Let’s face it: I can extol the glories of homemade chicken and vegetable broths until Hades freezes over. In reality, the only people making their own broth are me and an eighty-year old women in Siberia.

from The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper— a cookbook with great recipes!

Here’s where we left off in the Sansing Story:

So when I told Mr. Big Food I had decided on The Frug’s French Onion Soup for Marica Cooks Monday and that I was going to need some beef bones, do you know what he said? “We better get to Sansing before they close.” (Sansing’s Meat Processing, Salvage Grocery, and Sod Farm is only open until noon on Saturday. Closed Sunday.)

So we packed Rocky & Missy up in the backseat of the truck and headed down the road to Sansing’s Meat Processing, Salvage Grocery, and Sod Farm.

It was packed! Packed! We had to wait in line– and there were two ladies at the counter! When it was our turn, Mr. Big Food asked if they had any beef shank and the lady asked, “Soup bones? Let me look.” And she walked through the salvage grocery portion of the minuscule “store” to one of many freezer sections and retrieved one three-pound bag labeled “SOUP BONES,” but she said she thought there were more and she disappeared and then reappeared and then we took our place in line– again– and waited to pay for our 8 pounds of SOUP BONES.

As an aside (and although I didn’t do the exact math) SOUP BONES are going for about a buck a pound.

Anyway… when it was again our turn at the counter, another lady smiled at me and asked, “Are you the lady who called about SOUP BONES?” I answered that I was not and she informed us that some other lady had called earlier asking if they had SOUP BONES. ¡Imagine that!

Let us pause this story for a moment to comment on reality.

There would appear to be two distinct realities with regard to homemade broths. In one reality there exists the author of The Splendid Table’s How to Cook Dinner and an 80 year old woman in Sibera. In another there exists Mr. Big Food, some anonymous women presumably within driving distance of Sansing’s (i.e., not the Siberian), myself, and the other folks who are going to buy those six additional bags of SOUP BONES with which the lady appeared.

To paraphrase a phrase I’ve heard too many times as I’ve been watching the commercials running during televised games of the National Football Disgrace: Those City Mice just don’t get it. We Country Mice do indeed make homemade broths & stocks.

Back to Sansing’s Meat Processing, Salvage Grocery, and Sod Farm.

If you ignore the Salvage Grocery Part of the operation, Sansing’s is pretty respectable. (I know nothing of the Sod Farm.) Whole ribeyes are $8.99 / pound and the butcher will slice them for you. Nothing like a ribeye on the grill, don’t you know? One of the fancy restaurants in Starkville features a drink called the “Sansing slinger.” It’s essentially a Manhattan with a large piece of Sansing bacon marinating in bourbon. Heavenly. If you have’t thought of the delight of a bacon-salty Manhattan,.. . Well, you poor City Mouse, you.

Anyway– as I said, Sansing’s was packed!

There were guys coming and going with boxes and paper sacks and Mr. Sansing his-self was checking things off on a clipboard.

Let us pause, yet again, to ask, “Why?”

Why would a 5 & dime Meat Processing, Salvage Grocery, & Sod Farm in the literal middle of nowhere be busy on a Saturday morning in January– and a rainy morning, at that?

🙂

Two words: Deer. Meat.

And they close at noon on Saturday.

Boom! Country Mice!!

RIGHT. ON.

Originally posted January 10, 2016.