Because food and thereby, restaurants, tend to be regional, I knew when we came out here that I would be sacrificing some of my beloved culinary addictions. Since I'm hungry and in a sentimental mood today, I'm going to share a list of some of the centers of my food universe that I no longer get to frequent. I do try, however, to eat at every single one of them when I'm home to make up for it.
Ted's Cafe Escondido: The best chips and tortillas I have ever had. The rest of their food is pretty good too. They also have a great lunch menu with very reasonable prices. This is an absolute can't-miss when I'm home.
El Chico: Not the best or most authentic mexican food on the planet, but the main draw here is that they also serve Kraft mac and cheese and corndogs, so the kids will actually eat without whining that there's nothing they like. Prices are also quite reasonable, and their queso is fairly good.
Chipotle: I like that you can see it as they make it, it tastes great, it's pretty fresh, and again, affordable. I like to get the soft-shell tacos. The closest one is an hour away, which beats 10 hours, but is still too far to go frequently.
Tarahumara's: a family-run joint with the absolute fastest service anywhere. On Earth. One time I had my food within five minutes (and it was perfectly cooked, too.) I don't think I've ever not cleaned my entire plate when I've been here. It's so good I literally can't stop eating til it's empty.
Poblano Grill: this chain opened up about six months before we moved, and I immediately became a fan. Apparently lots of other people feel the same, based on the ratings.
Taco Bueno: (sensing a theme yet?) Again, not the best or most authentic, but for fast food mexican, it's fresher and better than most. Excellent for when you're broke but still want good food. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't like Bueno.
Pei Wei: the cheaper, faster version of PF Chang's. Marvelous Asian food and a great variety at reasonable prices (unlike Chang's itself.) Another can't-miss.
Johnny Carino's: My favorite Italian place ev-ah. Their bread is awesome, their food is awesome, their service is awesome, their atmosphere is awesome. Soldier Boy and I ate our first meal together here. Again, there is one about an hour away, but that's a lot of fuel just to go out to eat.
Braum's: this is THE place for ice cream at home. My favorite is cherry limeade sherbet. They're probably also just as well known for their burgers, which are big and delicious.
To be fair, there are a couple of new places out here that I have become attached to; I will probably miss them when we leave, but not enough to want to stay out here. They are:
Hungry Howie's Pizza: the pizza itself is fairly good for an inexpensive carry-out/delivery-only place, but the flavored crust is the big deal here. There's something like six different flavors to choose from and all the ones I've tried have been great. The kids love it too.
Longhorn Steakhouse: on the pricey side, but no more than Carino's or Ted's. It has a real "Texas" vibe to it, but then again, if it didn't, I couldn't consider it a real steakhouse. Good steaks, good bread, good sides. They have coupons, too, which is unusual for a steakhouse, but endears me to them even more.
And we all know how important coupons have become to me recently.
About Me
- Soonerchick
- I have a Bachelor's in Psychology, a Master's in Human Relations, and a Ph.D. in telling people what to do. I raise children, dogs, cats, and hermit crabs and cultivate crabgrass and pretty weeds. I am teaching myself to cook, not because I love to cook but because I love to eat. I love to travel, read, and take pictures; I also like to write, so you'll get to read a lot about all the aforementioned subjects plus about anything else I happen to feel like sharing with you. I'll take all your questions and may even give some back with answers if you're lucky and I'm feeling helpful (or bored.)
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Couponing the paycheck away
I've always been a casual coupon user. If I notice a good one, for something I've been wanting to try, I'll try to remember to bring it with me to the store. Fuel prices of late, however, have catapulted the need for $ cutbacks anywhere I can make them. To that end, I have turned the furnace down 3 degrees and tried to consolidate all my errands to one or two days a week. Which means I have to stay home the other five. Which is driving me insane.
So yesterday I decided it was time to jump back into the coupon pool and see what I came up with. I regularly subscribe to Groupon and Living Social, but the problem with those is that you have to pay up front before you can use the coupon or discount. And they're usually for things like restaurants, carpet cleaning, entertainment, or spas/salons. When you're scraping nickels out of the car seats to put fuel in your truck, like me, you tend not to have extraneous cash to fritter away on such luxuries like a flippin' haircut, although I've needed one for over 9 months now, and we haven't seen a movie in a theater in over a year, and we can't afford to eat at most of those art-house restaurants anyway and even if we could, they're not usually ones that welcome kids and since we can't afford a babysitter we stick to places like McAlisters that offer two free kids meals with an adult entree purchase Monday-Thursday.
Although I will admit that both of those services offer some damn good deals if you can afford to shell out up front.
One of my husband's friends routinely posts on facebook (hereafter known as FB on this blog) about her coupon savings. She's bought every grocery item you can imagine for nearly free, at least once. She uses a website back at home that consolidates coupons from every possible source and lists them out neatly so that you can pick and choose what you want and then print them out. However, since I'm half a continent away from home, I can't use most of them, so I have to hunt for my own. I dream of the day I can go to Target or Wal-Mart and walk out with six bags of groceries, having paid something like $20 for all of it.
I'm not there yet. Mostly because the majority of the coupons I encounter are not for things I use. I realize that this is because the whole purpose of coupons, from the manufacturer's perspective, is to entice the customer to try their product, and they don't need to entice people to buy things they are already buying anyway, but frankly, I don't care about the manufacturers. I care about me and my family and feeding all of us on a thrice-daily basis.
So far, all the coupons I've cut out and printed off amount to about a $7 savings on my grocery bill this paycheck. Not enough, sonny boy. Where are the coupons for milk, eggs, rice, taco shells, sliced bread, shredded cheese, butter, or trash bags? Come on, give me something I can really use. I don't give a rat's butt about .75 off a box of Claritin, which I don't use anyway because it doesn't work. I want to save a dollar or two off milk, which is almost $4 a gallon. It's almost cheaper to have your own cow.
While I'm on the subject, why is it that healthier foods are always so much more expensive anyway? If Michelle Obama wants us to eat healthier, why doesn't she introduce some REAL eating-habit-changing legislation, like requiring healthy foods to be priced half as much as the crap that's bad for you? I'll be honest, a lot of people buy soda (or "pop", as we call it where I'm from) because a two-liter costs $1.09 versus a gallon of juice that costs $4.50. That family-size box of Froot Loops costs less that the paperback-novel size box of Kashi granola. If it means the difference between eating and not eating, I'm gonna go for the Froot Loops. Is the point of Whole Foods and other stores like it simply to drive home the insinuation that only the wealthy should be allowed to eat healthy? Is this just really (literally) Survival of The Fittest based on economic scale?
I've already switched to store brands for a lot of things like paper towels, kleenex, toilet paper, baggies, trash bags, and a host of other non-food items. I tend to be more of a snob about food, though; I've tried the store brand spaghettios and they suck. Milk is milk no matter what label is on it, though, so it's one of the few things I'll go generic on, food-wise.
I've "liked" a page on FB that is all about couponing, in a effort to pick up some more deals here and there. And although it costs $2, I'm gonna go buy a Sunday paper this weekend since the P&G coupon section is supposed to be in it. I hope it's not a waste of $2, because I can feed myself lunch at McD's with that much. Or buy half a gallon of gas.
So yesterday I decided it was time to jump back into the coupon pool and see what I came up with. I regularly subscribe to Groupon and Living Social, but the problem with those is that you have to pay up front before you can use the coupon or discount. And they're usually for things like restaurants, carpet cleaning, entertainment, or spas/salons. When you're scraping nickels out of the car seats to put fuel in your truck, like me, you tend not to have extraneous cash to fritter away on such luxuries like a flippin' haircut, although I've needed one for over 9 months now, and we haven't seen a movie in a theater in over a year, and we can't afford to eat at most of those art-house restaurants anyway and even if we could, they're not usually ones that welcome kids and since we can't afford a babysitter we stick to places like McAlisters that offer two free kids meals with an adult entree purchase Monday-Thursday.
Although I will admit that both of those services offer some damn good deals if you can afford to shell out up front.
One of my husband's friends routinely posts on facebook (hereafter known as FB on this blog) about her coupon savings. She's bought every grocery item you can imagine for nearly free, at least once. She uses a website back at home that consolidates coupons from every possible source and lists them out neatly so that you can pick and choose what you want and then print them out. However, since I'm half a continent away from home, I can't use most of them, so I have to hunt for my own. I dream of the day I can go to Target or Wal-Mart and walk out with six bags of groceries, having paid something like $20 for all of it.
I'm not there yet. Mostly because the majority of the coupons I encounter are not for things I use. I realize that this is because the whole purpose of coupons, from the manufacturer's perspective, is to entice the customer to try their product, and they don't need to entice people to buy things they are already buying anyway, but frankly, I don't care about the manufacturers. I care about me and my family and feeding all of us on a thrice-daily basis.
So far, all the coupons I've cut out and printed off amount to about a $7 savings on my grocery bill this paycheck. Not enough, sonny boy. Where are the coupons for milk, eggs, rice, taco shells, sliced bread, shredded cheese, butter, or trash bags? Come on, give me something I can really use. I don't give a rat's butt about .75 off a box of Claritin, which I don't use anyway because it doesn't work. I want to save a dollar or two off milk, which is almost $4 a gallon. It's almost cheaper to have your own cow.
While I'm on the subject, why is it that healthier foods are always so much more expensive anyway? If Michelle Obama wants us to eat healthier, why doesn't she introduce some REAL eating-habit-changing legislation, like requiring healthy foods to be priced half as much as the crap that's bad for you? I'll be honest, a lot of people buy soda (or "pop", as we call it where I'm from) because a two-liter costs $1.09 versus a gallon of juice that costs $4.50. That family-size box of Froot Loops costs less that the paperback-novel size box of Kashi granola. If it means the difference between eating and not eating, I'm gonna go for the Froot Loops. Is the point of Whole Foods and other stores like it simply to drive home the insinuation that only the wealthy should be allowed to eat healthy? Is this just really (literally) Survival of The Fittest based on economic scale?
I've already switched to store brands for a lot of things like paper towels, kleenex, toilet paper, baggies, trash bags, and a host of other non-food items. I tend to be more of a snob about food, though; I've tried the store brand spaghettios and they suck. Milk is milk no matter what label is on it, though, so it's one of the few things I'll go generic on, food-wise.
I've "liked" a page on FB that is all about couponing, in a effort to pick up some more deals here and there. And although it costs $2, I'm gonna go buy a Sunday paper this weekend since the P&G coupon section is supposed to be in it. I hope it's not a waste of $2, because I can feed myself lunch at McD's with that much. Or buy half a gallon of gas.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Things I'm Thankful For, Part One
You know those fun-filled all-night sleepovers with your kids where they're up projectile vomiting every thirty minutes and you have to change the kid's bedding and clothes so many times that you run out of clean bedding and clothes and the unbalanced washer is bouncing all over the laundry room (which happens to be across the hall from your bedroom) all night trying to keep up with the growing mountain of crap you keep throwing at it? We had one in our bedroom last night.
This was a few days after taking Soldier Boy to the ER one evening for the same thing. Apparently all the boys in this house have been trading this virus back and forth for about a week now. I'm hoping it's one of those "y-chromosome" viruses that doesn't affect the mother, because I can't afford to be sick while they are. Frankly, I can't afford to be sick ever.
Despite the roughly hour and a half or so of sleep that Soldier Boy and I got, I have to say that I am thankful for a few things, at least.
1. Soldier Boy was actually HOME to help with the mess. I did not have to hold the baby, clean the baby, change the baby's sheets, and urge him to drink some water all by myself. After three years of doing it myself, having the help made it almost easy. Almost.
2. Said baby (who is nearly four, by the way) does not sleep in our bed anymore. This is a fairly recent development, having occurred only about six months ago when we moved. (Don't judge me, he's the baby and everyone knows that by the time you've been schooled by several kids in nighttime battles, you just give in and let them sleep wherever they want so everyone can get some rest.) Thus, now when he gets sick, it's in his own bed and does not destroy ours. Toddler bed sheets are a lot easier to rip off and throw in the washing machine than queen-size ones. Moreover, we don't have to smell his vomit-scented breath in our faces or take a shower because he's thrown up all over US.
3. I am still a stay at home mom at this moment. This will be changing soon, but nights like last night make me grateful that I don't have to fake sick calling into work. Or worse, be threatened with involuntary termination if I don't go in, and cry and scream and sob in a desperate manner to find a non-psychotic person to come stay with the contagious baby so I can go to work and sulk and pout and feel guilty all day, all in the name of staying Employed.
4. The baby, although he is in his own bed, still sleeps in our room. We have been devising ways to evict him from our bedroom and out to his own room for awhile, but I just haven't had the balls to do it yet, because he sleeps pretty much peacefully in our room and I don't want to have to get up seventeen times every night to walk to the other end of the house to cover him back up, reassure him that it's not the end of the world, or help him to the bathroom. When he's sick, it is particularly convenient that he is in our room, because he's less than five feet from me and I can get to him quickly before he drags the vomit-covered blankie and jammies across the carpet and down the hall, crying and spewing. If he were in his own room, not only would I have to clean up THAT mess, but I would also have to bring him in bed with us so I could keep a close eye on him while he's sick, and then you're right back to the whole sick-baby-destroying-your-bed-and-breathing-vomit-breath-on-you scenario again. With him in OUR room, but in his OWN bed, it's the best of both worlds when he's sick.
5. It's a gray rainy day outside, so I don't feel like I should be out running errands or getting some exercise or being outside in general. Everyone knows that it's better to be sick (or nurse a sick person) when the weather is also sickly. That way, you don't feel like you're missing out on much.
6. I have a washing machine. I can't tell you how important this is when you have a sick kid. The washing machine is my favorite appliance pretty much all the time. I'm fond of the fridge, the oven, and the microwave as well, but dragging loads of smelly, messy clothes to a laundromat and 'washing' them in some equally dirty-looking machine that Bubba's wife probably used to wash the chicken shit out of his coveralls and skid marks out of his Hanes makes me want to simultaneously throttle someone and bathe myself in bleach. Thus, I (heart) my washing machine. Which I now have to go put another load of vomit blankets into.
This was a few days after taking Soldier Boy to the ER one evening for the same thing. Apparently all the boys in this house have been trading this virus back and forth for about a week now. I'm hoping it's one of those "y-chromosome" viruses that doesn't affect the mother, because I can't afford to be sick while they are. Frankly, I can't afford to be sick ever.
Despite the roughly hour and a half or so of sleep that Soldier Boy and I got, I have to say that I am thankful for a few things, at least.
1. Soldier Boy was actually HOME to help with the mess. I did not have to hold the baby, clean the baby, change the baby's sheets, and urge him to drink some water all by myself. After three years of doing it myself, having the help made it almost easy. Almost.
2. Said baby (who is nearly four, by the way) does not sleep in our bed anymore. This is a fairly recent development, having occurred only about six months ago when we moved. (Don't judge me, he's the baby and everyone knows that by the time you've been schooled by several kids in nighttime battles, you just give in and let them sleep wherever they want so everyone can get some rest.) Thus, now when he gets sick, it's in his own bed and does not destroy ours. Toddler bed sheets are a lot easier to rip off and throw in the washing machine than queen-size ones. Moreover, we don't have to smell his vomit-scented breath in our faces or take a shower because he's thrown up all over US.
3. I am still a stay at home mom at this moment. This will be changing soon, but nights like last night make me grateful that I don't have to fake sick calling into work. Or worse, be threatened with involuntary termination if I don't go in, and cry and scream and sob in a desperate manner to find a non-psychotic person to come stay with the contagious baby so I can go to work and sulk and pout and feel guilty all day, all in the name of staying Employed.
4. The baby, although he is in his own bed, still sleeps in our room. We have been devising ways to evict him from our bedroom and out to his own room for awhile, but I just haven't had the balls to do it yet, because he sleeps pretty much peacefully in our room and I don't want to have to get up seventeen times every night to walk to the other end of the house to cover him back up, reassure him that it's not the end of the world, or help him to the bathroom. When he's sick, it is particularly convenient that he is in our room, because he's less than five feet from me and I can get to him quickly before he drags the vomit-covered blankie and jammies across the carpet and down the hall, crying and spewing. If he were in his own room, not only would I have to clean up THAT mess, but I would also have to bring him in bed with us so I could keep a close eye on him while he's sick, and then you're right back to the whole sick-baby-destroying-your-bed-and-breathing-vomit-breath-on-you scenario again. With him in OUR room, but in his OWN bed, it's the best of both worlds when he's sick.
5. It's a gray rainy day outside, so I don't feel like I should be out running errands or getting some exercise or being outside in general. Everyone knows that it's better to be sick (or nurse a sick person) when the weather is also sickly. That way, you don't feel like you're missing out on much.
6. I have a washing machine. I can't tell you how important this is when you have a sick kid. The washing machine is my favorite appliance pretty much all the time. I'm fond of the fridge, the oven, and the microwave as well, but dragging loads of smelly, messy clothes to a laundromat and 'washing' them in some equally dirty-looking machine that Bubba's wife probably used to wash the chicken shit out of his coveralls and skid marks out of his Hanes makes me want to simultaneously throttle someone and bathe myself in bleach. Thus, I (heart) my washing machine. Which I now have to go put another load of vomit blankets into.
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