An inexpensive way to gain weight

[rmscott_75077]

I have a little bit of experience in this. I own a farm in Illinois. Between my sisters and I we have two full size chest freezers out in the garage / barn. It is the way to go if you have the space. If you are only buying 1/4 or so at a time you can soft freeze, but if you want to keep it longer you want to keep it 0 degrees Fahrenheit or below. My Mom was big on about -10 F. Every so often we have one butchered and put into the freezer. I bring some back to Texas on some dry ice from time to time. We have a ton of deer on the farm as well. I let me friends reduce the damage on corn every year and they graciously always leave me some venison in the freezer!

We don't use any hormones. They just graze naturally during the summer. However, during the winter months we give them hay and corn. You will find they are a bit fattier with the corn or grain and taste much better. Unfortunately, the deer on the property tend to be well fed on corn as well. They probably taste better that way too.

If you know the correct places, you can buy much higher quality beef for much much lower cost than. In Illinois, we have a group of friends who buy the whole cow from us sometimes. This works better for us and them. If you live in the country don't be afraid to try this route. Otherwise, man meat packing plants will sell you 1/4 or 1/2.

[jlwilson]

How do you save money on chicken? Raise chickens and slaughter yourself?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Fuck chickens. Buy them already dead. That way, you don't have to get to know the goddamn things.

[trapntan]

Fuck chickens. Buy them already dead. That way, you don't have to get to know the goddamn things.

I keep chickens and ducks, we don't kill them, but I show 'em who's boss by eating their young every day.

[ForbiddenDonut]

So does this mean I should feed my enemies grains rather than a paleo/ketogenic diet before I cannibalize them?

[Joe Tandy]

Even chickens hate chickens, constantly squawking "faaaark" at each other.

[trapntan]

So does this mean I should feed my enemies grains rather than a paleo/ketogenic diet before I cannibalize them?

Let them get their own food, just eat their children. Preferably in front of them.
If you must feed your enemies, feed them curry.

[Leoric]

Whey is pretty cheap too. Per gram of protein, you would have to buy beef for about $3/lb for it to be cheaper than whey (I pay $64 bucks for 72 scoops of 25g protein isolate. For ground beef to be that cheap it would have to cost less than $2.66/lb). Milk is even cheaper. It's only $2.50 in milk to equal the protein in 1 lb of 80% ground beef, but you have to deal with the extra calories in the milk, so whey is easier to manage dietwise.

I still eat beef because its delicious, but I use whey and milk like crazy because I'm cheap.

[paterfamilias]

Even chickens hate chickens, constantly squawking "faaaark" at each other.

You gotta keep chickens to really understand how much chickens hate chickens. Chickens will stone cold peck each other to death just for laughs.

[crc]

For fun I went to the grocery store afterwards. The least expensive hamburger was $4.19 lb, roasts were $5.60 to a little under $7 a pound and it went up from there.

I used to live in a place that was large enough for a chest freezer, but after moving to a small apartment in the middle of the city I don't have space. I wrote a web crawler to check meat prices for all nearby supermarkets and tell me where I should be buying that week, and it was surprising to see how much money I was able to save. One of the five stores almost always has pork tenderloin or beef (granted, london broil type cuts, but still) for about $3 a pound and whole chickens for about $1 a pound. If you can't buy an entire side of beef at a time, get into the habit of reviewing grocery ads - you're getting screwed otherwise.