I usually try to get the lowest price on everything. This works fine for most things, but it occasionally backfires.
Take chicken, for instance. I always bought large quantities of it and froze it when the price was right. I didn’t care what brand it was, I just went by price.
Then I started to see Amish chickens for sale in the grocery several years back, and I thought, what a rip off! Why should I pay several dollars a pound for chicken when I can get it for 89 cents a pound? Who buys that stuff anyway?
Before long, I started seeing articles about the chicken sold in groceries and how it contains all sorts of antibiotics that are reducing our immunities, and hormones that are making little girls mature too early. And I got to thinking, maybe I should be watching what kind of chicken I buy….
One week the local Piggly Wiggly put the Amish chicken on sale and I splurged on some (even the sale price was higher than what I usually paid for chicken). When I baked it, the whole house soon smelled wonderful! And when we ate it, well, all I could think was that this was like I remember chicken tasting when I was a child in the 1960s.
I thought it was all in my head, but the next time we had chicken, it was my usual sale-priced store brand, and it tasted like nothing compared to that darned Amish chicken.
Since then, I’ve gotten hooked. I try to stock up when Amish chicken is on sale. Sometimes I run out before it goes on sale again, so I’m stuck with the regular stuff, which I still buy, but I don’t like nearly as well.
I’ve noticed a few name brands are now offering “all-natural, no hormones, no antibiotic” chicken, and the price is better than the Amish chicken. But you can’t match the taste. There is nothing better than Amish chicken, I’ve decided. So I buy it when it’s on sale, and I pine for it once I’ve used it all up…….
My aunt and uncle always raised poultry on their ranch. When I was young we get all of our turkeys and large number of our chickens and eggs from them. There is nothing on Earth comparable to free range animals. The eggs are better tasting and the shells are stronger. The chickens and turkeys we roasted were amazing! Commercial poultry is yucky. It lacks flavor. The eggs are thin shelled and tasteless. I hate chickens and really don’t want to raise them, but I’m happy to pay a few dollars extra for farm fresh eggs and meat. In fact I’m researching homemade laundry detergent this evening in an effort to afford more farm fresh eggs without raising my grocery budget. Good food is a luxury that we’re not willing to skimp on. We will make whatever we can (like bread and tamales) in order to cut costs, but we won’t eat inferior food if there’s any way we can help it! 🙂
Some things are just worth paying more for. We are planning to buy a half a cow this year and we always gets our eggs from a lady nearby who has her own little operation.
Hey, I just noticed, the other commenter was Janet too. Weird. 🙂
I wish I could buy a farm and raise chickens…and other stuff…
I think my chickens tasted pretty dog gone good.
We had chickens for a while. The eggs were great! When our chickens died 🙁 we had to resort to buying eggs at the store again. I didn’t think to much about it until I fried up some eggs. The shells broke with barely any pressure. The yolks broke before I could even flip the eggs. And the taste… Well, now I want to get some more chickens!
About antibiotics being in certain foods, doesn’t it make you wonder why there is such talk about our bodies becoming immuned to antibiotics and how dangerous that can be when an obvious solution is right in front of us?
I am not even sure we can get that around here. I’ll have to look
Janet, you’re so fortunate that you were raised on good food! I grew up on grocery store stuff and it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve learned how much better the free range and naturally grown food is. Oh, and I’ve got all the stuff for homemade laundry detergent here and just need to find time to make some. Hope yours worked out!
Janet #2, with your big family that’s a really wise move.
Katherine, I’m with you on that 🙂
Barbaralee, do you raise your own?
Pam, I agree completely. My kids’ doctor warned me years ago not to use antibacterial soap for the same reason. I don’t understand why we can’t use the obvious solution either.
Kristy, the chicken I buy is called Gerber’s, if that helps.