This might seem like a boring blog post, but it is one of the central aspects of my grocery budget. Let's face it, meat is usually the most expensive component of any grocery budget. Therefore, controlling the amount  spent on meat is vital to controlling the grocery budget. I suppose I should really be saying PROTEIN instead of MEAT. If you and and your family are vegetarians, your protein source could probably still be your primary expense. However, non-meat protein sources for our family are usually the more affordable. I guess those would really be lunches for us...peanut butter, grilled cheese or cheese toast, etc. We do not often have a dinner (that is the evening meal for us) that is meatless.  Even when we have beans and rice for dinner, we use a hunk of ham to season them (and I do mean a "hunk.")  I mainly plan for meat at dinner when buying raw meat. Sometimes we will get frozen nuggets or lunch meat to eat for lunches, but frequently eat meatless or low meat lunches. Consequently, when planning for raw meat purchases, I assume one "meat meal" per day. I purchase meat in large quantities...perhaps for weeks...when I find a really good deal on one of my two "backbone"  meats, ground chuck and boneless chicken breast. Then I fill in with other meats when they are reasonably priced. I like to pay under $2.00 per pound for chicken or pork and under $3.00 per pound for beef. I start looking for really good deals on boneless chicken and ground chuck when I get down to 2 weeks worth of meat in my deep freeze. This gives me a little time to locate a good deal. Lately, my stock up boneless chicken price has been $1.49 per pound or less at Save-a-Lot and my stock up price for ground chuck has been $2.49 per pound (at Save-a-lot or sometimes other places.) If I get down to 4 or 5 days worth before a sale hits, I will head to Sam's to get a week or two's worth of each...their regular price for chicken of $1.97 per pound and $2.78 per pound for ground chuck is acceptable.). I normally freeze my meat in dinner size portions, but I am considering using some freezer crock pot recipes to freeze some meals in gallon zipper bags ready to throw in the crockpot. We'll see how that turns out.

So, now that you know my method, I will follow up with the fact that I am down to two weeks worth of meat in my deep freeze...time to stock up on meat again. I will be checking prices over the next few days at my meat sources...Save-a-Lot, Winn Dixie, Sams, Walmart (although I rarely purchase meat there) and even plan to check the grocery outlets (at which neither I normally shop)  and post the deals I see and let you know how I proceed!

Blessings,
Donna