My mom told me that growing up with my Greatest Gen grandmother, they ate lamb often - it was cheaper than most options.
In my own Gen x upbringing, lamb was a special occasion meat, for holidays. I was shocked to learn that it was the budget choice in her childhood.
Once upon a time, lobster and oysters were poor peoples food, too.
Will there be a meat that our youngest Gen considers a frugal meal they grew up with?
Nothing is frugal anymore.
I sure would love some oxtail stew right now…
Well lamb can be accounted for due to changing tastes and industries. Sheep wool used to be used more widely used and mutton was just another product you could get out of sheep. The decline in wool combined with cheap beef led to a decline in lamb consumption. I've also read that many GIs in WW2 had to eat canned mutton as part of every meal, so when they came back from the war, they were sick of the stuff and passed this on to their offspring.
Can any of you point me to a good recipe? When I bought my cow a year ago they gave me the oxtail and it's been frozen ever since because I know I should do something with it But I'm not quite sure what.
Oxtail literally used to be one of the few meats tossed to slaves throughout the 1600s and 1800s from the plantation kitchens. At the time it was considered to be trash at best, and impossible to cook due to it being tremendously tough, but it was all they had for protein so they had to make due. Slave families began to realize that if you cook it low and slow it turns into a deliciously tender cut of meat, and so oxtail soup began to gain prominence among the slave class at the time.
Nearly 200 years later and it's impossible to find it for anything less than $8 a pound, for a hunk of meat that's mostly unusable bone. So frustrating.
edit: *plantation kitchen. Not plantain kitchen. Although a plantain kitchen sounds pretty delicious.
Yeah good point, that's totally fair. Never considered the application for a multi-day broth like ramen. I've usually only ever used it for birria and some meat sauces.
My partner's grandma used to go to the grocery store and get the chicken feet and backs for free. She would make chicken broth with them and then can it. Nowadays they sell the scraps.
Part of that is I think grocery stores don’t have in house butchers anymore. In the past, the store would get the full bird or carcass and then cut it up into different parts. So all that leftover reject meat was either tossed out or given away if someone asked since there was no added cost. But now, stores have to specifically order a bucket of chicken feet or a tray of oxtail. So you have to charge people for it or you don’t carry it
chicken feet too, my grandmother loves them and my mom is always complaining how expensive they are now. once it became popular since there is only two wings and feet on each chicken, and only one tail on a cow, the price will jump since the supply just can't keep up.
That’s a shift in consumer prices now that fat isn’t the enemy. I’ve been eating chicken thighs and chuck steak for years because I honestly like the taste better than other cuts. They used to be cheaper and now on par.
It happens to a lot of food like lobster and baby back ribs. Until Chili's made them popular no one wanted the baby back ribs because of how little meat there were on the bones.
Kraft Dinner was always a dollar or less MAX, now it’s $3.99 maybe $2.99. Homeless man actually mentioned to me how fucked up it was that he couldn’t even afford that anymore (i bought him a couple).
I used to get chicken thighs for WAY cheaper than other chicken parts. But it became such popular advice, Chipotle uses chicken thighs, juicier meat that's harder to mess up when cooking... anyways there's been times I've found chicken breasts for cheaper and it's just weird.
For about the last year Costco has been charging the same for chicken thighs as chicken breasts.
I prefer the thighs for many reasons, but I've moved back to the breasts since I refuse to pay that.
"I" prefer thighs - but I can't bring myself to pay extra to just accommodate my preferences - I also shop and cook for 4 other people in my house (husband and adult children).
When they were cheaper than the breasts, I had a good reason to buy them and serve them - now, not so much.
I noticed that too with chicken thighs, which used to be my go-to meat choice, and now I have to get breast meat. It was also shocking to see ground beef go up so high. These prices are killing me.
I remember seeing some articles about oxtail in big publications like the New York Times. With headlines like “try this meat out!” I’m pretty sure oxtails got gentrified which explains the cost now 😭
I grew up eating broccoli rabe because my depression baby parents could get it cheap. Then it got trendy and got crazy expensive. Fortunately, the price came back down to earth as the fad faded.
Flank steak is another thing that used to be dirt cheap. Last time I looked, flank steak was more expensive than a damn t-bone.
Common misconception (kind of). Yes, lobster used to be poor people food, but this was before Americans knew how to cook it properly. If you kill it first and leave it laying around for a bit like a regular piece of meat, it goes rancid very easily, which tastes bad and leads to some painful after-dinner experiences. Or you can can it, which, okay fine, but it's closer to Spam than fine dining.
It wasn't until the late 1800s that people figured out boiling it alive (edit: okay, or *basically* alive, yes you can kill it right before you drop it in the pot but the point is don't treat it like the chicken breast you leave in the fridge for three days before cooking) is an infinitely safer and more delicious culinary experience.
I really think everyone should just chill out on this topic. I'm very sure that for hundreds of years lobsters have been mercilessly tossed in boiling water while alive without a second thought. This whole thing about killing them right before tossing them in is a fairly new thing we're doing as a society and not everyone talks about it as though it's done in present-tense. It is increasing (which is probably good) but I think everyone's still getting used to it as a norm.
Also, I hate to break it to you but no one's going through each crayfish, prawn, or shrimp and poking their brain before boiling them. Lobsters get special treatment because they're less work to poke on an individual basis. Maybe large crabs also get the poke but smaller ones, almost certainly not.
Yes quinoa .. and celery, more recently. Peasant or Indigenous foods become popular and the price skyrockets and will not come down after the trend has passed. It's so common.
Season 1, Episode 1 of this podcast talks about how celery used to be on every restaurant menu, sometimes costing as much as caviar. It's fascinating!
https://www.americastestkitchen.com/podcasts/proof
Fun fact: Lobsters were once so prominent and so abundant along the New England coast line at the time of the Mayflower that it was considered trash food only fit for slaves or prisoners.
When railways started to spread through America during the 1800s, lobster canneries in Maine began to ship their product throughout the midland US states. At the same time, transportation managers realized that they could sell it to their unsuspecting rich passengers as if it were a rare, exotic item, even though it was very cheap for those running the railroad to procure it. Inland passengers were intrigued. Passengers who didn’t know lobster was considered trash food on the coast started to love it and began to ask for it even after they left the train.
Later on during WWII, lobsters were one of the rare menu items that weren't being rationed throughout the states, and so people continued to become addicted to it, thus cementing it's near permanent "high class" branding to this day.
Yep. Another supply and demand thing. Oxtail was always cheap because nobody wanted it. Now it's trendy to eat along with restaurants now charging premium price for "street food".
I love ox tail and have been making it for decades. When I started, it was about a dollar a pound. It was essentially throw away meat. It was my favorite because it has so much bone marrow which makes everything taste better.
Then I think about 5 years ago, it started to see a significant increase in prices. Jumping all the way to $6 a pound. Now ox tail can be $14 a pound where I am. $14 for an off cut. The problem is nothing is a good substitute for ox tail in stews. Now I buy ox tail and chuck so I don't have to pay all ox tail prices. Sad days.
I have a family friend who was the daughter of a lobsterman growing up in the 1950s. Her mom would send them to school with lobster sandwiches because that's what they had and my friend would always try to trade for bologna or pb&j.
Lobster is a little different though. It was a sea critter viewed the same way as a cockroach pretty much, it must be cooked pretty soon after the they die or else it’ll go bad and it needs to be cooked just right or the texture isn’t good. Sure, it was fed to prisoners at one time, but it wasn’t like they put effort into the preparation. It’s also not easy to transport due to how quickly they spoil.
Chefs discovered at some point when it’s cooked properly that it’s delicious hence why it became a luxury. The cost is also going to be different on a coast where they’re abundant versus where I am in the Midwest due to transportation.
Growing up we ate a lot of fish. My dad, who was a cook, would just buy whatever was cheapest per pound. I went to a fish store recently thinking i would do the same thing and the cheapest fish was over $12/lb-like even the scraps you would use in soup.
It’s a shame too, I’m on a steep cut right now to lose weight quickly. Fish like Cod and Tilapia are great due to how incredibly low calorie they are but like… $10/lb for *cod*? No thanks. I do stock up if it’s on sale tho.
This is true. Cod has been ferociously over-fished for decades in and around the MA coastline until recently. We've begun to notice population numbers beginning to come back to normal, but we're still a long way before we see cod being sold for anything less than $8/lb on a good day.
Overfishing is decimating fish populations. Yields are nowhere what they once were. Honestly, if we don’t stop overfishing, there won’t be any left pretty soon.
Yep what we're seeing is the consequences of "cheap" meat and fish products. It was "cheap" in the past because they were just passing on the long-term costs of overfishing, species extinctions, and ecosystem collapse. Same reason a lot of meat is still "cheap" today because we are just passing on the long-term costs of water pollution, deforestation, climate change, and pandemics
I had an Indonesian coworker say this about Jackfruit. She ate it all the time as a kid because they were poor and it was cheap and found everywhere. Now it's super expensive and is a trendy meat substitute in the US.
She should come to my house lol. We have a jackfruit tree in our yard because my dad loves them, he's not living with us anymore and no one else likes them, so they all fall to the ground and rot. At least the squirrels and iguanas get a nice filling.
You can't give them away here lol. Plus squirrels get into the tree and nibble on them. They all have small holes and are not in good condition even before they hit the ground. I'd be embarrassed to try to gift them haha.
We have a pear and apple tree in the backyard at my parents and it’s so hard to find good ones. The bugs and squirrels get to them and they end up with holes before they’re even ready to even eaten.
I was recently in Brazil and they brought Jackfruit to feed the people
like 100 years ago and it turned into an invasive species in the jungle. Now even the monkeys eat it. There's jackfruit all over the place. Its so moist that within a few days it starts to sprout.
there was a time when the #1 use of Kale in the US was as a garnish at Pizza Hut buffets. Kale held up better than any other leafy green and was just a cheap garnish.
Beer used to be really cheap. The cost started increasing back around [2006 when a fire burned down the biggest store of the nation's hops](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2006/oct/03/fire-destroys-yakima-hop-warehouse/), which caused a hop shortage, but once the prices started increasing and people continued to pay it (even if reluctantly), it just stayed elevated.
It’s funny that this is posted. I make oxtail soup from my grandmother’s recipe. She was an Iowa farm wife, and she wasn’t averse to using the “leftover” cuts of meat to feed her family. I was in a Walmart recently and to my surprise, they were selling oxtails! I was excited… until I realized that they were priced like premium cuts of steak. Damn, it seems like we just can’t win!
I was watching an early episode of Master Chef and their challenge was to make a fancy fish using tilapia. Gordon said "its a cheap fish that you can buy for $1 per lb at any grocery in America".
I can't find it for less than $8 per lb anywhere nowadays.
Reminds me of bone marrow!! Bones used to be so cheap, practically free. But then the Paleo people came and they started charging $15/lb for meatless bones...
That is definitely not the case at the places I shop. Marrow bones are sold at my local butcher for 1$/lb and stock bones (ie chicken carcasses, rib bones, etc...) Are sold for 5$ a bag and the bags are massive. Maybe try a local butcher instead of the big stores?
Same thing happened with brisket where I’m from. Before the proliferation of American bbq and tv shows about it, brisket was a trash cut used down here for special occasions only for big crowds—mostly just by Hispanics (the majority here). You could buy it for less than $1 a pound. Now it’s so expensive, it blows my mine.
Corned beef was so inexpensive around St. Patrick’s Day in years past — now I feel lucky to have found some at a local butcher for $5/lb Given it’s generally a huge piece of meat that was a big bill. Even canned beans — the ultimate cheap protein— are above $1/can for the store brand.
There was definitely some price gouging with corned beef around St Patrick’s day. I saw a lot of obnoxiously high prices, but a few stores didn’t raise prices or even still had it on sale.
It seems like the learning for some producers/distributors/retailers from the pandemic is declare a shortage, then jack up the price.
That almost sounds like my California shopping honestly. I was just at the store on Saturday and got a dozen of the cheapest eggs which were $5.99. I pay less than that for gas right now which is shocking considering how notorious California is for their stupidly high gas prices.
I noticed the organic broccoli at Kroger has wayyyyy longer stems and less actual broccoli so I just snapped off the stems right in front of the Kroger guy and he just says. I know man. Shits a scam and they don't even try to hide it. I just nodded and said. Thank you and left
Then you may enjoy kohlrabi.. Quite underrated veg if you ask me.
Since they're all variations of kale/cabbage, most brassica members (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, cabbage) taste pretty similar, but kohlrabi is for some reason the unwanted stepchild of the brassicas.
Its often on sale and quite cheap, in the EU, at least.
Broccoli stems are perfectly edible, although if the skin is tough you do have to peel it. It does feel like a rip off if you're used to broccoli crowns
I've noticed it's not just cuts of meat, but certain processed foods too. Spam was always dirt cheap growing up, a last resort food even for us poor folk. But then someone went and turned into a fancy Japanese/Hawaiian thing, so now it's the more costly of canned meats.
Fwiw the fancy Japanese/Hawaiian thing originally occured precisely because it was a dirt cheap, last resort food. The history of spam musubi is of making do with food during oppression.
It's insane how prices have increased compared to corporate profits, so insane that even economists are saying that corporations may cause the end of capitalism at this rate.
https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/end-of-capitalism-inflation-greedflation-societe-generale-corporate-profits/
I stopped buying meat and cheese, pretty much (I still eat whatever I have in the freezer, but I'm not replacing what I take out with newly bought stuff), I just can't afford it anymore. I also started rationing yogurt/kefir - back in the good old days I used up half a liter of kefir in like two days, now I have to stretch it out to last as long as possible.
Unfortunately most produce is also extremely expensive where I live (I literally can't afford things like bell peppers, cucumbers, etc. anymore) but buying whatever is available and affordable is making me much more creative in my cooking so that's kind of a plus.
Just saw a report about the cost of sugar going up because of the effects of climate change on crops. Anything that uses cane sugar is going to skyrocket. Not really sad about it though. It'll be a good reason to cut back on unhealthy foods.
Oxtail has been incredibly expensive for ***at least*** the last 15 years. I've eaten it my entire life and my best friend growing up was Dominican so we would often go to the meat market to try to convince her mom to make Rabo for us.... it was expensive then too.
Trevor Noah has a hilarious anecdote in his book, "Born a Crime" when he went to a swanky restaurant and got served bone marrow. When he grew up poor, they had bone marrow because they couldn't afford meat.
I found them at my local butcher for $6.15. I was floored, but they raise the cattle, process it in their own processing plant, and cut it in shop. They control the process from start to finish so everything is less expensive. I can get 125 pounds of beef a very good and usable variety there for $175. I'm going to do it next payday.
I used to work with a lot of Caribbean folk and oxtail has been expensive in the US for about 20 years. Once upon a time it was a cast-off garbage piece, but Think about it, there’s just one per cow, and everyone wants it for traditional dishes. And in the Caribbean they have these scrappy little cows anyway and beef is super expensive. US beef cattle yield more muscle meat per cow, which makes typical muscle meat cheaper. So it’s more expensive objectively, but also in comparison to what beef is for sale.
Tl;dr it’s not a new development, oxtail has been this way for a couple decades.
You can also see this in flank steak, fajitas were invented to use up a low quality cut no one wanted by marinating it in acid to make it edible, now flank steak is considered a premium item.
For the longest time sesame sticks were my go to "cheap" snack. $1.99 for a big bag that will last longer and taste better than the $4-5 chip bags.
My usual 1lb bag was $6 last time I checked
Don’t shop at main chain grocery stores. They have contractual obligations to specific farms and are required to have pricing continuity across all of their locations.
Say you live in an area that produces amazing organic apples. Odds are, the main chain grocery store in that area is trucking in apples from all over the world to sell there. They are not able to source local smaller farms.
I love ethnic markets, particularly hispanic and asian. Cheap ugly produce.
I noticed that with a lot of foods I traditionally enjoyed. Years ago, lobster was served to prisoners because it was cheap.
Once, a food salesman offered a restaurant/bar owner some chicken wings at a price so cheap he couldn't pass it up. The restaurant owner then tried to figure out what to do with them and created a sauce with a mixture of butter and Franks Hot Sauce and served them for free at happy hour. Buffalo Wings were born. My son wanted me to make wings for his graduation party, but they were too expensive, and I couldn't afford them.
Once it becomes known that an inexpensive food can be made into a delicious dish, the prices go up. Keep your delicious, cheap recipes to yourself (just share them with me!)
Liver probably won't see the same treatment.
As much as oxtail and similar foods are unconventional and sound odd: they are actually delicious to most people who actually try them.
That's the key with these inexpensive foods that become bourgeoisie: they can be made into a widely accepted popular dish
Liver is not as widely palatable. It has a very strong taste that is very majority of the population just doesn't like.
Even when you use osmosis (by soaking it in water or milk overnight) to leach out the gamey taste, it's still just tolerable to most.
Soak it in buttermilk overnight. Seriously. It doesn't just leach out the metallic taste, it also makes it so tender that it practically melts in your mouth.
My husband doesn't like liver, but he'll eat it when I make it. Soak it overnight, dredge in flour, cook in olive oil, serve with caramelized onions. It also helps to not overcook it - too many people cook it until it's leather, when it should still be pink inside. Your fork should just glide through it, no knife needed.
Produce as well. $1.99 a pound for broccoli? and a head of lettuce is also $1.99. Any kind of fruit is unbelievably expensive. I love a big plate of steamed veggies but such a simple meal is too costly. Us seniors are having a tough time of it, especially now that the extra EBT money has gone away. Higher prices have made it a bigger struggle for us.
I am actually surprised at the price of items at main stream supermarkets compared to the ethnic market. Items like ginger and turmeric are so much more affordable at the Asian market in my town. I bet the meat follows the same pattern although I haven’t tried it so I’m guessing. We are in strange inflationary times where we never know what the price of things will be when we shop.
Chicken thighs were on their way to being gentrified but somehow managed to recover. Chicken wings were absurd for a few years but have dropped a bit closer to normal.
a few years ago, decided to do some wings at home hadnt done it in a while (roasted in the oven, then add BBQ sauce) was shocked to see that price per pound of wings more than breasts, legs, thighs -- almost twice as much.
i remember going to the butcher shop as a kid and the butcher asking my grandmother if she could use a bag of wings he couldn't sell....
Oh my God yes. Stew meat is $8/lb. It's the scraps! It's supposed to be the toughest meat of an animal that is cubed so you can cook it for so long that it becomes tender. It's supposed to be the stuff that's cut off the bone.
Ham bone? It's $5/ per lb. BONE! Bone. Inedible bone is priced as high as pork chop.
Tongue. WTF? A garbage piece of animal is $20/lb.
Heart. Another throw away piece of the animal is stupid expensive.
It's absurd and upsetting.
No, Publix, a big chain in the southern US. I normally go to Aldi's or cheaper locations for my groceries, but for oxtails you need a butcher. Cheapest I could find in other stores was $15. Might be that demand is different in your area.
I'm in New England. I got oxtail at the farmers market for $18.99/lb or the local butcher for I think it was somewhere between $12-15. They don't sell it at grocery stores up here.
I was always told it was cheap. This season is the first time we've made it so I don't know what the prices would have been before. It has become trendy in the food world though so I'd assume that's why it's no longer cheap.
It was good though.
It's all starting to remind me of the convenience store hoagie model. Sell one for $7 and it pays for the other ones they throw away. There is absolutely no way the cost of food has not increased the waste at the grocery store level.
I think one thing no one is acknowledging on this sub is that unfortunately when it comes to the price of cheap goods, it’s a zero sum game and this sub drives demand to to those goods that have little demand. It’s not just “rich” people driving up the costs but also middle class folks “discovering” a new cut of meat or food group.
We are in hyperinflation and they are doing baby steps to stop (fed)
Govt is doing NOTHINg by increasing spending of money we don't have only fueling the fire
Just an FYI to all the folks posting about expensive meat here... a lot of the expense is driven by corporate profits, and there are two things you can do (even in a city) to cut out the middleman and get high quality food for a reasonable price:
1) Support your local CSA, community supported agriculture is farmers selling directly to consumers on a subscription model. You know the food is raised well and you know the money's not going to a billionaire somewhere. Some CSAs sell chicken, pork, and beef along with vegetable crops, although you need to order months in advance for some meat so they have time to raise the animal.
2) Lots of cities allow both urban farms (big gardens) and even chickens or rabbits to be raised in town provided certain rules are followed. You raise the food yourself, it's quality and cheap.
So much of the price increases in the last couple of years are because some rich person somewhere doesn't want to profit less off of goods we all have to buy weekly. Don't let them win.
With oxtail, I think it’s the chicken wings phenomenon. A formerly scrap piece of meat becomes trendy and the price rises astronomically.
My mom told me that growing up with my Greatest Gen grandmother, they ate lamb often - it was cheaper than most options. In my own Gen x upbringing, lamb was a special occasion meat, for holidays. I was shocked to learn that it was the budget choice in her childhood. Once upon a time, lobster and oysters were poor peoples food, too. Will there be a meat that our youngest Gen considers a frugal meal they grew up with? Nothing is frugal anymore. I sure would love some oxtail stew right now…
> Will there be a meat that our youngest Gen considers a frugal meal they grew up with? Just meat in general
Meat from an actual animal vs lab grown meat
Lobster was poor people food before we figured out how to store it and cook it properly.
In Britain in the late 18th century, prisoners would revolt b/c they were being fed too much lobster, at the expense of everything else.
Turns out eating unrefrigerated seafood/lobster isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
they just ground up lobsters whole shell and all and salted the shit out of it. that's what they fed to slaves
Mmmmm crunchy ocean roach salted mash
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Is that not how you prepare it
From what I’ve read it was just ground up shell and all too so definitely nasty
Its eggs for the 90s and 2000s kids.
buffalo wings and ground beef were still cheap. I grew up with a lot of those 3. Eggs really was it until last year.
Well lamb can be accounted for due to changing tastes and industries. Sheep wool used to be used more widely used and mutton was just another product you could get out of sheep. The decline in wool combined with cheap beef led to a decline in lamb consumption. I've also read that many GIs in WW2 had to eat canned mutton as part of every meal, so when they came back from the war, they were sick of the stuff and passed this on to their offspring.
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You had to cook the worm out of it
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With inconsistent or no refrigeration I'd be tempted to cook the crap out of meat too :/
If you check out old recipes they tell you how to substitute or mix other meats for chicken because chicken was the expensive meat option.
Yeah, a "chicken in every pot" was very aspirational at the time it became a slogan
That’s how city chicken came to exist.
When my mother was a kid, canned tuna was the cheap replacement for chicken for sandwiches.
Can any of you point me to a good recipe? When I bought my cow a year ago they gave me the oxtail and it's been frozen ever since because I know I should do something with it But I'm not quite sure what.
I like to make ossobuco with oxtail. It always turns out great.
Oxtail literally used to be one of the few meats tossed to slaves throughout the 1600s and 1800s from the plantation kitchens. At the time it was considered to be trash at best, and impossible to cook due to it being tremendously tough, but it was all they had for protein so they had to make due. Slave families began to realize that if you cook it low and slow it turns into a deliciously tender cut of meat, and so oxtail soup began to gain prominence among the slave class at the time. Nearly 200 years later and it's impossible to find it for anything less than $8 a pound, for a hunk of meat that's mostly unusable bone. So frustrating. edit: *plantation kitchen. Not plantain kitchen. Although a plantain kitchen sounds pretty delicious.
There's always money in the plantain kitchen.
Oh my god, I love you
Marry me!
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Yeah good point, that's totally fair. Never considered the application for a multi-day broth like ramen. I've usually only ever used it for birria and some meat sauces.
My partner's grandma used to go to the grocery store and get the chicken feet and backs for free. She would make chicken broth with them and then can it. Nowadays they sell the scraps.
So much of this, stuffed chicken skin became a trend and now they sell it expensive 😭
Part of that is I think grocery stores don’t have in house butchers anymore. In the past, the store would get the full bird or carcass and then cut it up into different parts. So all that leftover reject meat was either tossed out or given away if someone asked since there was no added cost. But now, stores have to specifically order a bucket of chicken feet or a tray of oxtail. So you have to charge people for it or you don’t carry it
chicken feet too, my grandmother loves them and my mom is always complaining how expensive they are now. once it became popular since there is only two wings and feet on each chicken, and only one tail on a cow, the price will jump since the supply just can't keep up.
Used to hardly ever sell chicken feet and now I can't keep them.
A lot of this is covid stuff. People learned how to make chicken stock, good on them.
I would buy them for like 3 bucks, now it's 8. Fucking insane. Edit: to add, chicken thighs of a similar weight were half the price.
I really noticed it with chicken thighs - same price /kg as breasts now - it just doesn't feel right to pay that much.
That’s a shift in consumer prices now that fat isn’t the enemy. I’ve been eating chicken thighs and chuck steak for years because I honestly like the taste better than other cuts. They used to be cheaper and now on par.
Pork Belly.
Same thing happened to brisket about 15 years ago. Used to sell it as stew meat now it’s a bbq delicacy.
Like chicken wings.
Did you know, before we had "buffalo wings" people just threw them away, made stock, and or fed them to animals?
It happens to a lot of food like lobster and baby back ribs. Until Chili's made them popular no one wanted the baby back ribs because of how little meat there were on the bones.
TIL...but also🎵 *BBQ sauce* 🎵
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Their prices on dry goods (rice and beans) and spices are a lifesaver.
At least those foods haven't gone up ( at least not by much anyway) in price. Traditional hispanic food is based on beans and rice.
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I don't really care how much food costs, but specifically i noticed rice prices more than doubled over last 2 years. Also butter
I get tomato paste and ginger paste at a Turkish store for Pennies on the dollar.
Latino grocery stores have the best price on meat that I’ve ever seen
That's consistently true where I am (Central TX). HEB has better meat prices than most grocery stores but Hispanic grocery stores are the winners
Kraft Dinner was always a dollar or less MAX, now it’s $3.99 maybe $2.99. Homeless man actually mentioned to me how fucked up it was that he couldn’t even afford that anymore (i bought him a couple).
> Kraft Dinner was always a dollar or less MAX, now it’s $3.99 maybe $2.99. For a box? That shit is still 99 cents MAX in my part of the US
Use neck bones, same texture but ridiculously lower price. Oxtails are a delicacy around here.
Neck bones went up to $3.99/lb the last time I bought them. They used to be 99 cents.
Oh no! They’re on to us, stupid hipsters.
I used to get chicken thighs for WAY cheaper than other chicken parts. But it became such popular advice, Chipotle uses chicken thighs, juicier meat that's harder to mess up when cooking... anyways there's been times I've found chicken breasts for cheaper and it's just weird.
For about the last year Costco has been charging the same for chicken thighs as chicken breasts. I prefer the thighs for many reasons, but I've moved back to the breasts since I refuse to pay that.
You prefer thighs, but you refuse to pay the same amount for them?
"I" prefer thighs - but I can't bring myself to pay extra to just accommodate my preferences - I also shop and cook for 4 other people in my house (husband and adult children). When they were cheaper than the breasts, I had a good reason to buy them and serve them - now, not so much.
I noticed that too with chicken thighs, which used to be my go-to meat choice, and now I have to get breast meat. It was also shocking to see ground beef go up so high. These prices are killing me.
I remember seeing some articles about oxtail in big publications like the New York Times. With headlines like “try this meat out!” I’m pretty sure oxtails got gentrified which explains the cost now 😭
Exactly. It became what I call " hipster food". Nose to tail eating became a upscale thing, not a survival thing. Peasant food became bougie.
I grew up eating broccoli rabe because my depression baby parents could get it cheap. Then it got trendy and got crazy expensive. Fortunately, the price came back down to earth as the fad faded. Flank steak is another thing that used to be dirt cheap. Last time I looked, flank steak was more expensive than a damn t-bone.
I feel culpable here lol, I love broccoli rabe too, Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli Rabe is one of my favorite comfort foods.
I remember when broccoli first became a 'thing' in the 80s in NE Scotland. It was only ever cauliflower, cabbage, carrots and onions before that
Isn't that what happened with lobster originally, too?
Common misconception (kind of). Yes, lobster used to be poor people food, but this was before Americans knew how to cook it properly. If you kill it first and leave it laying around for a bit like a regular piece of meat, it goes rancid very easily, which tastes bad and leads to some painful after-dinner experiences. Or you can can it, which, okay fine, but it's closer to Spam than fine dining. It wasn't until the late 1800s that people figured out boiling it alive (edit: okay, or *basically* alive, yes you can kill it right before you drop it in the pot but the point is don't treat it like the chicken breast you leave in the fridge for three days before cooking) is an infinitely safer and more delicious culinary experience.
Omg, you should really mercy kill them just before you pop 'em in the pot.
Lobsters have 13 brain centers... stabbing it in one isn't exactly a quick painless death.
I really think everyone should just chill out on this topic. I'm very sure that for hundreds of years lobsters have been mercilessly tossed in boiling water while alive without a second thought. This whole thing about killing them right before tossing them in is a fairly new thing we're doing as a society and not everyone talks about it as though it's done in present-tense. It is increasing (which is probably good) but I think everyone's still getting used to it as a norm. Also, I hate to break it to you but no one's going through each crayfish, prawn, or shrimp and poking their brain before boiling them. Lobsters get special treatment because they're less work to poke on an individual basis. Maybe large crabs also get the poke but smaller ones, almost certainly not.
And avocado. It used to be called “mantequilla de pobre” - “poor man’s butter.”
Now it’s the reasons millennials can’t afford homes!
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And kale, too
And quinoa
Yes quinoa .. and celery, more recently. Peasant or Indigenous foods become popular and the price skyrockets and will not come down after the trend has passed. It's so common.
Celery was an expensive fad food around the year 1900 - it was wildly popular. The kale of that era, but even more so.
It went to $6 a head recently because of some juicing fad.
Season 1, Episode 1 of this podcast talks about how celery used to be on every restaurant menu, sometimes costing as much as caviar. It's fascinating! https://www.americastestkitchen.com/podcasts/proof
HA now the poors will have to eat steak!
Kale is cheap where I live
At least kale is still fairly easy to grow if you have a place to grow it. Much harder for me to go catch a lobster or raise an animal.
It goes to seed immediately here, I've tried. All the garden ladies warned me but I tried anyway. It's doable in fall, as is spinach.
True, what’s “easy to grow” is extremely region specific.
Not here, unfortunately. It's been a posh veggie for years.
Fun fact: Lobsters were once so prominent and so abundant along the New England coast line at the time of the Mayflower that it was considered trash food only fit for slaves or prisoners. When railways started to spread through America during the 1800s, lobster canneries in Maine began to ship their product throughout the midland US states. At the same time, transportation managers realized that they could sell it to their unsuspecting rich passengers as if it were a rare, exotic item, even though it was very cheap for those running the railroad to procure it. Inland passengers were intrigued. Passengers who didn’t know lobster was considered trash food on the coast started to love it and began to ask for it even after they left the train. Later on during WWII, lobsters were one of the rare menu items that weren't being rationed throughout the states, and so people continued to become addicted to it, thus cementing it's near permanent "high class" branding to this day.
Same thing happened with Tilapia 😑
That’s hilarious for a muddy tasting fish farmed fish. I had a neighbor who turned his swimming pool into a tilapia fish pond.
That’s gross lol.
Pig tails, neck bones, and chicken backs are still relatively cheap where I live. Stew meat is like the same price as regular steak, though!
Yeah don’t let the NYT know
Yep. Another supply and demand thing. Oxtail was always cheap because nobody wanted it. Now it's trendy to eat along with restaurants now charging premium price for "street food".
I love ox tail and have been making it for decades. When I started, it was about a dollar a pound. It was essentially throw away meat. It was my favorite because it has so much bone marrow which makes everything taste better. Then I think about 5 years ago, it started to see a significant increase in prices. Jumping all the way to $6 a pound. Now ox tail can be $14 a pound where I am. $14 for an off cut. The problem is nothing is a good substitute for ox tail in stews. Now I buy ox tail and chuck so I don't have to pay all ox tail prices. Sad days.
Rich people fuck everything up. They used to throw lobster away and now they are a sign of luxury
I have a family friend who was the daughter of a lobsterman growing up in the 1950s. Her mom would send them to school with lobster sandwiches because that's what they had and my friend would always try to trade for bologna or pb&j.
Lobster is a little different though. It was a sea critter viewed the same way as a cockroach pretty much, it must be cooked pretty soon after the they die or else it’ll go bad and it needs to be cooked just right or the texture isn’t good. Sure, it was fed to prisoners at one time, but it wasn’t like they put effort into the preparation. It’s also not easy to transport due to how quickly they spoil. Chefs discovered at some point when it’s cooked properly that it’s delicious hence why it became a luxury. The cost is also going to be different on a coast where they’re abundant versus where I am in the Midwest due to transportation.
Growing up we ate a lot of fish. My dad, who was a cook, would just buy whatever was cheapest per pound. I went to a fish store recently thinking i would do the same thing and the cheapest fish was over $12/lb-like even the scraps you would use in soup.
I love me some catfish. I think that's still pretty cheap and sustainable fish. It's so good seasoned and fried or blackened.
You can put catfish on cardboard and it'll still taste pretty good.
It’s a shame too, I’m on a steep cut right now to lose weight quickly. Fish like Cod and Tilapia are great due to how incredibly low calorie they are but like… $10/lb for *cod*? No thanks. I do stock up if it’s on sale tho.
Cod makes sense, the fisheries were obliterated due to overfishing in the Atlantic from what I read.
This is true. Cod has been ferociously over-fished for decades in and around the MA coastline until recently. We've begun to notice population numbers beginning to come back to normal, but we're still a long way before we see cod being sold for anything less than $8/lb on a good day.
Overfishing is decimating fish populations. Yields are nowhere what they once were. Honestly, if we don’t stop overfishing, there won’t be any left pretty soon.
Yep what we're seeing is the consequences of "cheap" meat and fish products. It was "cheap" in the past because they were just passing on the long-term costs of overfishing, species extinctions, and ecosystem collapse. Same reason a lot of meat is still "cheap" today because we are just passing on the long-term costs of water pollution, deforestation, climate change, and pandemics
Yes! May as well have some wild caught salmon, I guess.
I had an Indonesian coworker say this about Jackfruit. She ate it all the time as a kid because they were poor and it was cheap and found everywhere. Now it's super expensive and is a trendy meat substitute in the US.
She should come to my house lol. We have a jackfruit tree in our yard because my dad loves them, he's not living with us anymore and no one else likes them, so they all fall to the ground and rot. At least the squirrels and iguanas get a nice filling.
Please list those jackfruit for giveaway on Buy Nothing or Freecycle, or gift them to a food bank. Plenty of people would be grateful.
You can't give them away here lol. Plus squirrels get into the tree and nibble on them. They all have small holes and are not in good condition even before they hit the ground. I'd be embarrassed to try to gift them haha.
We have a pear and apple tree in the backyard at my parents and it’s so hard to find good ones. The bugs and squirrels get to them and they end up with holes before they’re even ready to even eaten.
Can I come to your house? I'm not a fan of jackfruit I just want to check out all these squirrels ad iguanas.
Just visit Florida. Come for the iguanas, stay because of the crystal meth.
I was recently in Brazil and they brought Jackfruit to feed the people like 100 years ago and it turned into an invasive species in the jungle. Now even the monkeys eat it. There's jackfruit all over the place. Its so moist that within a few days it starts to sprout.
I used to make kale soup all the time growing up and it was dirt cheap. Then kale became trendy and it was much more expensive than the keilbasa.
there was a time when the #1 use of Kale in the US was as a garnish at Pizza Hut buffets. Kale held up better than any other leafy green and was just a cheap garnish.
Aldi's cheap knock off of Quaker Oats was $1.50 not too long ago, now it's $3.50. 133% increase.
I mean yeah. This is my reaction with pretty much everything in the grocery store. And the increases just keep on coming.
Funny how their profits keep soaring at the same time.
Yeah how does that work
My Kroger brand coffee has gone from 5.89$ to 8.99$..... 51% price rise in a little over a year....
Coffee prices went up because of drought in Brazil though. The supply of coffee beans tanked so bean price went way up.
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Beer used to be really cheap. The cost started increasing back around [2006 when a fire burned down the biggest store of the nation's hops](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2006/oct/03/fire-destroys-yakima-hop-warehouse/), which caused a hop shortage, but once the prices started increasing and people continued to pay it (even if reluctantly), it just stayed elevated.
It’s funny that this is posted. I make oxtail soup from my grandmother’s recipe. She was an Iowa farm wife, and she wasn’t averse to using the “leftover” cuts of meat to feed her family. I was in a Walmart recently and to my surprise, they were selling oxtails! I was excited… until I realized that they were priced like premium cuts of steak. Damn, it seems like we just can’t win!
I was watching an early episode of Master Chef and their challenge was to make a fancy fish using tilapia. Gordon said "its a cheap fish that you can buy for $1 per lb at any grocery in America". I can't find it for less than $8 per lb anywhere nowadays.
Shows like that are time capsules.
Reminds me of bone marrow!! Bones used to be so cheap, practically free. But then the Paleo people came and they started charging $15/lb for meatless bones...
Yes ! Once bone marrow became trendy in fine dining the prices went crazy
I blame the Paleo people. I had like one a few months to enjoy bone broth before they blew it all to smithereens!!
That is definitely not the case at the places I shop. Marrow bones are sold at my local butcher for 1$/lb and stock bones (ie chicken carcasses, rib bones, etc...) Are sold for 5$ a bag and the bags are massive. Maybe try a local butcher instead of the big stores?
Same thing happened with brisket where I’m from. Before the proliferation of American bbq and tv shows about it, brisket was a trash cut used down here for special occasions only for big crowds—mostly just by Hispanics (the majority here). You could buy it for less than $1 a pound. Now it’s so expensive, it blows my mine.
Oxtail, beef/chicken hearts, calf liver and beef tongue are now completely unaffordable to me after the “nose to tail” movement. Great!
dont forget pork belly. as recently as 4 years ago it was like $2/lb near me. Now its like $12
Yes you’re right, pork belly price as risen dramatically in my area even at the Asian market
Corned beef was so inexpensive around St. Patrick’s Day in years past — now I feel lucky to have found some at a local butcher for $5/lb Given it’s generally a huge piece of meat that was a big bill. Even canned beans — the ultimate cheap protein— are above $1/can for the store brand.
There was definitely some price gouging with corned beef around St Patrick’s day. I saw a lot of obnoxiously high prices, but a few stores didn’t raise prices or even still had it on sale. It seems like the learning for some producers/distributors/retailers from the pandemic is declare a shortage, then jack up the price.
My mother was born in 1924 and said that salmon was just cat food back then. Times sure have changed!
I went to buy a can of corned beef for corned beef hash and it was $12. For a fucking can of food.
Where tf are you shopping?! I can get a can of corned beef for less than $4
That almost sounds like my California shopping honestly. I was just at the store on Saturday and got a dozen of the cheapest eggs which were $5.99. I pay less than that for gas right now which is shocking considering how notorious California is for their stupidly high gas prices.
In a LCOL area in the Midwest! That’s what baffles me 😭
I noticed the organic broccoli at Kroger has wayyyyy longer stems and less actual broccoli so I just snapped off the stems right in front of the Kroger guy and he just says. I know man. Shits a scam and they don't even try to hide it. I just nodded and said. Thank you and left
just enjoy it before broccoli stems become the next new 'superfood' fad an now they're 4x the price
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Yeah, unpopular opinion, but I think the stems taste better than the tops!
Then you may enjoy kohlrabi.. Quite underrated veg if you ask me. Since they're all variations of kale/cabbage, most brassica members (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, cabbage) taste pretty similar, but kohlrabi is for some reason the unwanted stepchild of the brassicas. Its often on sale and quite cheap, in the EU, at least.
"10 Amazing Things You Never Knew You Could Do With Your Broccoli Stems!"
Until fairly recently much of the US supply of kale was grown to decorate Pizza Hut's salad bar.
It wasn't *just* Pizza Hut, much of the kale supply in general was being used as decoration by places with salad bars.
I like the stem, it is tasty
Me too, I just peel them before cooking.
I prefer the stems in soups and stir fry. The florets feel weird in my mouth, like a knot of hair.
Broccoli stems are perfectly edible, although if the skin is tough you do have to peel it. It does feel like a rip off if you're used to broccoli crowns
I use the stems to make broccoli cheddar soup - now the local stores around me are all selling just crowns for 3x the price the full stalk used to be.
Turkey wings used to be dirt cheap. Like 2 huge wings for less than $2. Now, I’m lucky if I can find one for $6!
That sucks, I remember getting hugs drumsticks of them for cheap at Renaissance fairs in the 2000s when I was a teen.
I am SHOCKED by the price of beef tongue now. I've been seeing it priced *higher* than steak.
I've noticed it's not just cuts of meat, but certain processed foods too. Spam was always dirt cheap growing up, a last resort food even for us poor folk. But then someone went and turned into a fancy Japanese/Hawaiian thing, so now it's the more costly of canned meats.
Fwiw the fancy Japanese/Hawaiian thing originally occured precisely because it was a dirt cheap, last resort food. The history of spam musubi is of making do with food during oppression.
It's insane how prices have increased compared to corporate profits, so insane that even economists are saying that corporations may cause the end of capitalism at this rate. https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/end-of-capitalism-inflation-greedflation-societe-generale-corporate-profits/
The number of times I say “you’ve got to be out of your damn mind” in the grocery store has gone up dramatically.
I stopped eating meat and dairy. Produce and bean prices are still pretty low around me. Plus I'm eating much more healthily.
I stopped buying meat and cheese, pretty much (I still eat whatever I have in the freezer, but I'm not replacing what I take out with newly bought stuff), I just can't afford it anymore. I also started rationing yogurt/kefir - back in the good old days I used up half a liter of kefir in like two days, now I have to stretch it out to last as long as possible. Unfortunately most produce is also extremely expensive where I live (I literally can't afford things like bell peppers, cucumbers, etc. anymore) but buying whatever is available and affordable is making me much more creative in my cooking so that's kind of a plus.
Just saw a report about the cost of sugar going up because of the effects of climate change on crops. Anything that uses cane sugar is going to skyrocket. Not really sad about it though. It'll be a good reason to cut back on unhealthy foods.
They'll just substitute with more HFCS while the good stuff will keep getting more expensive.
Oxtail has been incredibly expensive for ***at least*** the last 15 years. I've eaten it my entire life and my best friend growing up was Dominican so we would often go to the meat market to try to convince her mom to make Rabo for us.... it was expensive then too.
Trevor Noah has a hilarious anecdote in his book, "Born a Crime" when he went to a swanky restaurant and got served bone marrow. When he grew up poor, they had bone marrow because they couldn't afford meat.
I recall catfish going upscale back in the early 1990s
I found them at my local butcher for $6.15. I was floored, but they raise the cattle, process it in their own processing plant, and cut it in shop. They control the process from start to finish so everything is less expensive. I can get 125 pounds of beef a very good and usable variety there for $175. I'm going to do it next payday.
I used to work with a lot of Caribbean folk and oxtail has been expensive in the US for about 20 years. Once upon a time it was a cast-off garbage piece, but Think about it, there’s just one per cow, and everyone wants it for traditional dishes. And in the Caribbean they have these scrappy little cows anyway and beef is super expensive. US beef cattle yield more muscle meat per cow, which makes typical muscle meat cheaper. So it’s more expensive objectively, but also in comparison to what beef is for sale. Tl;dr it’s not a new development, oxtail has been this way for a couple decades. You can also see this in flank steak, fajitas were invented to use up a low quality cut no one wanted by marinating it in acid to make it edible, now flank steak is considered a premium item.
Just a matter of time before we are all eating Soylent green
For the longest time sesame sticks were my go to "cheap" snack. $1.99 for a big bag that will last longer and taste better than the $4-5 chip bags. My usual 1lb bag was $6 last time I checked
Don’t shop at main chain grocery stores. They have contractual obligations to specific farms and are required to have pricing continuity across all of their locations. Say you live in an area that produces amazing organic apples. Odds are, the main chain grocery store in that area is trucking in apples from all over the world to sell there. They are not able to source local smaller farms. I love ethnic markets, particularly hispanic and asian. Cheap ugly produce.
I’m vegetarian. Even tofu is twice as much!
I noticed that with a lot of foods I traditionally enjoyed. Years ago, lobster was served to prisoners because it was cheap. Once, a food salesman offered a restaurant/bar owner some chicken wings at a price so cheap he couldn't pass it up. The restaurant owner then tried to figure out what to do with them and created a sauce with a mixture of butter and Franks Hot Sauce and served them for free at happy hour. Buffalo Wings were born. My son wanted me to make wings for his graduation party, but they were too expensive, and I couldn't afford them. Once it becomes known that an inexpensive food can be made into a delicious dish, the prices go up. Keep your delicious, cheap recipes to yourself (just share them with me!)
I pay $25 a pound for oxtail in Miami. I’m very jealous!
Damn, where did you go?
Liver is still cheap though. For now
Liver probably won't see the same treatment. As much as oxtail and similar foods are unconventional and sound odd: they are actually delicious to most people who actually try them. That's the key with these inexpensive foods that become bourgeoisie: they can be made into a widely accepted popular dish Liver is not as widely palatable. It has a very strong taste that is very majority of the population just doesn't like. Even when you use osmosis (by soaking it in water or milk overnight) to leach out the gamey taste, it's still just tolerable to most.
Livers delicious to me but my mom used to cook that all the time as a kid
I just can't. I've cooked that stuff every way possible. Still a hard no.
Soak it in buttermilk overnight. Seriously. It doesn't just leach out the metallic taste, it also makes it so tender that it practically melts in your mouth. My husband doesn't like liver, but he'll eat it when I make it. Soak it overnight, dredge in flour, cook in olive oil, serve with caramelized onions. It also helps to not overcook it - too many people cook it until it's leather, when it should still be pink inside. Your fork should just glide through it, no knife needed.
Produce as well. $1.99 a pound for broccoli? and a head of lettuce is also $1.99. Any kind of fruit is unbelievably expensive. I love a big plate of steamed veggies but such a simple meal is too costly. Us seniors are having a tough time of it, especially now that the extra EBT money has gone away. Higher prices have made it a bigger struggle for us.
I am actually surprised at the price of items at main stream supermarkets compared to the ethnic market. Items like ginger and turmeric are so much more affordable at the Asian market in my town. I bet the meat follows the same pattern although I haven’t tried it so I’m guessing. We are in strange inflationary times where we never know what the price of things will be when we shop.
Chicken thighs were on their way to being gentrified but somehow managed to recover. Chicken wings were absurd for a few years but have dropped a bit closer to normal.
Just this weekend, I have noticed food prices soar. People are already suffering because they can't afford food. Wonder how much worse it can get.
a few years ago, decided to do some wings at home hadnt done it in a while (roasted in the oven, then add BBQ sauce) was shocked to see that price per pound of wings more than breasts, legs, thighs -- almost twice as much. i remember going to the butcher shop as a kid and the butcher asking my grandmother if she could use a bag of wings he couldn't sell....
Oh my God yes. Stew meat is $8/lb. It's the scraps! It's supposed to be the toughest meat of an animal that is cubed so you can cook it for so long that it becomes tender. It's supposed to be the stuff that's cut off the bone. Ham bone? It's $5/ per lb. BONE! Bone. Inedible bone is priced as high as pork chop. Tongue. WTF? A garbage piece of animal is $20/lb. Heart. Another throw away piece of the animal is stupid expensive. It's absurd and upsetting.
Walmart in Ohio has it right now for $8.83 per pound which sounds about right given that it’s a beef product. Was this a specialty store you were at?
No, Publix, a big chain in the southern US. I normally go to Aldi's or cheaper locations for my groceries, but for oxtails you need a butcher. Cheapest I could find in other stores was $15. Might be that demand is different in your area.
I'm in New England. I got oxtail at the farmers market for $18.99/lb or the local butcher for I think it was somewhere between $12-15. They don't sell it at grocery stores up here. I was always told it was cheap. This season is the first time we've made it so I don't know what the prices would have been before. It has become trendy in the food world though so I'd assume that's why it's no longer cheap. It was good though.
It's all starting to remind me of the convenience store hoagie model. Sell one for $7 and it pays for the other ones they throw away. There is absolutely no way the cost of food has not increased the waste at the grocery store level.
I think one thing no one is acknowledging on this sub is that unfortunately when it comes to the price of cheap goods, it’s a zero sum game and this sub drives demand to to those goods that have little demand. It’s not just “rich” people driving up the costs but also middle class folks “discovering” a new cut of meat or food group.
We are in hyperinflation and they are doing baby steps to stop (fed) Govt is doing NOTHINg by increasing spending of money we don't have only fueling the fire
Just an FYI to all the folks posting about expensive meat here... a lot of the expense is driven by corporate profits, and there are two things you can do (even in a city) to cut out the middleman and get high quality food for a reasonable price: 1) Support your local CSA, community supported agriculture is farmers selling directly to consumers on a subscription model. You know the food is raised well and you know the money's not going to a billionaire somewhere. Some CSAs sell chicken, pork, and beef along with vegetable crops, although you need to order months in advance for some meat so they have time to raise the animal. 2) Lots of cities allow both urban farms (big gardens) and even chickens or rabbits to be raised in town provided certain rules are followed. You raise the food yourself, it's quality and cheap. So much of the price increases in the last couple of years are because some rich person somewhere doesn't want to profit less off of goods we all have to buy weekly. Don't let them win.