Score!

What with the economy doing its best impression of the Titanic, the question of the cost of real, nutritious food becomes more pressing every day. So I thought I'd share my latest score with you -- because you might just be able to duplicate it.

I wrote once in Lowcarbezine! about how I feed my dogs the BARF diet (Bones And Raw Food,) being unconvinced that grain-filled packaged food laced with chemicals offers decent nutrition, much less being the necessity it's often made out to be. I buy fifty pound lots of chicken backs for my dogs from a local poultry processor. Chicken backs are boney, which is good for the dogs, whose evolutionary diet is pretty bone-heavy. As for us humans who don't just chew up raw chicken, backs aren't great for roasting or frying -- just not enough meat -- though they're great for soup.

But here's the thing: My fifty pound boxes of backs often include as many-- or more -- thighs as backs! Nice, meaty, bone-in, skin-on thighs, identical to the ones I could pay $1.89/lb for at the grocery store. Perfect for roasting, frying, boning and cutting up for stir-fry, or anything else I might care to do with chicken. And I prefer dark meat to white.

And what do I pay for a fifty pound box of chicken backs and thighs? Are you ready for this? 30c a pound. Yep, $15 for fifty pounds of chicken. I also buy chicken livers for... I think it's 79c a pound, in five pound bags.

Of course, buying food in this kind of quantity requires storage space. Since I have two deep freezes and two refrigerators (did I mention I write cookbooks? ;-D ), storage is no problem; I divide stuff up into smaller lots and freeze it. I've said it before, a good used freezer will pay you back quickly in food savings. (Unpaid plug: A great place to buy used appliances is your local ReStore. ReStores are run by Habitat for Humanity; people donate used home improvement stuff, and they resell it at very modest prices. A quick google under "ReStore" and your nearest city -- assuming you're here in the States -- should turn one up. Or there's always Craigslist.)

Alternitively, you could team up with a couple of friends, and split a fifty pound lot of chicken.

Do you have a poultry processor near you who would be willing to deal with a non-commercial customer? Boy, it's sure worth checking the Yellow Pages and making a few phone calls to find out.

I can't guarantee that your carton of backs will actually turn out to be a carton of thighs, I just know that mine often do. Seemed too good a deal not to let you in on it.