The wicker suitcase full of sauce I received last week had both a flavour and a purpose: it was time for a meat wave!

President’s Choice is relaunching some of their meat prodcuts with fancy titles: air-chilled chicken, anti-biotic and hormone-free beef and pork, cow parts with certification, etc. The sauces (and the wicker suitcase, which keeps getting mentioned because it is completely awesome) were merely a bonus to go along with my real project: go to a Real Canadian Superstore armed with an assortment of coupons that would allow me to get FREE MEAT, then cook said meat for eating times. Hooray!

Ed and I made our way to the store on Saturday, where we picked up some Tender and Tasty steak, a package of Air Chilled chicken drumsticks, and a rack of Free From pork ribs. Also, I bought two tank tops and a bag of M&Ms. We loaded our scooters up with our FREE MEAT and made our way back home to begin the process of marination for delicious experimentation.

Fun fact: I am not good at buying ribs, either. It’s common knowledge that I cannot eat things off bone – I can’t do wings or ribs or t-bone steaks – but it would appear that I am also a fail at the purchasing of ribs for other people to eat. The first rack I picked up caused a massive meat tsunami that I had to fix, and then I had to choose and re-choose my pork – ribs look like spinal columns. I can’t cook spinal columns. It is just a great big NO.

The suitcase sauces were both President’s Choice brand: a steak marinade, and a “Memories of Dad’s Grill” sauce with maple, apple and beer flavour. We used the memory sauce on the ribs, the steak sauce on the steak, and my favourite jerk sauce on the chicken, then told Josh and Shan to get their asses over to our place because there was no way in hell the two of us could eat that much meat. It’s good to share, and also I am not interested in achieving death by protein. We were worried that the Dad Sauce was going to be too sweet, so we added some freshly ground chili pepper to the marinades and let it all sit in the fridge for several hours.

It did come to pass that grilling things inside the house is not a good idea. We used a stovetop grill (being too lazy to actually fire up the BBQ), which worked wonderfully but made the apartment smoky as all hell. We had to open all the windows and use several fans to clear some of the smoke, and everything sort of smelled like pork for the rest of the night which is not necessarily a bad thing. A little paranoid about uncooked meat and having the fire department called on us, we sent Josh downstairs to finish the cooking process on a real BBQ while Shan and I lounged about idly, eating fruit. Excellent.

With the meat all cooked and smelling wonderful and the air in our apartment clearing a little, we dove into the mountain of flesh with delight. It was all really, really good – the steak in particular lived up to the name “Tender and Tasty”. The Dad Sauce on the ribs actualy turned out to be lovely and not at all overly sweet, and the chicken drumsticks were fantastic with the jerk sauce. All in all, it was the tastiest selling out I’ve ever done. I would gladly eat a large pile of meat in the name of consumer science any time.

This is all fine and good for the North Shore crew, but the FREE MEAT isn’t just limited to the awesome (ie: us). President’s Choice will be giving out coupons for FREE MEAT this Wednesday in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax from 4 to 6pm. They’ll be moving from Skytrain/C-Train/Subway/Bus station to station until all the coupons are gone, so be on the look out for people dressed as butchers (see where I was going with that whole “beware the butcher” thing? yeah, I plan this shit out). I can probably guarantee that the butchers will most likely NOT chase you around a dungeon with a meat cleaver, but just in case, be ready to grab your FREE MEAT coupon and run.

FREE MEAT! Delicious.

saucy meat goodness