Subj : Fresh Meat To : Dave Drum From : Ruth Haffly Date : Fri Jan 05 2024 13:44:28 Hi Dave, DD> Most stupormarkups buy "primal cuts" - one step beyond what Humphrey's DD> does. Examples of primals include the round, loin, rib, and chuck for DD> beef or the ham, loin, Boston butt, and picnic for pork. I see plenty of those in the meat bins. DD> Magro's buys live, on the hoof animals and goes from there. RH> True butchers then. DD> 8<----- NIPPED ----->8 RH> My dad was a white collar worker (local newspaper/free lance RH> photographer) so we didn't have any livestock except cats and dogs. I RH> have no idea how he got the chickens but there were a lot of them. DD> Did your family have to pluck the feathers and diembowel the chook? RH> Just singe the pin feathers, they were all plucked and dressed before RH> going into the freezer. DD> After watching my grandmother fire up the laundry stove and put a tub DD> of water on to heat, then dip the dewad chook in to hot water to DD> loosen the feathers. And let me mother step in to help her pluck those DD> feathers and get the bird ready to have the pin feathers seared by the DD> fire in the laundry stove I made myself scarce on chicken plucking DD> days. I think I would too. Our younger daughter had chickens for a while and would kill & pluck them, don't know if her boys helped any. I think she only did it one time when we were visiting, and I didn't offer to help. DD> I'm not sure there are any surviving "locker plants" since home DD> freezers and refrigerators have become so affordable. RH> There may be some in the Amish/Mennonite areas of the country--those RH> folks don't have electricity on their farms. DD> Just used the Bing search to learn that there are 4 locker plants DD> within 75 miles of me - the nearest being in a small town (all are DD> small town DD> located) about 40 miles away. All are butcher shops as well. No surprise. As I recall, the one in our town was just the freezer plant, probably put in when ice harvesting was still being done. Major part of downtown (including that plant) was destroyed in a fire in 1976 and that building wasn't rebuilt. DD> Amish, maybe. Mennonites are more modern. We have an Amish enclave DD> near to here (Arthur, IL) and marketroids often us "Amish made" as a DD> touchstone when sellin a whole range of things. RH> Usually a better quality than the average. We got intoduced to a new to RH> us Mennonite place last time we went thru Pennsylvania. Picked up RH> several kitchen tools, means to make cold brewed coffee, socks.... DD> I always thought a Monnonite was pretty much and Amish with a phone DD> and a car. Bv)= RH> There are some other differences but I'm not really sure on what's what RH> except that the Amish are the strictest in their separation from the RH> English of the various sects. They've modernised some, but still hold RH> to a lot of the old ways. Both Amish and Mennonitess have various RH> degrees of separation from the world but both maintain a strong RH> "apart-ness". DD> I have to keep remembering that the Amish were the original DD> "Pennsylvania Dutch". Which sort of explains a lot. True, and to them, we're English, no matter what our ethnic heritage is. --- Catch you later, Ruth rchaffly{at}earthlink{dot}net FIDO 1:396/45.28 .... OH NO! Not ANOTHER learning experience! --- PPoint 3.01 * Origin: Sew! That's My Point (1:396/45.28) .