Happy New Year!

I hope that you are waking up this morning without a nasty hangover.

I woke up this morning at the butt crack of dawn to put my Ropa Vieja in the crockpot. Just a warning, chopping garlic, bell peppers and onions at 7am does have a tendency to make you want to hurl. Generally unpleasant.

I just had to share my story about this particular batch of Ropa Vieja with you this morning… let me set the scene.

It’s New Year’s Eve, my Husband, Daughter and I were out and about doing some returns and shopping. It started to get a little late and we were hungry, so we popped into Bonefish Grill for some apps and a drink. We still had to go to the grocery store afterwards to get the ingredients for our New Years feast of Ropa Vieja. Ugg.

Well, Whole Foods just so happens to be right next to Bonefish, how convenient, let’s just get our food goodies over there and head on to the house.

I like Whole Foods, you can walk around in that place forever, just scoping out the interesting food products. I like Whole Foods, however, I do not enjoy their prices.

So, my daughter is reading off the ingredients for the dish, when we come to the meat counter. I start gazing at the sea of dead animals laying behind the glass and notice that there is not one piece of flank steak to be had.

When it comes my turn to speak to the meat barista, I say, what cut of meat can I get that is similar to flank steak? He says, “OH”, I got some grass fed flank steak in the back.

What luck, I will take that, I say!

He comes out from the back and packs the meat of for me. I say to my husband, is he even gonna ask me how much flank steak I need??  He comes up, puts the meat on the scale and says, its 1.4 lbs, how’s that?

I respond, that is super great, thanks! He then says, $27.99. I turned immediately to my husband cracking a smile and say, “wha’d he just say”? He said, 27 dollars. I reach out and take my 27 dollar piece of flank steak and slap it in my cart. Luckily, I had a Winter white cosmo at Bonefish or else, it might not have been so comical.

Needless to say this is the most expensive flank steak I have ever purchased and will probably ever purchase. I will say that it was a beautiful looking cut of meat that looked super fresh.

I paid roughly $100 bucks at the register for the ingredients to this New Years day Ropa Vieja that is currently percolating in my crockpot. I thought flank was an inexpensive cut of meat, apparently, Whole Foods categorizes it differently. It is grass-fed you know. Well then. Hopefully, I can’t taste the grass part when consuming it. I will let you know.

I hope your new year is filled with happiness and lower cost meat products, but if you would like to pay more for your meat, head on over to Whole Foods!

xoxo

-stylishpiggy

Tags: beef, blog, Expensive, flank steak, funny, grass fed, meals, new years, rope vieja, Story, Whole Foods