My mother was a financial genius. Anyone able to feed a family of 8 (six kids and two adults... well okay... six kids, one adult and one Dad.) as well as she did on the budget that she had is nothing short of a miracle worker. So, needless to say, every single "budget friendly" trick I know, I learned from watching her.
Our primary source of iron was ground beef. From her famous spaghetti sauce chock full of meatballs to her beef stroganoff to burgers that dad cooked perfectly on the grill, we rarely strayed from this staple of American cuisine. However, both my parents were steak fanatics. They absolutely loved a nice rare hunk of unadulterated beefy goodness on their plate. Unfortunately, big juicy ribeyes (and of course, filet mignon for Mom) were not budget friendly enough to make this more than an incredibly rare treat. So, to break up the ground beef monotony, mom would occasionally pick up
cube steaks from the grocery store and pan fry them for us. To us kids, it was awesome. The portions were generous and we could drown those tough, beefy cuts in A1 sauce and devour them with our mashed potatoes.
So, when I "grew up" and started living on my own (you know, almost 10 years after graduating from college) I had an epiphany. I was walking through the grocery store, checking out the price per pound of various proteins and lo and behold, there was a small package of three cube steaks for about $4/lb. After subsisting on ramen and $1.99/lb packages of chicken thighs, I thought I would treat myself.
