GOOD DEAL

It is an extremely good deal to get a bread machine for christmas. Mixing the dough and proofing in the machine eliminates the sadness of breadmaking (hand pain and cleaning woes), and baking in the oven ensures no damn paddle thing stuck in the butt of your bread (though it is easy and fun to just bake the bread in the machine).

BREAD

MACHINE

THE BIG APPLE IS A BAD DEAL

I am, of course, referring to the orchard relatively near to Allen's house. We went there yesterday on the hunt for unpasteurized cider. The only available cider was pasteurized, which was a sad time, but no disaster. Upon our arrival at Allen's house, we realized that the cider did not come from the orchard, it was "produced for" it. "WTF?" we asked. The same went for the "good deal" apple butter we purchased (it was not a good deal), which contained high fructose corn syrup and lies.

The New York City big apple remains a good deal, but only with tricky accounting and fuzzy math. Dispairing over the amount of dollars we were spending on a recent weekend jaunt, we decided that we were actually on vacation, making our modest expenditure justifiable. The Union Square farmer's market seemed like a seriously good time, and I touched all the yarn.

Allen is lously exclaiming about my adult chewable vitamins

I mean, they're really fucking good, but I think he's just mocking me ;___;

However, he did just make an amusing joke at Brendan's expense with a punching puppet thing. Way to bounce back!

Last week, we stayed within our self-imposed budget, with a little surplus to pay for mondo beers. One trip to the grocery store and one to the farmer's market at Brown, plus pumpkin and raspberry money (explained below) and dinner at Cindy's Diner. Yesterday, we got crazysexycool amounts of food for about $25.

This weekend, we went to two different Rhode Island farms with corn mazes. The first one was a "fakey farm"--sure, it had a corn maze. But it was in the shape of a pig, not a mystical neo-pagan swirly thing like we had expected. The farm also had a large pen of sad-looking animals trying to escape and a man wearing a reflective vest which read "Corn Cop" trying to catch the rabbits in a large butterfly net. The corn maze was suffuciently disorienting, and the hay ride was appropriately ridiculous (ride through an open dirt lot, passing by a severely injured seagull and the highway).



The second farm was truly a land of wonders. Not only did they have an actual, real-live, magical pumpkin patch (the ostensible reason for the trip), but they also had healthy-looking llamas which were protected from the grubby hands of children, a raspberry-picking area and a fantastic hay ride led by a saucy teen who gave our party coy looks as he steered the mighty vessel through mud puddles. We got some excellent deals on pumpkins and raspberries. I made a pie!

The Firefly theme song is so unforgivably lame

Tonight, we're eating broccoli-asparagus quiche. The pie crust came from the depths of the freezer!

I think the oven is lopsided or some such truck. The quiche is a little slanty-looking.

Dinner

We are having roasted beets, potatos, green beans and carrots for dinner tonight, along with some tasty Chicory Stout that I bought without factoring it into the budget.

Before cracking this fancy beer, I decided that there should be a handcrafted beer called Be-er Now.

I used the Shaw's Reward Card and got quite the discount!

Allen and I just returned from Shaw's, where we began Week 2 of our magical budget adventure. The parameters of the adventure are as follows: we will each chip in $30 for food-related items each week. Surplus will be used to buy mondo beers.

At Shaw's, we bought a bunch of produce, some coffee, barley, eggs, milk, a smartwater for me to bring to work this week, tortillas, and walnuts. We spent $21.2x. There were teens.