Turkey dinner for just $189 a plate
Posted
Nov 09 2007, 12:25 PM
by
Donna Freedman
The turkey ads showed up in my mailbox the other day. This week I can get a gobbler for 39 to 79 cents a pound, or even for free if I were to spend $100 at one store.
Compare that with the $4.99-a-pound cost for the "heritage" (exotic breed) turkeys featured in a recent article in Pacific Northwest, the Seattle Times Sunday magazine.
Author Lynda V. Mapes described supermarket turkeys as having "cottony meat" and as being "so blanderized by industrial-style production it can be like eating sawdust with butter."
The chef of a renowned regional restaurant orders the heirloom turkeys each year, Mapes wrote. "Not just any bird, after all, would do for his nine-course holiday dinner that goes for $189 per plate and up, including wine."
Last year's menu included a choice of poached white meat on king bolete mushroom bread pudding, confit of leg on mashed delicata squash with shallot, or herbed crépinette on cabbage with quince. Then there were the side dishes, like cauliflower fenugreek soup with slivered scallop, Montana paddlefish caviar on sea urchin flan, and "gently roasted" black cod with carrot lemon-thyme broth and three colors of beets.
I don't doubt that those high-end birds taste terrific. But I cook the cheapest turkey I can find each November, and have yet to encounter the flavor of either cotton or buttered sawdust.
Shrinking paychecks, social statements
I'm all for genetic diversity in both livestock and seeds, and definitely believe in the concept of family farms. (I grew up in a family-farm region.) But this article rubbed me the wrong way, and not just because I had to look up the word "crépinette."
What I inferred from the piece is that anyone with any brains/class would go for an heirloom bird, with or without the paddlefish caviar. They're yummy. They're part of sustainable agriculture. Their feathers are beautiful. What's not to like?
The fact is, many Americans have a hard time paying for regular groceries, let alone Thanksgiving feasts. The turkeys from the farm mentioned in the article average 8 to 13 pounds, or $39.92 to $64.87. At 39 cents per pound, the cost of supermarket gobblers in that size range is $3.12 to $5.07.
For some people, $39.92 is a week's worth of groceries. They don't have what Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott called "the economic luxury of making a broader social statement." Scott was referring to the fact that many people need to stretch their dollars as far as possible.
That goes for groceries as well as gewgaws. It's not that low- and middle-income people don't want to support family farms and sustainable agriculture. It's that they can't afford to do it. This week, eggs are a dollar a dozen at Albertsons and $2.99 a dozen at PCC Natural Markets. Which do you think a cash-strapped buyer will choose?
Incidentally, a crépinette is a small sausage wrapped in caul fat.
Shopping for a better world?
I think concepts like food co-ops and community-supported agriculture are swell ideas. But not everyone can pay the freight -- and some people can be a little sanctimonious about their own choices.
I personally know a couple who choose to buy mostly organic foods because they want their kids to have the healthiest possible start. To do this they must sacrifice in other ways. They don't make a big deal about it. They just do it.
Meanwhile, some of the people who rant about Wal-Mart and factory farms and diets for small planets do so from a position of privilege. They can afford to shop at specialty markets and sip shade-grown, fair-trade organic coffee because they have good jobs and/or don't have kids to feed and house.
I had this discussion with an old friend and fellow frugalist. He wondered about people who call for boycotts of big-box stores. These people may be well-intentioned, but he believes they are not taking into account "the real needs of, say, a single parent on low wages desperately looking for the cheapest diapers she can find."
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm all about intentional buying. To me, that means being realistic about the money you have. A minimum-wage earner probably doesn't shop for a better world: "Are these carrots organic? Is this chicken free-range?" He or she is more likely to be in the position of, "I've got $30 left until payday. How am I going to eat?"
That's why people shop at Wal-Mart, and why people buy the cheapest turkeys they can find: because it's what they can afford.
To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the rich are different -- they can afford Thanksgiving dinner that costs $189 a plate and up. Including wine.
