Just the other day a friend of mine finally dragged me to the local meat market. She insisted that the meat packets you could buy there were far less expensive than buying the meat at the local grocery store. The cuts of meat would be better and local meat markets are known for having meat from local suppliers. That appealed to my desire to buy local in the first place.
For various reasons, getting down to the meat market just didn't work out. We kept meaning to go, but all the good intentions in the world got us nowhere. It's nice to mean to do something, but until you actually do it, it's just out there in space. Strange how living closer actually meant doing less of what we said we were going to do. I guess things were just meant to work out that way.
Finally arriving at the meat market I was overwhelmed by their selection. I'd never bought my meat at a meat market before so the idea was kind of shocking to me. There were lists and lists of meat packages offered and a whole window full of meat available to order. There were so many possible selections it was dizzying!
Looking over the lists I saw one problem right away. Every single option on the list included a good share of pork. I can understand this as pork is cheap. Putting a lot of cheap meat in the package deals means allowing for a larger quantity at a lower cost. Let's face it, beef is expensive, and the only chicken they really seem to do there is quarters and whole, so that doesn't leave a lot of options. Many Americans I know have a very pork-heavy diet. Ham, sausage, and hot dogs make up a large component of many families' diets that I know of. Bacon and pork chops are also pretty popular.
Now, I know there are a lot of reasons not to eat pork out there. For me it all just started because I didn't like it all that much. As I got older and started studying medieval history more I decided I didn't want to eat an animal that had been used by so many cultures as a garbage disposal. When my littlest was born he made all sorts of little grunting pig sounds instead of crying, so I kept calling him my little piggy. This, of course, made it that much harder to eat pork. We've done a lot of work with the Native American concept of totem animals in this house. We discovered my daughter has rabbit on her totem, so no rabbit stew for us! I wasn't surprised because she used to kick like a rabbit before she was born and when she was very small. She had some serious leg strength! My younger son has some kind of cat, though I forget which. I believe it was a lynx, but I might be wrong. I never put much thought into it because we don't exactly eat cat in this house. My littlest was determined to be boar, so that's a close relative to pig. In Native American tradition it is considered in poor taste to eat your totem animal, so we've planned our diet accordingly. Chesh breaks the rules on pork a good deal because he loves it, and we're not terribly strict, but we try to keep the pork down so the little one won't eat it, at least not until he's old enough to make that decision on his own. For all we know he may grow up to decide he doesn't really care about the whole totem idea, or maybe he thinks it's not disrespectful to eat his totem animal. No matter how you look at it, we have a long list of reasons for keeping the pork in this house pretty minimal. Of course the older kids do like to have ham sandwiches now and again!
So, going to the meat market meant some careful figuring out so we wouldn't end up with pork that wouldn't be eaten. We're considering our options for the future, both in splitting our arrangement with another family so we can trade for things we'll actually use or buying our meat by the item versus by the pack.
Going to the meat market actually saved us a good deal of money, in some ways. The truth is we spent the same amount as we normally would on meat every month. The difference is we got a whole lot more meat, and we got a better selection for each of the meats we've gotten. It's nice to know we've got a local place to pick up good quality beef, save ourselves some money, and buy locally. There's nothing like stretching our food budget even farther!
I think the best part of shopping at a meat market is having the ability to get what I want and not rely on what I've got the availability to get. I don't have to worry about a store's selection. I can go in and tell them exactly what I want. If I feel like cooking a roast, I know I'll have several options instead of the three or four cuts of meat of one or two varieties. Often times that ends with more meat than we can use, or not enough to feed the family. True, chicken doesn't come with many choices, but we don't tend to eat a lot of chicken. We tend to be more of a turkey family when it comes to poultry. It's nice to go in with my shopping list and tell them what kinds of meat I need for my weekly or monthly shopping instead of having to look and hope they have something that works with what I want to make, or to plan my bigger roasts and things on the fly based on what they have available.
I have a feeling this local meat market is really going to do well for us. I'm glad we've got one available. Now I just need to start planning to take advantage of that!
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