Sticker Shock

All year long, I have been planning a Christmas meal. Not real, serious meal-planning mind you, just kicking around ideas, with the basic idea being to prepare a really nice, bordering high-brow, Christmas meal for Mark and the boys (and anyone else who wanted to join). My fantasy involved a standing rib roast, or possibly a leg of lamb, or something that equally screams "special occasion".

So I go to Ingles last weekend and take a meander through the meat department, just looking to see what was out there. I don't know about your neck of the woods, but around here, stores don't carry real specialty items until close to Christmas. So I was just taking an inventory - seeing what was available.

And Ingles had a standing rib roast! And it was $80! (Actually, it was $80 with the Ingles Advantage card - it was really $95.) Holy Lord! I put it down like it was on fire. I walked off, looking like someone who accidentally picked up an adult magazine or something.

Eighty dollars??? I wanted a special occasion, but not that special.

So yesterday, Mark and I are at Food City, and I decide to check out their meat department. They have a leg of lamb! For $68. And a beef tenderloin. For a couple thousand and some change. The most "in my budget" thing they had was a loin of pork for $30, but it didn't even have the bones in it.

I haven't completely given up. After all, I can do some pretty amazing things with a pork tenderloin, but we have that all the time (tonight, in fact.) I'm looking again on Monday, so we'll see what I find. I may end up hanging out at the grocery store until closing time on Christmas Eve and making an offer.