You nailed it, Linda!
And I guess I should have added, in the Burrito/Fajita post, that brisket is also used a lot for Fajitas. I used to use it a lot, because it was cheap. Slow roasted it with seasonings & broth, then when cooled, sliced it thin for lunchmeat. Better than any 'deli' meat.
Haven't bought one in years now, so not sure of price anymore, but I've been told that they are often hard to find. They are also very popular for barbequing. Which, by the way, in this part of the world is nothing like it is in nothern states. It is a method of cooking (outdoors) and sauce is an 'extra'. Meat cooked in an oven with BBQ sauce on it is definitely NOT BBQ here.
But, as someone said in the other thread, methods & everything else for the same dish can change drastically over the miles.

Rusty

Orange roughy used to be really inexepensive here. Not anymore.

Yeah, I agree, it's a major bummer! But after all, it's simple economics: supply & demand!

Grouper cheeks were kept by the charter boat crew as part of the throw away when they cleaned the fish for the fisher people. And when you did find them at the fish market, they were very cheap. Now they are priced as a delicacy and you need to get to the market first thing Monday morning because by noon they are cleaned out.

A little more than 30 years ago, as a young wife, I remember going into the grocery store and buying squid (uncleaned) at 28 cents a pound and having the checker ask me what I was going to do with it. I replied that I was going to eat it, of course. She yelled out to another checker, "Hey, Joe! Look at this. She says she's going to EAT it!"

LOL Donna Loomis!

Angelaid I love orange roughy, but don't have it much these days. I haven't followed the price, but I know I ate it a lot at a time that I didn't have a great deal of money, and seeing the prices now, I know I didn't or probably couldn't have paid the levels they're asking now.

To this day, my 80 year old dad says that chicken wings were the "garbage of the chicken" when he was a kid.

Frankly, all they are is skin and bones with very little meat -- don't know what people see in them.

Snapper and tilapia used to be cheap. Not anymore!
Whole chickens WERE dirt cheap...
Pork still tends to be way cheaper than beef here. I can pick up steaks, chops, ribs for under $2.00/lb. sometimes. For sure under $3.

My family always raised beef, so we didn't ever buy it in the grocery store and I still buy direct from the farmer (or butcher my own). Can't speak to that, I don't even look most of the time.

Turkey used to be cheap ($.29-.39), now it's commonly over $1.00 in the "off" season. Can still find deals near the holidays if spend more $$$ in the store.

Deanna

Fajitas and chicken wings have been popular for a very very long time, so yes they were cheaper then, but if you're turning the clock back by 20 years, it's understandeable.

Fish on the other hand, like tilapia, have become popular more recently.

Yes, I have one - marrow beans!

Marrow beans were always a top choice for bean soup in PA Dutch cooking for generations, although not well-known outside of the area.

About 5 or 6 years ago, they got "discovered" as an heirloom bean and now you'll see "marrow bean puree" and other dishes made with them on sophisticated restaurant menus. The local grocery store chains stopped carrying them because they couldn't get a supply and gradually, so did the country stores. This was the first year unusual bean suppliers like Rancho Gorda took them off their website since their entire supply was committed to the restaurant industry.

I sure do miss them.

And speaking of marrow, how about the price of marrow bones since poached or roasted marrow on toast has also been discovered?

Years ago, lamb shanks were still attached when you bought a leg of lamb. In our family, there were always fights over who got the shank - it's really the sweetest, most tender meat on the whole animal.

Then (perhaps in the interests of domestic harmony?) they started chopping off the shanks and collecting them and selling them off as dog's meat. Until people like me started asking that they be wrapped for human consumption, as a dirt cheap meat.

Lamb shanks were suddenly promoted as a gourmet specialty meat, and they now rank amongst the most expensive of lamb cuts!

It's a national disgrace.

I was going to mention the shank meats... pork, beef or lamb have gotten very pricy.

In the 1970s I asked the butcher if they ever had any Sweetbreads. He said maybe since they just threw them away, but there might still be some around. He came back with a large bowlful. I took what I wanted for 5 cents a pound... for his trouble... and the rest were quickly snatched-up by others in the shop. The next time I went back Calf Sweetbreads were being sold for a huge price...... for something that had been being thrown away.

Oxtails. They use to be really cheap but not any more.

Ann

Count me in for complaining about the high price of lamb shanks (& lamb chops) and oxtails!

One more thing that I complain about is the price of rabbit! I grew up with rabbit as a "staple" and now it's super expensive!

Gee, they procreate like, well, rabbits, so it's not like gestation takes a long time, & it's not like it takes a long time for them to become fully grown (and some people say they are practically born pregnant, they are so fertile!), but now, it is so EXPEN$IVE that we don't even consider them!

Sooz

Yes! The price of oxtails and shanks is ridiculous. For the longest time, I wasn't even able to find shanks unless I went to the butcher. Now I've noticed they are quite often at the grocery store, but for such a price!

And chicken wings... don't get me started. Unbelievable what they charge for them these days.

Beef bones used to be free and this past winter I asked the grocery store butcher for some and he gave them to me in a package ....for $15.00. I was too embarrassed to say no thanks after requesting them.
But not again.

I agree on the oxtails and soup bones. The bones that my grocery sells for $2.99 a pound didn't even have enough meat to interest the WonderWeiner, the single time I actually bought them. Oxtails were "junk" until about 4 or 5 years ago, when Carl starting packaging them up for me. People never asked for them before, now they do.

Also pork hocks and jowl bacon from pigs are outrageous. They were scrap meat a couple of years ago, now you can't buy them, they fly off the shelves at crazy prices.

So the parts that the farmers always ate because they couldn't sell them, now have become popular. Go figure, the farmer now can eat Porterhouse for less than he can eat oxtail!

Oh, and smelt. We used to dip and clean them by the bucket full. Now they're $3 or $4 a pound in the freezer section. I need to go back to smelt dipping....

Annie

I agree with all of you every thing is going up in price.
I just bought thick center cut pork chops for $1.99 a lb. so into the "Seal A Mealer" and into the freezer.
I only buy when the meats are on sale now.
Fruit and veggies too.
Linda

When I was a little girl I think we had salmon patties about once a week. After I was grown I asked my Mom why we had salmon patties so often and she said because it was cheap. Well, it's not cheap now!

How funny! I read most of this thread, and went downstairs to get a soda. As I was doing this, I started composing my post in my mind...it started with, "when I was a little girl." Then I came back upstairs and read Trixie's post and laughed, as it started with the same words.

I wonder if our great-great-great grandparents would have written similar things if they'd had a forum to write them in??

Gosh. When I was a little girl, my family was a bit strapped...in America, I hesitate to say poor, because we never had a dirt floor, or had to haul water in buckets from a village pump, but I suppose we were poor by some folks' standards.

In any case, my mother often had to get "creative" with her grocery shopping to make sure we kids got what we needed, nutritionally speaking.

Beef tongue was one very cheap source of protein, when she could find it. Also liver or chicken hearts. I remember she used to saute chicken hearts and make a gravy to eat over rice or potatoes, and as a kid, I liked it very much. I hated the liver, though. As an adult, I learned that liver is quite good...if it isn't just about cremated.

Liver is still relatively inexpensive, but the price of beef tongue, with the influx of Mexican immigrants (legal and illegal, lets not EVEN get into that!) who savor it has risen. One puzzle is that chicken hearts can't be found. Once in a while I'll find some packaged as "hearts and gizzards", but what is offered for sale is almost all gizzards, with a few hearts.

I discovered chicken wings as a college student. Cheap, tasty (well, duh-uh, mostly skin and fat, the yummiest parts) and quick/easy to cook. Mmmmmm. They're still one of my favorite comfort foods. But jeepers, they've gone up in price. They did used to be cheap-cheap...now, I'm better off (budget wise) to buy a whole chicken. It is truly strange to think that I can, with a fair amount of regularity, find whole chickens for under a dollar a pound but the wings rarely are offered for much under two!

Another thing that puzzles me at times is the price of ground beef. Has it gotten so high because people don't have meat grinders anymore?? I look at ground chuck, "under 20% fat", and compare it pricewise with a slab of chuck roast that is much less fatty and taking a few minutes to grind it myself doesn't seem a big deal. I know that when I was growing up, "hamburg" was cheap meat, to be browned and tossed with noodles, fried in patties and eaten with mashed potatoes or mixed with crumbs in a loaf. It is still, of course, cheaper than many cuts, but it is often significantly more expensive than the cuts it is ground from.

It's not a meal, but rachelellen just mentioned another thing that has gone up, soft drinks.

When I was a kid, we didn't drink very much pop, but Grandma would occasionally buy Big K pop from Kroger's for 7 cents a can. Even after I became an adult, I could buy Town Club for under $3 a case, they were 12 ounce bottles.

Now Diet Coke is $5.29 for a 12 pack of cans, plus the 10 cents per can deposit. Faygo used to be the "cheap" version and it's over $4 for a 12 pack, as is the other "cheap" alternative, RC Cola/Diet Rite.

WalMart has Sam's brand (I think, but the diet cola is disgusting) for somewhere around $3 a 12 pack.

Milk is only $1.79 a gallon here on sale and there's a sale somewhere all the time, but a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke (with absolutely no nutrition at all) is $1.49.

I quit drinking it altogether and switched back to iced tea, made at home with real tea, not the commercial stuff. That's just an excuse to sell a bottle of artificial sweetener for the same price as soft drinks.

Annie

Annie, for years, we have lived in a "soda war" between Coke and Pepsi zone. It's unusual not to find a grocery store each week with 12 pack cans of either Coke or Pepsi's full line of canned soda products at 4 cartons for $10 or $11.

Rachelellen, all the poultry stalls at our local farmers' markets still sell chicken livers, hearts or gizzards separately and prices are as relatively inexpensive as they've always been.

When DD was a toddler, I used to cook chicken hearts and slice them as one of her earlier protein foods. She'd gobble them up just like Cheerios. They're always on her list of requests when she comes home for a visit but now I make them into a risotto with shallots and marjoram.

I can relate to this discussion. We used to save money by frying hamburgers for supper, but ground beef is getting a lot more expensive nowadays.

I remember when the cheapest food to fill up on was cereal. And bread. Well ... who ever thought they'd see the day when we paid three dollars or even more for these staples?

Ruthanna, I wish we had meat stalls at our local farmers' markets. Here I live in the CA central valley...drive past turkey and chicken farms all the time (not to mention herds of burgers-on-the-hoof)and when I go to the farmers market, I find sugared almonds, organic beets and foo-foo lettuces...no meat. I wonder if it's a CA or local ordinance or what?

Stainless flatware - not a food item, but since it goes in the kitchen....And today I finally accepted that I'm down to 4 forks of the set I bought 30 years ago.

It used to be that you'd buy 1 or more sets for twelve, not spend a lot of money, & have enough flatware for most anything that came along in the kitchen or dining room. If you spent a few dollars more, you got top quality, heavy pieces that would last a lifetime, barring death by the disposal or disappearance. Then about 20 years ago, somebody started pushing the sale of place settings & almost instantly, sets disappeared. The price went from about $100 for service for 8 to about the same and up for 1 place setting. Now it's on bridal registeries like it's a precious metal to be handed down to future generations. Get real - it's STAINLESS STEEL made for everyday use, no gold, silver, or gems involved, mass produced & having no artistic value. Considering the price of antiques in the current market, it's cheaper to buy sterling!

And that's why all my stainless came in a box of detergent or was left here by someone who brought a salad to a pot luck. If I put 2 pieces of flatware out at the same time, it's sterling. I mean why would I eat a bowl of cereal that costs $3.25 a box, with anything less?

I recently bought organic, free range chickens for $2.50 a pound....but the farmer who processed and sold them threw out the liver and gizzards and feet...sigh...
Linda C

Linda, you need to educate that farmer & maybe he'll throw in a freebe the next time.

I use sterling for dining but I still like to have enough stainless - especially forks - to use for small amounts of mashing, lightly beating eggs, etc, or when I'm grabbing a snack or when I take food to potlucks! The ##$#$% things keep walking off and I don't have any kids to blame it on, LOL! The next time I go to an antique show where someone has a a bin of plain/ugly/whatever sterling for $5-10 each, I'm buying 1/2 dozen forks to be treated like utility items.

Parsnips! In my younger days, these were a much-despised vegetable, and could be bought for a song. These days they are classified (or so it seems) amongst the luxury gourmet items, and they cost an arm and a leg! Same with cabbage.

Also...

Nobody has so far mentioned that as the preference for baby vegetables has grown, so the veges have shrunk, and the price gone through the roof!

LOL @ Daisy!!!! :D :D :D

I always get sticker shock when I go grocery shopping now especially for meats. I saw some beef tongue today and it was as expensive as some cuts of steak. And eggs have really gone up in price or am I dating myself. I can remember when they were one of the cheapest protein foods to buy.
Clare

Clare, here eggs are 89 cents a dozen, I don't know what they are there.

I don't have any sterling and my flatware came from Sam's Club, the super cheap stuff. I get 8 forks (or knives or spoons) for about $5.

Then when they get lost, I don't care and I buy some more cheap stuff. (shrug)

I've thought a couple of times that I should buy some better, heavier flatware, but at the rate it gets lost or walks away, I always decide not to.

Annie

Eggs at 89 cents a dozen! Crumbs, we pay around $4 a dozen here - for the cheapest 'caged' eggs. More like $5-6 for the 'free range organic' ones.

As for cutlery, I've had the same set of stainless steel stuff I've had for about 35-40 years. All bought as part of a promotion at a local supermarket - you know, spend $5, get a knife (or whatever - a different item each week) free. I got a setting for 16, complete with things like fish knives and forks, dessert forks, parfait spoons (remember those?), jam and sugar spoons, cake slides etc. It does me just fine. I'm still using the same crockery I bought around the same time, in the same way!! All still in good condition.