Welcome back to the biweekly feature for those of you seeking to hand out resumes but not cash! Live from Pennsylvania, it's Furlough Friday!
Seventy-nine cents. That's smaller than pocket change. It's under-one-cushion-of-the-couch change. It's one cupholder-in-the-car-as-I-approach-the-toll-booth change.
I can't even buy a Twix at work without adding six pennies to 79 cents. (On Furlough Friday I can't buy a Twix at work at all, actually. Or anything at work, for that matter.) In spite of all that, Taco Bell is offering a generous portion of nachos for your three quarters and four pennies.
By "generous" I mean generous considering the price. The CD-sized heap of nachos won't last you through the first five minutes of, say, the baseball game you smuggled them into with a fake pregnant belly, but they will take the edge off your hunger.
And when you're furloughed or unemployed or seeking full-time employment instead of your current part-time work, taking the edge off your hunger is all you really hope for. Hunger never really goes away, even when you just ate a carton of ice cream while staring hopelessly at "General Hospital" in the middle of the afternoon, does it?
So take your stack of nachos that Taco Bell layered with refried beans, cheese and hot sauce and appreciate this novel fact: Hot sauce has apparently become a nacho layer in our stumbling employment market. Meaning you can treat it as a side dish.
In other words 79 cent Triple Layer Nachos legitimize a dinner consisting of lettuce and hot sauce. Perfect for Furlough Friday or staying out of a Hooverville.
April 24, 2009
April 23, 2009
Hunger Torpedoed
Stuck at work one evening after a long day that had already exhausted my lunch, I needed a cheap way to satiate my stomach. I also needed to circumvent my sensitive wallet, which only had $6 inside its folds.
Those criteria left me with a few options nearby: My usual standby -- Taco Bell -- an old favorite -- McDonald's McChicken -- or something new. Something that lay submerged beneath the surface of affordable food. Something that was ready to explode onto my food critique.
I speak of Quiznos' Toasty Torpedo, a narrow footlong "subette." It slots in at $4, so it wasn't going to sink my bank account. Additionally, it's slightly more than a foot long, so I anticipated it resulting in my hunger quotient taking a steep dive.
For the most part, I was right. The Toasty Torpedo is pretty filling, and it's a wholly satisfying package. The bread was just wide enough that it was easy to take a full bite off the end without having to nibble on alternating corners, which allowed me to eat the bread evenly. Some of us like to do that, after all.
The torpedo dropped its payload right on my hunger, too. It didn't leave me feeling like I'd overeaten, but I wasn't craving more after finishing it, either. While I could have had four McChickens for the same price, that would have left me feeling greasy and flabby, something Quizno's did not do with its higher-quality ingredients.
And yet I didn't crack a smile after I put my torpedo away. Something was missing. Something, I believe, that was related more to the type of Torpedo I ordered than any design flaw.
Surprisingly, it wasn't a lack of meat. My Toasty Torpedo was a little light on turkey, but I can handle a slightly unbalanced meat/bread ratio for four bucks.
It wasn't even the odd wrapping, which had the Quizno's worker roll the sub in paper and then slip it into a baguette bag that was obviously designed to leave several inches of the sub exposed so that I could eat it. Question: If I'm supposed to eat the sub from the paper bag, why wrap it in paper? Am I supposed to eat the paper too?
No, the problem with my Toasty Torpedo was that it was a Pesto Turkey Torpedo. It may sound like a terrific combination, but the pesto was completely off-base. Cheese and basil flavors were largely absent, replaced by an overpowering saltiness that dominated even the mozzarella slices on the Torpedo.
The flaw wasn't big enough to send the Tasty Torpedo to Davy Jones' Locker. But it did hold the subette to a mediocre 3 out of four sporks. Quizno's needs to scope out some better pesto.
Those criteria left me with a few options nearby: My usual standby -- Taco Bell -- an old favorite -- McDonald's McChicken -- or something new. Something that lay submerged beneath the surface of affordable food. Something that was ready to explode onto my food critique.
I speak of Quiznos' Toasty Torpedo, a narrow footlong "subette." It slots in at $4, so it wasn't going to sink my bank account. Additionally, it's slightly more than a foot long, so I anticipated it resulting in my hunger quotient taking a steep dive.
For the most part, I was right. The Toasty Torpedo is pretty filling, and it's a wholly satisfying package. The bread was just wide enough that it was easy to take a full bite off the end without having to nibble on alternating corners, which allowed me to eat the bread evenly. Some of us like to do that, after all.
The torpedo dropped its payload right on my hunger, too. It didn't leave me feeling like I'd overeaten, but I wasn't craving more after finishing it, either. While I could have had four McChickens for the same price, that would have left me feeling greasy and flabby, something Quizno's did not do with its higher-quality ingredients.
And yet I didn't crack a smile after I put my torpedo away. Something was missing. Something, I believe, that was related more to the type of Torpedo I ordered than any design flaw.
Surprisingly, it wasn't a lack of meat. My Toasty Torpedo was a little light on turkey, but I can handle a slightly unbalanced meat/bread ratio for four bucks.
It wasn't even the odd wrapping, which had the Quizno's worker roll the sub in paper and then slip it into a baguette bag that was obviously designed to leave several inches of the sub exposed so that I could eat it. Question: If I'm supposed to eat the sub from the paper bag, why wrap it in paper? Am I supposed to eat the paper too?
No, the problem with my Toasty Torpedo was that it was a Pesto Turkey Torpedo. It may sound like a terrific combination, but the pesto was completely off-base. Cheese and basil flavors were largely absent, replaced by an overpowering saltiness that dominated even the mozzarella slices on the Torpedo.
The flaw wasn't big enough to send the Tasty Torpedo to Davy Jones' Locker. But it did hold the subette to a mediocre 3 out of four sporks. Quizno's needs to scope out some better pesto.
April 18, 2009
Loveable lemonade
You may remember my aside about proper lemonade during my review of Arby's Roastburger. I ended up giving Arby's props for offering something other than soda and diet lemonade.
That something was unfortunately not tasty lemonade, though. It was a SoBe beverage. And as delicious as it was, it left part of me still searching for decent lemonade at a fat food restaurant.
Today I'm proud to announce my search is over.
Chik-Fil-A, which I've already treated to a deservedly glowing review, has tubs of supposedly fresh-brewed lemonade sitting behind the counter. And it's good.
You can actually get regular lemonade, which is a step up from certain chains that despicably only offer diet (coughWendy'scough). So it's free of that sickeningly sweet artificial twang.
Still, it's got it's own tang. Like any good lemonade, there's a decent amount of sourness that hits the tongue and balances out its loads of sugar. The flavor's actually approach complex -- which is unheard of in fast food beverages.
So Chick-Fil-A has another notch in its belt. Not only does it have delicious chicken sandwiches and waffle fries that are to die for (especially if loaded with delicious mayonnaise), it has a great drink to go along with it.
Worth remembering, if you ask me.
That something was unfortunately not tasty lemonade, though. It was a SoBe beverage. And as delicious as it was, it left part of me still searching for decent lemonade at a fat food restaurant.
Today I'm proud to announce my search is over.
Chik-Fil-A, which I've already treated to a deservedly glowing review, has tubs of supposedly fresh-brewed lemonade sitting behind the counter. And it's good.
You can actually get regular lemonade, which is a step up from certain chains that despicably only offer diet (coughWendy'scough). So it's free of that sickeningly sweet artificial twang.
Still, it's got it's own tang. Like any good lemonade, there's a decent amount of sourness that hits the tongue and balances out its loads of sugar. The flavor's actually approach complex -- which is unheard of in fast food beverages.
So Chick-Fil-A has another notch in its belt. Not only does it have delicious chicken sandwiches and waffle fries that are to die for (especially if loaded with delicious mayonnaise), it has a great drink to go along with it.
Worth remembering, if you ask me.
April 10, 2009
Furlough Friday: Cadbury Creme Egg
Welcome to the first Furlough Friday! As a service to all of you who may be seeking employment and as a nod to my colleagues (and to myself) who are struggling through coerced unpaid days off the job, I'm introducing Furlough Fridays as a way to check out the cheapest food you can find. You won't find anything over a dollar featured here on Furlough Friday. So ... Live from Pennsylvania, it's Furlough Friday!
With Easter just two days away, those of us reclined on the couch watching Billy Mays sell Mighty Putty from under a thin layer of Cheeto dust should be abandoning the typical non-working man diet of boxed macaroni and cheese and Jell-O for something a little more seasonable. That will be easier after the holiday when all the Easter candy is on sale.
Waiting for Monday doesn't do our spirits much good right now, though, so our choices are limited if we want to keep to a budget of a buck. There's the Reese's Peanut Butter Egg,. but that's too close to a peanut butter cup to truly embody a holiday spirit. There are marshmallow Peeps, but some of us are a bit sick of them after staging a massive Peep photo shoot and subsequently eating the participants.
So how about the famous Cadbury Creme Egg? You can typically pick one up for about 80 cents, and it's packed with milk chocolate shell goodness and creamy yolk-colored filling. The egg shrunk a couple of tenths of a gram from past years, yet its still an Easter bargain. The bigger ones were a recipe for a stomach ache anyway.
Why not use the Cadbury Creme Egg as a replacement for that retirement nest egg you aren't accumulating because you're spending the day unemployed? A batch of Cadbury Eggs, as cheap as they are, are probably worth more than your stock portfolio at this point anyway. Plus, even if they do cause a little indigestion, it will pale in comparison to how sick you feel as you take the penalty and withdraw funds early from your 401(k).
Forget investment bankers! Trust the Cadbury Bunny.
With Easter just two days away, those of us reclined on the couch watching Billy Mays sell Mighty Putty from under a thin layer of Cheeto dust should be abandoning the typical non-working man diet of boxed macaroni and cheese and Jell-O for something a little more seasonable. That will be easier after the holiday when all the Easter candy is on sale.
Waiting for Monday doesn't do our spirits much good right now, though, so our choices are limited if we want to keep to a budget of a buck. There's the Reese's Peanut Butter Egg,. but that's too close to a peanut butter cup to truly embody a holiday spirit. There are marshmallow Peeps, but some of us are a bit sick of them after staging a massive Peep photo shoot and subsequently eating the participants.
So how about the famous Cadbury Creme Egg? You can typically pick one up for about 80 cents, and it's packed with milk chocolate shell goodness and creamy yolk-colored filling. The egg shrunk a couple of tenths of a gram from past years, yet its still an Easter bargain. The bigger ones were a recipe for a stomach ache anyway.
Why not use the Cadbury Creme Egg as a replacement for that retirement nest egg you aren't accumulating because you're spending the day unemployed? A batch of Cadbury Eggs, as cheap as they are, are probably worth more than your stock portfolio at this point anyway. Plus, even if they do cause a little indigestion, it will pale in comparison to how sick you feel as you take the penalty and withdraw funds early from your 401(k).
Forget investment bankers! Trust the Cadbury Bunny.
Labels:
Furlough Friday,
Snacks,
Sweets
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)