Cheap Bastid Brings Home the Bacon

Today, let’s talk a bit about bacon.

Let’s talk about how damned expensive it’s gotten. In the last year or so, it’s doubled. Now I find this kind of interesting because other pork prices haven’t doubled. Is that because there’s just a lot more demand for bacon and the producers charge anywhere from $4 to $6 a pound now because they can?

But geez, I’ve been thinking not just twice but three times before buying bacon. We’ve gone from cooking up a pound for BLTs or breakfast to a half pound (Wow! Talk about sacrifice!) We’ve gone from having 2 or 3 pounds in the freezer to a pound.

Crap, I don’t like that. There’s got to be a better way. Well, thanks to the meat manager at my local Stater Brothers grocery store, I came up with a solution. I was chatting with him one day and mentioned how bacon had taken a big jump. He agreed and told me what he buys—“ends and pieces”.

And I thought to myself, “Self, those are going to be little bitty 2 or 3 inch pieces of bacon and they’re just not going to be the same.” I was wrong.

Usually, the ends and pieces are mostly slices that weren’t as uniform as the other slices that went into the meat display case or they’re half slices with just a few “pieces”. Take a look:

Here’s the package:

Here’s what was in it:

And here’s the best part. This bacon is $4 a pound in the display case. The “ends and pieces” are $1.99 a pound. I can do that math. And all I have to do when I get it home is take it out of the package, separate the full slices from the half slices from the pieces and repackage it for the freezer. That takes about 5 minutes. And I’ve got 5 minutes to save half the price of the bacon.

The slices and half slices get fried up just like any other bacon and the pieces end up in something like Spaghetti Carbonara.

If your grocer has “ends and pieces” for cheap, then check it out and see if you can save some money. Give it a try.




And here’s a couple of Cheap Bastid bacon recipes you might want to check out:

http://just-walt.blogspot.com/2010/03/cheap-bastids-classic-spaghetti.html

http://just-walt.blogspot.com/2009/06/cheap-bastids-foodie-tuesday-chocolate.html

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!