SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED TO "MAKE DO"

Old Mother Frugal was recently confronted with a cooking equipment conundrum.

At hand was the issue of converting a solid piece of pork butt into ground pork. That ordinarily would not have been a challenging situation but this was no ordinary situation.

Taking advantage of a pork butt sale, the piece of pork was boneless and slated for five meals. One meal required ground pork to be incorporated with ground chuck and transformed into meatloaf.

Other ideas for this meat was to use part of it for pork stew, part of it to simmer and flavor spaghetti sauce, one part was designated as pulled pork and the last part to go into the freezer to be used at a later time.

With a price point between $1.19/lb and $1.49/lb, this piece of meat came in on the lower end at $1.19/lb. With the right equipment, $7.81 of meat had the potential to cover a week’s worth of dinners. Consequently, having to purchase equipment to transform a solid piece of pork into ground pork would have defeated the purpose of frugal meal dining.

The situation arose as Old Grandmom Frugal’s kitchen was lacking a food processor or blender. Once upon a time, her kitchen was equipped with such a device. In an attempt to find it, an exhaustive search throughout her house was conducted to no avail.

The next best thing would be to grind this meat “old school” style with her old fashioned meat grinder. It was a heavy, steel kitchen tool that screwed onto her kitchen table and with a long handle, she would churn the meat by hand. It had to be somewhere in the house but endless hours later, that turned out to be another unsolved mystery.

Confronted with two unsolved mysteries, it was time to develop a new strategy. One strategy was to purchase a small food chopper or borrow something from someone that could grind meat. Quickly, the idea of purchasing new equipment was eliminated; it would have elevated the cost of my inexpensive meal.  

Only needing a cup of ground pork, borrowing equipment for a few pulsations was the answer. From a good neighbor, a mini-chopper was there, in the kitchen, in short order.

The mystery of the missing kitchen equipment was never resolved but resolve produced a very tasty pork and beef meatloaf dinner!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Before spending money on a new kitchen tool or piece of equipment, borrowing the item is a good way to determine if it is worth your while to purchase the item.