And Socrates other quote, "Semper ubi, sub ubi", meaning "Always wear, underwear" (Funny to be quoting a greek who was dead long before Latin was a language, har).

This is why I prefer to can my own meat products. If you know what you are doing, you don't have to rely on expensive, subgrade canned meats from the grocer. You can put up your own hamburger, chicken, fish, corned beef sausage, even steaks, and you can do it for a lot less money and a lot better taste.

I plan on putting up at least 200 quarts of canned meat this year. This will include Shad, Salmon, beef, chicken, turkey, elk or deer (or both, if I get lucky), and even some pork. Between the wife and I, we can go through about 1 1/2 quarts of meat a week. We can also take advantage of special purchases as the time allows. I like that I can control the sodium content, the preservatives, the fillers, the fat content, and the flavor. If I want to can a potted meat product, that is just a matter of getting some quality cuts and running them through the grinder a couple times, then processing them through a recipe.

Yeah, it's work, but it is good clean work, and it allows me to cultivate some valuable life skills. It requires some initial cash outlay, but if you amortize the cost of the equipment and materials, it pays for itself pretty fast. More importantly, the implicit values of eating my own product are immediately apparent.

Still, I have other committments and interests, so I stock store bought canned meats in my pantry for now, with the intent of using them while I build my jar collection and get ready for the Shad run here in May/August. For the cost of a license, I can catch and keep as many 4-6 lb fish as I care to. There's no daily catch limit, no possession limit, and there's 4 million fish in the run, and only maybe 50 or so who fish it. It's not uncommon to catch 30 fish a day during the peak! Talk about a great, inexpensive, abundant food source!