SNAP Card Gourmet: Steak Edition

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Published on the Doomstead Diner Dlog & YouTube Channel on June 10, 2018

Discuss this article & video in The Pantry inside the Diner

The SNAP Card Gourmet is BACK!

It was touch and go as to whether I would get back to doing these vids, but after getting out of hospital a couple of weeks ago I worked up the energy to get going with it again.  Before you get on my case about the poor lighting in this vid, I AM working on it!  Anyhow, you don't really want to see my Grim Reaper ghoulish appearance these days anyhow.

One thing I do want to address today is the criticism I periodically get inside the Diner for my food obsession in a thread I maintain daily called "The Diner Menu".  In that thread daily I feature different recipes for Diners to drool over while they are contemplating doom.  "What does this have to do with collapse?" the critics bellow!  To me the reasons are obvious, but some Doomers are so focused on their own interests in Collapse they can't fathom them, and then make a nuisance of themselves by complaining about it.

To begin with, Food is probably the #1 concern of people who see Collapse coming down the pipe.  "Where will I get it when the shelves go empty at Safeway?"  You have your Doomsteaders and Permies all trying to create subsistence farms they can feed themselves with.  Then you have your Survivalists who are going to go out into the bush and hunt and fish up their sustenance.  At least if they are doing this on their own, both groups are doomed to failure.  You can't produce or gather enough food on your own, it takes at least a small tribe to do it.  A FEW really expert survivalists like Cody Lundin can make it for a while, but even they would eventually succumb without a tribe working together.

The next reason is it demonstrates many of the things we take for granted, primarily JIT delivery of food from around the world.  You can't walk in a food superstore and shop without being overwhelmed by produce from Mexico, Fish from Thailand, Olive Oil from Spain and Wine & Cheese from France.  It's going to be mighty hard in the post-SHTF Day world to be cooking up a Gourmet Meal without these goodies.  So enjoy them now while they are there, because it won't last forever.

Third, it provides a respite from the constant stream of Doom Newz we are inundated with on the Diner every day.  "The World will go up in a Nuclear Fireball on July 19th!  The Chinese will take over the world and Amerikans will be their Slaves!  The Dollar will crash and the Petro-Yuan will be the Reserve Currency of the World!"  etc, etc, etc.  I doubt any of these predictions are accurate, but that doesn't stop Diners from pasting in articles every day to justify their POV.  It's nice (at least for me and other Diners who enjoy the thread) to get away from that constant stream of Apocalyptic Predictions and  enjoy reminiscing about great meals we have eaten or cooked up.

Finally, I am a lifelong "foodie" who has been frequenting various types of eateries my entire life, from cheap recent Greek immigrant street vendors of Souvlaki to the best restaurants in NY Shity..  Besides eating in them, I worked as a chef for a while also.  I love to cook for family and friends.  I also have great concern for the homeless and for those who are trying to get by on a tight budget provided currently in the FSoA by SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), so I created the SNAP Card Gourmet to demonstrate how you can eat very well on the current SNAP Card allowance, if you shop carefully and watch your pennies.  You can even afford to eat Gourmet Meals with Premium Foods a couple of times a month, even once a week if you scrimp the rest of the week.

With that in  mind, in this installment of the SNAP Card Gourmet we go over a couple of ways to prepare PRIME Ribeye Steaks. 😋

Anyhow, all that being said, the Steak Edition of the SNAP Card Gourmet premiering today on the Diner is a Premium Foods meal which was inspired by a great find of Prime Ribeye Steaks at my nearby food superstore of 3 Bears, which has the best meat department around here, far superior to Walmart, Safeway or Kroger.  Well, a small butcher Matanuska Meats has better meat sometimes, but never at the prices that 3 Bears offers up periodically.  Prime is the top designation by the USDA on meat, signifying extensive marbling of fat and tenderness of the meat.  Prime Ribeyes from online purveyors of top quality meat like Chicago Steaks or Omaha Steaks can run $30-40/lb, I got these two little beauties for $12/lb.  So one of them got cooked up as I generally most like a Ribeye done, over the fire on an open grill, and the other one I did as an indoor cooking method braising the meat in a pan and then slow roasting in an oven.  There are several episodes in this series to come which include not just the cooking but the preparation aspects as well and the importance of your cooking tools, especially for the homeless or near homeless person.  A simple question to consider here is where are you going to get your high-carbon stainless steel cooking knives from after SHTF Day arrives?  They won't be arriving on a Bunker Fuel powered container ship, that is for sure.  Pretty hard to do any decent cooking of anything without a good knife.  If you don't have some good ones in your preps along with some backups, now would be a good time to stock up.  A good Barter Item as well.

Intro done, now have fun watching the vid!  Again, apologies for the poor lighting.  This will be fixed!