West Virginia Sucks

[Al B. Sure!]

TMM, you're making too much sense.

To satisfy their rich elitist appetites, you need to eat like Marie Antoinette. Anything less is unacceptable for anything but dogs.

[Elok]

You're persistently missing the point, Al. If you cannot eat the more expensive food items, that is a lost opportunity you're refusing to factor in here. It's actually a rather minor point compared to the problem that your food stamp "hustle" forces you to live in a miserable cockroach-infested HUD project of some sort, but a lower food budget means fewer options. There's such a thing as good, cheap food, but at the very least your diet will have much less variety and some things will be right off the list. For example, while I don't eat seafood in general, I'd be very suspicious of any non-canned fish I could get really cheap...

And that's leaving off: nice clothes (if you go in for that), vacations, good furniture, most hobbies, dinner out, entertainment out, diminished romantic prospects, a decent car, presents and other special-occasion expenses, and above all NOT LIVING IN A ****HOLE.

[The Mad Monk]

I think we all agree that Al needs to be someplace better, but equating frugality with putting up with crap is really counterproductive.

[Elok]

I guess tastes are subjective...but dang.

[The Mad Monk]

Let's put it this way: you need money to go places. Getting a job is one part of the equation, but saving money is the other. You sacrifice in some areas to get ahead in others. If he's screwing up other aspects, go after him on that, but don't dump on him for what he's doing right.

[Elok]

? I think you missed the beginning of this argument, TMM. It started with him sorta-praising shysters who live off foodstamps and handouts, describing it as an admirable "hustle." To which I (along with Dinner) said that on $200 per person per month you're not going to be eating the best food. If Al's eating cheap to save cash, I'm fine with that. But if he were to switch over to permanent gov't. teat-suckling and laugh at us "suckers" making actual money and having a more substantial food budget (not that I think he ever would)...well, I'd laugh right back at him. Actually, since he's describing people who actually SELL some of their foodstamps at a tremendously discounted rate like 30 cents for a dollar, you're talking less than $200/month. That's crummy eating. Anyway, I'm not trying to rag on his present habits or anything.

[Al B. Sure!]

I'm making the point that people on public assistance are not hurting, as much as rich Democrats want us to believe.

[Elok]

Well, provided their hurting is voluntary and self-inflicted, my main concern is that they might have kids and give them similarly idiotic ideas about living lives of parasitic mediocrity.

[Felch]

Al does if it means he can afford to sit around all day smoking weed and playing Xbox, apparently.

I think you're mixing Al up with me again.

[Al B. Sure!]

Got boneless chicken breasts for $1.99/lb. Marinaded with a mesquite with lime marinade. Going to dice some green pepper and tomato and make mesquite chicken wraps. I could put some rice in the wraps to make it last.

Bargain eating is delicious. I pity Oerdin for thinking he needs to spend $20 on a good meal.

[Dinner]

yogurt chicken

5 lbs chicken thighs ($5)

6 cloves (or to taste) garlic, finely chopped ($1)

1 onion, quartered and sliced ($1)

1 TBSP each whole cumin and coriander ($.25) -- crack these between spoons or your palms just before use
--
1 tsp each crushed red pepper, ground ginger (can also be grated fresh, costs a little more), and ground paprika ($.25)

1/2 tsp each ground cinnamon, ground turmeric, and ground black pepper ($.15)

enough oil

2 cups plain yogurt ($1)

1 cup broth or water.

Add oil to pan, heat until spatter hot

Add cumin and coriander, stir briskly until toasted, about ten - fifteen seconds. This will be very aromatic

Add other spices, stir briskly five seconds

Add garlic, stir briskly thirty seconds. Garlic burns easily, if you see any brown go straight to the onion.

Add onion, saute until carmelized. Keep the heat up and the spoon moving, you want this fried, not steamed! You're looking for brown and translucent, not white and translucent.

Add chicken and brown the pieces. Reduce heat.

Add yogurt and liquid. Stir, being sure to coat all the pieces.

Cover and simmer on low until chicken is done.

Serve over rice. Or not.

This particular dog **** will fill your kitchen with a parade of delicious odors while cooking, and fill your mouth with a symphony of flavor when done.

About $9, but serves 5-10.

That sounds good though if the chicken is bone in it will really have to be at least 1lb of chicken per person as ~1/3 to 1/2 that weight will be bone. I agree that you can eat good food for not a lot of money (I believe I once started a thread about this subject) but it becomes hartd to do it all the time without resorting to eating a lot of the same stuff over and over (beans & rice with every meal). MY girlfriend and I both like to cook but I've found the older I get the less I want to bother with the cheap but boring stuff and the more I want to try fancier but more expensive stuff at least sometimes. Al's welfare scam lifestyle choice would mean they never get anything but the basics.

I can agree that the programs should have more over sight to prevent the abuse AL claims is rampant in his little ghetto but I still don't think it's a good idea to slash or eliminate these programs as there really are some people who would die without them. There is going to be some fraud in every system so we should work to minimize the fraud instead of just saying (as conservatives often do) "here's one bad case of fraud so let's use it to kill the whole social safety net".

[Egbert]

I see your chicken recipe and raise you a properly-grilled porterhouse steak, which is like eating an orgasm and which none of your government teat-sucklers will likely ever eat. Not even on special occasions. Forget about going out to a nice place, forget about good booze, forget about all the more exotic foods unless they happen to be very skilled cooks who know all the local specialty stores. Which I doubt, because becoming a good cook takes commitment and dedication and all that stuff they've demonstrated they don't have.

Round steak is cheaper than Porterhouse. Tastes just as good (IMHO), just as healthy, costs less dollars. *

* Costs less where I live. Prices relativities may be different where you live nevertheless it does illustrate the point that shopping around and substitution can go a long way.

My conclusion: Albie does have a point. (BTW Elok has a point too).

[Egbert]

What an exciting diet, Al.

Looks OK to me.

[Dinner]

I think we all agree that Al needs to be someplace better, but equating frugality with putting up with crap is really counterproductive.

You can be frugal any where and believe it or not I like most people prefer to spend less to get the same item. Yes, by avoiding the union super markets, using coupons, and keeping an eye on sales you can indeed save a significant amount of money on groceries and other household items but you frequently have to be careful to make sure you're really getting value and not just lowering quality. Around here Sav-A-Lot stores will frequently sell stuff for 1/3rd to 1/2 less so you can get some amazing bargains but they often cut corners and sell lower quality stuff too. I bought some of their Gwaltney brand pork sausage as it was $1 a pound but found the stuff to be to be made entirely of the pork equivalent to pink slime. We're talking highly, highly processed and treated garbage which is really cheap but not worth eating. Their chicken is actually pretty good, they have really low prices on canned foods, watch out for their other meats (which are often cut razor thin) and their bread was just junk (more air bubbles than wonder bread).

It is entirely possible to get stuff cheap, even almost dirt cheap, but it is a lot harder to get value which is good quality at a good price. Costco does a generally good job on the value front though you have to buy in bulk to get it, you can sometimes find good value at really cheap prices at stores like Marshalls or GTM but their selection is very hit or miss (they sell stuff the big chains discontinued so the nature of their business model is that no two items in their stores are ever the same), but after those few stores it starts getting really hard to find value consistently. Walmart has really low prices but sells junk which will break in short order, Sears has some good values when sales happen (we're talking top notch tools at very good prices when the right sale is on) but you essentially need to spend a lot of time always hunting for sales so you can figure out where the best deals are.

There are very few places where the prices are always low but the quality is always high.

[regexcellent]

There's a store around here called Price Right that sells stuff for really cheap. For instance I once saw vodka there that came in a half gallon milk jug.