Man, but do I like Fried Chicken.

From diners to fast food joints, I’ll almost always opt for fried chicken over other choices. I’m not even that picky with the Crunch Factor™ or which piece I get (though if pressed, my fave pieces go in this order: Thigh, Wing, Breast, Drumstick).

It’s a bit amazing I’ve never actually had Popeye’s until about 1 month ago. No, not the sailor man. I mean Popeye’s Chicken.

The first thing you’ll notice about the picture is that it was extremely dark. Well, it was a late night decision to try a chicken meal there. Also, for the life of me I can’t remember how much I paid for the meal. I believe it was a bit over 6 dollars which was sort of a sticker shocker. I mean, it’s fast food after all. I still can’t get used to food inflation.

Anyhow, I was getting ticked off at not being able to take a good picture. Food Bloggies know what I’m talking about… it’s hell on wheels when you’re starving but trying to get a good photo of your food! I finally gave up and picked up the fork.

Continue reading “Popeye’s Chicken Meal” …

Hi there fellow Cheap Eaters. Well, the old timers will probably have noticed by now that the Cheap Eats site looks a bit different. I’ve been wanting to redesign the site for months. And now that I got all excited about that a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been dealing with these shoulder issues. That’s been preventing me from working on the site and writing about cheap food.

However, you know the old “play through the pain” saying that sports coaches like to drill into their players heads? Yes, hello. Ouch.

But I’m not stupid. I’m taking it slow, which is why it has taken so long to put up this first redesign. I say “first”, because you can expect further changes to popup along the way as I’m able to get to them. I’m actually also hoping to introduce a new feature or two, but it all depends.

So for now, let us bid a fond farewell to the Cheap Eats mascott that has been the header graphic for over a year now. Bye, bye bangers ‘n mash (approximately $2.00 to make), but we need to make room for other cheap eats like the new header graphic which is Mexican food leftovers. Gotta love those leftovers.

[Note: I've been having major issues with my right shoulder from using the computer too much. Oh, the evils of technology. As such, you may notice Cheap Eats posts a little shorter and less frequent in coming weeks.]

All my life, I’ve lived in an Avocado Paradise.

It’s the combination of the mild Southern California climate with my parent’s backyard avocado trees that contributed most to this paradise. Growing up, I thought EVERYONE had avocado trees in their backyards. I had no idea that they weren’t the norm for most folks. Until I moved out.

So I realized I’ve been taking avocados for granted. That realization came one day after a trip down the produce aisle. Avocados can be crazy expensive. I wasn’t about to pay two dollars or whatever the cost was for ONE squishy looking avocado. I headed over to the parents place, where the two trees in the backyard have been consistently producing fruit twice a year for over 40 years.

Some people don’t like avocados, because they are sort of fattening. Or they also don’t like the puke-green-brown color they take on after having been mashed up for guacamole and left out for awhile.

They are pretty high on my list of Cheap Eats, however. Mostly because they are free for me, but also because of their versatility. You can put them in salads, tuck them in burritos, smash them for 7 layer dip, or eat them on toast.

Continue reading “Avocados” …

Warning – extremely Cheap Eats up ahead. You may want to look away if you’re adverse to main meal recipes with only three ingredients.

If you were ever a hungry latch-key kid coming home from school, chances are you’ve made an afternoon snack like this before. I call it Ghetto Pizza, although maybe it should be called “Starving College Kid Pizza”. I happen to think this is quite good for lunchtime meals as well (as long as you eat other stuff with it, veggies would be nice!).

I actually wasn’t a latch-key kid until high school, but I still found occasion to make these every so often. The recipe is stupidly simple, has endless modifications, generally tastes “good” and can be fairly cheap as long as you don’t go putting any gourmet toppings on top.

We haven’t had a recipe on Cheap Eats in awhile, and I know that this doesn’t really count, but hey it’s cheap isn’t it? Here are the basics:

Ghetto Pizza

2 tbsp spaghetti sauce from a 26 oz. $2 jar — $0.07
1 slice of white bread — $0.10
1 slice cheese (mozzarella, swiss, etc.) — $0.15

optional pepper, dried oregano — negligible

Total: $0.32

If you can’t figure out how to make this, then I don’t know what to say. Put the sauce on the bread and cover with the cheese. Optional dried oregano and pepper on top. Put it in the toaster oven and toast it until the cheese is bubbly. That’s it.

You probably want to make a couple of these to fill you up. You couch potato guys, I’m talking to you…

Continue reading “Ghetto Pizza” …

In the days of yore, back when normal sized candy bars were 25 cents a piece, I used to drink a lot of soda. Generally, we didn’t get a whole lot of name brands like Coke, Pepsi, and 7-up at home. We used to get cans of “fake” soda like Shasta.

Actually, there wasn’t a whole lot of soda drinking at home. It was mostly on camping trips when we got soda.

These were usually syrupy sweet carbonated concoctions that would melt teeth outright if you kept it too long in your mouth. It was best to gulp these down. My favorites were the articifical grape, black cherry and strawberry sodas. Only kids could love this stuff.

Flash forward to the present, and we happened to pick up some Welch’s Strawberry Soda which came in the ubiquitous fridge pack. I know it’s not a generic brand soda, but it was as cheap as one: $1.99 for a fridge pack. Difficult to pass up, seeing as we needed to re-fill our soda stock.

Let me just say that this soda is so sweet that I felt like I was going to go blind or something from drinking it. I bet if you let all the carbonation escape it might make a nice strawberry topping for shave ice.

Nevertheless, it brings back some good memories of Shasta soda when I was young (I know they still have this on the market). Little kids love sweet drinks – it fuels their inexhaustable energy reserves. I remember recently trying to drink one of those “Hi-C” type box drinks and I just couldn’t believe how sweet it was.

Continue reading “Welch’s Strawberry Soda” …