Food costs right now are thoroughly insane – and that's if you aren’t, say, eating all organic produce which ought to have been watered by an angel's tears for the price it commands. I'm consistently shocked at how much our grocery bill jumps each month, and when one of the four people who live here stops getting the bulk of his nutrition from me, we're really going to be shelling out.
One way to cut food costs is to butcher your own meat. I found this idea from Cheap Stingy Bargains (via The Consumerist). Now, neither they nor I am suggesting you turn your garage into a slaughterhouse – just buy bigger cuts of meat and break them down into cuts and individual portions by yourself. The more a butcher does for you, the less you get and the more you pay.
The Cheap Stingy folks used the example of boneless skinless chicken breasts, which often cost so much per pound that you can spend more on two of them than you do on a whole chicken (which comes with two breasts, plus a whole bird's worth of meat besides). If you learn how to break down a bird, you get those breasts plus legs and thighs for another meal and a back, neck and bones for stock. Those lovely, fancy center cut boneless pork chops? Just a pork loin, sliced about an inch thick and generally lots cheaper than the chops.
Here's a site to learn more about butchering.
