The Price Family Home Companion

MANers

I can't count the number of times I've had to tell my children, "Stop licking ketchup off your fingers. Ketchup is for french fries not fingers" or "Don't just lick the ranch off the carrot. If you want the ranch you gotta take a bite of the carrot."

Well, tonight Jeff brought Wing Stop home for dinner. Now anyone who's gone to Wing Stop knows they have some of the best ranch dressing on the face of the earth. Wing Stop knows this and they're quite stingy with it. They give you these tiny little cups so you learn to savor every drop.

We'd just about finished eating when I looked up and saw Jeff wiping his finger around the inside of the cup and licking it off. Our kids were right there. Before I could think I said in my most motherly tone, "Jeffrey, STOP that." He gave me a look and I immediately realized my mistake.

"Why?" he asked. "Because it's gross and bad manners," I whispered. He looked me in the eye, reached down, picked up the ranch cup lid, and started licking it. "What about this?" he asked, "Is this gross?" By then, I knew better than to answer.

Love it when that happens

On Wednesday Ryan and I had lunch with Salem. Her lunch is ridiculously early it starts at 10:50 (20 minutes later than kindergarten). I went to Chic-fil-a like I always do but instead of getting two kids meals I decided to save money and let the kids split one meal. When I got to the window the guy said "Do you want a sample of our breakfast minis?" I said "Sure". Then as he handed me the bag he told me he added a chicken biscuit too. We had so much food I got to eat and we had leftovers. It was great.

Then tonight I ordered pizza. When I went to pick it up instead of two mediums they had made one medium and one (my favorite) a large.They were so apologetic. Which I thought was pretty silly. Would I please take the large for the price of a medium? Of course.

I really love it when stuff like that happens.

They're Magically Delicious

Ryan, you can't just eat the marshmallows you have to eat the unlucky ones too!

    - Salem

Coke Chaos

Chantell reports that Target was chaos today.

Apparently they were having some insane promotion whereby you can purchase 12-packs of Coca-Cola product (4 for $10, limit 20) and receive a $5 Target gift card for every 4 12-packs purchased.

Crazed shoppers immediately saw the loophole and each member of the family had cartfulls of coke... would purchase the max, load them in their pickups and come back and buy more w/ the gift cards they just received.

Cashiers (probably acting on their own accord) tried to stem the flood by telling people they weren't allowed to purchase coke w/ gift cards, but Chantell reports that there was a "language barrier" adding to the pandemonium.

She says that workers were bringing out coke by the pallets full and they were immediately stripped bare... like bottled water before a hurricane.

She bought 4, but that was only because I hadn't figured out the economies of scale these persistent shoppers were acheiving.

I figured out that if you bought the max ($50) worth of coke and continued this trick (4 trips) you'd net 36 12-packs at a cost of $1.39 / 12-pack = 0.12 / can = a penny / ounce.

I think we have a new gold-standard in what constitutes a good sale on coke.

For extra credit, I think there's probably a way where you could add additional cash to the gift cards on subsequent trips to eliminate/minimize gift cards lost due to incomplete/fractional 12-packs (i.e. in trip 2 you can only afford 10 packs w/ your $25 gift card but are buying 2 packs and not getting a gift card for it).

Care to take a stab at it mom?

Grape Nutty

My Dad used to eat Grape Nuts all the time. Personally, I always thought it tasted like a bowl of gravel. Still, I have to wonder if dispariging one of their flagship products is such a good marketing move.

In commercials running this evening during the Olympics, Post touts their new Grape Nutes Trail Mix cereal line as tasting "so good you'll forget it's Grape Nuts."

Perhaps this is from the "Ever eat a pine tree?" school of marketing.

Whole Foods may stop selling lobsters

Houston Business Journal reports that Whole Foods may stop selling lobsters:

Whole Foods Market Inc., which operates four stores in Houston, says it'll stop selling live lobsters if a more humane way isn't found to buy and sell them.

Personally, I'm waiting for a humane alternative to boiling them alive and eating them, but perhaps that falls under unavoidable suffering.

No Free Lunch, Just Free Lunch Box

I had a $10 coupon for Academy that I used to purchase a $9.99 lunch box. When the cashier rung up the sale, the register crashed.

Once the manager came, she grew frustrated with the machine. I motioned to give her a dollar bill for the $0.82 I surely still owed, but she waved it off and said we could go unless we wanted a receipt. Planning not to return a free item, we opted to go paperless and left the building.

I'm thinking that Academy will surely revise their coupon policy with a "on $25 purchase" or some such phrase. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying my Free Lunch (Box). So what if it's girlie purple?

Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

While Coke and Pepsi are still dabbling in the "with lemon" product lines (yuck), Dr. Pepper does something so underwhelmingly simple... a Cherry Vanilla mix. To my knowledge, Coke has yet to combine these two flavors.

Of the new drink, Chantell says she may never need another Cherry Coke, Vanilla Coke, or Coke Classic again! She's right. I'm not a big Dr. Pepper fan at all, but the CVDP is that good (haven't tried the diet variation yet).

I bet it'd taste even better with the original sugar cane recipe. Dublin are you listening?

Sweet

We've been curious what all the construction around our mall is about... Now, we know. According to the Houston Business Journal:

...local industry sources say the expansion menu will include the Cheesecake Factory, Brio Tuscan Grille, Kona Grill and a Mexican restaurant still involved in negotiations.

The Cheesecake Factory is one of our all-time favorites. Besides having tremendous selection of cheesecake (surprise, surprise) their menu is so massive it'll fit most any food-mood. Also, the portion-size is so large we often end up eating the leftovers for several days.

Fortunately, for our collective waste line (not to mention wallet too) the Houston location at the Galleria isn't convenient. As such, we don't make it there but a few times a year... The new location could prove quite dangerous though!

This welcome bit of news helps to make up for the fact that our Ruth's Chris is now closed. Ruth's had the best (albeit most expensive) steak we've ever experienced. Although, we only went there one time (when we won a gift certificate), we are sad to see it go.