Food Archives - Lazy Man and Money

McEconomics!

November 2, 2020 by Kosmo 3 Comments

This article is from occasional contributor, Kosmo. At the end, I’ll tack on some of my own McDonalds economics thoughts.

Several weeks ago, I was at McDonalds with my 9 year old. It blew his mind that I was able to put together a package that included more food at a lower price than the standard option. I’ve turned this into a personal finance lesson for him and his 11 year old sister.

They like McNuggets. A lot. Typically, they’ve had the six piece Happy Meal, but they’ve reached the point where they (usually) don’t care about the toy anymore, and they want more food.

What do they want? Between the two of them, they want 18-20 nuggets, some fries, and two bottles of chocolate milk.

The standard six piece happy meal contains:

6 nuggets
Small fries
Apple slices or Go-gurt
Drink (chocolate milk)

The cost is $4.18 each, for a total cost of $8.36 for two. They end up with fewer nuggets than they want, but two Go-gurts (which they’re somewhat ambivalent about). Realistically, they’d need three Happy Meals to get the right number of nuggets.

So I went comparison shopping to see how else I might accomplish the goal.

A ten piece nugget value meal is $7.49. To get twenty nuggets, I’d have to spend $14.98! I’d end up with

Twenty nuggets
Two medium fries
Two medium fountain drinks

I’d have to swap out the fountain drinks for the chocolate milk. I’m not sure if there’s an upcharge for that, because this option was immediately discarded – because I found a better deal.

I went the a la carte option and took advantage of some special deals and coupons.

The ten piece nugget is part of a 2 for $5 deal.
I have a coupon for a large order of fries for $1. This is a coupon I can use once per week via the McDonalds app.

Here’s what I ended up ordering:

Two ten piece nuggets @ 2/$5 = $5
One large order of of fries = $1
Two chocolate milk @ $1 = $2

Total cost: $8. This is 8 more nuggets than the two Happy Meals, and more fries, since a large is more than twice as big as the small. The cost is 36 cents less than the two Happy Meals! You may have noticed the missing Go-gurt. The good news is that you can buy a Go-Gurt or apple slices for 50 cents. For the sake of argument, let’s say that I get two Go-Gurts. That brings the total to $9. I’ve gotten all the food the Happy Meals would have, plus eight extra nuggets, for 64 cents more than the cost of the Happy Meals.

For myself, I got two bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits. Sticker price $3.39 or 2 for $4. I would have slightly preferred one bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit and one egg McMuffin, but I’m not going to pass up the 2 for $4 deal.

Later, I pulled out a piece of paper and walked them through the options and prices. They were impressed at the price differences.

Is this post simply a way for me to brag about my ability to save money at McDonalds. Well, sort of. But mostly it’s to illustrate how simple it is to teach some basic personal finance lessons.

Unit pricing is another area where I try to teach the kids an occasional lesson. Toilet paper is a good place to start, because there are so many options within a brand and style. Which Charmin Ultra Soft Mega Roll is the best option – the 4 pack, the 8 pack, the 12 pack, or the 18 pack? You’d expect the per unit price to drop as the quantity increases, but that’s not always the case in the real world.

My nine year old is starting to grasp the concept. He can already determine which box of garbage bags we should buy.

I’m not necessarily a tightwad. There are things I’ll spend money one (MLB.TV, for example). But if I need 36 rolls of toilet paper, I don’t want to pay more per roll simply because I chose the wrong size package. 36 rolls is 36 rolls, regardless of how they are packaged.

I’ve also given the kids a thirty thousand foot exposure to concepts like bank accounts, credit accounts, pensions (and the difference between defined contribution and defined benefit), 401(k)s, 529s, and income taxes. As they get older, I’ll go deeper into these topics, so that by the time the graduate from high school, they’ll have a solid understanding of personal finances.

Editor’s McDonalds Economics Thoughts

For a long time, we were able to escape the McDonalds Happy Meal trap. Our kids simply didn’t know they existed until Grandma spoiled the plan. They would have figured it out eventually, but I can still fondly look back on those days.

With my kids at age 5 and 6, the Happy Meal is still important to them. However, we use it a treat. Typically, we’d take advantage of the five dollar 20-piece nuggets in our area. That’s the equivalent deal as Kosmo’s (except for the bulk requirement). Since my kids are smaller, we don’t need too much more to feed 3 or 4 of us. A $1 Value Menu sandwich will usually do it.

Recently, we’ve revisited the value of the Big Breakfast with Hot Cakes which is an economical ~1350 calories. Everyone has their favorites and it just seems to work out for us. Once again, an extra $1 value menu sandwich or two can round out a hearty breakfast for the family. It’s been particularly handy at the Orlando airport terminal that we seem to visit a few times a year.

As for teaching unit pricing, my kids are a little young for that. I’m very good with unit pricing, but toilet paper is very, very difficult. The best I can do is look at square footage to avoid the differences in mega-rolls and regular rolls. Doing a dollar per square foot isn’t always easy though.

Instead, I’m going to turn to teaching unit pricing through something that I know my kids will pay attention to: Pokemon. Specifically Pokemon Go has items for sale at the shop. A single super egg incubator will run 200 PokeCoins. However, you can get 10 super egg incubators and a bunch of other useful stuff (lucky eggs, and star pieces) for 1480 PokeCoins in an Ultra Box.

We’ll go down this road in more detail over the next year or so. For now, I explain that I can get a lot more things if I save my PokeCoins and take advantage of the package deal. I have a suspicion that unit pricing will come up in more video games in the future.

Make Bacon Great Again!

November 22, 2016 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

Over the last two weeks, I’ve learned one very important thing: how to make tremendous bacon. It’s quite honestly the best bacon I ever had. It’s the best my family has ever had. Trust me, this is the best bacon you’ve ever had.

Now everybody knows that bacon is hugely popular:

On the show, United States of Bacon, they highlight these bacon towers.
You can buy bacon steaks, but I don’t think they will catch on.
There’s a bacon world competition where it’s treated like the slab of meat it is. As the website reads, “Bacon is no longer just a food… it’s a way of life.”
You can even play a game of bacon

Enough about bacon’s popularity. You want to learn how to make bacon great again.

First, I need to explain why I felt my bacon was broken. For years, I’ve used a George Foreman Grill to make bacon. When it broke, I replaced it with this Cuisinart Griddler. (We were sold on the dishwasher safe plates.) Bacon came out in a clumpy mess. Grease overflowed the top or spilled out the back. If I overcooked it by even a little bit, it was burnt to a crisp. If I undercooked it, it was mostly stringy fat.

Despite this I continued to make bacon. Bacon is like pizza and that other thing: even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. To put it another way, “It was the best of foods, it was the worst of foods…”

My bacon needed real change.

I thought about possible solutions. There was the traditional method: frying in a pan on a stove. However, it seemed like I’d have to actively flip the bacon and deal with painful bacon splatters. I bet that the result would be fine bacon, but I had gotten used to the passive bacon cooking method of the double-sided grillers.

I went on the Internet and looked around for some better ideas. There was one place that suggested putting bacon in an old gym sock and microwaving it. I don’t even know where someone would come up with such an idea. More importantly they didn’t provide any logic for why this might be good bacon, any evidence or any sources. I think it might have been written by this guy. Hopefully millions of people aren’t making gym sock, microwave bacon.

So I decided to dig for some better sounding ideas. That’s when I came across the winner… making bacon in the oven.

Take a step inside my Bacon University. (For you, today only, the price is free.)

Making bacon in an oven is about as simple as it gets. You put the bacon a rack. I put some aluminum foil underneath it make clean-up easy. I just backed it for around 20 minutes at 400 degrees. (I have no patience for pre-heating.) Take it out and enjoy. It takes a little more time, but it is worth it.

As a follow-up test, I decided to go with my convection toaster. It’s small and I theorize is more economical than a big oven. Unfortunately it can’t do a lot of bacon.

Here’s the before picture:

Here’s the after picture:

I try curl the aluminum foil around the bacon so as to limit the splatter.

The toaster oven is almost as good as the real oven. I think the big difference is that the toaster oven isn’t on a raised rack like the conventional oven.

I should note that because I’m frugal, I buy the cheapest bacon I can find. That’s usually Aldi, but sometimes Shaws is running a special. If possible get the thick cut of bacon. Like hair, you don’t want it to be thin. That can lead to a bit of a mess. I’m sure that if ponied up the money for some butcher quality bacon, it would be amazing. I’m not sure I can handle that.

It’s worth noting that bacon isn’t one of the healthiest foods. Some might even say that it is downright bad for you. I can’t say that I disagree.

Did you learn anything interesting in that last couple of weeks? If so, please let me know in the comments.

Feed Your Freezer First

March 22, 2016 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

I’m always trying to be more productive, efficient, and simplify my life. For some reason, I’ve had difficulty with meal preparation. I am usually very good with planning ahead and saving money, but for some reason this doesn’t translate to making meals in advance.

I’m good with a slow cooker and can set up something in the morning, which usually has a couple of days of left-overs. My wife loves her Instant Pot (see review), which is perfect for when I don’t plan 7-8 hours ahead.

We have a chest freezer full of uncooked food. I buy in bulk when the grocery store has deals on meat. It saves us money… if I actually plan ahead and defrost something… or have enough time to cook it.

Feed Your Freezer First

The other day, I had an epiphany. If I use my Foodsaver with this wide-mouth jar sealer attachment and these wide-mouth mason jars, I can freeze meals for later. It only takes a couple of minutes to defrost under some hot water and microwave it.

That’s not the real epiphany. The epiphany is that I can use the personal finance axiom of “Pay Yourself First” to ensure that I build up a “savings” of meals.

So the first meal of everything that I make in the slow cooker is going in the freezer as my food emergency fund. This can save us money because we won’t be tempted to go to the restaurant simply because “There’s nothing to eat.”

What do you think? Do you have a food emergency fund?

My Favorite EASY Holiday Party Favor: 4-Step White Chocolate Bark

December 24, 2015 by Christina Garofalo Leave a Comment

[Editor: Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope you enjoy the time off. I’ll be back next week with a couple of articles before we reset for 2016.]

Last year for Christmas, I was looking for a simple, inexpensive parting gift to give to my guests. Looking for something that wouldn’t be over complicated, expensive, or time consuming, I stumbled upon a recipe for white chocolate bark.

Bark is a great party favor for the lazy and the time-starved: it requires little effort or skill, zero baking, and it’s nearly impossible to mess up. It’s so simple, in fact, you can throw it together the night before or morning of the holiday and have it still be ready before your guests arrive.

For this recipe, I decided to go with nuts and fruit over crushed candy canes, marshmallows, and the many other indulgent variations I’ve seen. I’ve found that by the time Christmas arrives — between holiday parties at work and with friends — most people have been eating unhealthy foods for weeks; the last thing they want is to come home with more of it.

For the fruit and nuts, I chose cranberries and pistachios — the festive red and green flecks give the bark a cheerful, holiday look. I like to use half salted and half unsalted pistachios, so it has a nice balance of salty and sweet.

The simple four-step recipe that resulted takes about five minutes to make and is a great, low-cost way to make sure no one leaves Christmas empty handed.

Ingredients

1 lb. white chocolate chips or slices
¼ lb. salted pistachios
¼ lb. unsalted pistachios
½ lb. dried cranberries

Instructions

Melt the white chocolate in a bowl in the microwave on 50-percent power, taking out approximately every 30 seconds to stir.
Once the chocolate is fully melted (should take a couple of minutes at most), stir in the pistachios and cranberries.
Line the base and sides of a baking tin or cookie sheet with wax paper, and pour the white chocolate mix into the tin, spreading it evenly across the wax paper to desired thickness.
Place in the refrigerator and let sit for at least 30 minutes or until completely hardened. Remove and cut into desired shapes.

I like to pack the bark in a printed goody bags from the Dollar Store or even clear sandwich bags (just cut the top off if you choose the latter), and tie the top together with curly ribbon.

Happy holidays!

Chest Freezer Awesomeness!

December 10, 2015 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

Several years ago I bought a chest freezer and it’s probably been one of my best tools for saving money. I just got back from the local grocery store (Shaws) and stocked up on some pork tenderloin:

(Click for larger view…)

In case you are too lazy to click (and I don’t blame you), I paid ~$16 for 8 pounds of pork tenderloin. According to Shaws that is typically $48 worth of pork tenderloin… saving me $32 (as if I would ever pay that full price – ha!)

To be honest, I didn’t know how much pork tenderloin typically costs. I wouldn’t have thought to even look up the costs of pork tenderloin, but I know that beef tenderloin is typically expensive… and one of the best cuts. So I figured it must be similar for pigs right?

In doing a few internet searches, I quickly found that $3.99/lb. was a very good price and that $4.99/lb. is more typical. And many of those results came from 2010 and 2011. So this deal at $1.99/lb. looked like a tremendous deal… one of those that it is worth clearing some space in the chest freezer for.

Truth be told, I would have bought a lot more, but the eventual divorce lawyer would quickly outstrip the savings. I could have created a lot more space as the packages aren’t very big.

This is a long way to ask a question that was probably better suited for Twitter. Anyone have any favorite pork tenderloin recipes? I prefer ones involving a slow cooker. Yes, there are internet searches for that as well, but if people have some favorites, I’d love to give them a try.