So on Sunday I did send my husband in to take advantage of the last day of that meat sale and we got both the tri tip and the chuck shoulder roll.  For an 18 pound tri tip and a 25 pound chuck shoulder roll, both black angus, we spent $194.98.  The amounts are rounded, but it is very close.  I haven't cut up the chuck shoulder roll yet as its use or freeze by date is further out, but my son and I spent tonight (Thursday, it'll be Friday by the time this posts) cutting up the tri tip.

We ended up with 18 bags of steaks, some with 1 10 to 12 oz, and some with two 5 or 6 oz depending on if they were for one of the guys or for me and my daughter both, 3 servings of beef stir-fry in a 5 oz portion and half a gallon Ziploc bag full of odd pieces of meat and fat for grinding hamburger.  We will save that in the freezer until we have done the chuck roll.  We may save it even longer until we have done a lot more meat.  We may not have enough to bother getting the grinder out and dirty.  It's a lot of work to clean it.

I'm not sure if I will do a full tri tip again.  While it is a nice looking chunk of meat, having it switch grains in an area that is hidden almost completely by fat can make it hard to deal with and the fat on one side is really hard fat and the other is hard to hold onto, there is like nothing to it.  The knives dull really fast with that kind of fat and my husband had sharpened all of my knives well before I started.  I think maybe a top sirloin cap might be better for steaks the next time it goes on sale, though then I'd have to worry about lymph nodes and yuck.

Brisket is on sale right now for $3.99.  I think it is the surplus from St. Patrick's Day coming out of the freezers.  I am thinking on it for canning.  I don't like brisket for eating directly as a roast.  Well, cut up into many roasts and frozen and then made individually, but when cut up as stew meat and canned it comes out beautifully and it would be 80 cents a pound less than even the chuck shoulder roll was.  I will have to consider it.

I am glad I waited on the tomatoes, though, because they are on an even better sale this week, 10 cents less a pound, and it is warm enough now at night to let any that are not ready ripen in the garage and not have to worry about fruit flies hatching out from them in the house.  So I should be able to crockpot some tomato sauce over the weekend while my son and I are busy working in the garden assembling new garden beds.

Unfortunately, my husband will not be joining us, but for a god reason.  There is serious overtime the next three days.  Has hardly been any all year or for maybe six or seven months.  Figures it will be when the weather finally clears up and is sunny on a weekend.  But we can really make use of the money towards that stupid bathroom repair.  We are supposed to have the new person's quote for it sometime in the nest few days.  I was hoping it would be this week, but it is looking like it might get pushed to next week.  I know he is really busy trying to finish a project so it was just that, a hope.  Even with a quote, we still just might be another year of saving away anyway.  He came last Friday and that was his second time looking at the space.

The hope is DH can get in 20 hours of OT tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday.  He's got homemade tv dinners to choose from and says he is planning on the meatloaf/mashed potatoes/corn/normandy veggies one for dinner and the chicken fettucine Alfredo with broccoli one for lunch and he keeps a loaf of bread and peanutbutter in his office and some butter and jelly in the fridge at work so he can have a snack.  He has a bag of frozen homemade breakfast burritos or breakfast sandwiches that he replaces as he uses them in the work freezer, too.  He never has to go buy something at one of the nearby fast food places as long as he keeps the dates up to date on his food.  He used to go buy food a lot, so we did everything we could to hedge against that so he would stop buying so much food on take out.  Since he will be there from 8 a.m. until probably 8 p.m., maybe even 10 p.m., he will likely need it all.