No Bad Kittens: Pork Shoulder at Safeway is $0.99 per pound

At Safeway right now, you can get pork shoulder (pork shank? pork steak?) for $0.99 per pound. I picked up 6 pounds of pork shoulder for less than $6. I took it home and only half of it will fit into my crock pot, and that's after attacking it with a cleaver. The kittens were suitably impressed by all the excitement of dismembering a dead pig and cramming it into a crock pot.

Later I discovered why this cut of meat is so cheap. It comes with bones, great heavy bones that you pay for but cannot eat no matter how long you run the crock pot. I guess that's why this cut of meat is so cheap, because only half of it is edible. The edible half includes the generous inch of pork fat floating on top of the crock pot. If you are not on a pork fat diet, then you have to discount everything slimy and gross, and you're down to just a little bit of meat bobbing around with the potatoes and carrots.

So once I pulled out the bones and skimmed and re-skimmed and re-contra-skimmed off all the fat, I had a big plate of something that I would not, could not eat ("I do not like fat bones of ham, I do not like them Sam-I-am").

But then I thought of two fuzzy souls living here who probably would enjoy congealed pork fat, reconstituted right back onto the bone -- just like their mother used to do for them out on the Serengeti. I put it on the floor on a plate, the bones as big as kittens, fat globules oozing slowly as only fat globules can. The kittens sniffed dubiously at the mess and looked up at me. Meow? I sighed and rolled my eyes, "Okay, kittens, this is a gazelle I hit with the car on the way home from Safeway. Each of you has a drumstick." They roared their approval and leapt upon the carcass.