(
)
The kabobs aren’t the only things getting skewered at this year’s Memorial Day barbecue.
Hosts of the traditional holiday backyard cookout — even a budget affair — can expect to shell out an extra $45 for the fixings to serve a dozen.
The souped-up total comes to $199, about 29 percent more than it cost last year — and that doesn’t include soda, beer or booze.
According to the latest inflation data for metro New York, food cost hikes are popping up just in time to spoil the annual holiday that marks the start of summer and salutes fallen heroes who helped make America the land of plenty.
Gasoline’s 44 percent hike at the pumps this past year, along with similar diesel spikes, are squeezing industries and agriculture equally, said regional economist Martin Kohli of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Analysts said growers and food markets can no longer afford to soak up the rising costs and are passing them on to consumers at the fastest pace in several years.
Since last Memorial Day, lettuce for that cookout hamburger has climbed 28 percent while a 20-cent ear of sweet corn on the cob is now 50 cents. Want tomatoes on that burger? It’ll cost you 86 percent more than last year.
Growers, meanwhile, are abandoning usual crops of grains and vegetables in favor of loading acres with corn for ethanol in gasoline blends. A record 43 percent of the US corn crop went into gas tanks in 2010, or about 810 billion pounds, with next year’s gas-tank crop forecast at 1 trillion pounds, said the US Department of Agriculture.
Consumers have already cut back to make up for gas pump excesses, but can’t exactly dodge the barbecue bubble with cheaper menus.
The 29-percent jump in the cookout is based on a modest menu of ground beef burgers, ordinary franks, side dishes of potato salad, lettuce and tomatoes, and a dessert of supermarket ice cream. Coffee, which is up 20 percent, is included.
Propane is 20 percent higher here and the price of gas at the pump to get you to the store to buy all the goodies — well, you know how much that costs these days. tharp@nypost.com