My sister, Martha came to visit yesterday. All week I'd been anxious for the day to come. Not so much to see her, even though I wanted very much to see her, but that because she was coming, Richard and I decided to take her out for dinner.
Richard and I have been on diets. I've lost 13 pounds and he's lost about 15. We've been making salads and grilling salmon. We cut out our visits to the dollar menu at McDonald's and stopped buying pretzels and tortilla chips. Needless to say we hadn't been to a restaurant in several months. We feel great and have started to crave those big salads but the dream of a fat juicy steak remained in the back of our minds.
At 5 o'clock Richard rushed my sister and me out the door. We were going to Longhorn. Richard was having the biggest prime rib. He'd decided that days in advance. I drove and Martha got a little nervous when I couldn't even find the restaurant. It's been a LONG time since we ate out.
"I'll have the prime rib," Richard announced to the server.
"I'll have the prime rib too," said Martha.
I opted for the filet mignon. As soon as the warm loaf of bread appeared on the table, it was gone. We fought to get to the butter. Next was the caesar salad which also disappeared in an instant.
"Can you bring us some more bread?" Richard waved at a different waitress. We stuffed more in our mouths when our meat arrived. We had very little dinner conversation. We were all too busy shoveling down our tender, juicy beef.
"How about some dessert tonight?" the cheerful waitress asked.
"Chocolate brownie sundae and three spoons," I said without hesitation.
Martha who said she didn't want any dessert was the first to dip her spoon into the ice cream for a taste. Once we made it to the bottom of the dish Richard waved his hand and ordered a second. We polished off the second sundae, paid the bill and left.
It was 5:40. We'd eaten twenty pounds of food in thirty minutes flat. Oh, it was good!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Frugal is Chic
There is a commercial for an appliance retailer that plays repeatedly around here. A woman wearing a bright green suit screams for us to come and buy her out of box refrigerators. Every commercial ends with man wearing a white t-shirt and jean shorts. He simply says thank you.
Recently the tag line 'Frugal is Chic' has been added to the mesmerizing advertisements. Richard, the man who during his working life literally had flames sprouting from his pockets because his money was burning a hole in them has turned into the king of frugality.
It started with the super duper size bag of pancake mix which he mixed and cooked and wrapped into two pancake portion controlled size packages. I haven't had to worry about where my breakfast was coming from in a very long time. Richard refuses to spend money on my expensive toaster waffles.
Then there's the water cooler. The water here in Viera is wonderful. One day I had a long conversation with the water tester from the city. His job is to drive around and test the quality of the water in different neighborhoods. He explained that the water comes directly from the aquafir. The guy was really into the water. I learned alot. Who'd ever thought I'd give up buying bottled water! Now when the 5 gallon jug runs out, Richard puts it under the faucet and immediately I'm good to go again. No more lugging $6 water jugs from the store and paying a $6 deposit just to have the pleasure of a sore back.
Ginger gets in on the savings too. She's a fussy eater so I've tried every kind of fancy dog food to tempt her. Now that Richard does the grocery shopping he bought the cheapest food he could find in Walmart. Fifty cents a can!! She wolfed it down. Amazing!
Don't worry. We're already using one ply toilet paper so you won't hear any tales from me about splitting the plys to make it last longer. It already lasts a really long time. Unless of course Ginger decides to grab the end and drag it all over the house. Since Ginger is always very chic, when she decides it's playtime, frugal doesn't matter.
Recently the tag line 'Frugal is Chic' has been added to the mesmerizing advertisements. Richard, the man who during his working life literally had flames sprouting from his pockets because his money was burning a hole in them has turned into the king of frugality.
It started with the super duper size bag of pancake mix which he mixed and cooked and wrapped into two pancake portion controlled size packages. I haven't had to worry about where my breakfast was coming from in a very long time. Richard refuses to spend money on my expensive toaster waffles.
Then there's the water cooler. The water here in Viera is wonderful. One day I had a long conversation with the water tester from the city. His job is to drive around and test the quality of the water in different neighborhoods. He explained that the water comes directly from the aquafir. The guy was really into the water. I learned alot. Who'd ever thought I'd give up buying bottled water! Now when the 5 gallon jug runs out, Richard puts it under the faucet and immediately I'm good to go again. No more lugging $6 water jugs from the store and paying a $6 deposit just to have the pleasure of a sore back.
Ginger gets in on the savings too. She's a fussy eater so I've tried every kind of fancy dog food to tempt her. Now that Richard does the grocery shopping he bought the cheapest food he could find in Walmart. Fifty cents a can!! She wolfed it down. Amazing!
Don't worry. We're already using one ply toilet paper so you won't hear any tales from me about splitting the plys to make it last longer. It already lasts a really long time. Unless of course Ginger decides to grab the end and drag it all over the house. Since Ginger is always very chic, when she decides it's playtime, frugal doesn't matter.
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