michael ark
Master of the Pit
Yes it has. I have been buying meat on sale and discounted. More chicken and pork hardly any beef besides ground round. Gearing up for the garden this year. To help cut cost.
Around here thrift stores are very lean. People are holding on to the better items and holding garage sales. Thrift stores are "hawked over" by professional flea marker sellers.One thing I'm addicted to besides buying/smoking/grilling food is to buy Accessories and paraphernalia. I would go to gander mtn. On my Saturdays off, I would buy things like wood chips, rib racks , rubs, cures, the sky is the limit as to what I would leave with... Most of the time spending 100+$
Now on my Saturdays off I drive from thrift store to thrift store. Believe it or not I can find lots of cool cooking tools/pans .( Even found a meat slicer the other day).. Cast iron fri pans .
It's an idea I wanted to mention
The" lot of countries" also are worse off now because our economy went sour. Today everything is globally connected. One country makes poor decisions and the world suffers.I get annoyed at fixed,rigid attitudes to food & pricing.People in my city pay over the odds for protein because they cant or won't cook outside of what they know. A $20 shoulder of goat fed me for 3 nights,braised slow with tomato ,red pepper,but end of a bit of pancetta,1/2 bottle red wine left over from night before + big bunch of chicory, chilli ,herbs out of my garden my own bacon. So maybe $30 for 3 dinners.Thats one thai takeout with delivery at my neighbours !
I drive 30 minutes from my weekender to buy EVO at the farm gate,$200 for 20 litres in a plastic drum. Pressed on the farm. $ 19 A litre in the store minimum.
Share it around my circle of friends at cost. Other people give me " why bother" or "we only buy imported EVO ". Go ahead but it may not actually be EVO from our European friends & your paying $25 & up for a fancy bottle with a picture of some Italian guys house on the label! But dont whine about your cost of living.
Lot of really spoilt people who got a hell of shock when things went sour here.We have it much better than a lot of countries too boot.
Unfortunately it's all of the unsustainable wants and needs of these supposedly more sensible generations everyone is reminiscing about that caused our economy's issues. And current and future generations will be tasked with picking up the pieces.This is all true, but you can't turn back time and there is no way short of a collapse of the government that could bring back those more sensible times.
My neighbor tells me of how he would bring his rifle to school and give it to the teacher for safe keeping. After school, teacher would return the rifle and he would hunt deer on the way home. Try doing that today.
But when you try to pass that on to your kids, all you get is, aw dad you told me that already....how you had to walk to school twenty miles through the snow. Got a text, talk to ya later....I'm with Martin. I was raised dirt poor, 1 of 6 children. Didn't have much through the majority of my adult life either but I didn't know any better and was happy as can be. Now that I have a good job and don't want for anything I still live like my upbringing taught me....Frugally. For the first time in my adult life I'm going to grow a garden. I've learned various forms of food preservation and I plan on using these skills to make life easier than it already is because I know that this won't last. It won't matter though, you gotta keep keepin' on, there is no other option.
I agree with your thinking. Just think if the power goes out and there is not any petroleum available. We have such poor infrastructure in place. There will be no place to hide.It's not a matter of if, but when will the house of cards tumble.
When it happens, it's not going to be pretty.
This isn't 1929, back then, for the most part, people knew how to take care of themselves, yet many still suffered greatly!!!!
What's going to happen to a population where many can't understand the directions to microwave their sodium-rich quick-fix dinner, let alone grow or can or otherwise preserve their own food???!!!
Prepare the best you can, and hope that's enough, but I have a feeling that legions of very hungry people will be a force that's nearly impossible to reckon with!!!!
~Martin