Ben and Phil were in Kansas for a week, returning today from their visit. While I’m delighted to see them both again, I’m downright overjoyed to post what Uncle David (Phil’s brother) sent me from their time cooking together. Enjoy David’s fantastic account below!
On Friday, we had a packed schedule of financial meetings and other estate projects, but we still wanted to have a relaxed group meal. To demonstrate the joy of planning a menu around bargains, Ben and I curated a feast in which every component represented a significant discount.
In the famous Brown Garage Cookbook (1987), I advocated that a person should shop a grocery store’s weekly ads in order to ensure variety in one’s diet. That is still good advice, but in 2023, I would add a recommendation to pay attention also to the clearance section of the grocery store as well as places like Newton’s Meridian Grocery, which features a constant rotation of dented, unsuccessful, discontinued, and past-date items. By buying bargains when they present themselves, a person can save money and try some new dishes.
A warning: Not every deal will be a winner. My family still remembers with some alarm the bargain Cajun turducken snagged from the discount meat bin of our grocery story in Fargo. Despite the delectable promise of a chicken packed with Cajun cornbread dressing, stuffed into a duck and then inserted into a turkey, the result was dry and bland. The meal was a spectacular fail on a scale unprecedented since the great chicken-gizzard-curry debacle of 1984.
- Our entrée featured 6 pounds of bbq burnt ends. Why pay over $50 when the same thing was available for barely $25, apparently just because another pouch of bbq had leaked over its neighbors? We rinsed off the pouch and dumped them into the crock pot for a gentle reheat.
2. BBQ is always good with some bread, so we prepared a loaf of garlic bread that was relegated to the clearance rack a full two days before its expiration date.
3. Here’s a product that didn’t really catch on. I don’t know why. Who doesn’t like baked beans? Who doesn’t like Dr. Pepper? These oddities were on a discount endcap in the grocery section of Menards.
4. I used a digital coupon for a discount on some of Dillon’s potato salad. Pro tip: Avoid buying past-dated potato salad.
5. For dessert, we broke out a deluxe cake kit from the clearance section at Dillons. Grandma Sprunger, Anna, and Ben made cupcakes on Thursday and frosted them Friday.
So, there you have it. A deluxe meal for seven people for under $35. And, there were leftovers.
*Editor’s Note: The Brown Garage Cookbook referred to above was a cookbook Uncle David produced in graduate school when he lived in an apartment that looked like a brown garage. When I struck off on my own to Arizona, David, like a good older brother-in-law-to-be, supplied me with a copy. My friends read it cover to cover, absorbing all the little nuggets within. I still remember MaryBeth sitting at my kitchen table in Kykotsmovi, Arizona, tears of laughter streaming down her face when she read the recipe for “Special Brown Garage Breakfast.”
Great read! Uncle David is a rock star, just like Sister-in-Law, Liz and Nephew, Ben!
Thank you, Jerene! Ben had so much fun in Kansas, but I sure am happy to have my guys home again. I only ate sandwiches, leftovers and cereal while they were gone because I had no one to cook for! Uncle David is the undisputed King of Thrift!