This has not been a good week for me in terms of not being a big fat liar.
First, I tried to pass off grilled cheese sandwiches as a “romantic” food. Then, half the entrants of the last First Thursday event failed to make it into my inbox, or were accidentaly deleted during the Great Spam Purge of February 2009, but I’m pretty sure it’s not my fault because I’m painfully anal* about things like that (although if you titled your post “I have a wonderful offer from Nigeria!” then it’s totally your fault).
THEN I inadvertently lied to you about the provenance of my tomatoes. And finally, although I’d said I’d post the guidelines for the new food event that’s replacing First Thursdays in yesterday’s Cheap Ass Monday post, I completely failed to do so.
FAIL.
So, here’s the skinny: While there have been some First Thursday stalwarts and polling indicated that people were interested, First Thursdays never generated much excitement, which led in turn to ME not being very excited about it and I require CONSTANT EXCITEMENT. I don’t get that any more since I quit the crystal meth**, so I decided to scrap First Thursdays.
Since we’re all poor now and our economy is going to keep heading down the shitter until it somehow finds an even bigger shitter down which to hurl itself***, Cheap Ass Mondays seemed like a much better idea for an event. Y’all get to exercise your creative cooking muscles and we all get to save money so we can help stimulate the economy by not spending any of it (rim shot!). I’ll be replacing the First Thursday page with a Cheap Ass Monday page, but here are the basics:
- In the interest of those whose blogs are not R-rated, the event will be called “The Recession Special: Hobo Mondays.”
- The meal must either serve 2 for $5 or less (total, not per person) or 4 for $10.
- Ingredient splitting is allowed. I.e., if you used half a can of diced tomatoes, you can charge half the can.
- As much as possible, the dishes should use real ingredients. Do not go to Wendy’s and order off the dollar menu.
- You cannot take advantage of economies of scale by making enormous meals that serve 200 and come in at $0.10 a person. Sometimes we only have $5 in our pockets and we still need dinner.
- At the end of your post, you have to do the math. Pantry staples like salt, pepper and oil don’t count toward your total
- The round-ups will go up by end of day the following Friday.
- The person who comes up with the most appetizing and cheapest dish gets to feel smug until the next month’s event.
You’re free to determine what constitutes a “pantry staple” for you, and through that we’ll all learn more about what kinds of useful foods to stock for easy and inexpensive meals.
The first Monday in March is the 2nd, so you have some time to think.
GO!
*Betting pool for number of disgusting hits this generates? I’m taking 5-10.
**I am not now and have never been a meth addict. I have enough prescription drugs.
**My prediction: this will continue to happen, with the economy throwing itself down progressively more and more enormous shitters, until we discover a black hole at the center of the universe that is actually a giant toilet. Take that, Hawking.
so spices and such dont count, what about butter? rice? (I buy masseeve costco sacks of it). Flour?
I’m in. I might not even wait until March. Maybe I’ll join you next Monday.
I did not want you to feel like a liar! Which is what I meant by “not wanting to be whatever”! I just wanted to know!
In news of fail, my Cheap Ass Monday dinner last night was a 99cent bag of Hot Cheese Popcorn.
I’m in. Prepare to be wowed.
1. Even if grilled cheese isn’t romantic food, story was good. And we come here to read….
2. They’ll get over it, we know you didn’t do it on purpose.
3. Fuck the fuckers who advertise falsely or label misleadingly.
4. I can’t even remember what I’m doing at this blog much less what you promised in a previous post.
5. I think it is hysterical that Blogger or WordPress or whoever recognizes “Fuck” as a word but not “fuckers”!!!!!
I’ll see you on Hobo Monday!!!!
Can we convert the $$? For example $5Aus might not get us a great dinner but $7.60Aus (at the current exchange rate) gives me a fighting chance.
This is tempting, but I don’t think I could participate. I have two problems. One is that the majority of the food I use either came from our garden or from the entire animals we buy all at once for meat. So, not so much pricing on those, you know? And the second is that I totally suck at math and probably couldn’t figure out the cost even if I were using store ingredients. But I will cheer from the sidelines, because we could all use some more cheap-ass Monday (and Tuesday, and Wednesday . . .) ideas.
vera, i don’t count things that i buy in bulk and always have around, and that includes butter and flour. i do include things that i normally have around but others might not – like this monday’s green lentils and canned tomatoes. like i said, i think it’s interesting to see how others stock their pantries, and everyone is on the honor system (which may or may not be a good idea around here).
robin, every monday is cheap-ass monday around here, so i don’t see why it can’t be everywhere.
we will start a world-wide movement.
jesse, i ate some mesquite bbq baked lays last night, but then brian made some chicken and i had to eat a real dinner. also, i was not actually apologizing (see below).
heather, you just want to win the smugness prize. which i’m pretty sure you win whether you participate or not.
you know, because you’re a smug bitch.
anna, i better see you on hobo monday. and my apologies were completely insincere, i just needed a title for the post.
other anna, conversation is allowed. whatever = $5US.
kristin, sure you can! what’s cheaper than food you’ve grown yourself? we can all learn about creating our own victory gardens.
Does this require that we use a recipe from a book? Or more of a whip something up?
I think grilled cheese is a very romantic food. No need to apologize for that.
Actually, scrap that. For me grilled cheese *would be* a very romantic food if I didn’t have to eat it alone. Try getting Sir Pickypants to eat grilled cheese.
I want to play because I love you and hope you’ll one day make me a grilled cheese sandwich.
Oh, and it is ok that “serves 4” is the maximum, the baby is really little and we don’t feed her much during these here hard times anyway.
heatherkay, nope, whip it up. use the gray matter.
rachel, seriously, is there ANYTHING this man eats? are you my ex-roommate whose boyfriend ate nothing but potato rolls? (literally).
katie, i will make you a grilled cheese sandwich if you can figure out where i live. also, you can feed more than 4 (see the actual rules page, where i thought ahead and added a proviso for these situations).
however, if you eat the baby you are DISQUALIFIED.
Yes, I’m all for a worldwide Cheap Ass Monday movement!! I’m a little new to the site, but will be participating in March’s event.