Text 29937, 67 rader
Skriven 2012-09-27 22:26:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Recent extravagances
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I recently listened to a soft pitch spiel from a telemarketer that I
didn't hang up on. It was an invitation for a gourmet meat and
seafood truck to offer its wares at my house by appointment. I said
sure and met the guy Tuesday after work. The company is called High
Arctic Seafoods Ltd. They are a family owned business in Alberta who
also operate a bison ranch and have been going to High Level, Hay
River and Fort Smith for 10 years, but it was their first trip to
Yellowknife.

Their beef is all free range, almost organic, Canada Triple A (the top
third of the American Choice grade, almost prime), aged 21 days. All
their seafood is wild caught and sourced from Canada only, not Asia.
Nothing is brined or injected, not even their scallops.

I went in with the preconceived idea that I would not pay more than
$10 per pound for beef steak or $16 per pound for seafood, which
would eliminate lobster and crab but hopefully not jumbo shrimp.
Well everything was more expensive than that but after looking it
over critically I bought some stuff anyway. Everything carried a
price per pound that was almost identical to the price per kilogram
(i.e X 2.2) for comparable cuts locally and easily 5 times my normal
meat budget as I buy (and enjoy) a lot of cheap cuts like bulk
chicken thighs and bone-in, rind-on smoked pork shoulder.

I had a choice of gigantic (10-12 count) shrimp, lobster tails, crab
legs, lamb chops, pork chops, tenderloins and ribs, bacon, several
cuts of beef and bison steaks and jerky, 13 kinds of high end fish
steaks and fillets like halibut and swordfish, plus cod tongues,
cheeks and loins, chicken breasts and pre-made cordon bleu.

I ended up choosing some very lean bacon (6 pound box of 6 packages,
for $50) after inspecting the pork chops which were a lovely rosy
red, not white, a 6 pound box of 12 individually shrink wrapped,
beautifully marbled beef strip steaks for $144, and the biggest
extravagance of all, 32 massive 2 oz frozen raw B.C. oysters in
packs of 8 for $100. That's $3.125 per oyster! I can tell just by
looking that the bacon will be very good and the steaks equal to any
high end steak house's but those oysters better be pretty special
too. I told Roslind that we would go vegan every other night to get
back on budget!

If I am satisfied I think I will try their lamb chops, scallops and
swordfish next time.

The other extravagance was a freebie. There is a chocolate company in
Ottawa and Manhattan called Degas that is the exclusive North American
distributor for some most excellent Belgian truffles, which has a
part time sales rep in Yellowknife who sells to the diamond mines.
The normal truffles are quite large, a little over 1" in diameter
but they do a special order of gift packages for De Beers of
oversized 2" truffles (so they are in fact 8 times as large). I gave
the lady a little free real estate advise and she dropped off a box
of 24 giant chocolates as thanks. I joked with the bookkeeper that
it was a non-cash commission so the company gets half and if my
broker didn't find out she would have 12 of them.


Cheers

YK Jim, who is eating utility grade turkey tonight and saving the
good stuff for later.



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