Cutting Food Cost Without Raising it Yourself.

It is great to find smart ways to cut your food cost back. We actually raise more of our meat to cut cost but not everyone has the space to do that. Most people can raise some of their meat even with a small area of space by raising rabbits. We started with rabbits and chickens years ago and rabbits will produce lots of meat in a very small space but for a lot of people living in suburbia it is not space that is the problem but regulations. Regulations telling you what you can and can't park in your driveway. Regulations on what you can and can't have in your back yard. Even regulations on what type of trees or gardens you can have. To me this is craziness and I can't begin to understand why anyone would want to live like that but that is for each person to decide.

When I do buy meat I prefer to buy uncut meat like beef lip-ons. If you don't know the lip-on is the part they cut ribeyes from and usually weighs between 12 and 20 lbs, choice grade is usually the smaller size compared to select. Buying the whole lip-on means I get it cheaper then buying the cuts and I also can cut them as thick or thin as I like along with all the extra trimmings that we use for other things. The end cuts are usually not great looking steaks but once trimmed up they are perfect little breakfast steaks. Even the fat trimmings people throw away are great for chili's or to be ground into hamburger meat. Beef fat is fantastic to save to add to venison for venison burgers. In case someone does not know venison is such a lean meat that trying to make burgers out of it will just burn so adding beef fat to it when you grind it fixes the problem.

Just think at your job how labor cost effects things and look at it as you are paying that butchers labor to cut your meat. Butchers are not cheap and the stores are not going to pay it for you they are going to pass the cost down to the customer in the meat prices.

I prefer to do that same with tenderloins and other pieces of meat like whole chickens or turkeys and break them down myself. Best way to do this is to bake the whole bird and then pick the meat and use your carcass left in a stew, soup or just boil it down into a chicken stock. You can take your chicken stocks and put into ice trays to freeze and when you want to cook with it just toss in a few cubes. Sometimes you have to ask to buy these large whole pieces of meat but they will usually sell them and sometimes at only a $1 or $2 a lb over what they buy them at. I usually spend the same on a whole lip-on that I would for 8 ribeye steaks except I get 12 to 14 cuts out of it the same size plus I get the scraps to use.

Food prices have a market just like the stock market and if you watch the trending prices you can buy in bulk when it is cheap. Sometimes choice lip-on will run $13 and sometimes it will be in the mid $8's. That is a big difference and if you buy whole lip-ons, for example, and freeze them they will last a long time. Even after 6 months or longer if the sides start to look discolored you can just trim it off and still have lots of meat left but if you have precut meat that starts to discolor or spoil their is nothing left once you trim it off and it is a waste. Just something else maybe you can add to your arsenal of food savings for everyone that does not raise their own meat.

Here is an article I did on rabbits on the homestead. https://steemit.com/homestead/@liberyworms/rabbits-on-the-homestead