Okay, I do work for them (in the bakery) but I’m not being paid to write this . I really think that they’re actually fighting the rising food costs and you can definitely shop smart there these days while still feelign good about what you’re putting in your body!

Heres a tip for overcomeing squeemishness forever, if your game. (which few people are, surpriseingly). Find a place where many wild rabbits live. Set a trap for them. When you have your rabbit, skin and butcher it, then cut it up, cook it and serve it for diner. It will either turn you vegiterian or make you capable of any form of cooking.
If you live somewhere that has a rabbit bounty, which I suspect is nowhere outside Australia, make sure you keep the tails.

Before you all bomb me with comments, I’m mostly jokeing.

Now that I’ve got some of the other elements of nutrition and fitness down, I’m also trying to be smarter about the cost, chemical & ecological aspects of my decisions. I find that it’s really not that much more work to buy a whole head of cauliflower and prep it than it is to buy the bags of dainty little florettes when all I’m going to do is steam them all up and send them through the food processor with olive oil and roasted garlic. And the plain ol’ baked (expensive, boneless, skinless) chicken breasts I used to eat day in and day out don’t hold a candle to a crockpot of coconut curry (whole) chicken. The key is having good tools, a good recipe, and a little confidence.

I’m still hoping you are going to teach us how to find local farmers to get meat, eggs, and dairy products.

I’d eat fish.

Seriously tho, on developing a taste for dark meat, my only suggestion would be to use it in recipes where the cut of meat isn’t as obvious. For example, recipes that incorporate a sauce or broth often take away that “gamey” taste that is sometimes associated with dark meat. Slow-cooked jambalaya or curry are good examples. So, you could buy a whole chicken and use the rest in a recipe that is more sauce or soup based.

On the reheated chicken sensitivity, that is definitely a new one to me – Is reheated chicken a problem when it has not been cooked already? Meaning, freezing it raw? Or is it just cooked leftovers? In other words could you still look for sales and buy for later?

Otherwise, I think you’ve covered the bases pretty well, and may have to settle for higher prices (though I still think 13.00/lb is outrageous). I suppose the trick there is to view your overall food budget and decide how much of the “good stuff” you can afford. In other words, doing what you’re doing already – making the trade-off of better quality food, just less of it.

I definitely applaud your efforts – you’ve done a ton of work to try to keep chicken in the picture!

@ FBG: Yep, and that is a valid view for sure. It took a little getting used to for us, but the cost savings (at $2.00 a pound for pasture-raised local chickens) was worth it in our case. But it wasn’t easy, particularly for my wife. She was a vegetarian for 12 years, so the idea of dealing with the whole bird was less than desirable. But, with two kids and me leaving my day job and all, we both decided that sometimes ya gotta do, what ya gotta do.

And that, is something not everyone needs to do. Just suggestions.