A beef beef

Guy asks why I've not ranted lately about meat prices. I have, just not in print. I've had a lot of sticker-shock moments the last few months ... pick up something I'm used to buying, look at the price tag, and set it back down and walk off whimpering. My favorite cigars went from $25 a bundle to $27 to $29 in just a few months. I'm trying occasionally to smoke one fewer a day to make up the damage.
But, the meat, yes. Been a little cool, soup weather, and I had some odds and ends of vegetables in the bin, plus I got some barley a little while back [I like barley in vegetable soup]. Used to be you could buy soup bones for maybe a dime a pound. Hell, some places a butcher'd give you two or three pounds of bones, call 'em dog bones. I used to use beef shank for soup; it's got a lot of collagen, makes a rich and thick stock, but it's a prime ingredient of caldo de res, so the price has gotten a little high for a cheap meal. Asked my wife to bring me some soup bones and she came back with a package of bones – really, bones – with a price tag of $2.33 on them for a pound and a little bit more. Two bucks a pound for bones. I roasted them and made a nice stock but couldn't bear a meatless soup, so I went to the corner here looking for some cheap beef to throw into the pot. Ended up with three pieces of cross-cut short ribs. Nice cut, short ribs, meat on the bone is tasty ... used to braise short ribs with tomato sauce and thyme, used to bone them out and make stew with them, they sell the cross-cuts in Laredo as costillas, very nice. My short ribs cost me $7.12. The soup was aces, but it should be, since it had almost ten bucks worth of meat in it. What next? Not lower meat prices behind dropping feed prices, of that I am certain. And have you checked out the price of tongue lately?