Ok, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it just one more time. Now is your opportunity to buy beef, hamburger, pork, chicken, etc. on sale (except for fish.) Yesterday, I bought sirloin for $2.99 / lb. That’s cheap! By the way, M & M Meat Markets are still over-priced. Fish costs 2 or 3 times as much. The high cost of animal feed is forcing animal producers to take their animals to market and the oversupply of meat is forcing prices down. By the end of the year, the inventory of animals will be low and meat prices will be high (reflecting the high cost of animal feed.)

     The reason fish is so much more expensive is most are “free-range” (wild) such as Cod, Haddock, Hake, wild Salmon, etc. i.e. not fed animal feed. Exceptions are pond-raised Catfish from the south eastern states (fast going out of business) and farmed west coast salmon (yuk!) As an aside, I hear San Francisco restaurants are serving Lake Superior White Fish (aka whiting or shad, they average about 2 kg (4.5 pounds) in weight). The high prices of wild fish reflect actual cost inputs – fuel, transportation, etc. so they are really the standard by which you can judge future meat prices.

     Sometimes you gotta spend money to save money. So, save yourself some money, buy meat on sale and freeze what you don’t immediately consume. If you don’t yet have a freezer, why not? Modern freezers are cheap and energy efficient. They, too, will go up in price as inflation kicks in.

     Freezing tip: for long term storage, freeze meat in water i.e. I use Ziplock freezer bags. Don’t freeze a lot at one time because water takes a long time to freeze. I use both the chest freezer and the fridge freezer (it’s faster.) As long as the meat is surrounded by ice, it won’t get “freezer burn” which is actually dehydration. And, use a permanent marker to identify what it is (I have several frozen bags of mystery meat.)

     Physics explanation if you’re interested: water molecules (even frozen) migrate from the meat to the air which causes it to dehydrate. That’s the “snow” that forms outside the meat.  However, surrounded by ice, water molecules then migrate both ways from the meat to the ice and from the ice back to the meat. This migration process stops only at absolute zero, minus 273 degrees aka zero degrees Kelvin. Do not attempt this with your freezer.

Gerold

July 19, 2008

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