This Little Piggy went to the Ferry Building...

I’d imagine that many born-again carnivores have to summon up the courage to cook meat at home. I know I did. It was surprisingly easy, really. First a Thanksgiving turkey (with 4 pairs of rubber gloves to remove the innards), then some Thai pork shoulder which I hacked apart while chanting “it’s okay, it’s already dead, it’s already dead…”, and I never looked back. Apart from the fact that I love to cook, I knew cooking meat was inevitable for me because I really wanted to make a commitment to eating “good” meat. Humanely raised, organic, no hormones, that sort of thing. This is hard to do when you go out to eat. If you really want to know where your food came from, you either need to eat exclusively at places like Delfina, or you need to cook it yourself.

And so I ventured into the world of butcher shops. It was, and is still, a bit intimidating. All those strange bits of raw meat, and me with not a clue what to do with them. I really think meat should come with instructions. Thankfully I've found some pretty helpful butcher shops in San Francisco.

My first was Drewes Brothers in Noe Valley. I love that place. It’s a great independent butcher shop, owned by two brothers that seem to have a thing for heavy metal. I don’t really approve of the metal, but I do feel good spending my money there. If there’s a long wait when you go to pick up your Thanksgiving turkey, they have free tequila to pass the time. Patron, not the cheap stuff.

Sometimes I go to Prather Ranch in the Ferry Building – they have a nice selection of meats and the music is better than at Drewes Brothers. There's a moddish guy that works there and he's usually playing the Jam or the Buzzcocks as loud as he can get away with in a place like the Ferry Building. And everyone there is friendly too. Butchers are friendly people, I’ve discovered. They don't give you any of that snotty Rainbow Grocery attitude. (Don't get me wrong, I do love Rainbow Grocery, but sometimes I feel like everyone's sneering at me because I didn't bring a jar from home to put my bulk olives in.)

Mostly I love to go to BiRite. They have beef from Marin Sun Farms and other great stuff too. I even bought a duck breast there once - my first! But everything in that store is great so it can be dangerous as I usually end up with loads of cheese and wine and ice cream too.

Now a lot has been written about eating local, sustainable, humanely raised food. And a lot more has been written about how this is an elitist concept that only a few people can afford to practice. Well, I don’t know. Last time I went to Prather Ranch, I got 2 pounds of ground beef, 2 filet mignon and 2 pounds of pork shoulder for about $60. This seemed pretty cheap to me. I mean, $60 for big hunks of various animals? I had to pay more that that to adopt one little dog, and we have to feed HER, not the other way around.

I guess this is really one of the great advantages of being a born-again carnivore: I have absolutely NO IDEA how much meat is supposed to cost! $60 for a big bag-o’-meat, is that expensive? Let's do the math...for $60 we got a fantastic steak dinner, hamburgers, lasagne bolognese, pulled pork sandwiches and papardelle with a slow-cooked pork sugo. 5 meals x 2 people = 10 meals @ $6 each, which makes it almost as cheap as the taqueria on the corner. And ain’t nobody calling that place elitist.