The Food Thread

Guess I'm going down to the butcher to buy 40lbs of chicken breast then.

rgambs said:

Many smaller grocers will be better, they often buy primal cuts and butcher them down to table cuts.
My Dad is a trucker and he's seen 3 big box stores sold out on meat in the last week.  I hope things improve soon and I'm just being paranoid.
I'm calling my local place today to see about a whole hog, since I'm just not gonna be able to get one of those cheap live ones.

I will preface by saying my question is probably a very dumb one. 

How about the smaller or home processors who process deer? I know a deer is a different critter. My sister used to help at one of those places back when she lived in Hanover PA. Just a thought. 

deadendp said:

Breakfast. 

Is this your famous homemade granola?

rgambs said:

Many smaller grocers will be better, they often buy primal cuts and butcher them down to table cuts.
My Dad is a trucker and he's seen 3 big box stores sold out on meat in the last week.  I hope things improve soon and I'm just being paranoid.
I'm calling my local place today to see about a whole hog, since I'm just not gonna be able to get one of those cheap live ones.

I saw on the news that some big box stores are putting limits on meat. I guess meat is the new toilet paper. 

rgambs said:

Stock your freezers people, the meat shortages are looking more and more imminent.
I just saw a Facebook post about a farm 3 hours or so away from me that is selling live market weight hogs for $140!  They can't get them processed so they are just trying to recoup what they can.  The farmer who sent it to me said it's happening all over.  I checked around the local processors and they are all booked out months on orders and aren't taking live animals until 2021 in some cases, farmers are scheduling that far in advance. 
I'm scrambling to figure out if I can get a live hog across the state and get it butchered 🤔 

I just called our local meat market yesterday to look into getting some steaks for Mother's Day.  I haven't been there since the shut down so I wanted to make sure they had a normal supply and to see if I needed to pre-order.  He said they had the supply (for now), but steak was up ~$2/ lb. and ground sirloin was up ~$1.50/ lb.  Prices are going up big time. 

rgambs said:

deadendp said:

rgambs said:

Many smaller grocers will be better, they often buy primal cuts and butcher them down to table cuts.
My Dad is a trucker and he's seen 3 big box stores sold out on meat in the last week.  I hope things improve soon and I'm just being paranoid.
I'm calling my local place today to see about a whole hog, since I'm just not gonna be able to get one of those cheap live ones.

I will preface by saying my question is probably a very dumb one. 

How about the smaller or home processors who process deer? I know a deer is a different critter. My sister used to help at one of those places back when she lived in Hanover PA. Just a thought. 

Nope, it's a valid question.  I've helped process a deer before, so I know it's possible, but there's 3 things stopping me.
1 is that a hog is twice the weight and meat as a deer and with well more than twice the fat content. 
2 is that the precision of butchering is completely different.  Most of a deer goes to sausage, so you hack it off the bone and grind it up.  Hog butchering, properly, requires quite a bit of bone cutting.
3 is that my wife isn't super comfortable with that lol. She would rather we oversee the process to guarantee clean practices, or go with a trusted USDA inspected processor.

I understand that completely. 

No use in trashing a perfectly good critter with people who aren't as familiar with proper butchering of that animal. 

Glad that you got it resolved. 

tempo_n_groove said:

Just purchased 20lbs of chicken from my butcher.  All individually wrapped into 1lbs so I can grab and thaw.

They aren't having a problem with getting product because they are "prime".  Maybe the answer is to buy from your local prime meat butcher.  You'll pay more but it'll be some good stuff!

Always a good plan, smaller is better.  Big boxes are already running shortages, it seems likely to me that independent grocers are next, and butcher shops will follow.  
I live in a completely rural area of Ohio, but the county I live in is more rural than the one we do business in.  The processors in the less rural county are running backlogs of 1.5-2 months and I'm only waiting 2 weeks in my home county.  Most of the small shops are limiting ground beef to a few lbs/customer and it's sold out constantly at Walmart and short/expensive at big independents. I don't understand why people rush to buy ground beef, it's practically the least interesting kind of meat you can buy. Even chicken is more fun than ground beef.

https://youtu.be/bkExpbnjsX8

Decided to help out one of my local spots and order out the "taco emergency kit".
6 tortillas, protein of choice, chips and sals and pint of Margarita of choice for $27.

What a fucking disaster.  Told my GF while getting ready to pay that I would never do this again hoping that everyone inside heard me.

Forgot my salsa, chicken was cold, margaritas sucked, unorganized chaos inside, stood there waiting to pay for 10 minutes while the other 5 people inside looked for someone else's order whom cut the line because she is a regular...

Best part of my meal was the Negro Medelo that I bought somewhere else.

deadendp said:

tempo_n_groove said:

Decided to help out one of my local spots and order out the "taco emergency kit".
6 tortillas, protein of choice, chips and sals and pint of Margarita of choice for $27.

What a fucking disaster.  Told my GF while getting ready to pay that I would never do this again hoping that everyone inside heard me.

Forgot my salsa, chicken was cold, margaritas sucked, unorganized chaos inside, stood there waiting to pay for 10 minutes while the other 5 people inside looked for someone else's order whom cut the line because she is a regular...

Best part of my meal was the Negro Medelo that I bought somewhere else.

I'm sorry, C. 

Thx.  I did have a nice beer though, lol!