Two weird money things

[Nazgul Girl]

I sometimes suffer from over-thriftiness based on my past experiences. I try to moderate it, but sometimes it gets the best of me.

I had two interesting experiences this last week. We had gotten some Angel Food ground chicken in the past year, and I decided to use up the packages two weeks ago. The were bright yellow and red packages, and look obnoxious in the freezer because I hate ground poultry. I found a recipe for chicken patties, and DH made them. The recipe made about 15 - 16 of the darned things. They were very good on the first night, good on the second night, tiresome on the third night, and two days later, he & I ate two more, and we were chickend out. We still had 6 left. We ate two more a week ( ! ) later. Very tired of chicken patties then. I went to actually get rid of them, because they were old, and we couldn't stand them anymore, but I just couldn't. Instead, I made a New England standby called Desperation Soup ( or Dibs and Dabs ). I put the remaining patties in a soup with a can of tomatoes, kidney beans, two remaining baked potatos from another meal, a can of corn, some left over black olive slices, an onion, and some rice. I threw in the cut-off tops of some celery and some home-grown basil. It made a huge batch delicious soup. I couldn't believe it. I figure we got about $ 7 worth of soup out of many ingredients which just weren't worth keeping around. I froze 3 pints of the soup. Unfortunately, we just got another pound of the ground chicken in our last package from Angel Food.

Also, this last week, we went out to a local chain called Taco Del Mar, at which we liked the food. The food is not cheap. This was our fourth visit, and this time, we brought our daughter. We ordered $ 18 worth of food, and I bought a large bottle of Diet Coke for $ 1.79. We asked for water glasses for my husband and daughter, but the kid at the cash register just ignored our request, and also messed up my husband's order, but we didn't say anything. I thought that there would be water cups over by the pop machine, but there weren't. In the meantime, more customers had come in. Finally, not seeing any water cups, I just took two of the single-size drink cups, thinking that was their set-up. The teenager operated the cash register.

Lo and behold, the owner came storming out of the back, looked around, and accused us of stealing drinks out of the machine which we hadn't paid for. He called us out in front of everyone, bawled us out, told us he had to "account" for all of cups, so finally, after some shock, I told him that we bought the bottle of pop from him at $ 1.79 from his cooler, and that we had paid for everything. He wanted $ 1.49 per cup after we offered to pay for the damned things, and kept screaming at us. We told him that we weren't trying to steal anything at all, and didn't see any water cups. He produced two from behind the counter and almost threw them at us. We ate our dinners, and left. On our way out, I quietly said, " Viva Qdoba." I hope he likes his paper cups, because he evidently thinks that they'll keep his business afloat, instead of customers that give him $20 bills. I haven't eve been called out like that in my life ! Wow.