Waiving Fees & Price of Beef

Waiving Fees & Price of Beef plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Winter is coming on but there is still time to get out and enjoy one of the many U.S. Forest Service recreation sites. GOod news during the upcoming Veteran’s Day holiday weekend, the U.S. Forest Service will waive fees at most of its day-use recreation sites. U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell says this is their way of saying thanks to the brave men and women - past and present - who put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe. The U.S. Forest Service operates approximately 17-thousand developed recreation sites nationwide. Approximately six-thousand of those require recreation fees.

If you are looking for good prices on meat at the grocery store, you will probably not find any better prices than right now. USDA food price economist, Ricky Volpe says there are many reasons for shoppers to expect to see higher and higher beef prices over the next year. 

VOLPE: I think there’s very little question we are going to see beef inflation pick up even more in 2013. There’s very little way around that because we’re dealing with structural inflation, we’re dealing with low inventories. What we’re seeing right now is inventories getting even lower but the demand for beef and veal both here in the U.S. and globally isn’t going anywhere so expect those prices to continue to shoot up.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

Our family is either fortunate, or not so fortunate to have a concord grape vine growing along the backside of our property. This year’s crop was exceptional, and we couldn’t stand the thought of wasting even one little grape. In years past we’ve made jelly, juice, and even grape pies to freeze for the holidays. We wanted something different this year. After living here for over a decade we have an over abundance of grape jelly in the cupboard. Even the neighbors have had enough! So, my hubby found a recipe for fruit leather with a very short ingredient list, grapes, that’s it, nothing but fresh concord grapes. First you mash the grapes, removing the skins and seeds from the pulp. A kitchen gadget made just for such an endeavor made this part fairly painless. Next it called for cooking the juice and pulp down to a jam like consistency, which the author said would take a couple of hours, give or take an hour, since it needed to be done on low. After nearly twelve hours of this, the grapes were finally the right consistency for the final step of cooking in the oven on low for two hours. What resulted was a really good grape fruit leather that most of the family likes. Will we do it again next year? Right now it looks like we might be vacationing in the south of France when the grapes are ready to harvest. Darn.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.