How to save money on meat at the grocery store with Jenny Mittich.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill. And today we are focusing specifically on meat, which tends to be the most expensive part of your grocery bill. And we're not just saying buy a whole cow or get a deep freezer. Actually those are none of our recommendations. We're giving recommendations for normal people who have normal freezers.
This is also a little funny coming on the tales of our last episode, which was going plant based on a budget, and so we just want to remind you that we're here to bring you the radical middle.
We are not.
Doing either one of these kind of diets on either extreme of the spectrum, but it is worth understanding what are the different ways that we could save money. We know that a lot of people have different dietary restrictions, so we're trying to kind of cover all of our bases here, but specifically in this episode, talking with somebody who eats primarily meat.
And so she knows a lot about how to save money on meat.
So yeah, if you're here with us want to know how to save on protein, you're in the right place.
But first, this episode is brought to you by Summer. Summer, summer time. That's all I can sing of that copyright, But it is brought to you by Summer. We are on the heels Memorial Days over, and we are here for summer, and we want you to have the healthiest summer you can. So that's why June's challenge in the
Monthly Money Challenge membership is the Healthy Summer Challenge. It is a Bingo style challenge, so it's got different different tasks for you to do that will help you stay healthy on a budget, because I think that is everybody's biggest question to us when it comes to groceries, is I want to save money on groceries, but I don't want to sacrifice being healthy. So we've got this episode, last week's episode or our last episode, and this challenge coming for you, and we want to give you fifty
percent off of June's Healthy Summer Challenge. Head to Frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash challenge and at checkout enter the code Summer Summer and that'll get you fifty percent off of your first challenge in the membership and have a healthy summer on a budget.
I'm still making the Summer challenge actually as we speak. So now I know what you hope.
Will be in it.
Yep, i'd put it.
It will be Bengos style.
I already put it in the asana task Jill. I said this would be a great idea, and you didn't say no, and so I just assumed that you didn't disagree with me, and you thought made it that far.
But here we go.
It'll be a Bingo style, all right, Chen said it, I'll do it.
Here we go.
I love our relationship. So if you're looking for more ways to save money on groceries, we have a lot of episodes on it. We have been doing this year specific categories in groceries. So today we've got meat. Last episode we had plant based, we have had takeout, we have had an overall an update on our overall groceries. Upcoming we will have organic food. So if you have a request, a specific request for a groceries episode, let
us know. If you're on the Friend letter. Just respond to the front letter and we will definitely take that into consideration when we are adding episodes throughout the year. But I think our ultimate guide to frugal grocery shopping what we just did episode four ninety nine and then episode four thirty three tips for grocery shopping on a budget. And you'll notice at the very beginning of the episode,
I didn't say the episode number. I've heard you and I've heard those aren't helpful, and so we've taken them away. No more episode numbers, no more episode number.
Only we will know how many episodes we've released in our lifetime.
Will keep track of them for you, and all you do is you search the title and it will it should come up for you in your podcast player. I think Spotify is a little better on the search front than Apple podcasts, but you let us know you're the easiest way you have found to found find our episodes, and that is what we will start recommending.
Yeah, I mean there's also always show notes.
There is always well, yes, we will have these episodes linked in this episodes shows. Yeah, that's always an option.
All right, Well, let's get into it.
Talk with Jenny, who is the owner of or the on Instagram at Mama Mitich. She's on YouTube. She's talking all about her meat eating lifestyle and she's given us tips on how to save.
Yeah, and we'll preface this with Jenny does talk about the carnivore diet. She does practice that diet. We are not nutrition influencers or podcasters, so we don't promote any particular type of lifestyle or diet. But we thought we saw her videos on YouTube about buying meat on a budget and thought they were really good. And who better to tell us how to save money on meat than somebody who's buying meat very frequently, so yeah, and does not have a big house or a deep freezer or
enough space to raise their own cows for slaughter. Jenny was a wealth of information that's very accessible. But yeah, we just wanted you to know that we're not promoting any particular type of diet. We're just really looking for the people who know the most about saving in the places they're experts on.
We love interviewing experts on their particular area as it relates to money saving.
So let's do it. Let's talk to Jenny.
Jenny, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. We're so excited to have you and talk about this topic that we haven't gone in depth on before.
So you know a ton about purchasing meat and we want to hear all of your expertise on this. So just to kick it off for the people who don't have a deep freezer, because I think that's like a main way that a lot of people say how to save on meat. But if you don't have a deep freezer, what would you say is the best way to be able to save money on your protein when shopping?
Yeah, so everyone has a regular freezer, so I think kind of just clearing that out and having space for the meat in the first place. I feel like when I go into my freezer now it's very organized, but before I just had a bunch of like half eaten bags of vegetables and like just random things in there.
So I think the first step is just cleaning it out, making the space, and then after that, you don't you just have to kind of search out the deals and make sure you don't have a ba A and then make sure you have a vacuum sealer so that you're keeping the meat fresh for a long period of time. But yeah, I think that's probably a good place to start.
And then you need to figure out what are your favorite cuts of meat, because I know when I'm searching at the grocery store, there's a lot of things that are on sale, but I'm like, am I going to eat that? Am I just buying that because it's on sale? So I always kind of just go with my staples and that's what I put into the freezer.
What stores have you found can offer the best prices on the meat that we're buying.
Well, I'm in the Chicagoland area, so we have jewel Oscos and they have incredible meat deals. Incredible every week there's one cut that is just deeply discounted. Sometimes it's like a pork shoulder I got for ninety nine cents a pound. Just recently for Easter, they had the rib roasts, you know, five ninety nine pound, which is insane. You can just cut those into ribbi steaks. You don't have to do the whole you know, prime rib or anything
like that. So that's kind of where I go for my best meat deals.
Nice and for anybody that doesn't have one of those, are there any like kind of nationwide stores that you might push people to sure.
I mean, Aldie is great. I typically don't do a lot of meat from Walmart. I think they're overpriced. Surprisingly interesting, but yeah, very much so. You would you would think it wouldn't be right, but Walmart overpriced, Target overpriced. I really like local international grocery stores in my area. I'm in the Chicagoland suburbs, so we have a lot of different grocery stores to go to, and there's one grocery store in particular I go to. It's local. There's like
probably two of them in my area. But it's got a huge produce section but also an amazing meat section, and they have some banging prices on meat that are like always good, always good. Even with the the inflation and all the price increases with all that stuff, they've remained a really good option. So I think for anybody in whatever area they're in, you need to figure out and scout out all of the possible stores around you,
not just the stores you would normally go to. You know, get out of your comfort zone, go check out these other little places and see what's available, because you might find a couple of awesome deals. I mean I'm shopping at like five or six different grocery stores. Maybe once a month, I do a big shop and I'm getting all the meat that I need for the month, or most of it, and I'm, you know, I get this here, I get this here, I get this here, And that's kind of how I'm able to save a lot of money.
Yeah, that's such a good point to not just assume.
I think we would assume Walmart's gonna have cheap prices and the local store is going to hike them up. But it depends product to product. You might find that your meat is going to be far more affordable. And I can anecdotally corroborate that there is a local grocer kind of near us, like thirty five minutes away, and
they have phenomenal meat prices. So yeah, just getting out and shopping around it could be worth it, especially if you can stock up, if you've if you have cleaned out, even just your regular freezer and not your deep freezer.
Yeah, and even if you're not going to do five to six stores a month, like just getting out and knowing what's out there so you can be sure like, hey, I had never even heard of this local international grocer and their prices were lower than where I'm normally going. So maybe it's not the lowest every single week, but you can be confident that you know, maybe three out of five weeks it's going to be the lowest, and
that helps support buying local. This is one of the things we tell our people do all the time.
What about Costco?
Do you find Costco has deals?
I love Costco. I'm obsessed. I have a Costco that's very close to my house and that is where I get my whole ribbis. So if you go to Costco, you can buy a whole ribbi. It's like manywhere between eighteen to twenty two pounds, and I just cut it myself and then I cut off the extra beef fat and I save that so I can render my own tallow for cooking. So that's really nice. But typically the whole ribbi is two to four pounds excuse me, two to four dollars cheaper per than the pre cut ribbi.
It's the exact same thing, but if you just do a little bit of the cutting, you save money. That varies across the United States. You can also get at cost Co business center. Have you ever been to one of those?
I have not, but I have heard rumors of it. Please tell me about They're amazing.
They're amazing. So any cost Co member can go to a cost Co Business Center. You do not need to have a special membership, so just go use your normal cost Co card. You go in there and their meat section is just like, oh my god, amazing. They have so many different cuts of meat. They had like beef tongue. They had huge boxes of chicken thighs, bone in, skin on drum ease for much much cheaper than you're going
to get it anywhere else. Their whole ribbis I think, were like a dollar cheaper than your normal cost code because they're more for like food service, right, but you can access it. You can get a whole goat, you can get a whole pig. It's insane. The Costco Business Center it's about like forty five minutes from my house, so I don't go very often, but it's good to know that it's there that.
If you're near one of those, then it might be worth getting a deep.
Freezer or just going regularly if you're that close. On the weekends, Yeah, hanging out at the Cosco Business Center.
So let's talk more about like cuts and animals. What are our most affordable options.
Sure, I mean I think most affordable it's going to be chicken and pork. Those are my go tos. I'm if I'm needing to save some money, drumsticks and yeah, it's usually just drumsticks I can find for ninety nine cents a pound, typically Costco Business Center seventy nine cents a pound. That's incredible. There's just an amazing amount of nutrition in a chicken wing or a drummy, and you can you can cover a lot of a lot of
your caloric needs with that. I think for pork, pork chops, pork shoulder, pork tenderloin, any kind of pork you can find, you can find for pretty cheap. And if I'm finding it on sale, I am buying a bunch of it and freezing it. But I think like bang for your buck, beef is probably the best meat that you can get, just nutrition wise. It's a ruminant animal. The meat is just so packed full of vitamins and minerals and a
lot of caloric density. So if you're trying to save money, you know eating more meat in the form of beef can be very helpful because you know you're taking care of a lot of your nutrition needs in just one meal. So whenever I find beef like ground beef on sale typically right now in my area, it's like, I don't know, four to eight dollars a pound, depending on what you're getting.
But if I can find that for really cheap, like Jewel had these pub burgers that was like two pounds worth of pub burgers, but they were selling that package for four dollars, that's two bucks a po. So I mean, don't use them for burgers if you just need to use the ground beef whatever. I bought a ton of those, you know, So scoop up the deals where you can find it. But yeah, chicken, pork, cheapest beef though, I think is probably the best bang for your buck when you can find a good deal.
Yeah, I have so much to learn about the different cuts of meat I can. I can get into these ruts of this is just what I know. So I'm just buying some chicken and then I look at all of the different types of beef and I'm like, the prices feel wildly different, and I don't know what to do with them, like how to prepare them. So I just often will stick to what I know, and I'm like, someday I want to be a grown up and understand
what all of these different cuts mean. But so hearing what you're saying about beef and how this actually could be, you know, quality over quantity for us, and we see that, you know, some beef is really an expensive price per pound and then summer up to you know, fifteen dollars per pound. How do we make sense of those different types of cuts? Should we just you know, what it's beef, get whatever's cheapest and figure it out later, like what should we be considering?
Yeah, that's a good question. So, I mean with beef, there's select, choice and prime. Prime is going to be your most expensive. Select is going to be your least expensive. I usually go for the middle ground choice. It's good, you know, pretty tender for the most part. Your different cuts of beef are going to be you know, prepared in different ways. The cuts that need to be cooked for longer, that are tougher, you know, like your chuck roast things like that, those you know, are going to
be probably cheaper per pound. Then you get all the way up to like a ribbi steak or something. Those are those can go for a lot you know down I'm in Florida right now, and they have publics as their local grocery store. Man, did they overcharge for steaks here?
Publics?
I have not buying ribbys down here. It's like nineteen dollars a pound. I'm like, why why is it so expensive? So that kind of runs the gamut there. I think as far as like cost effective cuts of beef, the chuckeye steak has a similar fat profile and tenderness to the ribbi, but it's drastically cheaper. I mean, like I can find one of those for maybe four or five dollars a pound, and then the ribbi, you know, thirteen
to twenty dollars a pound. So that's a really good cost effective way to eat more steak and have the you know, good fat to protein ratios, but save some money. I also really like skirt steak. I like the untrimmed skirt steak. It has a lot of fat on it when it's untrimmed, and then I either cook that on a grill, you know, garlic powder, salt on both sides, and then just grill it to maybe like medium rare, because that one, if you cook it too much, it can get tough, but if you cook it just right,
it's really juicy and delicious. Do it on a grill, or I do it in my air fryer. Surprisingly, I cook a lot of steaks and beef in my air force, so that's always a good way to do it too.
Yeah.
I did just go out on a limb and got a chuck roast because I'm like, this is so inexpensive, I'll figure it out later.
It was so good.
I in my mind, I'm thinking roast like what my grandmother used to make, and it was always so tough, and the gravy was lumpy, and she was a good cook at one point in her life. But the roasts I was accustomed to were just not the greatest, And so I've never really done a roast because I thought I don't like them. But this was so good and so inexpensive and so so. On the flip side of that, you kind of mentioned this already with the different I did not know that.
Between the select choice and prime.
I didn't either.
That's a fun choice what I will go with.
Now, are there any cuts of meat that aren't worth the extra price? Like you could go with something less expensive, just like, yeah, if you see that this is a lot of money. It's it's not actually worth it if you're on a tight budget.
Yeah, that's a really good question. I think one of the most trendy meats out there is the tomahawk steak. You know, the big ribbi with the big bone. It looks really cool, it's not. It's just a ribbi steak with a long bone on it. That's all it is. And you get charged so much more just by a normal ribbi. If you're going to do that, it's not worth it. That's the first thing that comes to my mind.
That is a good point.
I always wondered what sets a tomahawk part other than it just looking like you get hold it with a big stick.
Yeah, it's very instagrammable, Yeah, very much so.
It looks great on camera. But you don't need to spend an extra twenty dollars a pound for it, you know.
Oh my gosh, are you is that extra twenty dollars basically just paying for bone because that's what's considered in the weight, right, That's what I always think with bone in stuff.
Yeah, I basically, yeah, I think so, because I mean weight wise, Yeah, the Tomahawk's steak normally is going to be more meat on it, you know, like they're going to be a larger steak just to compensate. You can't have a tiny little piece of rabbi and that a huge bone, so it's going to be a little bit bigger, but just price per pound, it's normally just so much
more than just a normal even bone in rabbi. So yeah, I just avoid those unless I'm doing like a special cookout with a party and I want to you know, be bougie or something, but that's not really happening. Oh my gosh.
Okay, So I have two questions. I want to know kind of how you like to cook your meats, like really either like simple recipes or yeah, just like how are you cooking your meats? That's my first question.
Sure. So, I for those in your audience that don't know, I follow a carnivore diet. I'm a carnivor educator on YouTube, and so I only eat meat and animal products. And one of the best things about this lifestyle is that you don't have to think too much about your food. I don't have a lot of fancy side dishes or like extra stuff I have to buy. So for me, I keep it simple. I have twin toddlers that are three and a half and they are wonderful, but also
very active and always trying to like kill themselves. You know, they're like trying to break everything all the time.
You know that life, I know it. I go with one of those.
Yeah, So I just want to keep it as simple as possible. So when it comes to my meat, I do ribbi steaks. I'll do sirloin. Once in a blue moon, I'll do filet, but typically it's ribbi because I do that whole ribbi from cost Co to save money, and we just cut that up, freeze it, put it away, and I'll eat steak maybe once or twice a week.
I will take it out of the freezer thought, and then I do garlic powder and salt on both sides, and we either grill it to medium rare or I do it in my air fryer and I use a Tasty air fire. It has a built in temperature, so I just stick that in the meat, put it into the air fryer, and then I cook it to like one hundred and eighteen degrees internal temperature fahrenheit because it cooks for a few minutes longer once you pull it out, so we'll get to about one to twenty five A
really good medium rare, great, good to go. I cook it at like four hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit for twelve to fourteen minutes for the rib. Chicken wings super simple. I love chicken wings. I'm slightly obsessed. I kind of like blackout when I'm eating them, and my husband's like, wait, can I have some, and I'm like, no, fall. But chicken wings are super simple too. We do those in the air fryer four hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit for
about eighteen to twenty minutes. And with those, I do a little bit of avocado oil on the wings, and then I'll do garlic powder, onion powder, smoke, paprika, and salt. It's kind of like my chicken blend and just you know, get it all over all the chicken wings, put them in wing tips to the inside, and then I cook like eight to ten of them at a time for that period of time. That's a really good way to do it. Yeah, I have some complicated recipes. I have
a cookbook. While it's an end up guide to the carnivore diet and a cookbook in one that's coming out in September, so there's some more fancy recipes in there for people that need a little bit more, you know, diversity in their meals. For me, I could eat steak, chicken, wings, bacon, and eggs every single day for the rest of my life, and I would be like, I'm good, very boring eater.
How do you cook your bacon, are you like mass like baking it or because that's always been troublesome for me because I will do a whole package in the oven, but it's hard for me to get it to the crisp that I like.
Yeah, it depends on what you're looking for. So for me, I want that kind of crispiness that melts in your mouth. I love that. That's my favorite type of bacon. So I do it the oven, a whole pound on a rack, so elevate it off the bottom, put them all out, and I do it at like four hundred to four hundred and five degrees fahrenheit for twenty five to thirty minutes. I check on it right when I get down to that wire and kind of just see if it's crispy enough.
That's that's how I'm cooking bacon. I cook that almost every day.
Is that when you're an oven, like with all the grease, I've yeah that, so you also have to clean your eye things too.
Yeah.
I usually make it on the stove.
But then it's like, all right, it's a bacon day and I just have grease all over the floors.
I would rather do it in the oven to contain the grease than to have it all over it like poison. That's my I would rather clean the oven as it contains.
Yes, it feels like a like a job.
It's like you got to put it on the calendar, like that's the day you cook bacon, and you hate your life, but you love the food.
It are so good though, But you know, when we have a very small house, so all of I just smell like meat all the time. I kind of painted. But when we get a bigger house, hopefully someday, I want to get a griddle to put outside on the back porch or something. That's how a lot of people cook a lot of their bacon and stuff. Then you're not dealing with that on the inside. But until then, yeah, I'm going to be doing it in the oven, because I get it han't just the most crispy consistency.
I do have an induction burner, and I'm going to do that because I've actually done this when I've cooked crab legs before. Take it outside on the induction burner in a big pot so that my house doesn't smell like fish.
I've never thought about it with bacon, though.
There you go.
That's a big on lock for me. Wow.
Okay, And so my second question is how do you repurpose leftovers and like minimize waste?
Sure, so, I guess it depends on your relationship with leftover. Some people just can't do it, and some people are totally into it. So for me, breakfast meats, honestly, there's not really anything left over. Between my boys and myself,
we eat all of it every day. But if I'm doing like a breakfast castrole, I'll set some aside, so I chop up breakfast sausage, bacon, any kind of meats I have leftover, chicken, like if we had some chicken drummies left, any steak, ground, beef, cheery, so anything I have left over, I'll just throw that all into a casserole pan and whip up like eight to twelve eggs, maybe with a little dairy if you're including dairy, throw that in and then cover it and cheese, bake it
for like twenty five thirty minutes, and you have a breakfast castrole. So that's a really good way to reuse your meat. Because my husband and I are only eating meat. The leftovers that we have are pretty typically like half a steak or like some chicken wings, and we just eat it the next day. Following the lifestyle that I do, we don't have a ton of food waste. That's another way we're saving money because we're just eating everything that
we cook. So that's been really really helpful with our grocery bill because we used to when we were eating salads and you know, all that stuff, it would just go bad in the fridge because we couldn't eat the lettuce click enough or the you know, other vegetables and fruits that we were eating. So that's been really helpful, you know, money wise with that. But yeah, leftovers just depends just depends on how you feel about it.
You know, you mentioned repurposing some of the fats and making your own tallow do you also do anything fun with the bones.
Yeah, yeah, there's so much you can do. You can use every piece of the animal. Tell us about that. So you can do like, yeah, you can do a bone broth with you know, any kind of bone really. I usually typically use beef. Throw some bones in a big crock pot, cover it with some filtered water, add a little bit of salt and a little bit of apple cider vinegar. Be sure to add maybe like a teaspoon because that can kind of unlock the nutrients from the bone, and just let it cook for like twenty
four hours on low. I tend to skim some of the fat off the top just because it's just too much for me to then consume. But that's a really good way to do. Just bone broth as a drink on its own, or if you're making a base for a soup. Bone marrow. Bone marrow is amazing and it's so so good for you. So anytime I can, we're roasting some bone marrow. I've done it in the air fryer.
I do it in the oven. And you typically at your local grocery store if you can get bones there, they can cut them canoe cut styles, so they're flat and long instead of you know, vertical. That's easier to access the marrow in that form. That local international grocery store I was talking about, they will canoe cut bone marrow for me. So that's kind of another thing that I figured out. But yeah, there's lots of uses for the bones.
When you make your bone broth.
Will you mix animals like you know, you said you primarily use beef bone, but could you do like beef.
Chicken turkey bow? Yeah, okay, you can do whatever you want. I like that. That works for me, you know, yeah.
I mean, you know, if you're buying like a whole chicken and you have the carcass left over, you can make a really delicious chicken soup out of that, you know, just like like a rotisserie chicken from costcos five bucks. Eat what you're gonna eat. Put the carcass into a crock pot with some water salt, cook that down, and then you can add more chicken, like if you ate the whole thing, you know, or you can just leave what's on the bone. We do that with our Thanksgiving turkey.
You know, I did that for the first time last year. It's so good, you know, throw it in a giant stock pot, let it cook down, gets all the little bits off, and then you just throw in whatever you're going to if you're including plants, you know, carrots, potatoes, whatever you're going to do for us. We just eat it like that and it's so good and just that would have gone in the garbage, you know, right.
But there's still so many, so many nutrients like left, do you know what's not going in the garbage and is actually supernutrients?
A sour pack.
It's so debse every single episode the bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams.
Maybe you've paid off.
Your mortgage, maybe your card died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, butffalo bills, Bill Clinton, This is the bill of the.
Week, Jenny. Every week we invite our guests and our listeners to tell us what their bill for the week is, and we look forward to hearing yours.
Well. I had a few thoughts. But one of the things that my husband and I have done recently is go through our credit card bill and eliminate all of these stupid subscriptions that we had that we didn't even realize we still had. I had one for like some key tones. He had one. He had like two credit checking subscriptions. So we each made our own list and we've been checking them off. So we've saved like hundreds of dollars eliminating those bills.
That is so good. That's the thing that we tell people to start when they're trying to lower the expenses. Do not start with the thing with the first thing that comes to your head. That's the last thing that you eliminate. The first thing you eliminate is those two credit checking services you didn't realize and don't know why you're paying for.
Yeah, this is one of our money moves that we talked about recently, and it's amazing. Not just oh, cancel subscriptions. Cancel subscriptions you don't utilize. I think when we talked about this as a money move recently, it was something like at least thirty three dollars a month the average American is spending on unused subscriptions.
So that's just a good bill and a good tip Jenny.
To go through your credit card bill, make sure that you don't have any unused subscriptions, and if you do, cancel them. If you all are listening and you have a bill that you want to submit to us, if it is about Bill's you forgot you were paying for and you don't want to be paying for them anymore, or a bill you.
Don't mind paying for.
Your name is Bill Ethan, you have bizarre unused bill? I want to hear the most bizarre or the.
Most bizarre used bill.
Or your name is Bill and your bizarre frugal friendspodcast dot com slash Bill.
We can't wait for it. And now it's time for the lightning round.
Shoo pew.
Okay, so for a lightning round. Either this we could be we could do this two ways. What's your go to cut of meat and how do you cook it? Or like, what is your like favorite kind of meat and how do you cook it?
Okay?
Jenny Rebui Ribby steak is king. If I could eat it every day, I would and garlic, powder, salt, cook it for twelve to fourteen minutes to medium rare. What is that?
So my husband's favorite steak is New York Strip. How does that compare to ribi? I don't know, Yeah, just a different fat profile. So on carnivore, we're aiming for high fat, moderate protein. So just the amount of fat and protein on a ribbi is like seventy percent fat to thirty percent protein, which is like the ideal fat to protein ratio.
So for me, I've always loved the fat. I was one of those kids that like, if my mom cut fat off of her steak, I was like, oh, give it to me. I was a weirdo. So that's kind of why I go for the rib.
And so what would the profile of the New York strip be?
So the New York Strip would just be a little bit more protein and a little bit less fat, but still a really good ratio.
Okay, Yeah, I am the person that cuts off the fat and throws it away, and that's how I feel.
I recently, I have learned that the fat is good for you, and I love it. So I'm leaning in.
I know, all right, I am trying to lean more into healthy fats, but they are my least favorite foods across the board. I have found when I've now that I'm looking into the macro nutrients of different foods, I can really like, you don't judge me. I I'm so nervous to say this. I'm kind of take it or leave it on cheese, like on things.
Okay, you're safe, you're safe, thank you.
I'm taking to leave it on like the avocado on toast, okay, and then the fat on meat.
Wow.
Yeah, I know so, but I am I am more cognizant of that.
And what are you eating? You just eliminated evocatto. I am red fatic.
I am exclusively living on caffeine. I told Jill this before we started recording Good Caffeine, not because I'm an Instagram influencer, but because my two year old decided that was when he was ready to get up. So I think I exist exclusively on caffeine. That's I'm on the caffeine diet.
Yeah. I am a steak girly.
I do love this. It is my favorite. I probably could eat steak every day. I feel like I'm at a point where that's not quite affordable for me. But my favorite way is to prepare it with just a ton of salt. I don't even do the pepper, honestly, I just put salt all over that bad boy and cook it in some really good butter in a cast iron skellet.
Yeah, that's my favorite. I know that it's not meat, but Jenny, tell us, what is the what's the best butter that you can get at like Costco or any other regular grocery store.
Yeah, just go for grass fed butter of any kind. Carry gold. The Kirkland brand is really really good. That's what I use. It's like nine dollars for a four pack of the big bricks and it's delicious. Salted I always use salted.
Noise yeah, yeah, what are we out here doing with unsalted butter?
Usually off bacon, my own hot taste.
It's usually for bacon, and why I don't know, because that's what the recipe says.
Hill why And then they're like, so then you don't have to add salt.
Don't like question the recipe, bakers, No, just follow them blindly.
I don't, and I always I buy salted. I use salted. No complaints over here, Okay, your.
Turn, gym.
So okay. I was a vegetarian for ten years and I started eating meat again when I was pregnant with my first son, and I craved to a Chick fil a chicken sandwich. So that meat has always held a special place in my heart. So the Chick fil a chicken sandwich, I don't know if it's my favorite cut of meat. It might be my it's not my go to because I can't afford to eat that.
You call it the time cut of meat. Can you call anything from a fast food restaurant like a cut of meat?
I'm sorry. A Chick fil A is a chick chick file a. It's a cut of chicken. I would say, I do enjoy the New York strip when I get it right. It took me a while to figure it out after not cooking any meats. But so when I say I was a vegetarian, I really mean I was a pescatarian because I would eat sushi throughout the ten years that was like my one exception is that I would eat sushi. Do you eat any like seafood or shellfish?
Jenny, Yeah, I do.
I do tuna sashimi. And then there's this amazing sushi salad at my local sushi place that's like a bunch of cut up pieces of fish with some spicy mao, and they usually put ten pora flakes in it, but we get those out and then I do a lot of sardine fasting, so I just eat sardines for a specific period of time. So that's typically the seafood. I'm oh crab and lobster and all that stuff. But that's kind of expensive right now, So none of.
That, None of that if you were going to eat it and you wanted to get the best price, what would you do if you were in maybe splurt or for any food, what kind of seafood and where would you go if you were like, I need seafood or shellfish right now and I have a limited budget.
Right now, Okay, so always get wild caught always, because the farm raise just has a bunch of stuff in it you don't even want to consume. It's not worth it. So keeping that in mind, it's you know, depends on the cut of fish. If you're getting like, you know, wild caught salmon, it's going to be expensive, so search
out the deals for sure. You know, around Easter time before Easter with lent, a lot of seafood was on sale because a lot of people don't eat meat for that forty day period of time, so you could stock up on it then and freeze it. Seafood freezes really well and then of course, you know, like around New Year's you're going to be able to find crab for pretty cheap, and crab legs do freeze freeze well, so.
I don't know.
King crab has been an issue though, just with the big die off there was like the ocean is too hot and the King crab is all dying, so that's why we couldn't really find it this year. But yeah,
that's kind of what I do do there. But can fish can or great great deals, and you know, sardines, A lot of people were like, ugh, sardines, but man, they have a lot of nutrition, a lot of bang for your buck, and you can get a really really good deal at Costco a six pack for I think twelve dollars of the Season brand, and they have some of the Wild Planet which are whole sardines for I think it's like ten dollars for a six pack. So you can get a lot of nutrition from canned fish.
When I was in Portugal, there was an entire store dedicated to sardines. Can sardine. I mean, I think it's a big thing in Portugal, but it made me want to buy. I don't actually think I've ever tried to just eat sardines out of a can. And I didn't start there. I did not, but the cans were so beautiful and the store was so beautiful, and I'm like, I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna eat sardines. Now, this is beenful. I didn't, but they were influencing me.
Oh, I remember. I have one more question for you. I watched in one of your videos that you had a tip of going to a grocery store in the early morning for deals. Is that still applicable and is there like a certain day of the week that you found better deals.
It's a really good question. So the meat manager at whatever grocery store you're at, if the meat needs to be sold by that day, they're doing those markdowns first thing in the morning, six seven am because they want to get that stuff out the door and make some money. Now, before the past couple of years, a few years ago, I would see fifty percent off discounts. Now at my local jewel I'm seeing just thirty percent off. So that's changed.
But I still am finding really really sweet deals now down here in Florida at publics, I have not seen any meat discounts. It's crazy. So we actually froze a bunch of meat. We drove down and brought it with us. But I would say if you talk to your meat manager, ask them when do you do your markdowns, and they'll tell you, you know, because they want to get that out the door. So just communicate with your meat manager.
You can also, like I go, I do a big grocery shop once a month, but I also visit my local grocery store a couple times a week, maybe to pick up some bacon or some milk for my boys or something like that. And I'll just do a quick check and I'll look at the date. It's like, oh, okay, these chicken, it needs to be sold by this day. That's in a couple of days. I'll come back and
see if there's any discounted. So, yeah, you're at the store a little bit more, but you're really cued into what's going on there, and you can kind of see the rhythm of things and then you can find some really good deals.
That's a good tip asking the meat manager when the markdowns happen.
Yeah.
Cool, Well, Jenny, if people want more from you, where can they find that?
Sure?
I'm on YouTube, Jenny Midich is my handle. I'm also on Instagram that's Mama Miditch and my podcast is Meat Matters. That's also on YouTube. But all of your podcasting platforms that it's available.
You're listening to this. Thank you so much, Jenny, And uh yeah, I'm excited to eat some.
Meat and get the meat sweats me too.
You got that in again.
I did, yeah the second time this week. She said meat sweats.
Well, I have some takeaways, and that's always my metric for if.
The interview was good or not.
Granted, there ever, hasn't ever been an interview that we haven't aired, so they've.
All been good in my opinion.
But I love it when I can walk away with some takeaways. Like I said in the podcast, I had no idea about the select Choice Prime.
And she said, actually, once we stopped recording that very rarely will they have select out. And I just assumed choice was the bottom of the barrel and prime was the only other option. But now knowing that there are three options and choice is actually the middle of the road, I can feel safer making that choice.
Now.
Asking your meat manager for discounts making some of your own broth that has always felt so clouded for me, like unattainable, but she made it sound so simple that maybe I'll try it.
And we have said in the Weekly Money Move one of our one of the money moves is tracking your food for a few days, figuring out, Okay, how many calories am I putting into my body and what are the nutrients in those foods that I'm putting in my body, so we can make sure that we're getting the right nutrients to fuel ourselves. And so I think it's important to also kind of know what Jenny was talking about with the fat protein ratio. So like someone like me, I like less fat and so fat my desire for
fat content is lower. And so now I can kind of know, like I mean, if I want to splurge, I can do a New York strip, But most of the time, I mean, I may be buy stake once a month. Yeah, honestly, same, And I feel more confident in that now. So it's it's important to know that we're spending money in the right places when it comes to buying food, regardless of the diet lifestyle that you are following.
Finding your radical middle leaning into quality over quantity. It works across the board and you know what else is working all.
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I've started.
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Gorugal Friends is produced by Eric Siriani.
I want sushi now.
We have to record another episode before we get sushi. Okay, But we had already planned for it. Yeah, we did plan for it a plan. It's in the it's in the business plan. It just happened to be that today is also the day I woke up at three am. But so that's just a happy accident.
When she talked about the tuna what tuna tartar salad? Or am I mixing things?
I don't know.
I blacked out when she was talking about that sounded so good to me.
Like an ahi tuna salad maybe or not, like I used other words to describe what I described.
Yeah, was like tuna tartar in a salad with like a spicy mayo on it.
That. Oh yeah, I blacked out at spicy mayo. That's where she lost me.
I was just she didn't lose me. She wrangled me, but I still blacked out.
I left the episode and went to tuna and spicy Mayo.
I wonder if they have that at this place next door?
They have a delicious spicy tuna and a delicious spicy mayo.
You're gonna make me record more before I get it.
I am, but I'm just I can't stop thinking about I'm just a girl. How are we gonna be able to record a Sunday reset when I can't stop thinking about tuna?
Oh? Girl, we got a Sunday reset and another podcast episode.
Now, oh that's right.
We we'll do a snack. I'm gonna do a snack of caffeine because that's my diet