no lockers or butcher shops in Cali?
There definitely are. I have a really awesome butcher shop just a few miles away:
El Toro Gourmet MeatsIt's where I go for "special occasion meat" though, usually, due to price. In a couple weeks my wife and I have our 2 year anniversary, and we planned to go to Ruth's Chris... Thinking that's not an option. So I'll buy her the $32/lb filet mignon and buy myself the $24/lb ribeye and grill it myself... But I'm not feeding the kids from that joint!
I hit Costco this morning. I got really lucky in that I thought they opened at 9:30, when they open at 10, and I showed up at 9:30. But they apparently have started letting in normal shoppers after the 8-9 AM "senior hour", so I walked right in. When I left at 9:55, it was like a flood of people into the store because they were coming for the normal store opening time.
No chuck roast or pork tenderloin, which was annoying. But I managed to get flank steak, some baby back ribs, and a rack of lamb. They didn't have fresh ground beef, but I realized they sell 5# bags of individually-wrapped 1# chubs of ground beef. And it's 85/15 rather than their usual 88/12, which I prefer.
Given that I end up portioning out the big packages of fresh roast beef, vacuum sealing, and freezing it anyway, I'm going to be looking for this stuff in the future.
I think we're all set on groceries now. Absent maybe a run to the normal store for fresh produce next week, we're good on meat/fish/etc for the foreseeable future.